5 Ace Characters I Want To See
For the August Carnival of Aces.
Obviously, I want to see all sorts of (respectfully
portrayed) ace characters, but it’s like when you ask someone what they want to
eat for dinner and they say “food”; having too many options isn’t actually
helpful. So what I’m giving here are five specific ace characters that I want to
see.
The Accepted Ace Jock
In a way, no character is more sexualized than the white
male American football player. That is to say that, if you see a white male
American football player, especially one in high school or college, you assume
that they have had sex (with a woman), they have a lot of sex (with women), and
they always want more sex (with women). There’s occasionally, especially with
non-white or female jocks, the case because they’re too focused on their
relationship or too busy trying to stay afloat academically/financially, but
for white male American jocks, they’re almost all portrayed this way.
What I want to see is an ace jock who’s accepted by everyone
around him. His friends and schoolmates all know, and whenever someone tries to
push him into having sex his friends defend him, just as they would if he were
gay at a tolerant school. I guess what I want is a white male jock who’s
asexual and allowed to not be sexual, rather than one who’s asexual but plays
as straight anyway to please his friends, family, and society.
The Powerful Partner
in an Arranged Marriage
Arranged marriages in romance novels are usually written as
somewhere between entirely non-consensual relationships between a helpless
woman (who eventually escapes or is rescued by the hero) and a
sexually-and-otherwise-abusive man (if he’s the antagonist) or originally-dubiously-consensual
relationships between a woman and a man who bravely restrains himself from
assaulting his wife (sometimes) until she’s ready (or until he seduces her into
it). The major point of it, though, is that the person who wants sex more is
the person who holds the power in the relationship, because most arranged
marriage stories are set in historical times when men held most if not all of
the power in the relationship.
What I want to see with this is an arranged marriage where
the person holding the power is asexual. What I want to see is not the powerful
member of the marriage (who is usually the husband) heroically restraining from
having (at best) dubiously consensual sex with their wife, but instead the
powerful member being the one who waits, possibly forever, because they just
don’t want to. I want to see them struggling with feeling like having forced
someone into a sexless marriage. I want to see them struggling with not
providing an heir.
(Aro/)Ace Soulmates
In soulmate stories, what they often have is sex playing
integral part in the mating, often with sex being what sets the mating and
makes it final or sets up some other sort of magic is affiliated with it. Other
times, there will be lines about platonic partnerships as an “oh, that could
happen, but it almost never does” as a sort of throwaway.
What I want to see are really two types of soulmates. The
first is a romantic ace pair of soulmates, and the second is a platonic or QP
pair of soulmates. I want to see these are more than just the afterthought
comments when someone asks about it because they’re afraid of potentially being
sexually related to someone of the same gender (as usually happens in
fanfiction soulmate stories). I want this to be portrayed as normal in soulmate
stories because it shows the idea that you can have primary partnerships
without sex and/or without romance that are long-lasting and meaningful,
because sometimes you need to prove a point by going further than you really
need.
The Mothering Ace
There’s a tendency—understandably—to affiliate sexuality, in
women, with being mothering, whether literally or figuratively. There’s a
tendency to think of being mothering with a midlevel sexuality; if you’re too
sexual, you don’t have time for children or you’re too catty for them, and if
you’re not sexual, you’re too cold or snooty for children.
What I want to see is an affectionate, mothering (literally
or metaphorically) ace female character. I want to see an ace character with
children, an ace character who adores her nieces and nephews (and whatever the
gender-neutral term for children of parents siblings is), an ace character who
has substitute children in their students or their camp members. I want an ace
character who nurtures their friends, who takes care of strangers and kittens
and iguanas that they find.
The Curvy Ace
As I wrote about here (TW for sexual assault and victim blaming), there’s a tendency to think of curvy
as equaling sexy, which equals sexual. What I want to see is an ace character
who is curvy, who has a big chest and big hips and everything that is thought
of as being typically sexual, without feeling any sexual attraction.
What I want to see is characters who look like me.
