For me, not having smut in TotW was a good point. There's nothing wrong with smut! Just, you know, not my thing. There was a good amount of focus on their relationship without sex and that was really cool. I can never really find slow burn fics that include asexual characters, so I was really glad to find yours. Just my thoughts on it ^_^
I definitely don’t regret making TotW smut-free. That was honestly never in question, beginning to end. And I definitely know that a lot of people enjoyed specifically for its lack of smut, and that’s also great! I’m glad you liked it. :> I’m simply not comfortable reading or writing that kind of thing, and I wasn’t going to do it just so more people would read it.
That and I feel like it’s really important for ace people to get representation that doesn’t involve them choosing to have sex in order to please their non-ace partner. I don’t like that that’s seen as super romantic, you know? Of course I know that there are ace people who DO find sex pleasurable and WOULD make that choice, but there are also ace people who really, really don’t like sex and would be super uncomfortable with that, and this second group doesn’t get represented… hardly at all. I for one have never read a story where the sexual half of a partnership was the one who had to change.
It’s important for people to realize that healthy, loving relationships can exist without sex, basically. Because a lot of people still don’t. And that can cause problems for people.
My issue with people not reading TotW because of its lack of smut is kind of just.. well, it’s probably silly. I don’t even REALLY know if anyone did - but there were certainly a lot of people who read it and then stopped around the time Asahi said he was ace. Maybe they just didn’t like it in general; I don’t know.
I just feel like I told a good story and the fact that people might skip over it just because it doesn’t have porn in it makes me feel a little… funny.
