#wrong?

There’s a lot of people who say that Alastor is canonically Aroace, and the fact is that he’s not. He’s canonically asexual, but vizziepop has not mentioned he’s aromantic as well.

Now I want to say this first and foremost, you CAN headcanon alastor as aroace, in fact as an aroace person myself I actively encourage it! It’s great! It’s fun! I understand the need/want to see a part of yourself in a character you enjoy!

But by saying he is something that he is canonically not only will create a negative and harmful space, those who WANT to ship alastor with someone will feel as if they can’t, that they don’t want to get attacked or hated on or made fun of, and that’s not fair to them for multiple reasons.

One being that if he WAS canonically aroace, aroace people can still date, it is quite literally a spectrum orientation, you have those who are willing to be open to dating with time, let’s just call this demiromantic or in the asexual case, demisexual, you have the people who are not at all open to dating, I’ve seen multiple names for this but mostly “loveless” and you also have the people who don’t necessarily want to date someone but love/care about them more than a friend, so you have queer platonic relationships.

These are all incredibly valid people and incredibly valid feelings and incredibly valid ways to date or to not date.

If vizziepop takes the direction, which I truly doubt she will to be honest, or if someone ships alastor with someone. They CAN do this, it’s not taking a canonically gay male character and shipping him with a woman, it’s taking a character who needs time and boundaries to develop a relationship. These are two totally different things.

I’ve seen this thing happen… not exactly consistently but almost enough, where people will see an asexual character and go “oh! They must be aro too!” And that is not valid, a character should be allowed to just be the one without people saying they SHOULD be the other, it’s harmful to the communities and nearly exclusionary to those who struggle with their identities already and trying to find out WHO they are HOW they feel about these things and once again, creates a confusing space for those trying to just enjoy their characters smooching.

So, if you want to write alastor having sex, you can do that, asexual people and their relationship with sex CANNOT be narrowed down to one type of stereotype of “oh, I don’t want to have it” which is VALID!! But it’s not the worldwide universal feeling, if you want to write alastor developing romantic feelings, however they may be, you can do that! If you want to write alastor being sexual and romantic averse. YOU CAN DO THAT.

But you have to do it in a way that is respectful and knowledgeable, state alastor became comfortable enough with his partner to have sexual acts, state that although he may not take a 100% physical role in sex but still wants to please his partner because he knows THEY enjoy sex and they come to an understanding and firm/respected boundaries.

And state that you don’t want to ship him, you don’t want him taking a role in sex, but just don’t be cruel about it; don’t attack people; don’t say he’s something he isn’t. Just say this is how you see him and respect others who don’t see him like that, I promise you they will understand that and respect it too.

I keep seeing that when people go about redesigning/"redeeming" a character, one thing they often remove is like. symptoms of neurodiversity?

Such as removing a character's trauma related sensory and relation issues entirely, or having them suddenly being more socially aware without anyone actually understanding why they might not have understood a situation in the first place.

Nothing against redesigns n rewrites or trying to write redemption arcs! I just don't think traits of neurodiversity in specific are something to be fixed or treated as something to be removed just because the artist finds them unfitting.