LEP 27.2.

[yvannairie]

Once again thinking about how I'm not opposed to ace and aro rep in fandom, but the way people go about it is frustratingly reductive. It's all about forbidding people from doing certain things that people could never see themselves doing and not really saying what they want to see other than... not... those things.

It's the flipside of the vinegar-honey conversation. I'm a lot more permissive of people saying "I want to see more of x, I feel like there's so much y but not x, here's why x should be considered more" even if I don't think there was any reason to bring up y than I am of "I wanna see less of x, people shouldn't be writing x, I don't want to see x". Like, genuinely, what is your alternative? What should all the people who wanna make x do instead? Or could you just, like. Ask people to tag x better so you can block it better?

If your solution to something is "people should just stop x", that's not a solution, that's a preference, and it needs to be handled through methods you have agency over. You have no agency over what I write. You can try to convince me to write something different, sure, but that's a negotiation. There is no negotiation to be had when discussing something I'm doing because I want to that doesn't bother anyone else.

Comments

[palominocorn]

My annoyance with most aro/ace headcanons (as an aroace) is that a lot of them boil down to "I don't like (popular ship) so I'm going to make one of them a-spec so it can't happen". No exploration of the identity, just using aromanticism/asexuality as a shipping torpedo.

The sheer level of "don't write this" followed by attempts to moralize what is clearly a personal preference is deeply frustrating. It's okay to dislike things! To be sick of them, even! You can just. Block it and ask people to tag better! But if you tell me "stop writing this" my response will be to write it MORE.

[yvannairie]

EXACTLY, IT'S SO AGGRAVATING. If I never have to see another aroace Bulkhead headcanon I can die happy, which is an absolute upside-down sentiment for me to be holding about one of my favourite characters in the franchise because it fucking always, invariably boils down to "stop shipping him with [character they have another ship with]"

"Character is ace" being a polite way of saying "character is unfuckable" is so exhausting. It's so rude. It's so cowardly. Sometimes aces are fucking hot and them being disinterested in me and everyone is not a them problem, it's a me problem to manage.