Masochism for the Asexual

We are doing something. We’re rejecting allonormative ideals and that’s a massive thing to do. We’re actively fighting not just to help other aspecs, but to help everyone, because amatonormativity (and allonormativity as a whole) hurt everyone. Single people who want to find a partner but can’t also deserve to be able to exist.

There are so many issues with the expectation of marriage, including:

A single income isn't enough to get by anymore

Having a spouse is almost necessary under the current medical system

Society shames and pressures people who are single to get into relationships constantly

Rejecting allonormativity means fighting against these things that hurt everyone.

but now you’re a public figure and they’re adding a whole extra layer to that. you have a partner that you love who isn’t the same gender as you. you’re not strictly gender conforming 100% of the time, you happily show physical affection to your friends regardless of their gender, you act silly and camp sometimes bc you’re a human being with the full normal range of human emotions.

people spin a wheel to see what they’re gonna criticise you for today. maybe they’ve decided you’re acting faggy for clout. you’re ‘queerbaiting’. your partner is proof that you’re actually straight.

or maybe the way you treat your same-gender friends is proof that you’re actually gay. you’re in denial, everyone can see it but you, these strangers who’ve never met you clearly understand you better than you ever could from living inside your own body. nobody acts like that unless they’re actually gay, right?

they act as if they’re almost sorry for you, or perhaps for themselves. your relationship with your partner is a loss for the community. as we all know, it is devastating when a bisexual person commits the sinful betrayal of entering a ‘straight passing’ relationship. and for you it’s worse, because you’re not even bisexual, you’re gay! either you’re fooling yourself and stringing your partner along and the world is being deprived of what is clearly a Real Gay, or you’re fooling everybody else and your partner is actually your beard and isn’t that just queerbaiting again with extra steps? you should just come out. you owe it to the strangers, who have already decided, because they already know.

like, for example if someone said, “why does everything have to be sexual, people are so depraved!”, other than maybe an evangelical, would said person even be saying this if there wasn’t an overarching pressure to be sexual? like why do you think people care so much about highlighting the spectrum to get away from being seen as “sexless”? That’s not just because it’s inaccurate, it’s because being “sexless” is mocked and denigrated! It’s why I’d rather be sex neutral, on god I’m too averse to sex to say im “positive” about anything related to sex.

But TSHD instead subverts all notions about grief and this monster wearing somebody's corpse, and then poses the question of "Now that this person that you loved is gone, how will you cope with the void left in your life?". Moreso, "What would happen if your routine wasn't forced to change while you're grieving?". And actually, "What if rather than compartmentalizing your feelings to conform to this classical societal expectation of what moving on is, which is an euphemism for this connotation of having to do as if this person never existed in the first place, you actually had a constant photography of them by your side?".

'Hikaru' is wrong about thinking Yoshiki would have been better of if he hadn't been there: the most likely option is what I said earlier about how the original Hikaru was right to worry about Yoshiki's wellbeing, because Yoshiki would have been left alone in a village he hates, entrenched in an unstable family dynamic after losing his best friend and main support. 'Hikaru's presence saved Yoshiki, to the point one of the "bad endings" in Vol.6's extra comics signals that had 'Hikaru' left him, Yoshiki would've stayed miserable for the rest of his life in Kubitachi. And I think this is also why it bothers me when people aren't paying attention to the story many such cases and seem to expect 'Hikaru' ditches that body because it doesn't fit into their mold of what Yoshiki's grieving process should be like. Because ultimately that body was given to 'Hikaru' by the owner for a purpose, and Yoshiki likes that 'Hikaru' has it ("Sorry 'bout all this. As long as he's here no one will mourn ya. But with him around, I'm happy 'cos I won't forget you. Forgetting'… is what scares me the most"), even long before he learns that was Hikaru's death wish all along. And if 'Hikaru' didn't have that body, then he would not be able to keep his memories or experience his life with Yoshiki in the way he has until now either.

Another aspect I like is that the story is clear about how 'Hikaru' will never be Hikaru, but he's also not treated as "less" or "more" than the original. He's "else". It's a thing in the real world, in the end. Widows and widowers are often expected to what amounts to forgetting their deceased loved ones. After a certain point, it's just not seen as socially acceptable to mention them. Rituals of remembrance are seen as errors, as proof that the person has not actually "moved on". New spouses enter unilateral competitions with the dead person and search for validation in their insecurities, wanting the widow/widower to claim that they love them more than the dead spouse. It's depressing, but I can say it happens a lot.

I also like that TSHD doesn't pathologizes nor shames grieving. Despite not quite understanding it, 'Hikaru' never says something to Yoshiki like "Why are you sad? It's been over six months", or "You have me now, anyway". The monster who doesn't understand humanity has more compassion than actual humans.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

Asexuality and aromanticism in particular are seen as alien, inhuman, monstrous, even. Many villains have been depicted as being evil because of their 'heartlessness' or lack of love, and characters that don't feel romantic love are often demonised and seen as less than human. Conversion therapy is also widely accepted as a 'treatment' for asexuality as it's viewed as something to be 'fixed'.

irl, i live alone. irl, i am disabled. irl, that intersection and my lack of interest in partnering actively makes life really hard. everything is expensive. i can't always cook when i want to or have fresh ingredients, because my symptoms don't care if I want to cut up vegetables and eat something homemade before they go bad. if I have a bad flareup and getting up is not in the cards, that's it. i have what's next to me. the lack of social support for single folks, for disabled folks, for folks whose family care is inadequate or damaging... it's impactful.

