Listening to the bee duo fic Ad Astra, book one of the Event Horizon series read by Passerine Podcast with my family (my sister's first time listening to it and my mom's like sixth)
Neither of them are at all aware or literally any of the cc!'s these characters are based off, which is great. That's fun actually.
And so anyway they're both really invested in the way that Tubbo's adoration towards Tommy reads as romantic attraction, and that's all well and good because I don't really care and yeah I can see how you come to those conclusions,
But they keep talking about how there's "zero ways this could be read as anything other than romantic" and it's like.
Yeah, they say "I love you" to each other all the time and Tubbo talks about how much he cares about Tommy and how he would do anything and stuff, but THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ROMANTIC!!
Aros can feel all those ways towards a person and still have there be zero romantic attraction.
And he's having like Thoughts and Feelings about Ranboo, and obviously they're cariads and end up romantically married by the end of the series, but they're (my sister in particular) going "Ohhh there's NOTHING platonic about this! This is so ROMANTIC! Very very romantic and in no way shape or form could this be read as platonic and anyone who reads it as platonic is crazy"
And I'm just sitting here quietly headcanoning Tubbo as demiaroace because of something that happens in the second book, De Terra
And I can't say anything because I'll get booed or whatever