Aceness in BL: Let’s go for a Ramble
(I made this post soon after Be My Favorite finished but shadowbanning has delayed the posting) - I'm Freeee (@plantsarepeopletoo @shouldiusemyname)
So, I’ve been thinking more and more about aceness in BL (mainly BL anyway), and to get my thought’s in order I thought I’d make a post.
This post is NOT intended as a blanket rule in literally any context. It is specifically about how 1. I frame aceness in my head based on very surface level research and my own experience and how 2. I apply that to a few characters (In BL) who, to me, have felt acespec.
This post will cover
A brief overview of how I understand the acespectrum (with reference to aesthetic, romantic and sexual attraction)
How I view demisexuality as a kind of doorway (with reference to my own deminess)
How I feel five characters (Ae from Love by Chance, Arthrit from SOTUS & SOTUS S, Kat from The Warp Effect (yes not BL but whatevs), Kawi from Be My Favorite and Khai from the Warp Effect) might fall on these spectrums. (THIS WILL INCLUDE SPOILERS)
A wrap up on acepectrum, transient identities, and labels
First Up the Ace-Spectrum!
(How I frame aceness in my head)
Aesthetic attraction = I really want to just stare at this person, they so pretty
Romantic attraction = I want to have this person with me, I want to hold them close and see them daily and talk to them about everything, also I want to cuddle and sleep together (maybe idk this is the attraction I am vaguest on)
Sexual attraction = I want to have sex with this person, I want to personally bang this person, I stare at this person and think about what it would be like to kiss them with tongue and push them against walls and have them underneath/on top of me. (This isn’t necessarily at like 100% all the time I think)
Kapish?
Romantic and Sexual attraction are both spectrums (obvs) and in my head they go from
Allo (100%) <------- to --------> Ace/Aro (0%) with the percentage reflective of how frequently you find people attractive, (I don’t think 100% is everybody all the time though).
So theoretically anyone not at 100% for either romantic or sexual attraction might identify as acespec, though I IMAGINE most people over perhaps, 30% feel attraction often enough that they don’t consider it, so for headcannon purposes I’m considering under 30% as ace or aro.
Sometimes people might consider themselves grey-ace (or grey-aro) if they fall within the more middling but still low percentages (say 15-50%,) So they experience attraction to individuals on occasion, but less frequently than typical. (But, again any label that people identify with is true for them)
Framing Demisexuality as a doorway
Demisexuality is, to me (in brief), not experiencing sexual attraction prior to the development of strong emotional/intellectual/romantic feelings (also can feel like a significant jump rather than completely 0-100, for me it’s almost like a switch on/off, but it can be gradual too)
Demiromantic people don’t experience romantic feelings for people unless there’s a strong emotional bond in place. (Same caveats as above)
The demi-doorway doesn’t automatically open the moment bonds/romantic feelings are developed, it’s simply that these feelings DON’T occur without the bond first. An alloromantic demisexual person MAY develop sexual feelings for someone they like romantically, but they also may not.
Personally, I consider myself demisexual and demiromantic because (based on 1.5 data points (data points = people), which is really not enough evidence) after bonds are formed both my romantic and sexual interest about a specific person jump up to allo. My deminess also feels tied to the way the changing/wavering of these emotional bonds also closes the door really quickly?? (So I can become abruptly not attracted to someone anymore if my romantic feelings/emotions are gone/destabilised, let me tell you it is weird to experience)
The lines around characters and actors and attraction gets all blurry too. Kind of like there’s a window in my door(s) that can be open or shut, but I can always look through it? (IDK how this metaphor is holding up)
For example, here’s some arbitrary categorites:
1. People are nice looking because everybody is nice looking (e.g., most people)
2. Aesthetic attraction (let me stare) e.g., Jean from The Warp Effect or Ayan from The Eclipse
3. Aesthetic attraction but more?? E.g., Joong (Joong is pretty, VERY PRETTY. But it’s still not really sexual attraction…I just want to stare at him…extra hard…and if he WANTED to fuck me…I mean for science…but I still don’t really WANT to??)
4. First. E.g., AM I EVEN ACE/ARO WHAT IS THIS SORCERY??
Clear as mud I’m sure.
Ace people can also dislike sex, be sex repulsed, enjoy watching, and whatever else without it emphasising or erasing their aceness, since it’s about sexual attraction to an individual more than anything else.
In a similar way you can also be sex repulsed or dislike sex or dislike aspects of sex without automatically being ace.
ALSO Demispec people may experience full (e.g. 100%) romantic/sexual feelings once the door is open without the caveats that I listed (about emotional instability) and this in NO WAY erases their aceness (or their deminess). There is also something to be said for the different ways the emotional bonds are formed/feelings are triggered. My two data points (attraction to people) were both triggered by strong intellectual connections.
