#i LOVE Alastor's orientation and how it's portrayed in canon and i think it's so perfectly handled rn

[iholli]

"weh weh Alastor is canonically aroace you're being disrespectful" I'm ace and probably aro-adjacent get the fuck out of my space and let me foam at the mouth in peace

[nyx-umbrakinesis]

Hello!

Just a little A/N so any of you lovely readers of mine know.

(It was longer than I expected in the end, it's now in the undercut 🤣)

(This post is about how I write Ace Alastor, Gender, Sex, Race, and Sexual Orientation (it's longer than I planned as more and more came out as I wrote but hope it explains things for those who want to know a little more about my writing and about how I write and feel about Alastor and his Ace canon orientation)

I do try to make the 'Reader' in my fics as G/N as possible, I will try my best to avoid using pronouns in my fics and I rely heavily on pet names (which I do IRL as I'm an affectionate person 😁) to avoid using things like 'Y/N' or 'Reader' which I personally prefer not using for a smoother (IMO) more immersive read.

I will often use the readers Sex in the fics as it's just a lot sexier (IMO) to describe how it's affecting 'You', which I know so far I'm guilty of only writing from a female perspective (in nsfw, I don't describe sex organs in sfw if I can help it) I do plan on doing some male reader perspective fics once I've gotten my current fem reader WIPs out of the way.

I am a little nervous at writing them as I'm personally cis female and I hope I do the male perspective justice and it isn't a load of hard to read non immersive rubbish, I also hope I write Alastor and Lucifer's experience's well enough that I can develop my skill and transfer it over to a male perspective reader

I've not had any negative feedback so far on the sex scenes so I hope that means I did good male and female wise, and I know it can be nerve wracking to comment on people's work so I'm going from the few positive comments I have and the reblogs and hearts I've gotten, but I do encourage any constructive advice or even if you want to see certain things in the future, I am very friendly and I won't be mean I promise💜💜💜💜💜

Also I am aware of Alastor's sexual orientation in canon and I completely respect him and the Ace community and don't for a moment think he or any Ace person should change.

I really can't help that I have latched onto Alastor in such an intense way (my AuDHD loves him) but I do still try to keep him in the Ace spectrum (with what knowledge I have researched) and not make the sex about his gratification or desire for sex itself, and use it either as a powerplay or manipulation tool (as he knows he's desirable).

Or if the fic is about him in an established relationship with the reader or any other character it will be about seeing his partner come undone for him and/or doing it all for them and their pleasure, he can take it or leave it in regards to sex (I know I don't explicitly say it in the fics, I do try to do things subtly, like little things with him only getting undressed at the last moment or being very dominant and having reader or Lucifer vulnerable for him and the power being a big motivator for him and how it feels to have them begging for him etc) I hope I explained what I mean well enough.

I don't for a second think anyone's sexual orientation should ever be changed nor their gender identity, fictional characters are fictional and I like to play with them, I am personally (Pansexual and hypersexual which means all characters are at risk lol 😂) but as I've seen many times in many fandoms all characters can have sexual orientations, sex's and genders get changed left right and centre.

I do know and understand it's difficult if you're part of a smaller less represented LGBTQ+ community to see a character who in canon is really lovable/amazing and represents your sexual orientation and/or gender identity get portrayed differently in fanfics or changed because of self indulgent writers.

I hope you know now I'm not trying to change Alastor and by no means want to see him like this in canon, I just really love him as a character and it helps my own mental health to play with him too sometimes 💜💜💜

And it will be the same with Velvette when I write her with a male reader (I will also write gender swapped readers for each of my fics or I'll try to if you guys want me too), I don't think her sexual orientation should change in canon and I love that she's lesbian, just as I love Alastor being Ace, I just wanna borrow and play with them for a bit (😉), and I hope that's okay. 💜💜

I also try to be inclusive with race and will often avoid describing specific colours of readers skin, or hair or eye colour but if I do make mistakes in those areas don't be afraid to give me a nudge and point out the error okay 💜💜

(In my last fic I know I described the reader as having a red tail and that's because the animal she had features of that I'd chosen was a red squirrel, hair colour and eye colour I still left ambiguous not all the hair had to be red for example, I'm not a redhead myself which most of you who know me on my main blog or discord will know as I have pictures of myself up)

Also if you're in the Alastor simp sanctuary discord server and follow me just drop me a comment or pm and I'll follow back (as this is my sub account it'll be my main account that follows you)

And if anyone wants me to read their stuff in general I take recommendations just send a link 🫶

(I will add this to the bottom of my pinned post too so anyone in the future can see this little (large) note 💜💜)

~Nyx~

[ckret2]

i saw a post saying that alastor is an aphobic caricature because he’s portrayed as heartless and manipulative. is this true?? i didn’t even know asexuals were stereotyped like that

I'm gonna talk about both asexuality and aromanticism in this post because 1) creators have confirmed that Alastor is both ace & aro (the ace part was confirmed much earlier, which is why it's talked about more often than the aro part), and 2) the fictional tropes I'm talking about usually apply both to aces & aros, mainly because the creators using them typically don't separate sexual attraction from romantic attraction.

