primeideal

For the May 2019 Carnival of Aros, roundup link here!

Everything I know about romantic relationships comes from watching in the outside--mostly through popular media rather than voyeuristically creeping on my friends' dating habits, you'll be glad to know. So of course I recognize that many of these portrayals will be exaggerated in some ways--relying on tropes and cliches rather than realistic depictions of evolving relationships.

One of those tropes is hesitation to say "I love you" (link to TVTropes). Fictional couples might engage in lots of sexual intimacy and/or consider themselves in a very long-term commitment with no interest in being romantically involved with anyone else, but the idea of articulating "love" in so many words is still scary, and if and when it comes to pass, it's seen as a significant milestone.

It's hard for me to imagine what that mindset would be like. Partly because it's hard for me to imagine what it would be like to be in a romantic relationship--I don't actively identify as aromantic (or asexual), mostly for reasons that are caught up in being autistic, but I've never experienced anything I could pinpoint as romantic or sexual attraction. But also partly because the language of love comes naturally to me, and it's hard to imagine having stigma around it.

I think for me, that's somewhat an "advantage" (or at least consequence) of having been raised in a religious family. I've been Christian (Lutheran) all my life, and that worldview seems full of the languages of love: God's love for humankind, humans' reciprocal love for God, and love for each other. To me, loving someone, recognizing God's creation in them and trying to do the best for them, is a lot lower barrier than liking them! I often find myself pulling away from individuals or groups that frustrate me and make me upset, because I don't like spending time around them and my hobby/fun time is better spent elsewhere. But I still have a responsibility to love them, and that includes stopping myself from lashing out in anger.

Religion, to me, can also be a source of art and music that's more diverse than contemporary pop culture. Certainly not all of it is spiritually or artistically meaningful! (I have an entire side blog dedicated to commenting on, which in many cases means snarking at, my denomination's hymnal.) But being able to sing about Jesus sacrificing his life for humanity, or the beauty of nature reflecting God's creativity, or hope for social change, is a lot more interesting than romantic narratives I can't relate to.

So, the Carnival of Aces theme is "fiction" this month, which is exciting! But also open-ended.
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Over the last few years, I've written several sets of lyrics as part of a series of competitions called "WorldVision." (It's based on the real-life Eurovision, only for fictional countries.) Many of them are not my best work, but I've been thinking about them in terms of poetree 's queer poetry week. See, a lot of the songs are written to use some of the language or structures of pop songs (which are, to my disappointment, disproportionately romance-based), but are actually about very different sets of relationships. My way of playing with the genre, if you will.

The first of these could probably be reinterpreted as an asexual character's voice, in my opinion. Maybe some of the others too.

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