I want to talk about Ryan. Specifically, I want to talk about something I see occassionally expressed about Ryan. This is going to go a bit into rant territory, so be warned.
I've been a member of the quarry fandom for almost three years now, and there's a view about Ryan that's brought up every now and then that I have an issue with. It's popped up here on tumblr a few times, though I've seen more of it pop up on Reddit.
That view is that Ryan is boring. Now I'm not saying you can't think a character is boring. Sometimes you just don't gel with a character and I get that. The specific issue I have is when someone states they find Ryan boring, or don't like him, and then the reasoning they give is because he's monotone, he doesn't show emotion, it doesn't seem like he's all that interested in Dylan (if they're someone who likes Dylan), etc etc.
Now Ryan is heavily viewed and headcannoned as an autistic character (for good reason; Ryan's autism is a post in and of itself that I'm not going to go into here), and all those "reasons" I just listed are common traits among autistic individuals. So when someone says they don't like Ryan for the above mentioned traits, it comes across as "I don't like Ryan because he's autistic".
It's even worse when that viewpoint is paired with the belief that he's somehow "not good enough" for Dylan, or that Dylan "deserves better", or any other iteration thereof, as if Ryan's autism makes him unworthy of having a relationship with someone.
And that belief of autistic individuals not being able to have meaningful relationships is not a quarry only thing. It's a problem across fandom as a whole. The Heated Rivalry fandom is going through the same thing in terms of people saying Shane doesn't seem as interested in Ilya because of his autism. Ryan just happens to be the one to take the brunt of it in the quarry fandom.
And I'm not going to lie, it's very frustrating. I myself am autistic and most of my friends are as well, and a lot of the ways that Ryan expresses himself I've seen in both myself and my friends. So to have those traits shit upon, to say that he's unworthy of a relationship because he expresses himself differently, really doesn't feel great.
And speaking of fandom-wide issues, there's one other thing I want to bring up, and that's the headcanoning of Ryan being aroace. Specifically, the headcanoning of Ryan being aroace in order to not ship him with anyone. I'm not saying you can't view him as aroace, and I'm not saying that you can't have him not be interested in a romantic/sexual relationship. The link between autism and asexuality is well known, and I know autistic individuals may see parts of themselves in Ryan and headcanon him accordingly. I myself am aroace and I headcanon Ryan to be demi-sexual because of it, so I get it.
But the problem comes when someone doesn't care for a character, or just doesn't ship them with anyone, and decides to make them aroace as more of an afterthought/excuse than any sort of actual representation. "I don't ship this character with anyone so I'll make them asexual as an excuse of why they aren't shipped with anyone". The problem with this is that's not how being asexual works. Aroace people can and do have meaningful romantic/sexual relationships. Making a character aroace shouldn't be done as an afterthought to your shipping preferences.
I love asexual Ryan, I want to see more of him, but I want it to be actual representation and not just "I want to ship Dylan with someone else so I'll make Ryan asexual to get him out of the way". Asexuals don't deserve to have our sexuality be an afterthought.
Anyways, everyone's allowed to headcanon whatever they want and ship whoever they want together, just please don't be ableist about it.