So, since you hadn't heard of that stereotype before, here is a thing that is true about fiction:

In media—particularly sci-if/fantasy (where you can have characters manipulated on a soul-deep level by technology/magic) and crime/horror fiction (where you have the ever-pervasive remorseless killer and "heartless sociopath" tropes)—characters are often portrayed as "incapable of love" as a way to indicate villainy. (Widely-known example I mentioned just a couple days ago: Voldemort from Harry Potter is described as having been born incapable of feeling love due to Magic, which puts him at odds with heroes who are shown to draw their greatest strength from love.) Often, an incapacity to feel love is also indicated through an incapacity to feel sexual desire (because most allosexual alloromantic people who aren't involved in the queer community conflate romantic desire and sexual desire as the same thing).

In most cases, it seems like the logic behind this is "if I want to indicate that this person is cruel and heartless beyond all measure, what better and more extreme measure can I take than to say that they are simply completely incapable of feeling love/desire?" and this media is usually produced by people to whom it has not occurred that there are, in fact, totally normal people in the world who don't feel love or desire, and maybe there's a better way to suggest that characters are evil than to accidentally lump them in with those people?

In cases like that, usually the character isn't even called ace or aro, especially in older media. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there are some crime procedurals that throw around "our suspect is a cold, manipulative, asexual man" because it's a clinical-sounding buzzword they can use but don't totally understand; but whenever I've seen this trope pop up, a character's purported lovelessness is never treated like a sexual orientation, but rather like a negative mental condition. A negative mental condition that just happens—in many cases probably by accident—to be described the exact same way as actual people's orientations.

I'm sure there are also examples of people going "I'm going to make this character asexual" and then going "I don't know how to write an asexual character except by making them cold, callous, and unfeeling," but I feel like that's less relevant to the background of Alastor's character than the characters who are villains that get asexuality pasted onto them to enhance their villainy.

So on to the question of Alastor.

Now, without an account from Vivziepop on how Alastor's orientation was decided, I don't know her motives in making him ace/aro. Considering that his lack of sexual/romantic desire is being talked about by the creators as an orientation rather than as a negative personality trait, I doubt that she went "I want him to be peak evil so I'm going to sprinkle lovelessness on him to enhance that evilness." Rather, I would bet that it happened the other way around: there's good odds that Vivzie created this murderous cannibalistic character with shallow emotional connections to other people, then thought about his orientation, then went, "I really can't see him ever being attracted to anyone?? Better call him ace/aro."

So, yes, I think that he does end up falling into some of the same boxes as the "loveless evil manipulative villain (who is accidentally coded as ace/aro)" trope. But I don't think it was intentional, and—more importantly—I think there's room in his character to subvert the worst implications of that trope.

Ways that could happen would be by giving him, through gradual character growth, close platonic emotional relationships & a growing conscience without removing his asexuality/aromanticism, showing that loveless doesn't mean heartless; or simply by making his asexuality/aromanticism seem understandable, relatable, and harmless, and most importantly separate from his cruelty.

There are hints already in canon that he could go that way. His brief moment of confused panic in reaction to Angel's proposition in the pilot is one of the most succinct ace jokes I've ever seen, it goes against the "loveless villain is perfectly in control of his emotions and above such shallow things as desire" trope so common to accidentally-ace villains, and it presents his "where the hell did that come from??" reaction as understandable/relatable rather than unfamiliar & alienating. And inwhat few glimpses we've gotten of his prequel comic so far, it looks like Alastor keeps doggedly trying to start conversations with people and being frustrated when they run from him in terror—showing that he wants to reach out and make some sort of connection with other people, so he still desires platonic connections even though he doesn't want romantic/sexual connections. If those trends continue, I'll be satisfied.

So, summary: is he an aphobic caricature? I wouldn't go that far. Does he have significant overlap with "loveless = heartless" villain tropes that don't do ace & aro folks any favors? Yeah, I'd say he does. Could he still end up a well-rounded and interesting piece of ace/aro representation? Yes, he definitely can—but if so, it's going to be in spite of the fact that he's a manipulative cannibalistic serial killer. Like, in terms of "positive ace/aro representation," he automatically gets 20 points docked off his final score before the test even begins—but he doesn't get an automatic failing grade.

For my part, as an ace/aro viewer, I'm waiting to see where they go with his character with eagerness, not dread.