all the rights that come with marriage you should be able to have without marriage btw. you should be able to designate a person who can visit you in the hospital regardless of your relationship to that person.
People in the notes are saying "You can!" referring just to the hospital visitation part, and sure (depending). But people should have access to ALL of the benefits of marriage without needing to be married.
You should be able to add anyone you want on your health insurance plan.
You should be able to sponsor the visa of anyone you choose to move to your home country.
You should be able to name anyone you choose as the legal-from-birth legal coparent of any child you give birth to.
You should be able to apply for student aid on your own at any age.
And yes, yes, ideally healthcare and college should be free, international migration should be unrestricted, and the entire concept of legal parenthood should be rewritten from the ground up. But right now we're talking about marriage benefits.
opposite of a wife guy im a my friends guy. oh you like that flower thats crazy my friend literally gardens. oh you ate a bagel today thats crazy when i hung out with my friend we got bagels. oh you took a walk by some water that's crazy because a year ago me and my friend took this specific walk by the water and it was meaningful. phone screen of my friends. always talking about my friends. starting to think nobody else has my friends in the same way that i have my friends and im really sorry about that you know what i mean
(rent lowering post) ryland grace is subtextually aroace in both the phm book and movie, as well as very likely aroace-coded in the movie due to there plausibly being intent behind that subtext, and referring to grace being aroace as âjust a headcanonâ for the sole purpose of trying to argue that itâs âokayâ to ship him (read: shut aspecs up when they mention you are doing amatonormativity) is disrespectful to IRL aroace people who are using their own lived queer experience to analyze the story and identify that subtext
It really is so telling when people are like "Well aromanticism and asexuality are modern identities, so it's impossible for people to have historically had anything pejorative to say about the category of 'people disinterested in sex and romance' that might be of relevance to discussions of ace and aro identity. However my concept of gay identity is that it has always been exactly the same as today and I can totally project modern ways of thinking about gayness backwards into history."
do think when people say "we know marriage is a social construct, but it's a legal way to be able to take care of someone else and vice versa" as if those of us making a point about marriage (i would say, a lot of us being aromantic people especially) don't know this fact, are missing a bit of the point about why this is stressed and potentially not giving enough grace to (again especially aromantic) people who say this.
when it's framed as a "so just get married for legality reasons" and im like. you mean like how gay people married/marry people of the opposite gender for legality reasons? and that's considered to be a symptom of a problem, not the solution? you want people to "just" get married against their will because it's the only solution this system has available?
if people cannot or will not get married for whatever reason -- not just for being aromantic, but, say, due to inefficient disability support measures within marriage, because of having had bad experiences with marriage in the past, because of being polyamorous, because some element of marriage is ineffective, unwanted, limited, discriminatory, or hell, because you can't find somebody to marry or nobody wants to marry you, or maybe because you just plain don't want to without there being a distinct Reason -- then it's a problem that this is the only framework in place for people to be afforded certain legal and social protections.
i am glad for others that more people can get married, but it's a flawed institution with gaping holes that isn't for everyone and builds social structures that leave so many people behind and unsupported. this is abundantly obvious in the way that we saw why people pushed for the need for equal marriage in the first place.
that's what's said when making a point that it's a social construct. and also what's meant (partially) when pushing against the idea that "love" as concept isn't at the core of queer (amongst others hinted at in this post) activism, because it's about building better structures. if the only people we care about are those we "love" within a family unit, or those who successfully manage to pretend that unit without actually really wanting it, and if not being in that unit for whatever reason means that care isn't going to be/is no longer afforded, then are we really doing any better than heteronormativity?
more people need to read up on "amatonormativity" from the original source (this is a summary from the same person written in 2012 and so doesn't include aromantic, but it's all in there) before they start pushing marriage as the ultimate goal of queer liberation, or indeed any liberation.
"aro/ace people can still be in relationships/have sex!!!" yeah and lesbians can have sex with men without it invalidating their identity, but if you go up to every lesbian you meet and start screaming about how "lesbians can be in relationships with cis men too!!!" you're gonna end up with a lot of pissed off lesbians because you're highkey replicating the same "you don't have to go against the norms of allocishet society! you can just be Normalâ˘!" messaging they've been bombarded with ever since they started using that label, just dressed up in progressive language.
