An aromantic person will say “I wish there were more aromantic characters in media.” and people will go “what about [asexual character who has never actually been confirmed aro (e.g., Alastor Hazbin Hotel)], [character who verbally expresses disinterest in romance, but is implied to be suppressing their feelings or lying to themself about their secret romantic feelings towards another character (as much as I enjoy an aro interpretation of his character…Saiki K. arguably falls under this category)], [character who was confirmed aroace on twitter but has never even vaguely referenced it in the source material (e.g., Lilith Owl House)]”.
We’re implicitly told that we should consider characters who aren’t canonically aromantic or whose aromanticism is never shown in the source material to represent us. Unless, of course, we want to actually engage seriously with an aromantic interpretation of a character who isn’t confirmed aromantic in canon (people love to recommend Saiki K. as aromantic representation, but if you openly talk about interpreting him as aromantic within fandom spaces, other fans will go out of their way to find examples from the source material of behavior from him that proves you wrong).
Or unless, of course, we want to have a serious conversation about arophobia in fiction. If a character being “unable to understand love” is used to explain why they’re evil, if a character’s apparent disinterest in the gender that they are expected to be attracted to is used to highlight that they are callous and cruel and “psychopathic” (which, I’m sure there’s something to be said there as well about how ableism towards people with personality disorders, especially pwASPD, overlaps with arophobia, but that’s outside the scope of this rambling mess of a post), if a character enjoying sex without romantic attachment is used to paint them as heartless, depraved, manipulative, and impure — these are all things we’re told aren’t arophobic. Because those characters aren’t REALLY meant to be aromantic. It can’t be arophobic if a character isn’t confirmed as aromantic, if they don’t say “I experience little to no romantic attraction” onscreen, if they don’t have a little aromantic pride pin on their shirt. None of this has anything to do with aromanticism, actually, and we’re all just overreacting.
And to be clear, I’m not saying that the people who are recommending non-aromantic or word-of-God aromantic characters as representation are necessarily the same people who go above and beyond to shit on any aromantic person who makes an aromantic headcanon or criticizes an arophobic trope. I’m just saying that it’s incredibly frustrating to experience both of these things simultaneously.
