The Asexual Geek's 2021 Recap
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| Image description: This hand gesture is known as a "Korean heart" (image obtained from Google Images). The heart-shaped asexual flag is my addition, and if you've read my posts this year, I'm sure it's not difficult for you to guess why I've picked this image to symbolize 2021. Today I recap the posts of this year, revisit some final points, and, of course, thank all of you once again for coming on this journey with me! |
To my dearest friends and readers – this has been a very up
and down year for me. From utter heartbreak to surprising triumph, it feels
like I’ve experienced it all. And in many cases, I’ve put it here in my blog to
process, to relate it back to my identity, and to throw a little light on my
experiences. And in every case, you all have been lovely, amazing, and
supportive. From this blog’s inception, I have been grateful to you for helping
me, for suggesting things to me, and for reading my posts, but this year I am
extra grateful for all the support that many of you have shown me in other
ways. I’ll be stepping back a bit for the holidays, so this is my last post of
2021. As such, I wanted to take a chance to review where I’ve been this year as
one last opportunity to share my thoughts – and my gratitude. Care to join me
on one last walk through some of the topics of this emotional year?
The “How to
Write” series
As a writer, there is probably nothing quite so meta as
writing about writing. This year, I embarked on a series of posts about just
that – the “How to Write Aspec Characters” series, which covered everything
from how to write asexuality and romance, to how to write non-aspec characters
or stories that don’t invalidate aspec identities. Of course, like everything
on this blog, these tips were extremely subjective, covering what I myself
personally feel makes for good aspec representation and the ways writers might
be able to include these. Obviously there are many different paths aspec
characters can take, but I hope my insights might provide a good jumping off
point and encourage writers and readers alike to think about non-sexual and non-romantic characters from a new lens.
In 2020, when I did the trope series, I did see examples where
aphobia in media seemed to be done deliberately, but I saw many, many more
where aphobic tropes happened simply due to lack of knowledge. Because
asexuality, aromanticism, and their related identities are still relatively
unknown, it can be difficult for writers – whether that means the writing staff
of a major TV show or someone writing a fanfic – to separate what have become
common genre conventions with what is actually good storytelling. My series of
posts, although a short series and without much influence, is hopefully a good
first step at showing how you can embrace a genre without embracing all of
the problematic tropes that come with it.
In fact, this series relied a lot more heavily on my tropes
series than even I was expecting. In discussing writing conventions, I ended up
thinking even more deeply about the tropes we see in media that contribute to
aphobia or perpetuate negative stereotypes about aspec people – and indeed
identities of all kinds. This is why I also felt compelled this year to talk
about how aphobia hurts allosexual people too, or how to write non-aspec
characters in ways that lift up everyone. These issues don’t exist in a vacuum,
and when we see writing conventions that are damaging to aspec people, such as
the “denying yourself happiness” trope or the “hard to get” trope, these things
affect all people. I haven’t even discussed these in great detail, but talking
about these tropes and others, as well as how to replace them with better
representation, is so important. I hope I was able to convey some hope with
this series to make up for a lot of the bad representation out there. In some
ways, the series came and went before I even realized it, but I had a lot of
fun with it, and I hope you all had as much fun reading it.
Suggestions
From Friends
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this at least once before on the
blog, but something I find extremely flattering and humbling is when the people
in my life tell me that my blog or having discussions with me about aspec issues
has broadened their own horizons. For example, my best friend is also my
proofreader and sometimes topic brainstormer, and I am always so thrilled when
she tells me that reading my posts has given her new insights into her favorite
pieces of media. Something my best friend has also done for me is give me an
allosexual perspective on a lot of things, which gave me the ideas for posts
such as “How Aphobia Hurts Allosexual People Too”, and the way she
interacts with me and my work has formed a lot of the basis of my advice for other allies.
Suggestions from friends gave me so much this year.
Last year, I had an entire post dedicated to recommendations of aspec
characters from my dearest friends and, although I didn’t do a post like that
this year, I had a tremendous amount of support and wonderful
conversations with my friends about various posts or topics. Talking to my
friends gave me new ideas for topics that I hope to cover in 2022, as well as
fresh insights into the topics I covered this year. Sometimes these insights were
not things I could include in posts at the time, due to the fact that I was
already getting extremely long-winded and didn’t want the posts to become
unreadably long. But I kept the notes specifically so I could address them in a
post like this.
One such fantastic insight was courtesy of my bestie and
editor extraordinaire on the book review post I did for Linsey
Miller’s Belle Revolte (spoilers ahead!). The novel takes place in a fantasy setting and centers on two
magic-wielding young women named Emilie and Annette – the latter of whom is
asexual – who fight a war against the corrupt ruling class
of their nation. By the end of the book, the main characters both find
themselves without magic, having sacrificed all of their power in the grueling
war. In my review, I discussed feeling torn about this – on the one hand, it’s
an excellent way to portray the sacrifice and loss that the war inflicted on
both of our main characters, but on the other hand, watching them lose a part
of themselves was deeply uncomfortable for me.
