the post about people shifting to “aroace is a spectrum” when it comes to Ryland Grace is SO TRUEEEE. AUGH
it almost feels like people initially accepted the “non-partnering aroace Ryland Grace” headcanon just because they thought he COULDN’T be shipped with anyone else (i.e. the sapient space rock alien who already had a partner, or the woman who sent him to space against his will in the first place)
but then they all saw Bloodymary and went “WAIT what if this OTHER HUMAN from a completely different space movie was ALSO there and they were in LOVE and DATING and MADE OUT with each other” and it’s just. hey so what happened. what about us.
it sucks too because before that, this was the first time i’ve seen such a widely accepted aroace headcanon- and i was OVERJOYED. i felt SO represented and seen. and suddenly it’s all gone. like everyone just moved on when the “better” option presented itself :/
(to clarify: i genuinely have no qualms against partnering aroace folks, Iron Lung itself (i haven’t even seen it lol), or crackshipping across fandoms - i just hate that it became the new norm so fast, and the non-partnering aroace headcanon got practically erased 💔)
It wouldn’t be so unbearable if all the shipping stuff wasn’t also in the aroace grace tags. Sometimes I scroll through aroace grace tags and see “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #strattland,” “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #grocky,” “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #bloodymary,” “this post has filtered tags: #grocky…” with like maybe three other posts in that mix.
And I know some of those are probably QPR, but that’s still a type of partnering, and still feels a bit like it’s overshadowing a huge, important part of the story, and it feels discouraging.
And every time I discuss this, I get yelled at for harassing people when IM LITERALLY JUST NOTING AN ALLONORMATIVE TREND AND POLITELY ASKING PEOPLE TO CONSIDER THEIR INTERNAL BIASES.