Thoughts on Heartbreaker Characters (from an aromantic)
Okay so probably no one’s gonna read this, and I wasn’t really sure about writing it, but here it is anyway
I’ve seen several negative opinions about characters I really love, and the reason I hear/read the most is that they play with people’s feelings (romantic feelings), and it gets to me because I don’t think most of these characters are playing with anyone’s feelings, they don’t feel the same about people who fall for them (despite them being pretty straight forward about not wanting anything serious), they’re being as used as everyone else but don’t get to complain because they don’t get a heart break (although they do get hurt a lot).
Now, I’m aromantic, but I didn’t actually figure it out until around a year ago while I was dating a guy, and for years when I spoke to my friends about not feeling like my romantic relationships were right despite caring for them as friends and feeling sexual attraction towards them everyone called me cold and heartless, which is funny the first few times, but starts making you wonder if you’re somehow broken on the long run.
It’s totally okay if you don’t like these characters, but if this is the reason maybe don’t call them heartless and cruel? I enjoy being in these fandoms, and that makes it worse to hear the same stuff I got to hear from my friends about characters I identify with. I get that they date these people before getting intimate knowing fully well they won’t fall for them, but the characters they date only get hurt because they believe they’re special, that they’re the ones who are gonna melt this frozen heart! And that’s not the character’s fault, just like it wasn’t my fault that my ex had thought the same about him after I told him my feeling wouldn’t change and it had nothing to do with him.
Sure, sometimes they sound a little too delighted to be breaking someone’s heart, but in my experience, being nice and thoughtful makes it worse for both sides, they think they still have a chance because you care enough to try not to hurt their feelings and you end up feeling like you were somehow lying to them and get trapped into another week of trying something you don’t like and being treated like a project.
I know these characters aren’t canonically arospec, but they get some of the same criticism, so I felt like I had to put this out there in case someone felt on a similar way.
I don’t like beautiful disaster and I disagree with several of the things they say and do in the book, but when I read it (around 6 years ago) there was this part I never forgot:
And then they both proceed to be assholes and make me regret being born.
However, that piece of dialogue was so important to me, because despite still being a kid and having done nothing sexual ever, it validated me, because it made me think maybe it wasn’t my fault when some dude liked me and assumed I had to like him back, and even tho it wasn’t enough to fight my friends telling me I had to try harder, that I needed to be more open because that boy was cute or nice or funny so I had to fall for him like they did with their boyfriends, it gave me something to relate to.
I say these characters get used because believe it or not, when you do something romantic for someone without thinking if they’ll like it or not, you’re not considering their feelings, you’re thinking about yourself, what you’d like, what you’d get, what you’d want to do. It’s not fair that we get judged as bad people for not reciprocating someone’s feelings when they’re using you as a personal project.
These characters eventually fall in love, there is someone they feel romantic attraction towards, but please don’t say they got fixed because of that. Even tho most of the time there was something they needed to work on to get there (some character development) it doesn’t mean that not feeling romantic attraction towards every person they ever dated was a character flaw, or something they needed to fix.
Not falling in love doesn’t mean someone’s broken or bad. I’m not saying these characters are perfect, they are flawed, that’s the whole point, but this is not the reason.
I get that we live in a society that makes love and sex look like the same thing, but they’re not, and more people need to know that.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind on the characters themselves, it’s your perception anyway, all I wanted was to explain why the way some people talk about them can be harmful.
