Over the last couple years, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from the internet, as some of you may have noticed. Between activist burnout, Covid-19 lockdown screen fatigue, and increased responsibilities and demands from my day job, I’ve needed a break from screens and online discussions, and I’ve been focusing on more local ace organizing and my offline hobbies.

I’m still doing well, just in a space where I needed some different habits for a while.

For 2025, I’m looking to start getting back into more online networking and resource curation, but it will probably take different forms. This particular blog may not be the right space for me anymore either – in the almost 12 years since I first started this blog, I’ve evolved a lot as a person, and so have my thoughts on web design, writing, organizing, and more. That said, I’ll still be leaving everything up so that any existing resource lists or pages will remain accessible.

As for where I’ll be going from here, that remains to be seen, but I’ll keep this site updated once I do have firmer plans and a better idea of where I’ll be calling home next.

Cheers, Sennkestra

Click here to downloader a printer-friendly color PDF file >>

There’s a grayscale version for black and white printers, which removes the ace flag background colors so save ink.

Also, if you run your own local group and would like an editable version of this poster where you can swap in your own group’s contact info or adjust with your own personal rec lists, you can contact me at sennkestra@gmail.com for an editable copy.

Happy Ace Week, everyone!

And for those of you who aren’t able to make it, we’ll be posting some of our sessions slides and notes from the two Asexuality SF sponsored sessions (The Aro and Ace Caucus and the Best Practices for Ace Cultural Competency Workshop) afterwards if you’d like to check back in a week or two!

The third and final of these is a set of printable ace flag bunting to hang on a wall or window. It’s double sided so it can be viewed from any angle.

Materials Needed:

• Access to a color printer
• Printer paper
• Glue, tape, or stapler
• Scissors
• Ribbon or string or twine

Instructions:

1. Download the ace week flag bunting here.
2. Load your printer with printer paper
3. Print the ace bunting template. Each pages makes four triangles (around 10-12″ of string), so print multiple copies depending on how long you want your string of bunting to be.
4. Cut out a piece of string – you’ll usually want at least 12″ for every page printed, and an extra 12″ for the loose ends. When in doubt, cut longer and trim it later.
5. Cut out all the diamond shapes along the outer edges, then fold in half along the dotted lines (with colored sides out and white sides in.
6. Arrange the triangles in the order of black – grey – white – purple – repeat and run the string through the creases
7. Add glue or tape to the inside of each new triangle, or staple about .25″ to .5″ in.
   • If you want to be able to reposition the triangles and adjust the spacing easily, don’t put any glue or tape within .25″ to .5″ of the crease.
   • Alternatively, if you want the spacing to be more secure and not slip, then do add glue or tape into the crease to hold the string in place
8. Refold and press each triangle closed in order to seal
9. Repeat for each triangle until all triangles have been added to the string.
10. Hang up your string wherever you want!

If you make any of these yourself, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

The second of these is a set of printable mini ace flags designed to pair well with standard size toothpicks – great for adding to baked goods or sliced fruit or other snacks that could use some ace week festivity.

Materials Needed:

• Access to a color printer
• Printer paper
• Glue stick (preferrable) or other tape or glue
• Scissors
• Standard wooden toothpicks

Instructions:

1. Download the ace week toothpicks flags template here.
2. Load your printer with printer paper
3. Print the toothpick flags template. In your printer settings, make sure to set scaling to “fit to page” for best results.
4. Cut out all the flags – I like to cut vertically first, then make the smaller cuts to cut out each individual flag.
   • When cutting out the individual flags in this template, make sure to cut between the black and purple stripes to avoid accidentally ending up with a different flag type.
5. Fold each flag in half, with the white back on the inside and the colored stripes on the outside, and crease
6. Add glue or tape to the inside of each flag cutout, then place a toothpick in the fold.
   • Line up the top of the toothpick with the top black stripe. The bottom purple stripe should be in the middle of the toothpick
   • If using glue or a gluestick, just do a quick swipe across the blank white side, crossing the fold – you don’t need to get all the edges.
   • If using tape, I recommend one piece of tape over the toothpick and the fold, and one tape loop on the edge of the flag (see image example below)
7. Refold each paper flag around the toothpick and pinch to seal
8. Repeat for each flag.

Attached below are a few sample images, including a demonstration of how to use regular tape if you don’t have glue or double stick tape on hand.