I talk about how i once visited a place with an ex partner. i mention how our relationship started because i was pressured into it, and i wasn't really into the level of seriousness and 'forever' she treated it with. everyone says it's weird that i agreed if i didn't want it to be serious. i remember being 16, saying no, and a chorus of people telling me i was stupid and immature, that her family was rich, that we would be cute and to listen to them, not my heart. my heart was saying nothing.

i look at my current age and life goals. for many of my peers, dating and marriage and eventual kids are common goals. i am watching my rights erode and trying to practice good mental hygeine. my five year goal is to be alive. my next major life milestone is a nebulous desire to find a life i can tolerate living.

being aromantic significantly impacts my day to day. i want to see aro people living their lives, and doing so with joy. i want to see aro adults making it, ones like me. i want aro people to thrive. i want to live, aromantically.

Yoshiki loves them for different reasons, and Yoshiki has repeatedly emphasized the qualities he admires in 'Hikaru.' I'm really annoyed by the point of view of people who want a part of Hikaru to be in 'Hikaru,' but in my opinion, this is terribly contrary to the message of MMR. Part of the story tells us that it is necessary to bury the people we love. Hikaru must die in the eyes of Yoshiki and the others, so that 'Hikaru' doesn't feel like a replacement for someone and a parody of a person. That Hikaru is no longer there. He wants to live differently. He loves completely different things, and he himself has as many reasons to love Yoshiki as vice versa. The old Hikaru would never have reciprocated his feelings. Yoshiki wasn't ready to stay in the village for the old Hikaru either, but from the unrealized bad endings in the manga, we know that if 'Hikaru' had left in the mountains, Yoshiki would have stayed in the village.

This is a story about how after someone dies, there's always your life, and it must go on. "Live no matter what," says Yoshiki's mother. Live and find a new meaning in life, she means.

I’m saying I wish people would explore more non-traditional relationships. What their relationship is in the canon story is not romantic, they have both stated that multiple times. A relationship is only what the people in said relationship decides it is, and they have both said it is not romantic.

They are each others' home. They see every strange, horrible, wrong thing about each other and still they open their arms and accepts it.

I imagine for most people, the person they find home in is their romantic and/or sexual partner, and that’s perfectly fine. But that’s not how it is for everyone, and I think The Summer Hikaru Died brings light to those kind of relationships, and says the person you find home in doesn’t have to be romantic and that’s okay.

I don’t feel like it’s a stretch to say it’s a core theme of the story, it’s about otherness, whatever form it takes, being able to not only exist, but to be a happy existence. Not having to conform to what is “normal” and “right.”

And yeah, romantic and sexual queer relationships are othered from society, and I believe it's important to address those relationships, it's just not what I think The Summer Hikaru Died is about.

Because I feel like it's fair to say that, nowadays especially, close non-romantic relationships are also othered quite a bit. Two people can't be close to each other without others assuming it's romantic.

(Which I am very happy that romantic queer relationships are becoming more accepted, but it would also be nice if people could be close without people thinking they're romantically and/or sexually involved.)

You have people saying things like "There's no non-romantic way to interpret that" or "They want to kiss each other so bad" and then it turns out to be, like, two people caring for each others' basic wellbeing or something.

And I feel like this is even slightly addressed in the story, Asako asks if Yoshiki goes so far for Hikaru because of his romantic feelings for Hikaru. There is the assumption that Yoshiki is going to great lengths for Hikaru for romantic reasons, and it is explicitly stated that it is not.

And this one's more interpretation, but Kurebayashi also assumes that Yoshiki does what he does because of his feelings for Hikaru (I.e. romantic feelings) but it's not because of that, it's because of his feelings for Hikaru, which again, has been stated to not be romantic.

But I say all this, not to say they can’t be shipped romantically, but to try to say how much their relationship is important as a non-romantic relationship.

It means a lot to me to see a relationship be so close and intimate without being romantic, and I don't think I'm the only one, so it's a little disheartening to see it always turned into a basic romance.

Like, I don’t think most people would put Yoshiki in a romantic relationship with a girl, because that would be disrespectful to the kind of person he represents.

So in the same vein, I don't think their relationship should be solely romantic, because I feel like it's disrespectful to the kind of relationship it represents.

"I am of the opinion that queer stories without romance should exist. That's why, officially and from the beginning, I have kept in mind not to appoint [TSHD] as a romantic love story."

"(…) Though [TSHD] is a queer story (understanding as queer that it's not limited to LGBTQ, and includes sexual minorities past those letters), it's not drawn as a romantic love story. I think that queer stories without romance are valid. Not engaging in a romantic relationship, whether it's from being unable to or not wanting to, is also an important element. (…)"

"When during the last episode of the anime 'Hikaru' says 'I love you, Yoshiki', he continues with 'not in a romantic or friendly way'. I don't consider that all the deep bonds with others need to be divided into 'it's a friendship' or 'it's a romance', and that's why I always draw the feelings of Monster!Hikaru in such a manner. (…)"

"I also believe that not knowing [not experiencing], among other things, what being in love or sexual desire feels like, is an important aspect of queerness. And I know how easily this can be misunderstood, but still…"

"(...) During the time I have been drawing this work [TSHD], I have often been told things such as 'I wish they were a man and a woman instead', 'It'd be better if they were just friends', and on the other hand I have also heard 'Why not make them into a regular romantic couple?'. But the truth is that plenty of works like that already exist, which is why I think it's fine if there are works that don't do those things. I think it's more interesting to have all sorts of different works (...)"

With these quotes out of the way, yes. I agree that people are free to draw or write whatever they desire, including romantic content. I agree that ultimately, all the fanon of the world can never erase the original narrative. However, I also agree that it is indeed somewhat disappointing how a part of the story that according to the author is as important as the homosexual component has been so blatantly glossed over. And 'Hikaru' might be a monster, but the aro/ace read is clearly intentional.

I realized I went on a tangent now, so I'm inserting a read more here.