Alright. This has been said to death by now I'm sure but I can't not tell you how tearjerking it is as an aspec person that not even a full 24 hours after Yelena makes her debut in Hawkeye - in a very much intentional parallel to Clint and Natasha - that aromantic/asexulity was trending. Almost a year ago today I came out as asexual lesbian only to be harassed and told "I'll never be a lesbian" I'm "larping as marginalized groups of women and being homophobic"?? and essentially any romantic feelings I have for women, just cause I have no desire to have sex, automatically makes it feelings of friendship which is still utter cowshit. Not to mention its completely mild in comparison to what other aspecs have gone through, and while I don't identify here and now as aro I get just as mad at people dismissing aros cause theyre still my people and who, other than us, is gonna look out for each other? So seeing droves of support rolling in to preserve this one piece of us aspec still have - one that hasn't been exploited for views and erased completely without a single care - to a point where aromantics are trending is something I'll admit i never thought I'd see.
I wholeheartedly understand people who genuinely didn't know cause when Black Widow came out and Yelena fics started rolling out, I was none the wiser. I had no idea she was one of us until I saw someone apologizing and removing it - again, which meant so much because that's far more courtesy than we ever get. So I desperately hope people can find it in their hearts to understand we're here and this is something important to us. Our queer rep matters just as much as yours and all we want is to keep one of the very few remaining characters we have, that hasn't been blatantly been allowashed. I'm already weary of the mcu myself - I'm thinking, watch. after all the opportunities they've had to allow two queercoded main characters a genuine, on-screen queer/wlw relationship they're gonna make it out of the aroace character cause why not, right? But I'm trying to stay hopeful. And by hopeful I mean just not think about it and for once depend on Disney/Marvel's cowardice to showcase "typical" queer relationships.
After all, if this really is gonna go anything like Clint and Nat in the mcu than we should be safe, canonwise. But I can't beg people enough to be respectful of aspecs. Romantic and sexual relationships aren't the only valuable relationships, nor are they the only relationships that make us human.