I wish I could talk about amatonormativity & how shitty the world is for single people without being told that I should get a roommate. I have a roommate, it is not socially acceptable to rely on a roommate the way you rely on a significant other.
do think when people say "we know marriage is a social construct, but it's a legal way to be able to take care of someone else and vice versa" as if those of us making a point about marriage (i would say, a lot of us being aromantic people especially) don't know this fact, are missing a bit of the point about why this is stressed and potentially not giving enough grace to (again especially aromantic) people who say this.
when it's framed as a "so just get married for legality reasons" and im like. you mean like how gay people married/marry people of the opposite gender for legality reasons? and that's considered to be a symptom of a problem, not the solution? you want people to "just" get married against their will because it's the only solution this system has available?
if people cannot or will not get married for whatever reason -- not just for being aromantic, but, say, due to inefficient disability support measures within marriage, because of having had bad experiences with marriage in the past, because of being polyamorous, because some element of marriage is ineffective, unwanted, limited, discriminatory, or hell, because you can't find somebody to marry or nobody wants to marry you, or maybe because you just plain don't want to without there being a distinct Reason -- then it's a problem that this is the only framework in place for people to be afforded certain legal and social protections.
i am glad for others that more people can get married, but it's a flawed institution with gaping holes that isn't for everyone and builds social structures that leave so many people behind and unsupported. this is abundantly obvious in the way that we saw why people pushed for the need for equal marriage in the first place.
that's what's said when making a point that it's a social construct. and also what's meant (partially) when pushing against the idea that "love" as concept isn't at the core of queer (amongst others hinted at in this post) activism, because it's about building better structures. if the only people we care about are those we "love" within a family unit, or those who successfully manage to pretend that unit without actually really wanting it, and if not being in that unit for whatever reason means that care isn't going to be/is no longer afforded, then are we really doing any better than heteronormativity?
more people need to read up on "amatonormativity" from the original source (this is a summary from the same person written in 2012 and so doesn't include aromantic, but it's all in there) before they start pushing marriage as the ultimate goal of queer liberation, or indeed any liberation.
hi. me again. happy pride! this post is my place to collect all of my thoughts regarding the aroace subtext and coding in the project hail mary film. iâve been having a lot of really great conversations with friends about how i believe that the PHM movie is not only a film which CAN be read as an aroace story centered around an aroace protagonist, but one which has intentional subtext (coding) which supports that reading. unfortunately i am very bad at gathering complete, coherent thoughts on the spot, and my memory is terrible, so i wanted to collate them here for my own reference and also to share them with others!
for starters, i do want to clarify that i am specifically talking about the film, rather than the novel (though i will be referencing the novel a few times). i am also specifically talking about subtext/coding here, and not explicit mentions of queerness/aroace identity within the filmâs text. i do not expect ryan gosling, phil lord, chris miller, drew goddard, or anyone else involved in the filmâs creation to outright confirm via word of god that there was intent to present PHM as an aroace story. itâs 2026; large corporations arenât even pretending to care about queer people by using rainbow logos for pride month anymore - i think the people who worked on the movie (which is distributed by amazon, the final boss of big evil corporations) know that saying PHM is a film with intentional queer elements would significantly limit the filmâs reach. which, of course, does suck, but that is the political and cultural moment weâre in so thatâs how iâm approaching this.
however! i DO think itâs notable to observe that many of the filmâs creative staff have experience with past queer subtext/storytelling. PHMâs directors, phil lord and chris miller, were writers and producers on spider-man: across the spider-verse, which codes gwen stacy as trans. PHMâs screenplay was written by drew goddard, who was a writer on buffy the vampire slayer (an extremely notable installment in queer media) and who wrote an official buffy comic in which buffy herself sleeps with a woman. and those are just the folks at the top - many similar instances could likely be found throughout the hundreds of people who contributed to the PHM film!
