#but I can try clariel again... for the world building.....

[beliscary]

there's a tower in belisaere called dolorous bastion

[aroworlds]

So I was just kicked off of a famous ace blog chat room for saying Ebeneezer Scrooge is Aro ace , they told me to not headcanon gross characters Aro ace and I was like “ it’s not headcanon it’s fact “ he’s Aro ace coded , they got so offended they kicked me instead of discussing author bias against Aro aces , it’s not Scrooge’s fault dickens made him such a jerk to justify his villianization . I just ... I hate myself for not being socially acceptable around sensitive people

Anon, I am so sorry that you had to experience this awfulness. I assure you, this is not a case of people being sensitive. I’m also glad, selfishly, that you’ve sent this in, because it’s a wonderful excuse to talk about how current attitudes towards representation are running the risk of enabling bigotry more than preventing it.

This is a case of people engaging in clear, bold, specific aro-ace erasure and using the language of social justice to justify said erasure. It’s out-and-out aro-ace antagonism in the vein of denying an aro-ace person ability to express identity within the context of a well-known character and it is not okay. In fact, it’s downright reprehensible, to the extent that I could joyfully employ the thesaurus in finding alternate ways to discuss how despicable I find this–both the initial response in denying you identity/connection with a famous literary character and the resulting response in kicking you out of the ace community because you won’t fall in line with their ignorant ideas about representation.

You aren’t the problem here, anon. You never were the problem here. You do not deserve to hate yourself because you have been a victim of other people’s erasure, prejudice and dismissal. You do not deserve to hate yourself because you have been denied access to the asexual community for the crime of relating to a fictional character. You deserve to be angry, furious, outraged.

It’s hard not to feel this way when people are telling you that you don’t get to exist, when you have been kicked out of a community for daring to be yourself and express an connection for a character. It is absolutely not a failing in you that you feel the way you do–I want to be clear on that. We tend to direct the hate given by others towards ourselves, and that’s a normal human response. But it is not deserved.

It is not okay to tell a marginalised person that they cannot relate to a character coded like us. It is not okay to deny a marginalised person, often with few mainstream characters that depict anything close to our lived experiences, connection with a literary canon just because it isn’t good or idealised representation.

Scrooge–very aro-ace-coded to me, I must say–isn’t good representation. How can he be, given the context of his creation? That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t relate to him, create headcanons, write fanfiction or draw fanart, make meta posts, discuss how we connect to his life. On the contrary, transformative media is about taking a character like Scrooge and making him meaningful, supportive, positive representation despite the canon. Fandom has always been for taking the failings in the source material and transforming it into something that celebrates us–that moves beyond simply being relatable.

We can connect to, celebrate and discuss a character in their canon without it being cast as good representation. We can understand the difference between good representation and connection with a character--that connection does not have to mean endorsement of the canon approach. In a world where there’s little mainstream representation to speak of, we have to fall back on the latter. Where do we exist without it? Nowhere.

To tell us that we cannot do that, that we have to wait instead on characters who fit the narrow box of idealised, intentional, pure, perfect representation, is erasure. It’s silencing. Because it’s so tangled up in social justice understandings (and performances) of representation in a culture where representation is valued and consequently stripped apart, it is also disingenuous and dangerous. In how we’ve come to consider and understand representation, we have handed people a weapon to dismiss people while sounding as though they’re not engaging in explicit erasure–usually targeting people of intersecting marginalised identities, like aro-aces, disabled a-specs and a-specs of colour (as a very incomplete list).

I’m sure folks who’ve followed me for a little while have realised that I’m not a fan of how it has become fashionable to discuss and conceptualise representation, and anon’s story is a very clear cut example of why. People understand that it is damaging to marginalise-code a villain/antihero/antagonist character (or make them specifically/intentionally of a marginalised identity). People understand the need for marginalised people to see themselves in positive/protagonist characters. We no longer, though, have any sense of grey space where a character is not good representation but is still relatable and allowed to be discussed for that alone.

I’m going to use Garth Nix’s Clariel as an example. Clariel is dreadful aro-ace representation, in my opinion: in her own story (Clariel) she’s a fairly-sympathetic anti-hero protagonist who makes some awful decisions in the name of trying to solve a difficult situation, but she becomes a series antagonist who carries out murderous actions (seen clearly in Goldenhand but alluded-to throughout the series). The aro-ace character steals young women’s bodies to house her own spirit. She is terrible, terrible aro-ace rep. But that doesn’t mean a-spec folks can’t or shouldn’t relate to her experiences as an aro-ace character. I can dislike her as representation because of her position as series antagonist while at the same time connecting to her disconnection from social interaction and preference to live alone (the autism-coding is significant!) and there is worth in discussing that connection.

I don’t see how characters like Scrooge are any different. You’ve made it clear that you’re discussing him in terms of coding. You’re not painting a picture of Scrooge as good, idealised representation. You’re just saying you see him as aro-ace, that Scrooge is a character in a long-line of aro-ace-coded antagonist-ish characters, and you just want to talk about that with other aces. (Since when has it become a problem to talk about the antagonism directed at aro-aces via aro-ace coding, anyway?) It isn’t a crime to even want to reclaim Scrooge, to build something positive out of a faulty canon, to talk about what he means to you as an aro-ace character. That’s what fandom is for.

We can, should and must discuss characters and properties that are damaging representation or are not representation at all (just coding) in ways that acknowledge the problems of their being rep (or that they’re not rep at all) without dismissing the fact that people will still connect to and wish to enjoy and share these characters. We can discuss problems in coding and representation for a certain property or character while still giving people space to discuss said connection.

The idea that I should only express connection for characters who are perfect, pure representation of my marginalised identities is bigotry. It’s erasure in social justice clothing. It silences the people who do not yet have the privilege of mainstream/readily-accessible representation while privileging those who do have increased access to representation, and we cannot allow or accept it. Your ask exemplifies this: we have a culture where many parts of the broader asexual community have a habit of seeing aro-ace as the wrong way to write asexual, and now there’s one less aro-ace character acceptable to talk about in an ace community space. That isn’t a coincidence; the people who have least representation will always be most harmed by this. Always.

Again, anon, I’m so sorry that you had to endure this. If you want to fill my inbox with your thoughts on Scrooge, go for it.