ALSO acespec (which includes all aro/ace/demi people FTR) people can have gender specific (or non-specific) orientations as well (e.g. homoromantic asexual or aromantic pansexual or even biromantic bi-grey-ace).
Examples from Thailand BL/QL in my headcannon
I’m only talking about allo/ace/demi here, no gender-(non)-specific orientations.
Ae (Love By Chance) alloromantic demisexual (through the door 100%)
Ae is, I think, a pretty classic example of the most common view of demisexuality. He experiences romantic feelings for someone (idk if it’s the first time for this) and then slowly realises he’s sexually attracted to said person and goes a bit crazy because he doesn’t quite know what his feelings mean because he’s never experienced them before and, well, he’s a horndog (I love Ae and this depiction for the record) his demisexuality is absolutely a gateway to 100% sexual interest!
Some signs of his aceness might include his lack of interest in sex as commented on by his roommate and his confusion over the feelings he’s experiencing for the first time because they’re outside of his frame of experience. Also his sexual feelings seem to take a while to develop, after his crush has begun.
(I’m much less certain about romantic orientation here because we don’t know if he’s had crushes before (without wanting sex) and also he’s only 18, so even if he hasn’t doesn’t mean he’s arospec)
Arthrit (SOTUS & SOTUS S) Alloromantic demisexual (but different!!)
Arthrit seems alloromantic, in his previous feelings for his childhood friend and his clearly developing romantic feelings for Kong.
Arthit’s aceness is less clear cut than Ae’s because even after he develops sexual feelings (through the demidoor) he doesn’t experience allo sexual attraction as strongly as someone like Ae. I found a lot of his reactions to the relationship ups and downs in SOTUS S were very relatable (and prompted my first ever long post lol click for way more info on this) because of how Arthrit’s desire for sex (or sexual touch) seem to waver with the relationship stability. This is not about being uncomfortable with Kong exactly, but more about how even after they’re technically on an even keel and Kong’s sharing his bed and apartment, Arthit still seems uncomfortable with some of his sexual advances. While LATER after they’ve properly talked about it, he goes back to leaning into Kongs space and making flirty eyebrows.
So his deminess kind of means his aceness is variable even through the demidoor, like the door is wavering between open and closed. But it also doesn’t ever feel like his romantic feelings for Kong waver, just that the unstable grounding of their relationship boundaries lead to emotional instability which effect his sexual interest.
(Because I will take every excuse to use my Arthrit screenshots)
Kat in The Warp Effect (aromantic allosexual)
Honestly, Kat being Aro seemed basically canon during my viewing of The Warp Effect. She shows essentially no evidence of romantic feelings for anyone the whole series. (Though obvs people can want and have sex without wanting relationships and not be aro)
While Kat later tells Alex that she likes him (and tells Jean too) I don’t really feel like this mucks with the head-canon for a few reasons:
Kat is shown to be pretty monogamous when in sexual relationships with people even as she want’s no strings (she tells Alex he’s the only one she is currently having sex with (I think), she later tells Captain Asshole this and then later tells Tony this).
Thanks to Captain Asshole she begins to feel unsafe with the way she lives her life.
She initially wants to commit to Alex as the person she is most comfortable with, but we are not really shown any evidence of romantic feelings, just a desire for commitment.
She seems to reach a similar sort of balance with Tony in the OG Warp Timeline, but there still (to me) isn’t really evidence of romantic feelings
Aro people can, after all, want a committed and/or monogamous relationship.
Kawi in Be My Favorite (Alloromatic Asexual (not Demi IMO))
The reason I think he’s ace rather than demi is more about the language he uses even after he’s in love with Piseang (please see my thoughts about ace-kawi coding in ep 10 for more details if you're curious). Even after this wasn’t made explicit by the narrative, I stand by my thoughts around his lack of interest in sex in general. (As well as the coding in ep12 of him trying the rollercoaster and not liking it). It didn’t really feel to me like he gained sexual feelings for Piseang (unlike the vibes I personally got from Arthrit even if they wavered), more than he tried sex and enjoyed it enough to participate again in the future because he loved and felt comfortable with Piseang.
If you feel ambivalent about playing tennis, but your partner really likes playing tennis than maybe you make a point of playing tennis regularly even if it’s not something you’d think about doing on your own, because playing tennis with your partner is fun you know?
Of course, if tennis makes you feel icky, or really bored, you many not ever want to play it even if your partner enjoys it.
Khai in Theory of Love (demiromantic allosexual)
So Khai is my most recent addition to this post given I just finished ToL but he was so demiromantic it crushed me into pieces so he gets to be included! ways Khai feels demirom:
His confused realisation of feelings when he talks to his Phi at the beach.
He likes to keep things uncomplicated with the girls he’s seeing because he doesn’t do relationships.
He actually tries to take his relationships seriously but just never really seemed to genuinely want the romance.
