plenty of people have talked about aroace ryland grace but i want to add my two cents
aroace grace is so important to a lot of us aspecs, i think. but i think it's specifically important to those of us who are fully aroace, who don't experience any sexual or romantic attraction, and i want to talk about that.
aroace grace is a super popular headcanon, and it's great! but unfortunately, this is fandom, where no character is safe from shipping, and also the guy's played by ryan gosling, so of course people are shipping him. now, of course, you can do whatever you want forever, don't like don't look is a principle i subscribe to, but that doesn't mean i can't be annoyed and complain about it into the void.
grace is so clearly aroace-coded. he mentions being in a relationship exactly one time and it's to complain. he mentions sex exactly once and it's to say food is better. he's beyond weirded out by dubois and shapiro's talk of their relationship. he's horrified when he learns that people think he and stratt are together. he is a person whose life is valued less because he doesn't have a romantic partner (or many relationships in general, but partner is a big one). and so he is outcast, seen as an easy sacrifice, because he won't really have anyone to miss him, and certainly no one to fight for him. and yet he finds happiness anyway, out in space, lightyears from humanity, with no obligation or pressure to conform to society's rules and expectations, and he can finally be himself.
do you know how relatable that is, as someone who's aroace?
even when people headcanon/portray grace as grayspec or otherwise not completely aroace, it just... doesn't sit right with me. i know there's little aspec representation, but there's also little aroace representation, and it feels like erasure especially when people say they're portraying the character as aspec but the result is indistinguishable from something allospec. i know there are people out there who are arospec and/or acespec, and they want to see themselves in media, and that's fine! you deserve that too! but come on, man. so many people could be considered aspec and just don't realize it or don't care (looking at demi- here). there are other characters you can hit with the aspec beam. the same can't be said about aroaceness, because with how prevalent sex and romance are in society, we're lucky to get a character who fits the aroace label so well, so when we do, it's a big deal for us.
and yet when we finally get that, people are like "oh but ace people can still have sex," "aro people can still be in romantic relationships," "you don't need to experience attraction to enjoy or want to participate in something." and yeah, that's not wrong. but listen.
what about all the stuff about how aroace people often feel wrong or awkward or broken and they make stuff up and force themselves into uncomfortable situations to try to fit in?
what about the way you feel when everyone and everything around you praises and prioritizes things you actively dislike?
the feeling that you're being gaslit by everyone around you and everyone's just exaggerating and making things up, but surely the entire world can't keep up a lie that big for so long without coordination, so are you really the crazy one?
valentine's day every year, family gatherings, everyone asking if you have a partner yet like it's an inevitability, speaking about a hypothetical one as if it's something you want, the pressure to continue your bloodline because you owe it to your ancestors?
not knowing what your future is going to look like, because everyone ends up marrying and settling down some day, but you can't imagine yourself with anyone?
who's going to be waiting at home for you?
who's going to go on your emergency contacts list?
who's going to prioritize you?
who's going to have time for you?
if you can't stomach faking it for your whole life, are you just doomed to be left behind?
everywhere you look are reminders that you're different. all the people you grew up with get crushes in or before their teens and you don't. everyone around you is apparently having sex in college and even late high school and the idea freaks you out. eventually your friends are getting married, and you accept the invitation because you don't want to be rude, and you spend the whole time wondering what the point of all this is, how and why people could actually want and enjoy this.
you seek out content that makes you uncomfortable on purpose, because you're curious, or because you think you're being dramatic, and for a while you can't look away, and it leaves you feeling guilty and gross and full of regret because there wasn't any point to that and you knew it would upset you and you did it anyway because maybe this time there would be something there you wouldn't hate, something that would make you understand, something that would fix you, but there never is.
someone makes a sex joke around you, someone plays or sings a song about sex or romance, you're watching a show with friends and two of the characters start making out. and you can't complain because nobody else cares, especially not enough to put such a big filter on their behavior just for you. so you just have to deal with it until it stops grossing you out so much, but it never fully goes away. and you know it won't, and that you just have to deal with it, because realistically, it isn't reasonable to ask everyone ever to stop themselves from talking about a normal part of the human experience just for the small number of people like you who don't like it.
a normal part of the human experience that so many people love and praise but which you can't get far enough from.
you're telling me you want to explore sex and romance, something that's been done a million times before, instead of this?
sex and romance is all the same wherever you look. everything's already been done before. humans have been creating for thousands upon thousands of years, and a lot of that is about sex and romance. nothing is new anymore. okay, yeah, yeah, "but nobody's done it with these characters yet", whatever. someone's going to do it eventually.
and if you look at everything already out there, and squint, or even if you don't, how much can you really tell the difference? nearly anything you can imagine is out there somewhere. you're by no means new here.
it's exhausting at this point. it's suffocating how every corner i turn there's sex or romance no matter how much the odds are in my favor. i filter tags and things still get through. i find a super aroace-coded character and things still get through. i find an explicitly aroace and sex-repulsed character and things still get through. it's like an invasive species. there's no winning.
in the same way that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of consequences, you can do whatever you want forever, but i'm allowed to be upset about it. and i'm allowed to ask that you give us some fucking space for once. let us have this.
being aroace is so, so alienating. so let's let the guy who's lightyears from home and best friends with an alien be aroace for once, yeah?
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