Aromantic Narratives and Creativity
Hallo, Aro is a series of flash fiction stories about allosexual aromantic characters navigating friendship, sexual attraction, aromanticism and the weight of amatonormative expectation.
Contains: A allo-aro woman who doesn’t choose marriage and children … and a society that expects she use her time in service to those who did.
When fog creeps and moon fades, the desperate seek out gods few dare name.
If you follow me here or elsewhere, you probably know that I posted a collection including pixel-style “queer” text patterns for three, four and six-stripe pride flags. If you’re really invested in my creative output, you may remember that last year’s Pride Month patch patterns included lower and upper-case pixel-style “queer” patterns for five-stripe flags. On Patreon and Tumblr, meanwhile, I’ve been posting pixel-style “queer” header images in aromantic spectrum pride colours–headers based upon my original patterns.
Given that I also made a-spectrum variants of last year’s “pride” text patterns, I don’t know why I didn’t think to create a-spectrum “queer” text patterns before the end of June. I can and will, however, hurriedly finish Pride Month with patterns celebrating apothi, aego, caed, caligo, demi, jump, spike and vague folks!
Some patterns will require fractional stitches to sew as shown. Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my pride text tutorial and my tutorial master page.
Are you an aromantic or otherwise queer person wanting more text patch designs for five or ten-stripe pride flags? Do you crave patches depicting longer words like “aromantic asexual”? I now have a complete alphabet, with narrow letters ideal for stitching non-abbreviated terms, to accompany my many five-stripe block text patterns. Plus patterns for the words “aromantic”, “allosexual”, “asexual”, “non sam aro” and “arospec” … and adaptations for my 8 x 10 block A is for Aro letter frame designs!
You’ll need familiarity with cross stitch (full crosses and fractional stitches) and backstitch to make unedged patches, along with buttonhole stitch to make the edged patches shown above. The first instalment of this patch tutorial series demonstrates cross and blanket/buttonhole stitch, while the second covers backstitch. While these patterns use fractional stitches to round off most letters, they can be omitted for a more pixellated look.
Folks after patterns suitable for three, four, six and twelve-stripe pride flags should check out my 10 x 12 Aro Alphabet and Letter Patch tutorials.
Princess Constance of Blackvale hopes a witch’s entrapment proves less onerous than a royal betrothal. A ring weighs heavy upon a gay trans man who knows no acceptable reason to avoid marrying the man he loves. Suki faces condemnation for scorning her lover’s courtly intentions. Esher Hill’s dogs make his days worth living, but his cousin believes marriage the cure to his depression. Priesthood offers Moll community and purpose in a life eschewing love until their usefulness–and their humanity–comes under question. A baker risks unknowable powers rather than submit to the relationships his mother deems necessary.
When society celebrates partnership as obligate duty, unquestionable necessity and saving grace, what must these aromantics sacrifice to build a world without it?
Spirits Most Singular collects sixteen fantasy and contemporary aromantic stories that don’t centre on a wish for or possession of a partner.
Prudence Revered revels in her work as witch-hunter. (Well, census-taker.) What’s not to appreciate in travelling new roads, meeting new people and experiencing new freedoms–ones impossible as the demure once-wife to the Sorcerer Potentate? If she prefers to bed and befriend the witches she tracks down, well, she doubts the Citadel cares (much) about a minor official’s lack of interest in investigation and interrogation. The only clouds on her endless horizon are those ignorant souls who preach the rules that once caged her–the rules witches taught her to break.
She thought herself content wearing the Citadel’s uniform, but when a chance-met companion expects Prue to wage a moral war against unwed witches and provocatively-shaped trees, she fears that her new life isn’t different enough from what she thought to leave behind.
Mother told such stories. Their silken filaments clung to everything Prue knew herself to be, until she was less a person than an actor upon the stage, reciting the lines of a play so old that the audience mouthed the words along with her.
My second Aro Week arrow pattern post features patterns for aromantic-spectrum flags with uneven stripe counts or non-stripe elements like crosses, spikes and triangles. Most of these patterns aren’t exact representations of their respective flags, as I am constrained by cross stitch’s pixellated nature as well as the width and angled slope of the arrow fletching. I hope, however, that these patterns come close enough that aegoromantic, apothiromantic and demiromantic folks feel included in this series.
Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.
Previous patterns are available at part one and my pattern gallery.
A couple of years ago, I posted a tutorial for making pride-themed arrow cross-stitch patches. Unfortunately, the template I used back then made it difficult (read: time-consuming) for me to post patterns covering flag style and stripe variants. This isn’t the case with my current template, so for Aro Week I thought I’d update my arrow patterns to cover a greater selection of aromantic flags … starting with simple horizontal stripes.
Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.
Previous patterns are available at my pattern gallery.
Even knows himself: son, baker, non-partnering. He doesn’t want to want sex, marriage or children; he wants the village’s acceptance of a life best lived crafting seed buns and fruit pies. He doesn’t want the local flock of crows as his only companions; he wants human friendships free of pressure and expectation. Most of all, he wants Ma to let go of the idea that a sorcerer’s magic can and must “fix” him.
Desperation leads Even into the forest to seek the only person who can advise him on resisting a sorcerer: the witch Miser Felled, “skilled purveyor of magic and pleasure”. A master of scandal-provoking arts never undertaken before open windows and watching birds. A mysterious figure who has more in common with Even than just an affinity for crows … and offers a more extraordinary solution than he ever thought possible.
Why weep for something no more rightly part of him than garlic in a recipe for apple pie?
As chronic pain plagued me during January, thus derailing my plains, I’m starting Aro Week with something easy: my small collection of rainbow-shaped pride patches.
These patches were made using a five-stripe pattern available in K-Mart’s 22 Piece Cross Stitch Kit, albeit adjusted to better suit my taste in terms of shape and symmetry. (It can be stitched as is: I just have the compulsive need to tweak, change and modify every cross stitch or embroidery pattern I work!) As I’ve long wanted to make a rainbow pride patch but disliked my own attempts, finding this pattern in a kit I bought for the plastic hoop was a delightful bonus. I mean … what queer doesn’t want rainbows sewn onto their pride patch jacket?
Continue reading “Pride Patch Collection: Rainbows”
Are you an aromantic or otherwise queer person wanting letter patches using pride flags with three, four, six or even twelve horizontal stripes? Are you craving patches that read “cupioromantic” or “oriented aroace”? Do you yearn to sew a “fuck the binary” patch in the colours of the non-binary pride flag? I now have frame-patch patterns suitable for three, four and six-stripe flags plus a complete rescaling of my five-stripe lower-case alphabet!
These rescaled patterns will let you stitch words and letters in the colours of any horizontal three, four, six and twelve-stripe flag design. Every letter also fits inside the new 10 x 12 block version of my A is for Aro frame pattern, massively expanding the range of identities encompassed by my icon-style letter patches.
You’ll need familiarity with cross stitch (full crosses and fractional stitches) and backstitch to make unedged patches, along with a buttonhole/closed blanket stitch to make the edged patches shown above. The first instalment of this patch tutorial series demonstrates cross and blanket/buttonhole stitch, while the second covers backstitch.
Folks after patterns suitable for five and ten-stripe pride flags should check out my 8 x 10 Aro Alphabet and my 8 x 10 Letter Patch tutorials.
Continue reading “Pride Patch Tutorial: Aromantic Alphabet, Part Two”
Aro Worlds 