When my bestie read my review, she made an excellent point,
first about how magic is often used in fantasy works as a shorthand for queer and other minority identities, especially in fantasy worlds
where magic is considered a rarity or is discriminated against. She noted that, in this case, Annette’s ace identity is explicitly separate and unique from her
magic. Her magic does not make her asexual, nor is her magic used as the only shorthand
for her identity. Because the story is set in a sort of historical fantasy
setting, the term “asexual” is never explicitly used; however, a lot of
Annette’s narration, as well as her coming out to her love interest, all do an
excellent job of making it clear that she does not experience sexual attraction.
My bestie pointed out that this doesn’t change, despite the fact that Annette
loses her magic. It really helped reframe the situation for me and deepened my
appreciate for the story even more.
I am frequently uncomfortable to find that a
character’s aspec tendencies get erased in media through some method or another (like Cole in Dragon
Age, for example). Therefore, it is actually extremely rare and noteworthy to see a
character who is changed by the events of a story but retains their identity.
I really appreciate that - and came to appreciate it primarily through the amazing
insights of my bestie. This is true in a lot of senses, and in ways that happen
behind the scenes of so many posts. Everyone from my friends to my parents to
strangers on the internet can help me see my topics through new lens, and I
find it amazing to think that, for as much as I may influence them, they
influence me just as much. This year, more than ever, I was grateful for my
support system and all the people who make this blog possible. Which leads me
nicely into my next point.
Getting
personal
Throughout 2020, I was committed to giving you my real
opinions on asexuality and aromanticism in media. I covered some media I know
in passing, some media I didn’t really know until I did research, and even
media I straight-up detest (*makes “I’m watching you” motion at House
episode “Better Half”*). But, more often than not, I was doing analysis on
things I truly love – everything from Star Trek to BTS songs. My
description of the blog as covering what I consider to be the good, the bad,
and the ugly of media is proof of how deeply personal and subjective every bit
of analysis I did was; but even though this entire project has been very
personal from the beginning, I’ve always felt like writing as “The Asexual
Geek” rather than just “Rachel” has allowed me to hover above most topics, even
when they’re personally important to me.
This year, I definitely feel like I was Rachel every bit as
much as I was the Asexual Geek. Obviously, in my day-to-day life I am both an
aspec woman and a geek, and so I will always be both, but in 2021 my posts
reflected it more than ever before too. A lot of this is because of the deeply
personal loss of my beloved pet of fifteen years, and the way losing her has
impacted me over the last two months of the year. But even before she passed
away, I found myself struggling in a deeply personal sense as I felt pushed out
of safe spaces online or dealt with the sense of feeling alienated even in
things that give me comfort. It was hard not to let those things affect me, and
as such, I think my analysis tended to take on an even more personal and
emotional tone than the analytical one I took for many posts in 2020. Of
course, I’ve also been perfectly willing to bring my readers into my triumphs
too, such as my most recent post about my search for belonging, another deeply
personal topic for me.
Many of my readers are friends, family members, or other
people I know in real life, but I also have a lot of readers whom I’ve never
had the pleasure of meeting. I think using the internet regularly can sort of
desensitize us to the fact that we can interact with people all around the
world, people whose lives can be similar to ours and also very different. That is an
incredible blessing, but it does also make me nervous when I consider it too
closely. How do people I don’t know feel about seeing such personal material
from a blog about asexuality in media? Do I have enough courage to share these
things so openly? I surprised myself a great deal in 2021 by sharing these
things candidly and with truth. While it wasn’t always easy, I’m glad I did so.
It was very cathartic for me to write about many of these personal topics, and
I can only hope that someone out there – whether they know me personally or not
– was able to find it helpful.
I know that I will still be personally feeling the effects
of 2021 into the next year and beyond, both good and bad. Like 2020, this year
has been one of challenges, and it was, in many cases, difficult beyond words
to navigate. But in so many other cases, sharing my thoughts on this blog really
helped me process what I was going through, and helped me continue forward. I
think I can honestly say that I would not have survived this year without my
friends and readers, this blog, and your continued support both
online and off. For so much of the year, especially the last quarter of it, it
felt like so many things happened so quickly that I experienced them all
without actively processing them, so being able to process them here with you
has been so important to me. The good, the bad, and the ugly is as much a part
of life as it is my analysis, but because of you, I feel it’s possible to focus
on the good rather than the bad.
Thank you for being a part of my journey this year and I
hope you’ll come with me next year as well.
With all my platonic love,
The Asexual Geek/Rachel
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