5 Ace Characters I Want To See

writer-ace:

For the August Carnival of Aces.

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Obviously, I want to see all sorts of (respectfully portrayed) ace characters, but it’s like when you ask someone what they want to eat for dinner and they say “food”; having too many options isn’t actually helpful. So what I’m giving here are five specific ace characters that I want to see.

The Accepted Ace Jock

In a way, no character is more sexualized than the white male American football player. That is to say that, if you see a white male American football player, especially one in high school or college, you assume that they have had sex (with a woman), they have a lot of sex (with women), and they always want more sex (with women). There’s occasionally, especially with non-white or female jocks, the case because they’re too focused on their relationship or too busy trying to stay afloat academically/financially, but for white male American jocks, they’re almost all portrayed this way.

What I want to see is an ace jock who’s accepted by everyone around him. His friends and schoolmates all know, and whenever someone tries to push him into having sex his friends defend him, just as they would if he were gay at a tolerant school. I guess what I want is a white male jock who’s asexual and allowed to not be sexual, rather than one who’s asexual but plays as straight anyway to please his friends, family, and society.

The Powerful Partner in an Arranged Marriage

Arranged marriages in romance novels are usually written as somewhere between entirely non-consensual relationships between a helpless woman (who eventually escapes or is rescued by the hero) and a sexually-and-otherwise-abusive man (if he’s the antagonist) or originally-dubiously-consensual relationships between a woman and a man who bravely restrains himself from assaulting his wife (sometimes) until she’s ready (or until he seduces her into it). The major point of it, though, is that the person who wants sex more is the person who holds the power in the relationship, because most arranged marriage stories are set in historical times when men held most if not all of the power in the relationship.

What I want to see with this is an arranged marriage where the person holding the power is asexual. What I want to see is not the powerful member of the marriage (who is usually the husband) heroically restraining from having (at best) dubiously consensual sex with their wife, but instead the powerful member being the one who waits, possibly forever, because they just don’t want to. I want to see them struggling with feeling like having forced someone into a sexless marriage. I want to see them struggling with not providing an heir.

(Aro/)Ace Soulmates

In soulmate stories, what they often have is sex playing integral part in the mating, often with sex being what sets the mating and makes it final or sets up some other sort of magic is affiliated with it. Other times, there will be lines about platonic partnerships as an “oh, that could happen, but it almost never does” as a sort of throwaway.

What I want to see are really two types of soulmates. The first is a romantic ace pair of soulmates, and the second is a platonic or QP pair of soulmates. I want to see these are more than just the afterthought comments when someone asks about it because they’re afraid of potentially being sexually related to someone of the same gender (as usually happens in fanfiction soulmate stories). I want this to be portrayed as normal in soulmate stories because it shows the idea that you can have primary partnerships without sex and/or without romance that are long-lasting and meaningful, because sometimes you need to prove a point by going further than you really need.

The Mothering Ace

There’s a tendency—understandably—to affiliate sexuality, in women, with being mothering, whether literally or figuratively. There’s a tendency to think of being mothering with a midlevel sexuality; if you’re too sexual, you don’t have time for children or you’re too catty for them, and if you’re not sexual, you’re too cold or snooty for children.

What I want to see is an affectionate, mothering (literally or metaphorically) ace female character. I want to see an ace character with children, an ace character who adores her nieces and nephews (and whatever the gender-neutral term for children of parents siblings is), an ace character who has substitute children in their students or their camp members. I want an ace character who nurtures their friends, who takes care of strangers and kittens and iguanas that they find.

The Curvy Ace

As I wrote about here (TW for sexual assault and victim blaming), there’s a tendency to think of curvy as equaling sexy, which equals sexual. What I want to see is an ace character who is curvy, who has a big chest and big hips and everything that is thought of as being typically sexual, without feeling any sexual attraction.

What I want to see is characters who look like me.