Looking Ahead to 2025 - A Preview of This Year's Posts

Image description: The asexual and aromantic pride flags in a little edit I made on Canva

Happy 2025, everyone, and welcome back to the blog! I thank you for your patience as I took a slightly longer than usual Christmas break, but given the sheer number of projects I tend to have going on at any given time – as well as my retail job – giving myself a little extra time to blog was exactly what I needed. Not only that, but choosing to do my post this week instead of last week allowed me to perfectly line up the dates of a few upcoming posts, which you’ll see down the line. Speaking of upcoming posts, that is what today is all about. As I do every year, I’m here to give you a preview of what topics I have lined up to cover!

Of course, as I always say, it’s entirely possible and very probable that not all of the topics I mention here will be covered this year. I tend to plan my posts well in advance due to various factors, but sometimes other topics present themselves or certain topics take longer than I expected and end up being split into multiple parts. That in turn bumps some of my older ideas off. Other times, it turns out to be a good idea to wait to do a topic until I have more examples to discuss, or a topic requires more planning than I’m able to give it at any given time – again, see retail job and several different other projects cooking at the same time. If anything, I tend to have an overabundance of ideas or topics, so there’s no danger of running out of ideas, only time. All that to say, if a topic isn’t covered this year, it will likely show up again in the future in some way, shape, or form.

But what about here in 2025? Because my holiday break extended into the middle of January this year, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and thus my Valentine’s themed posts are going to be first up. Usually around this romantic holiday, I like to focus on topics that are romance-related, and this year is no exception as I plan to do romance-themed posts before and after the holiday. Before it, I’ll be once again taking a look at the topic of “Redefining Romance,” diving even deeper into the notion of how romance can be rethought in our media and day-to-day life; if I have time, I may even try to analyze the reasons why I, as an aromantic asexual, like romance in the first place. Then after the holiday, I’ll be looking at even more aspec relationships I’d love to see in media. Of course, my 5th blogging anniversary is also on Valentine’s Day itself, which is something I look forward to every year.

After that, it’s time to discuss one of my favorite pieces of media, but also one that vexes me a great deal: my beloved video game franchise, Dragon Age. 2024 was a very big year for Dragon Age fans (either good or bad, depending on your outlook), so perhaps it’s not surprising that I have several Dragon Age analysis posts planned – posts that either discuss specific characters or the franchise as a whole. Unfortunately, aspec representation in this series has been extremely lacking over its 15-year history – in fact, that very topic is literally what one of the posts is going to be about, analyzing the missed opportunities and squandered potential to portray good aspec characters, as well as instances where aspec identities or aspec-adjacent characters are portrayed poorly.

Before that post, however, I plan to talk about a specific character, one who appeared in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the long-awaited fourth installment of the series that came out at the end of 2024. The end of 2024 left us with something of an aspec mystery regarding this character, one that I absolutely need to explore and unpack. From new characters to old ones, long-time readers of the blog no doubt recognize the name Cole, a spirit of Compassion from Dragon Age: Inquisition and a character I frequently discuss when it comes to missed opportunities for representation and a failure to break out of problematic tropes. While I’m not entirely sure yet when I’ll be scheduling this post, at some point this year I plan on discussing this oft-mentioned character in a slightly different light, analyzing how part of Cole’s personal quest in the game is an accidentally perfect aspec metaphor.

These are not the only topics I have planned for Dragon Age, and other characters and topics will be discussed throughout the year. Naturally, there will also be plenty of posts about some of my other long-standing fandoms, such as Star Trek. Much like Dragon Age, Star Trek is a franchise I love, but which routinely falls down when it comes to portraying non-sexual and/or non-romantic characters with any type of nuance. This is not something limited only to the older shows and movies, however, and throughout the year, I’m going to be analyzing how modern Trek and modern media in general can’t seem to represent non-sexual and/or non-romantic identities, let alone treat these identities with respect.

The idea of not respecting aspec identities is one that’s going to come up a lot this year, and my posts in many forms are really going to zero in on the idea of the good, the bad, and the ugly in popular media, because I feel there is so much to discuss. Of course, that means getting personal. While this blog is pretty much entirely based on my personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings, I have even more personal thoughts lined up throughout the year. I’d like to try discussing a few things I’ve felt or experienced while being aspec in fandom that could potentially be classified as “unpopular opinions.” As someone who doesn’t always feel super comfortable trying to call out the unfair things I see in fandom, this post will be quite a step for me. I also have plans to discuss some of the words or phrases I think have a negative impact in a post tentatively titled “Sticks, Stones, and Words That Can Hurt as an Aspec Person.”

It won’t be all doom and gloom, though, when it comes to sharing my opinions. For instance, I have plans to do more installments of some of my favorite posts – another list of my quirky aspec headcanons and another post about characters who aren’t “normal.” List posts like these are always fun for me, as they allow me to discuss characters and media I might not otherwise get to discuss in an often-lighthearted way, something that can be very essential amid a landscape of otherwise deep and philosophical posts.

Another thing I plan to keep doing this year is of course book review posts. As always, it’s very easy for book review posts to get pushed aside in favor of other posts, so there may not be as many this year as I’d like. However, I’d definitely like to do at least one and have chosen the book already, so stay tuned. Another easy thing to get pushed off are sequels to previous posts. Not counting the two I mentioned in the last paragraph or my second “Redefining Romance” post mentioned earlier, I have others that I’ve been considering, but which may or may not get reworked or bumped off. As I said, I often have post ideas to spare and this year is no exception, so there are a few posts I have not yet mentioned here that may get moved around in favor of those back up ideas. So, as I often say when I do these posts, time will tell.

Although I’m still planning exactly what posts will go where (because the year’s blogging has only just started and already I’m getting bombarded with new ideas), this preview post gets me excited to see where this year of blogging will take me. I’m never a big fan of New Year’s and the pressure to look ahead to a year we can’t possibly imagine, but despite that, I will say that 2025 is a bit of a milestone year for me on several fronts. Not only will it mark my blog’s 5th anniversary, but it will mark the year my favorite band BTS finally comes back together after mandatory military service and, closer to home, it’s the year I turn 30 years old. I think a big year like this deserves a big year of blogging.

Thank you so much for being here and supporting the blog. How ever you interact with my blog, from reading, to sharing, to liking on Facebook, I am deeply gratified by your time and your interest in the things I have to say. I hope you enjoy reading the posts as much as I enjoy writing them, this year and beyond. See you again very soon!