If you make any of these yourself, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

The first of these is a quick and easy ace party hat pattern. These can be assembled in under 5 minutes, and they make a fun and stylish addition to any ace week celebrations you might be having. Or, get yourself some cake and have a party of one if that’s more your style!

Materials Needed:

• Access to a color printer
• Cardstock (you can use regular printer paper if it’s all you have, it will just be a little more fragile)
• Glue or double stick tape (optional)
• Scissors
• Clear tape
• Two (2) 18″+ pieces of string or ribbon or thin elastic

Instructions:

1. Download the ace week party hat pattern here.
2. Load your printer with cardstock (if possible)
3. Print the party hat pattern. In your printer settings, make sure to set scaling to “fit to page” for best results.
4. Cut along the outside lines of the pattern, making sure not to accidentally cut off the blank tab (you’ll need that to secure everything later)
5. Gently start bending the cardstock into a cone shape, aligning the stripe borders on each side. (It will be easier to tape it in the next steps if it’s already bent a little bit)
6. Apply double stick tape or glue to the left-hand tab, if you have it. Apply on the printed side with the text.
7. Gently bend the paper back into a cone shape, making sure the right side firmly overlaps the left tab and forms a seamless pattern, with all stripe edges aligned
8. Firmly hold the seam in place until it sticks
   • Note: if using glue, you may want to use a binder clip, paper clip, or weak rubber band to hold everything in place while the glue dries.
   • Optionally, you can also add a piece or two of clear tape on top of the outside seam to more firmly hold the hat seam in place. (If you don’t have access to double sided tape or glue, this will be the main thing holding your hat together)
9. Cut two 18″ pieces of string/elastic/ribbon (if in doubt, aim for longer – you can always cut shorter later if you need to)
10. With the seam facing you, identify the far left and right sides of the base of the hat
11. On the inside of the cone, just above the edge, tape the edges of each of your pieces of string (you want to tape the inside so the loose ends won’t show)
12. Put the hat on your or a friends head
13. Tie the strings in a bow either under your chin or under the back of the head, depending on preference and what balances better on your head shape.
14. Party!

If you want to see what the in progress and end result can look like, here’s a few more images for inspiration. The examples below were all made using cardstock, while the example with the shark in the header was made using regular printer paper – you can see how it doesn’t hold it’s shape quite as rigidly.

If you make any of these yourself, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

• Mundo Heterogéneo writes about households in Spain and their own ideals, including recent stats about the prevelance of single-person households and mixed households, and how housing policies are often biased towards “one family” models that don’t necessarily reflect how much of the population lives.
• Sildarmillion writes about the living situations she’s had and the ones she’s wanted, and how covid-isolation and limerence vs. more platonic feelings all affect her thoughts about living situations.
• Graces of Luck writes a reflection on home, explaining how both being aromantic and being an immigrant affects their priorities for a “home”, how income and housing restrictions can sometimes limit their options, and looking forward to making a new home.
• Sennkestra at Next Step: Cake writes about rental housing and communal living, and how discussions of owning vs. renting housing are complicated by non-nuclear-family households and preferences for alternative types of communal living.
• Roboticanary writes about their ideal housing as an aromantic and facing challenges from landlords who prefer couples (especially married couples) above single people and friend groups, with an additional aside about UK housing policy and how a focus on “families” often fails to support the kinds of new housing that would be accessible to young or single people.
• Ace Film Reviews asks “Where is my Home?” as they reflect on how living with their best friend and family led them to discover how much they enjoyed that kind of living, and the uncertainty of an upcoming move to a new place and new experience of living alone, leaving the future more open-ended.
• Grownupchangeling writes about wanting to live alone, what makes something feel like a “home” instead of a household or just a place you live, and how different living situations did or didn’t feel like home to them.

A big thank you to everyone who submitted!

The Carnival of Aros is currently on hiatus for the month of July, and is currently looking for additional hosts for upcoming months.

This post was written for the June 2022 Carnival of Aros on “House and Home”

With housing prices rapidly rising across the country, I’ve gotten used to seeing dozens of thinkpieces and well-meaning articles about how home-ownership is the key to building wealth, and that continuing to rent is just draining your money away instead of building equity. While there is room to argue about whether this is always the case, that’s not what’s activating my pet peeves today. Instead, what gets my goat is the way that such articles so often position rental vs. owned housing as a matter of whether you can afford a downpayment, with little acknowledgement of some of the other factors that can affect housing choices.

