dude. thank you (and munchie obviously but like i don't wanna bring anything nsfw onto her blog bc idk if she's ok w it). so much. felix legit helped me find a label for my own sexuality and im so so sosososososo grateful for the ace rep (asexuality is not alws treated like the spectrum that it is...), so good job!!! you've impacted smone's life!!! i finally feel comfortable in my labels and sexual identity, and felix as a character helped me with that, both because i see myself in his sexual identity, so i get some education, and because ive seen maybe one or two ace characters ever (even if it is fic, yall are making the aftershow your own and it's actually rly interesting and inspiring), and all of them are aro/ace and completely sex repulsed, which made me think 'i can't be ace, ace means this!!!' when that's not actually the whole of what ace means at all.
anyway, thank you so, so much.
Omg that makes me genuinely a bit teary eyed to read aaaaaaaa
I know exactly what you mean :') for the longest time the only things I've really seen on the topic were always on completely opposite ends of sexual attraction, and I always felt largely alienated by both extremes.
Figuring out that there's sub-labels for asexuality, and that it's a spectrum, where my highly conditional sexual attraction falls perfectly into the demisexual category... That was lowkey life changing!
There's so much nuance to explore with asexuality in fiction and it makes me so genuinely sad that there's always a fraction of fans (especially in shipping) who refuse to acknowledge that nuance :')
It's also incredibly annoying when people lump aro into it by default too???
Aromantic people can be allosexual (i.e. experience an unhindered/"normal" amount of sexual attraction), just as much as asexuals can have deep and fulfilling romantic relationships...
Sooo many people treat these two very separate labels like they're two halves of the same whole, and that's just not true.
(not to mention how allosexual, romance repulsed aros tend to get lowkey demonized bc too many people see sexual attraction as something that's inherently tied to romantic attraction and only liking sex but not romance is somehow unthinkable and heartless etc.. Just yikes)
Likewise, actually incorporating that ace spectrum nuance into fanfiction/fanart quickly gets you snarked at by people who don't understand the spectrum aspect and make wildly incorrect assumptions about your ethics and the character's emotional state - I've seen some people legit claim that an asexual character enjoying having sex is not only ace erasure but also counts as dub-con/non-con somehow???
Munchie in particular got so much bizarre hate for writing Jax in "I Hate You The Least" as grey ace, just because people didn't see it coming and made some wild undereducated assumptions...
... So yeah, by comparison reading that people like you feel seen and see themselves reflected in our stories and characters is like balm to my soul, thank you for taking the time to share this with me qwq <3 it reassures both of us that we made the right call with choosing to write these characters in this way :D
(also jfyi, Munchie is perfectly fine with receiving nsfw asks lmfao)
