I haven’t watched Iron Lung but I’ve seen people fight between BloodyMary and aroace Grace and usually I’m always on the side of the aroace rep but in this case it’s okay gang I’m aroace and I love my beautiful girlfriend so I hereby approve of both and challenge you all to write love stories from an aroace perspective please please please I promise it’s a fun exercise I can even help if you want
Like genuinely, I don’t think the problem is “aroace rep should exist without relationships” vs “aroace people can also be in relationships!” I think the problem is that people don’t think deeply enough about how a relationship involving aroace characters will be different to allo relationships and don’t bother to write about those differences or treat those differences like they’re just as beautiful and meaningful. Like you can ship that aroace character with whoever who want, but how does it work between them? What does their relationship look like? How does the aroace character express their love towards their partner(s) and how does their partner (if the partner isn’t also aroace) receive that love and/or reciprocate that love?
There’s a lot of possibilities here, and it would be nice to see shipping that doesn’t have to erase a character’s aroaceness in order to work. Like, I don’t want people to go “aroace people can also be in relationships!” and then write that relationship absolutely identical to an allo relationship, I want people to go “aroace people can also be in relationships and here’s how it would work for these specific characters!”