In particular, rather than simple profit or cost, what keeps me in rentals is a combination of flexibility and risk – particularly the flexibility to live in larger communal settings instead of small nuclear or individual households, and without having to take on the long-term financial risks of having to hold a forced partition sale in civil court or spend hundreds of thousands to buy people out everytime someone wants to move out. 

I’m also increasingly frustrated by how much these discussions revolve on the assumption of a nuclear family household model, with discussions of the relative merits of renting vs. buying all revolving on the assumption that these decisions are being made by either individuals or married partners. As an aromantic and non-partnering person who prefers semi-formal group living with platonic friends, this just doesn’t accurately reflect my reality.

I’ve spoken previously about my current living arrangement, and how much I enjoy group living with friends (currently 5 of us total). Within that arrangement, I effectively rent a full bedroom, and a share in a bathroom/kitchen/living area/balcony, for an incredibly affordable price, thanks in part to rent control, economies of scale, and being willing to take the smallest room (for reference, I pay under ~$1500 USD; a studio or 1 bedroom in my area is more like ~$2000-3000) . And since I prefer having lots of people around and like spending time in common areas, this works out great for me!

It’s also a style and cost of living that is basically impossible to replicate in a buyer’s market built for nuclear families, as “family”-size housing for this kind of social living isn’t generally sold in fractions. 

I’ve done the math before, when looking at the cost to buy housing in my area instead of renting. If I look at the cost of say, a four bedroom in a more affordable neighborhood a few transit stops away from me, I could theoretically reasonably afford ¼ of the cost for it. Unfortunately, I can’t buy just a share of a house the way I can buy a single slice of pie, even if that’s all I’m hungry for. 

Instead, the only things I could hope to qualify for a mortgage for would be something like a studio unit in a condo tower, which due to economies of scale and differences in target markets would likely cost 3x as much as my current living arrangement (and easily 2x as much as my theoretical ¼ of a house), and outstrip what I can reasonable pay for. 

The next logical question would be, if you can afford ¼ of a house, why not find three other ¼ ers and go in together? The answer is that this entails significantly more long-term financial risk for all of us. Even if we could initially afford to all go in on a mortgage together (and find a bank will to approve this nontraditional arrangement), the risks if things go wrong are significantly higher, as each person could be find themselves held liable for up to the the entire mortgage debt if things go wrong, not just their theoretical quarter share – more than 4x the risk they’d be taking on if they made a smaller purchase individually. You might be able to mitigate some of that with careful lawyering, cohabitation contracts, and use of civil courts, but all of those come with their own additional risks, not to mention added financial and time costs (and lots of stress in the meantime). 

As much as I sometimes complain about that one recent popular tumblr post and others like it that catastrophize the risks of buying property or cohabitating without the protections of marriage (which just isn’t an available option for everyone, especially if you number more than two!), there’s a reason that almost all financial advisors start of their introductions to how to co-own property as an unmarried couple with, “we generally suggest that you consider not doing this”. While the risk might be worth it for some (I’ve seriously looked into it myself), it does still involve taking on significantly more risk; and while you can mitigate some of it with a lot of money and paperwork, you can’t get rid of it all. And that’s just for regular couples – the risks get even more complex if you’re a group of friends or a complicated polycule or extended family that wants to split a house 3 or 4 or even 5 ways. 

Instead, the general advice for cohabitating couples and friends who want to buy property is to have a single head of household purchase a more modest home in their own name and with their own funds, and then simply become the landlord themselves, bringing us practically back to where we started: you either rent from a landlord, or you yourself must become the landlord. 

Of course, even this relies on assumptions of both wealth and nuclear families. A member of a well-off couple might be able to stretch their finances enough to cover the initial mortgage for a small condo with space for two. But if you are a group of friends looking to split a 4 bedroom house? Unless you are fortunate enough to have a very wealthy friend or a particularly affordable area, it’s unlikely any single person’s savings can stretch that far. And even if they could, it’s a huge amount of liability to ask anyone to take on.

Unless, perhaps, we could give someone a small financial incentive to take on that liability from the rest of us, so that we can all live together in a style we choose? Well, that’s exactly what for-profit landlords do (assume long-term risk in return for short-term financial profits), and we’re back where we started. 