i obviously do not know if lord, miller, and goddard specifically made the decisions which have imbued the PHM film with aroace subtext, but i think it is reasonable to assume that either they, or some of their creative collaborators, know enough about queer people and queer storytelling to have guided decisions which were made to intentionally present the PHM movie as an aroace story.
now for the decisions themselves!
first off, the movieâs color palette! this has been pointed out ad nauseam, by myself and other folks, but so, so much of the lighting, set design, and wardrobing of the PHM movie uses shades of orange, yellow, and blue, which are the stripes of the aroace pride flag.
some notable examples of this color palette include:
this promotional image of ryan gosling as ryland grace in the hail maryâs cockpit!
the scene where grace first sees the blip-a!
graceâs striped socks!
this one specific lens flare, which contains the actual stripes of the aroace flag in order!
as an additional highlight, in some behind the scenes material, you can see that a portion of the hail mary setpiece has been painted with 4/5 of the stripes of the aroace flag in order. this specific wall isnât shown directly in the film (as far as iâve been able to find), and i assume that its primary purpose was to assist with the orange, yellow, and blue lighting - but it is very cool to see!
and finally, here and here are some of my favorite gifsets posted on here by other tumblr users which highlight this color palette. i truly canât capture how orange/yellow/blue this film is with screenshots alone; once you notice how prevalent those colors are, they are impossible to ignore.
obviously, colors have meaning and storytelling functionality in film outside of their use in pride flags, but given the sheer frequency with which these colors appear in the film, and the story told by the film itself, it is absolutely not outside of the realm of possibility that the aroace flagâs color scheme was specifically considered during the filmmaking process. as is well-said in that gwen stacy trans subtext article linked above:
In a sequence where she talks to her father about her secret identity, a moment where sheâs afraid and anxious, the room sheâs in melts away into those pinks, blues, and whites. Perhaps itâs all a coincidence, but these artists â the same ones who deliberately put the âprotect trans kidsâ flag in Gwenâs room â are aware of the symbolism of these colors.
i believe this is exactly what is happening in the PHM movie, too. an artist (or multiple artists, who plausibly have historically used lighting/set design to support queer subtext/coding) involved in production realized that the story being told is one which would resonate with the aroace community, and chose/advocated for color choices which support that interpretation.
now, as for the story itself!
to briefly talk about the novel for a bit, i do want to highlight the ways in which book!grace interacts with the topics of sex and romance. because the novel is told in first-person from graceâs point of view, we as readers have access to his internal monologue in a way we donât have in the movie. even with this access, however, there is no moment in which grace expresses attraction towards another person or desire for a romantic and/or sexual relationship. instead, he feels:
baseline curiosity towards his romantic situation, while he is amnesiac and trying to determine how he has such a love for kids. notably, there is no clarification of his sexual orientation OR any preference expressed for a given outcome. i donât get the sense that grace cares about his romantic situation all that much; i get the sense that he cares about his kids.
no sentimentality about the sole past romantic relationship he mentions:
discomfort while in a conversation about his colleaguesâ sex life, even while that conversation is being held for the purpose of professional disclosure:
shock, when his colleagues assume that he has been sleeping with stratt, due to the two of them spending a lot of time together on the project and being in close proximity more often than not:
obliviousness that one of his colleagues might be into him/find him charming:
and total conviction that the astronauts chosen for the hail mary crew wonât jeopardize the mission by hooking up:
i do not know if there was any intent to code grace as aroace while writing the novel. perhaps andy weir has stated his thoughts on the matter somewhere or perhaps he hasnât - i truly donât know, but i also donât think that it matters, when it comes to identifying intentional subtext in the film! iâve included the specific passages from the novel above to show that book!grace has no strong drive/desire for sex/romance. therefore, i do not think that it is outside the realm of possibility for a screenwriter/artist/creative - especially one who has worked on queer media in the past - to read the novel, see that grace shares traits with aroace people, and to make changes in adaptation which specifically highlight the ways in which PHM and graceâs story reject amatonormativity.
now, back to the film, and onto the changes themselves!
