#Asexual Side Character

[wahlpaper]

Imogen, Obviously Review

Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli

CW: Swearing, Mentions of Sex, Underage Drinking, Gaslighting, Queer Gatekeeping, Internalized Biphobia, Anxiety, Celebrity Pressured into Coming Out, Bullying, Queerphobia, Biphobia, Positive Reference to David Bowie

5/5

I obviously read this book because I read all of Becky Albertalli's books, she even has a tag on this site. I love knowing that I'm getting queer and/or Jewish content when I start to read any of her novels. However, Imogen, Obviously ended up being extra special to me. Imogen and I are very similar people with very similar experiences. I am warning you now that I am going to go into some of my own queer journey further down. There is some bullying, but I will keep the details light. It is impossible for me to talk about this book without going into what it means to me.

Imogen Scott is a senior in high school who has just been accepted to her best friend's college. Lili is one year older than Imogen and has been begging her to come visit all year. When Imogen finally does, she quickly gets absorbed into the group of cool college queer folks that Lili is a part of. That includes Tessa, a chaotic lesbian who reminds Imogen of her favorite character in her favorite movie. It turns out that these friends think that Imogen is bi, as Lili pretended that they used to date. Imogen agrees to go along with it, but she starts to consider all she knows about being bi and what that might have to do with her.

Imogen, Obviously is written very well! Every joke landed, the characters felt like the ages they were written as, there was plenty of diversity, it dove into real and important issues, the pacing was perfect, and mental health was handled realistically and with care. Mental health is very important to this novel, especially considering the anxiety Imogen seems to be struggling with. Other mental health topics discussed and shown in this book are ADHD, bullying, bigotry, gaslighting/gatekeeping, and self-esteem. The diversity in the novel goes beyond queer representation, including a black character, an Asian character, and a Jewish love interest. The book takes place over the course of about a week, but nothing feels rushed or like it couldn't fit. Albertalli is great at making all of the elements work together.

Albertalli has discussed her story on social media, so I will discuss her’s before my own story. If you know it before you read the book, you'll be able to pick up on the references to it. However, you will still get a lot from Imogen, Obviously even if you don't know. There have been a lot of creators of queer content that have been pressured into coming out, especially from within the community. Becky Albertalli is one of them. Others include Kit Connor (Heartstopper), Jameela Jamil (Legacy), and Rebel Wilson (Isn't It Romantic). Albertalli faced years of scrutiny, harassment, criticism, and invasive questions surrounding her sexuality. Although she has been a great ally and advocate to the queer community and has never written anything exploitative, people had a problem with her writing queer content while being seen as cis and heterosexual. Her books led her to questioning her identity, but she should have gotten to come out on her own terms, if she ever wanted to. Imogen, Obviously explores both the pressure to come out when creating queer content and not knowing that you are queer until later in life.

Now for my own story. Thanks to queer media and Glee specifically, I started to consider that I might be bi in middle school. I called myself bicurious at summer camp between sixth and seventh grade. In retrospect, I had a crush on both the girl and boy in a couple I knew there. Although, my first unknown-crush was likely on a girl in my second grade class. However, in middle school, a bully found out that I am bi when she took my friend's phone. I believe I said it was a joke when I realized, and then went so far back into the closet that I thought I was straight.

I was a strong ally to a bunch of queer best friends throughout high school, even to the one person that was a lot like Imogen's friend, Gretchen (you'll know what I mean if you read the book). I also had my one "girl-crush" on/obsession with Felicia Day. In senior year I learned about aesthetic attraction and started coming back to terms with not being straight. It wasn't until the summer when I was posting a lot of pictures of Hayley Atwell on tumblr and also found the term "biromantic" on there, that I finally knew I was bi. Albertalli touches on this a little near the end of the book, but we need more asexual representation in school and in media. The lack of knowledge and the presence of bullies kept me from realizing who I am until a little after Imogen figured herself out. Still, it took me several more years to fully process where I am on the ace spectrum. My story is obviously mine, but I feel a deep sense of familiarity with Imogen.

Thank you for reading my story and Becky Albertalli's. I hope that you'll read Imogen's as well. If you like queer nerds and college stories, Imogen, Obviously is a great book for you! A giant griddle, underground passageways, and dark academia await you in the pages of this book!

[sofiasfanartcollection]

wishing all my fellow asexuals a belated happy ace week! 🖤🤍💜

this is my character, Amy, one I’ve had with me since I was small (Fire Opal is her best friend)

bonus gray ace flag colors, she is technically gray ace, though does also refer to herself as ace

[nondelphic]

i fucking love writing a healthy best friendship between a man and a woman without making it weird or having them fall in love

[redysetdare]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[dreamsy990]

some of the less nice thoughts about being aroace

extras below the cut

sketch

closeups on my favorite panels

bonus: adios

[im-a-regular-joe]

VOX AND ALASTOR BE LIKE

[stopper-my-heart]

Nothing like Heartstopper S2E8 removing some of Taylor Swift's "seven" lyrics just so that the singing can specifically come back in at "Or hide in the closet" while Isaac is processing difficult emotions related to the book he's reading (i.e., Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen).

Did I mention "Or hide in the closet" hits just as the camera focus finishes shifting away from Isaac?