That’s not to say that this is the best solution to this situation, or that it should be – in a more ideal world, maybe people could just buy shares in a common living space. Maybe larger groups could access marital-like legal recognition and the ensuing protections to make shared ownership less risky. Maybe there would be more novel and accessible types of homes to consider buying. And there definitely could be ways for individuals to trade off profit and risk without the massive and growing power imbalance of current rental markets. 

But in the short term, I’d like it if more discussions of the pros and cons of renting vs. buying could at least break away from assumptions of romantic-sexual nuclear families and acknowledge that other shapes of households or ways of living might require very different kinds of analysis.

For this month’s Carnival of Aros, I wanted to propose the topic of “House and Home” – whether it’s the literal structures that we currently live in, our aspirational ideal for a home, or the more philosophical concept of what makes up a home, house, or household in the first place.

Some possible prompts to consider include: 

• What is your current living situation? Does your a/romantic identity affect the options you have available to you?
• What is your ideal living situation? Is that also shaped by your a/romantic identity?
• What impact do your relationship preferences have on the kind of housing you prefer and how you like to furnish your home?
• What makes something a “home” to you?
• How are concepts of homes and households shaped by assumptions about nuclear families and romantic relationships, and how does aromanticism disrupt that?
• How do you define a “household” and who do you currently consider part of yours / who would you like to include?
• Are there any particular objects or spaces inside your home that have a meaningful connection to aromanticism for you?

How to Participate

To submit your entry to the carnival, you can leave a link to your submission in the comments below, or contact me directly at sennkestra@gmail.com. If you don’t have your own blog, you can also email me your submission text and I am happy to host it here as a guest post.

Submissions are due by midnight on June 30, 2022. (But if you think you are going to be a day or two late, we’re not sticklers – we’re happy to add late submissions to the roundup retroactively)

About the Carnival Aros

The Carnival of Aros is a monthly blogging carnival centered around aromantic/aro-spec identities and experiences! For more information on this project, see its home blog here.

Each monthly carnival is hosted by a volunteer blogger, who chooses any aro-related themes of their choice and issues a call for submissions, which can include text prose, poetry, video, art, or any other format of your choice. At the end of the month, the host will collect the links to all of that month’s submissions into a single masterpost.

The carnival is also always looking for new hosts – to volunteer to host, see here!

When it comes to aspirations about an asexual and aromantic lifestyle, I’ve come to realize over the last couple years that I’m already living the dream in many ways, with a social and cohabitation arrangement like something out of an ensemble fanfiction found family trope* – albeit it mostly by chance rather than design.

On the one hand, this is a great place to be in the moment, but it also brings with it anxiety about how long the dream can last, and if there’s anything I can do to maintain it into the future. However, I do at least have a few ideas about that.

First, before we get into speculation about causation, I think it’ll help to give a quick summary of some of the highlights of  my current friendship co-living situation:

• I currently rent the full upper floor of a duplex with 4 other friends all from the same friend group. W’eve been living at this current apartment for over 5 years now.
• We all know each from being part of the same college anime club almost a decade ago, and have stayed networked with other alumni from the same group via groupchat and lots of shared outings.
• Basically ever since I moved out of my first college dorms, I have almost always been living with friends from this group in some way, although the exact cast has varied over the years as various people moved in, moved out, or changed apartments. (We regularly announce to the group anytime someone needs a room or roommate, so there’s been several group share house iterations over the years). 
• As roommates with similar shared hobbies (anime, gaming, food), we’ll frequently have dinners together, watch new episode releases together, watch each other play games and comment, etc.
• As the possessor of the largest living room, we also become the prime choice for hosting group events for our larger social circle, so we regularly host dinners, movie nights, and pre- and post-outing debriefs (and it turns out maintaining an active social life is way easier when you don’t have to leave the house to do it).
• We also frequently go on joint vacations within this social circle and split hotel rooms, train fare, book tours or tickets together, road trip in someone’s car, etc. We literally spent hours a couple weeks ago nerding out about different options for potential long-distance train outings once the pandemic subsides enough.
• While I personally didn’t go to as many of these until the pandemic, the group has several times organized several thanksgiving/christmas/other holiday get togethers for folks who didn’t plan to return home for whatever reason (family overseas and too far to travel, family doesn’t do american holidays, not close with family, etc.).

