“Ace or aro coding as a stand-in for a disinterest in all intimate connections often trickles down to a lack of character development. A lot of our media depicts intimacy as only a sexual or romantic experience, so removing the interest for romance or sex from a character [often] means removing the potential for showing them forming deeper relationships with anyone.” Among asexual and aromantic characters, there is a clear pattern of dehumanization through constructing them as people without empathy and without any real concept of the emotional complexities of humans.
