posting my rant again after people disagreed with me before, I still think im right:
the project hail mary fandom (and fandom space as a whole) was so excited to have an aroace/aroace spec character for the first few months, but now there's an overwhelming amount of support for gracerocky and bloodymary to the point that I rarely see fan media tagged as explicitly aroace except for a few dedicated users. sorry but this feels fucking aphobic to me!!
obviously tags aren't a perfect measurement of engagement but this is a pretty clear example of the difference in fans:
this story places absolutely no emphasis on romantic/sexual love, and actually does the opposite which is a huge rarity and a massive fucking deal. so no wonder aroace people latched onto it. but then some people want to twist the story into something sexual or romantic - which, granted, you can do whatever you like - but I've recently noticed such a vitriol that people have when reacting to any complaints from aroace people about this.
you can ship what you want, no one will stop you - but the amatonormativity in the PHM fandom is fucking horrible. aroace people are silenced and told to stop snatching the toys from others when they've got genuine criticisms towards other people in the fandom.
maybe your insistence on placing a character that was - 1: not motivated by pursuing romance, and 2: actively ostracised and put in danger because of their lack of interest in romance - into romantic situations that don't match their character reads as fucking aphobic to people. who'd have thought
you can ship whatever you want i guess. this is just an example of a larger phenomenon of amatonormativity and speaking over aroace voices but i am fucking angry about this. people can comment on random fanart/edits (for any fandom) saying "X is so bi coded here" and everyone's chill but as soon as you say the same for aroace headcanons people start bending over backwards to justify why you're wrong. hey let me have this one guy. I dont have any other guys.
PS. this obviously does not apply to good faith shippers. if you're writing bloodymary aroace spec fanfic where they both have nuanced attitudes to partnership and maybe even have sex sometimes (crazy i know) then you are great I love you JUST as much as the people who write sex repulsed ryland grace, both are equally good :D