While it’s something I’ve fallen into almost entirely by accident, it’s actually pretty close to my ideal living situation, as someone who doesn’t like living alone and also prefers interacting with people in established groups over having lots of 1:1 relationships. It’s not as formal as a queerplatonic partner or life partner kinda thing, but that works fine for me since I’m not sure how willing I personally am to commit to anything more formal at this stage of my life either.

As to how I got here, it’s a mix of good and bad things, but I’d say the main factors are being in a high rent area (bad), having shared hobbies and traditions (good), and having strong group networking infrastructure (also good).

High Rent

The first factor that makes my living situation work is the fact that I live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the US, which makes having housemates an absolute necessity for many people; and still quite advantageous to have even for those with higher incomes. The fact that trying to live alone is incredibly expensive here means that living with non-partners is much more normalized, and many more people are open to living with friends than they might be if they lived elsewhere.

This kind of housing inaccessibility isn’t a good thing for society overall, but the increased social acceptance of co-living with friends is one silver lining.

However, I also need to add the caveat that I am unusually fortunate in that both I and many of my friends are lucky enough to now have the privilege of having the income and savings needed to hit the sweet spot of being able to hold out for an ideal living situation with trusted friends; unfortunately the reality of high rent markets is that many people end up stuck in unpleasant living situations out of financial desperation in the same way that lack of financial resources traps many people abusive romantic relationships as well – and there’s even fewer social scripts for dealing with abusive housemates than there are for dealing with abusive partners.

Shared Interests and Traditions

One of the more positive things that helped make this kind of friendship group work is the fact that we all have shared interests, which gave us common subjects of conversation and engagement. 

Perhaps even more importantly, we also tend to have a lot of overlap in the kinds of events we like to go to, so it’s easy to keep up contact with people when we’re all constantly going to the same movie screenings and meetups and conventions. This repeated proximity lends itself well to establishing friendships in a similar way to how it’s easy to form friendships in school when you keep seeing the same classmates day after day.

In particular, there are a few annual conventions that we all reliably travel to in a pilgrimage-like fashion, (and which also involve lots of time sitting hotels and waiting in lines together with nothing to do but talk and get to know each other) which often offers a chance to reconnect and solidify relationships even with people we might not see as often. 

Group Networking

Finally, I think the last thing that helps make things work well for us as a friend group is having a very established, very active group chat. The way it came to be was almost a fluke, involving several switches in chat group platforms for the original college anime club which eventually resulted in a chat group that consisted mostly of recent alumni from the club but which was no longer used for new incoming members or official announcements , allowing it to evolve from an official organizational server into a more casual server for lots of friends to just keep in touch and continue organizing dinners and movie nights and game streams and whatnot.

As someone who isn’t great at 1:1 interactions, having a group chat where I can drop invitations to proposed outings, or ask for advice or help with specific things makes it much easier to connect with people, especially people who I might not otherwise always think to reach out to. It also makes for a great point of contact for rebuilding connections if any of us ever drifts off for a bit (like because of a temporary out of state move or you know, a global pandemic that prevents everyone from socializing for a year or more). 

The Formula Worked Twice

Just for comparison, I’ve also found it interesting that the only friend group that I’ve really stayed in contact with from high school follows similar lines – we originally got to know each other from the anime and game clubs (shared interest), kept in touch largely because we already had traditions of meeting at several annual anime conventions, even when we all scattered to different cities, and of doing small gift exchanges whenever we were back in our hometown for the holidays (shared traditions). Eventually one person in the group set up a chat group to organize D&D sessions, and while the D&D sessions eventually petered out, the shared space has allowed us to become more involved than we had been at any point after graduation (group infrastructure).

I don’t know if this model works for everyone, as it’s focused on group relationships (which may not work for people who do prefer that 1:1 style interaction), and because my particular hobby is one that lends itself especially well to shared events, topics, and spaces, which isn’t the case for all people. It also just requires a certain amount of luck and convenient circumstances. But since this kind of social group dynamic does seem to be something that some people seem to aspire to, I figured I’d just share that it can and does happen sometimes.

*As a caveat, I don’t actually consider my current situation as a found family thing, in part because I actually already have a great relationship with my family of origin, in part because I don’t feel the need to conceptualize important friendships through a family lens, and in part because it’s more a medium-term result of circumstances than a long-term intentional relationship. But I realize that it does hit on a lot of tropes of what people like about found family tropes, especially of the ensemble fanfiction variety.