#ace characters

My first answer is, you can’t. You can’t make it so unambiguous that everybody understands and gets it and respects it. There will always be people who don’t get it and people who refuse to get it, people who don’t think aromanticism or asexuality is a real or meaningful thing and think that every character is automatically more realistic and more interesting if they have romance and sex. You’re not writing for those people. You’re writing for the people who are open to Getting It.

You want to write an aro or an ace character. Awesome! I love seeing more aro and ace characters.

You could have them identify themselves directly using the words “aromantic” or “asexual” or other terms like “demisexual” or “sex-repulsed” or “aro-allo” or “quoiromantic.” Tried and true and certainly unambiguous. However, what I always think about in such scenes:

What social circles is this character in that they know these words? In a realistic contemporary setting, identifying with these labels implies a source of connection with (usually young-skewing) queer communities, and/or an active online presence. “Asexual” has had more awareness-raising outside of internet spaces than “aromantic” has, but both raise the question of, where dod this character learn these terms? How did they come to connect and identify with them? What is their engagement with queer spaces and queer community like? It implies a certain positionality!

If they are telling another character they are aromantic or asexual: why? What is the context of this scene? Why did they bring it up? Would THIS character bring it up THIS way? Tailor the discussion to the character’s personality, what they want from this interaction, how they feel about their identity, how they feel about telling personal things to the person they’re talking to, IF they consider it a personal thing.

If it’s a fantasy or sci-fi setting: do they use the same sexuality words we do? Why? What is their framework for understanding identity, attraction, desire, sexuality? The answer can be “yes, they do so because I want them to” but I never like it when the answer is “yes, because that’s the singular correct way to understand sexuality and identity, we’ve solved it”

Thinking about these things makes such scenes stronger and feel less contrived than just dropping “by the way, I’m aromantic” or the Asexuality 101 Speech.

If you’re writing in a historical, fantasy, or sci-fi setting where they don’t use the same sexuality words or frameworks, or the character is just not the type of person to tell someone “I’m aromantic asexual” straight up, other character aspects have to do that work. But there are plenty of ways to portray this!

A character pledges herself as a virgin priestess of a virgin goddess. Instead of finding it sad or difficult, she finds it freeing or relieving. Her relationships with the other priestesses in the temple community are fulfilling and what she wants.

A character wanted to become a priest, monk, or nun at one point in their life, and found the “no sex or marriage” aspect a plus rather than a strain. If they ended up not going through with it, it was because of loss of faith, finding a different passion, converting to a different religion, flaking out of seminary, being queer and finding that irreconcilable, or realizing they didn’t want the actual duties expected, not because of the sex/marriage thing.

A character lives alone, and it may be a struggle, but finding a partner to live with would feel worse.

A character is a spaceport bartender who is friendly with all the spacers coming and going; one spacer is their ex, the last person they dated. It was decades ago, and they struggled with the relationship before realizing that it wasn’t going to work out, and they thought that the long-distance thing would be the hard part but actually the erratic long-distanceness was kind of appealing because it allowed them to put off thinking about what in the relationship was a struggle and ultimately that it wasn’t really what they wanted. Now they’re single and have been for decades, and are happy that way, happier than they were in the relationship, and they might be on fond and friendly terms with their ex or they might be awkward about it.

A character has a casual-sex relationship with a friend, and they both agree at the outset that it will stay casual and friendly and will not become a romantic Dating Relationship. Character 1 catches feelings anyway, and expects Character 2 to reciprocate them; Char2 doesn’t, and says, we agreed this would not become romantic! Even if Char1 is hurt, the narrative is sympathetic to Char2 and Char2 does not “come around” to entering a romantic relationship with Char1. Or maybe they feel guilted into doing so and it goes badly and ruins their friendship with resentment until they break up. The narrative should be sympathetic to Char2’s desires regardless.

A character breaks up with their partner to go on an Adventure and realizes they like being single more than they like having a partner (not just this partner, any partner at all), and don’t want to seek out a partner either on the adventure or after they return.

Character 1 feels romantic attraction/desire for Character 2. Character 2 feels strongly for character 1, but has no romantic feelings for them whatsoever. They both spend their relationship arc figuring out what their relationship should be, because they are important to each other but in different ways and they don’t want to lose each other as they navigate asymmetrical feelings.

In a setting where having children is considered a very important life goal and priority, a character deals with their conflicting desires to have children (whether they actually want children or want the social respectability that brings) vs. their complete lack of desire for sex.

A character skips sex scenes in media, and/or complains about or heckles the ubiquity of poorly written romantic drama.

A character lives with roommates and is happy with that and doesn’t want that to change; or, when their roommate leaves to move in with a romantic partner, they feel a loss and fear of being left behind.

A character has experienced sexual attraction/desire only once before, to a previous partner after knowing them for a long time; now they are with a different partner and experience no sexual attraction/desire for them, and either they or the partner are feeling uncomfortable about that. Ideally this doesn’t resolve in an “aha!” moment where they finally feel sexual attraction/desire after all because I think it’s an underexplored demisexual narrative of having felt sexual attraction to a previous partner you’re no longer with, but not your current partner, and having to deal with the fact that it doesn’t mean you love them any less, you’re just asexual spectrum and don’t control when the attraction/desire hppens.

A character is just, happily single through the whole story and not looking.

Explore the dynamic of relationships and intimacy when one or both partners entirely lack physical attraction to the other. (Or their physical attraction is just aesthetic attraction, they're nice to look at but it doesn't cause any other excitement or desire, they're like looking a sunset, or a cat, or some artwork). Actually take into consideration what our non-attraction motivations might be and incorporate them and the effect they might have (physical feeling, emotional connection, making their partner happy even if they are otherwise indifferent). Are there parts of intimacy they don't enjoy, because their motivation(s) wouldn't include it? Do they ever struggle with feeling like they're not good enough or their partner deserves better due to internalized aphobia? What about their partner first made them fall in love or want to pursue a relationship, since physical attraction can't be it?

Explore the ace spectrum and maybe try to write about a lesser represented identity on that spectrum. Write a slow-burn friends to lovers with demisexuality. Give us the story of what happens with someone who's fraysexual, who's attraction has started fading. Do they keep the relationship? Maybe explore someone discovering they're reciprosexual when they reject someone only to realize afterwards that shit, they do like them now. There are countless acespec identities you could explore. And don't just slap the label on them with no thought. Actually use that experience for the story.

However, if an ace character is confirmed to be strictly asexual/be sex averse, you probably shouldn't. Ace representation is rare and it does suck a lot when what little their is feels like it's always being seen by fandom as the "more palatable" version (and by more palatable I of course mean easier to ignore and sideline.)

But ultimately. If you're going to use my identity and experience as a cupiosexual person and other people's acespec identities to justify yourself, I expect you to do the bare minimum and actually write us as asexual and not just use a label as a performative way to go "see I'm not disrespecting their aceness."