broadly speaking, the film follows the same convention that the novel uses, where flashbacks to moments in graceâs life on earth are included sporadically as he regains his memories while in space. however, it shuffles around the order and presentation of certain events/plot points to create thematic parallels and structure specific scenes in ways which add aroace subtext.
my favorite example of this is in the âgrace go homeâ scene. in the film, rocky decides to sacrifice six years of life on erid so that grace can return to earth. this happens after rocky and grace have talked about rockyâs mate adrian, so they (and the audience) both know that rocky has a mate and grace doesnât. this is a reinterpretation of the sequence of events presented in the novel, where rocky 1) has so much extra fuel that giving grace what he needs does not impact rockyâs journey home at all, 2) only brings up adrian afterwards, and 3) never finds out that grace is single. in both versions of the story, this is a sweet gesture of friendship - but in the film, it is also rocky choosing to NOT prioritize a romantic relationship over his friend. this subverts the hierarchy created by amatonormativity, where romantic partnerships are considered the most important type of relationship. it is also presented as a good thing, since rockyâs choice here gives grace the tools to save him in the end! thus, the movieâs presentation of this moment affirms that the prioritization of non-romantic relationships will benefit everyone.
another example is the scene(s) in which stratt tells grace that he will be a part of the hail maryâs crew. both versions of the scene serve two purposes: they establish that 1) grace is too afraid to join the hail mary crew willingly, and 2) that there is a rift in understanding between him and stratt. in the novel, the rift in understanding between grace and stratt is shown by having her state that he is a teacher because of his cowardice, not because he genuinely loves teaching. however, in the film, this rift in understanding is shown when she delivers the legendary âyou have no immediate family; you donât even have a dogâ line - grace has not shown a desire to have a dog even once in the movie, yet stratt brings it up here as though it is something he does/should want. by focusing the breakdown of grace and strattâs friendship on graceâs lack of romantic relationship, the film calls attention to the fact that grace is Different the way many aroace people are Different. and the film goes a step further as well - while book!stratt believes that graceâs lack of romantic relationship is a consequence of his cowardice, movie!stratt implies that because grace does not have one, there is nothing in his life that he cares about enough for him to want to stay on earth. the film shows us here that because grace does not have the ârightâ type of relationship and his life does not follow amatonormativity, the people around him cannot understand how he finds fulfillment in that life. that is, unsurprisingly, very resonant with many aroace people!
furthermore, the way the film juxtaposes the grace-rocky and grace-stratt friendships, via the thematic throughline of âyou just need to find someone to be brave forâ and small moments (grace calls both mysterious, asks both for time to âthink about itâ when presented with the option to leave the planet heâs currently on), highlights the fact that graceâs most important/defining relationship is a friendship, not a romance. while grace and stratt are not presented romantically in the PHM film, that film still exists within a canon of hollywood films in which many attractive male leads are paired off with attractive female leads, simply because they are attractive and standing next to each other on screen. within that context, it is reasonable to assume that the PHM filmmakers were very aware that a large portion of their audience would interpret grace and strattâs relationship as romantic, no matter their intentions. additionally, it is notable that the âsomeone to be brave forâ line was delivered by yĂĄo, who has already been shown, by this point in the film, to have a wife and child (presumably, they are the people HE is brave for). thus, when grace finds âthe oneâ, âthe right personâ who he needs to be brave for in rocky instead of stratt, it is not only a great moment of friendship, but also an intentional subversion of expectations which have been set by other films/media. in explicitly pulling the storyâs âyou just need to find someone to be brave forâ throughline to the forefront as an in-text motif, the film once again highlights how graceâs story also subverts amatonormativity.
