calcine “cal” sancho

sometimes i wonder why dweller's empty path has such a tiny fandom when it's made by the lead artist of undertale and deltarune but then the cynical-killjoy-feminist in my brain reminds me that it's a story made by a woman about a shit ton of women with only like three white guys to yaoi about with and that fandom spaces are notoriously misogynistic. and like. i don't think the cynical-killjoy-feminist in my brain's hypothesis is the only reason for this but like. she's probably mostly right that's probably one of the main reasons.

another reason i suspect contributes to this is that the main character is aromantic which means if you want to do shipping with her you gotta actually fucking seek out and listen to how partnering arospec people describe their experiences in relationships and we all know fandomites just love listening to and learning about people who aren't like themselves so that they can accurately depict characters' unique and interesting traits instead of just slamming them into their favorite tropes

i think the second reason is more likely because in practice fandomites don't use their unwillingness to learn about the experiences of aromantics with partners as a reason to go "aw shucks, guess i won't ship this character then" they instead just use the fact that some aromantic people have and/or seek out partners as an excuse to depict aromantic characters indistinguishably from if they were alloromantic.

everyone's all about queer subtext until it's aromantic or asexual