Even after he realises he has romantic feelings for Third, when he returns back to him (after the beach reflection) he notices his sexual attraction more easily than his romantic feelings.
His confusion over how much he hurt when Third seemed to be choosing Un over him, and how it was the first time he realised how much Third must have been hurting because he’d never felt like this before.
The entirety of Ep12 with Third telling Khai what he feels isn't love (because Third has seen time and time again that Khai hasn't loved anyone before). Khai's attempts to prove himself even though he really understand what loving someone means, even as he follows his emotions, and tries hard to be “better” for Third because he does love Third, he chooses Third, he changes for Third, he cries for Third.
He also curls up in his room watching romantic movies for multiple days because Third tells him that what he's feeling isn't love and if it isn't then what is?)
Very relatable and also owie ouchie my brokenness feelings.
Lack of data points makes it tricky:
There are probably lots of other characters that COULD fall into a-spectrum, (just as there are reasons why these characters might not) but the thing I find the trickiest to navigate (for my headcanons) is lack of data points. Most characters in BL are in highschool/college, and this, combined with a desire for lack of messiness in story structure, means characters are often experiencing feelings ‘for the first time.’ Long term pining, childhood crushes, and first attraction to the same gender, all come into play and make evidence muddy and lacking a concrete foundation, from which to draw conclusions.
We can’t ask characters about their preferences, previous feelings, levels of emotion etc. so in my opinion conclusions can’t be drawn, only inferences made.
I don’t have a problem with anyone headcannoning these characters as not acespec.
I don’t have a problem with anyone headcannoning other characters as acespec.
Identities, Transience and Labelling
In discussing this post and my own framework with a couple of people I wanted to add a bit more of my personal experience with the ace label and the ace spectrum. Because the thing about both ace-ness and allo-ness is that they’re not equal all the time. Some people experience sexual attraction first or more frequently and may only experience romantic feelings later or less frequently. Some people feel romantic attraction before sexual, but only sometimes and sometimes people feel both at once and straight away, or both at once but only later on…
The romantic and sexual attraction spectrums are spectrums that everybody exists on and in existing on a spectrum some people have a firm placement and others a shifting one.
People who are ace-identified are typically those who have felt meaningfully different from their peers in the level and/or frequency of experiencing any sexual attraction and/or any romantic attraction and whose attraction is close to zero for one or both of those spectrums. They have thus sought out explanations for their difference and found the ace labels. Demi-ness, on either spectrum, then relates more to the way emotional(/intellectual) bonds, positive or negative, directly impact your ability to feel romantic or sexual attraction.
In the context of TV, for me, it’s picking up a photo of a character you love and being confused when they don’t seem right anymore. Its looking at a cast of beautiful humans and not really feeling anything but awe at their acting. It’s forgetting that characters were shirtless until the gifs show up on your dash the next day. It’s reading the definition of chemistry and not really understanding what it means. It’s not realising that there’s a difference between kisses where the lips move and kisses where they don’t because the way the characters talk and stand and stare means so much more. It’s so many things until you must notice because what you’re seeing and noticing and caring about is just…not the same as the things other people are seeing, noticing and caring about.
In the real world it’s messier, because aceness is sometimes framed as only 0%. Experiencing emotions outside of 0% can make the label feel hard to keep, or wrong or mismatched:
My 16-year-old-self called herself Asexual and was relieved to have found a reason why she felt so weird, even if it didn't quite fit right.
My 18-year-old-self called herself maybe-bi because both boys and girls can be pretty to look at, and this must be what crushes are right?
My 20-year-old-self called herself Asexual again (even though it still didn't fit right) because she’d tried things with one of these apparent crushes and it just felt…weird.
My 22-year-old-self called herself maybe straight afterall because she dreamed about kissing someone for the first time and that person was a boy.
My 24-year-old-self picked up demisexual and clung to it like a lifeline because why else would her attraction just be…gone. Was I broken?
My 25-year-old-self discovered demiromantic was also a label and felt like things finally made sense.
But what’s important to know is that at no point between finding the asexual label at 16 to finding the aromantic label at 25, was I not aro/ace. And that if I had settled on a non-aspec label after any one of my identity-questioning experiences, it wouldn’t have made me a liar at any age or negated the experience of other aspec people in any way.
Because what my 25-year-old-self now understands is that labels aren’t there to put you in a box and squeeze you into shape, nor are labels there to lay across your shoulders and weigh you down with their expectations.
The labels are a lifeline, a hand reaching out, a voice whispering in the darkness…
You are not, and have never been alone.
So, for me at least, to label characters as this or that, is not to box them in, instead it is pointing and gasping, look, look, that one is like me…or maybe, look, look, that one is like you.
When a character acts the way I would, thinks the way I would, talks the way I would I am again reminded that,
I are not, and have never been alone.
So please, label away, I don’t mind if we pick different labels. I just like that I can share my labels with you.