this juxtaposition is shown most explicitly, in my opinion, when the film contrasts grace and rockyâs trip to tau ceti-e with the party on strattâs vat, in side-by-side scenes. in the present, grace and rocky are shown having fun together, singing karaoke, and talking about both adrian and graceâs lack of a mate. in the past, however, grace says the line âit is such a weird party. yao is singing, everyoneâs so happy, people are hooking up⌠and they all know theyâre gonna die.â the first element of note here is that grace and rockyâs conversation about mates - the first explicit mention of romance in the film - happens immediately before the cut to the flashback where grace and stratt are at their closest. if the audience is going to assume that grace and strattâs relationship is romantic, they are going to do it now! the second element of note is that grace has just been shown singing, having fun, and being happy with rocky, despite knowing that he is going to die. this calls attention to both 1) grace finding fulfillment in his relationship with rocky that he does not find in his relationship with stratt, and 2) that grace is able to find that fulfillment even without âhooking upâ or a âmate.â structurally, the movie is showing its hand in who that âsomeoneâ grace is brave for will be - and by emphasizing that it is his friend rocky rather than any potential romantic partner, it is yet again emphasizing how his story rejects amatonormativity, and how he is content without romance or sex.
⌠and there are probably many other examples which can be pointed to as well! these are just my personal favorite ways in which the movie has chosen to add additional aroace subtext to grace, and to call attention to that subtext to a degree which, imo, outright codes him as aroace, while adapting the novel.
anyways! this is a long post! i am glad to have collected it all for my own reference, and if anyone else reads it all the way through, hopefully it makes sense! đ§Ąđđ¤đŠľđ
Iâm so tired of the âwhy do people hate aspecs, they arenât doing anything?â argument. I know that it is an attempt to support us, but it fails so spectacularly to understand aromanticism, asexuality, and any other aspec identity that itâs actively frustrating.
We are doing something. Weâre rejecting allonormative ideals and thatâs a massive thing to do. Weâre actively fighting not just to help other aspecs, but to help everyone, because amatonormativity (and allonormativity as a whole) hurt everyone. Single people who want to find a partner but canât also deserve to be able to exist.
There are so many issues with the expectation of marriage, including:
A single income isn't enough to get by anymore
Having a spouse is almost necessary under the current medical system
Society shames and pressures people who are single to get into relationships constantly
Rejecting allonormativity means fighting against these things that hurt everyone.
So, no, aces and aros and other aspecs aren't "doing nothing." We're doing quite a lot.
sometimes it's so very draining that the majority of aro content is about fictional relationships.
irl, i live alone. irl, i am disabled. irl, that intersection and my lack of interest in partnering actively makes life really hard. everything is expensive. i can't always cook when i want to or have fresh ingredients, because my symptoms don't care if I want to cut up vegetables and eat something homemade before they go bad. if I have a bad flareup and getting up is not in the cards, that's it. i have what's next to me. the lack of social support for single folks, for disabled folks, for folks whose family care is inadequate or damaging... it's impactful.
I talk about how i once visited a place with an ex partner. i mention how our relationship started because i was pressured into it, and i wasn't really into the level of seriousness and 'forever' she treated it with. everyone says it's weird that i agreed if i didn't want it to be serious. i remember being 16, saying no, and a chorus of people telling me i was stupid and immature, that her family was rich, that we would be cute and to listen to them, not my heart. my heart was saying nothing.
i look at my current age and life goals. for many of my peers, dating and marriage and eventual kids are common goals. i am watching my rights erode and trying to practice good mental hygeine. my five year goal is to be alive. my next major life milestone is a nebulous desire to find a life i can tolerate living.
being aromantic significantly impacts my day to day. i want to see aro people living their lives, and doing so with joy. i want to see aro adults making it, ones like me. i want aro people to thrive. i want to live, aromantically.
i scroll the aro tag. it's fandom and shipping and asexual posts.
The concept that married people live longer is interesting. I'm sure there is some merit to the idea that if you're married there is someone there to nag you about going to the doctor, but I think much larger factors are having the finances of dual incomes and access to an immediate support person.
Surgeries require having a designated person to look after you. Many injuries require driving to somewhere like an emergency room which can be hard to do if you are the one injured. If you're home with the flu, it's hard to tell when it's bad enough to go to the hospital without another person checking on you. And if you pass out it requires another person to find you like that to get medical aid.
You can prop it up as the benefits of marriage, but I think there's a much deeper discussion to be had about how we've built society around marriage as an inevitable conclusion and neglected to build support systems that function outside of romantic pairings.