This is fine

[aroaessidhe]

faves of 2023: ace & aro books

of the 101 aspec books I read this year, this is some I enjoyed a lot

Just Lizzie

The Siren, the Song, and the Spy

Wren Martin Ruins It All

The Spider and her Demons

The Story of the Hundred Promises

The Meister of Decimen City

Is Love The Answer?

The Tale That Twines

The Stones Stay Silent

Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty

The Hummingbird Killer

Odd Blood

The Dragon of Ynys

Small Joys

Sailing By Carina’s Star

[hazellvsq]

frank and piper are interesting counterpoint narratives to me. both of them have relatively mundane problems compared to the rest of the cast yet their parent's domains represent the heights of human passion as defined by the series, despite piper and frank both being (outwardly) dispassionate and (inwardly) mopey. the good end of these domains is love and protection (selfless), the bad end is heartbreak and bloodlust (selfish), which both of them try to resist. they both get claimed last out of their trios and had beforehand assumed that they were the children of someone else. both also experience perceived rejection from their mortal family directly before the series begins - both express anger and hurt at being "sent away". their rejection and unexpected claiming, back-to-back, results in discombobulation for them both, and feelings of humiliation brought on by both sets of parents.

they also both go through forced physical transformations by their parents to fit an ideal they don't want. all of the characters experience issues of identity and self-esteem but i think its the most pronounced with these two in the series. neither of them really knows who they are, and are pessimistic about their own capabilities. they are also counterpoints in that they feel disconnected from their own looks - both are very self-conscious people, but, based on how they're described by other characters, piper is probably the most beautiful member of the 7 and frank is probably the least. piper is frequently harassed and objectified, whereas frank is teased constantly about his looks. he neither feels as childish as his face is nor as grown as his body is, and he doesn't understand how to move through the world. both of which are common experiences throughout puberty - suddenly being treated differently on the basis of a body that's changing faster than you want or understand.

(discourse alert) i don't have a lot to add to the piper transformation discourse except that i do think its interesting that her blessing was temporary within the book and her love interest actually self-reflected on his reaction to it and realized that he should not have told her that she looked hot in that instance. rick did reverse frank's transformation five years later and i'm curious about his thought process about both writing it in the first place and in reversing it, and what feedback he received, if any. piper's transformation was a makeover whereas frank's was a puberty, which later rick walked back with "actually frank is still going through puberty". piper's was cheesy, sure, but frank's falls so flat bc that's just not how it works. its too much of a stretch. i don't even think it was in rick's og plan for frank, maybe he just watched captain america and was like "hell yeah i should do that" and flipped a coin between frank and leo, bc again frank was already initially described as physically grown in his debut book. and i can't even talk about hazel's reaction to to it bc its not real to me and i can't read suddenly. idk frank's plotline in general was too rushed in that book and he should have gotten another pov chapter set at least bc rick was trying to do too much too fast and relied on idiocy like the transformation to support it in the place of real character work when it wasn't even necessary for anything he accomplished in the book. he could've just walked around with better posture and achieved the same effect.

[melon-official]

She wails as though a part of her has died.

oh man. i picked up the sidestory to @just-a-carrot's five-arc horror epic a couple days ago and i'm so glad i did. i'll probably be talking nonstop and/or drawing about it for days

there's a handful of whiteboard doodles with other characters under the cut, but rly i just wanted to pay a homage to the scene that hit me the hardest... enjoy

[voidlessawoken]

hallo aces aros and aroaces (and all the others aswell)

i need to know if i'm not the only one with this. okay so we all know what reader inserts are. and the fact that they are always... always romantic in some kind. but like... can i please just have some where i'm idk a sibling of a main character... a friend? or just... someone that's also there? please?

i just wanna be in that universe. make some of those kinds of fics... like please i am begging you.

just a sibling. make the reader and the character bicker like most siblings do... i don't need that romance bullshit.

[web-novel-polls]

I know it's been, like, over half a year, and I probably shouldn't be concerned with it anymore, but I think what bugs me so badly about people being so self-righteous about Jiang Cheng "being homophobic" in the Aroace Spec Character Tournament is that directly correlates to actual experiences and interactions I see within the LGBTQIA+ community. It's so close to the fear and shame that leads to the question of, "how much of comfortability and well-being do I have to give up to live within an amatonormative world? At what point do I speak up about my own repulsion? Do I ever?Why am I the always the one who has to change?"

I can't help but come back to that AITA about an aro and/or ace GSA member who was shamed and called homophobic by what should be their own community for the simple crime of looking away from PDA. Their club advisor who acted like they were the problem because it's "supposed to be a safe space for the other kids" but not really answering whether it's also supposed to be a safe space for the submitter. How aroace people are "included" until they're uncomfortable or don't want to talk about sex or romance. How sex and romance repulsed aroaces are never allowed to show repulsion, or they're prudes, homophobic, ruining the fun. Why is someone being uneasy something THEY have to apologize for? Why is it an attack, if not to protect the amatonormative idea that anyone who is personally unsatisfied, uncomfortable, rejecting of love and sex is somehow lesser or hostile to love and sex itself? How aroace are we allowed to be before we become "problematic"?

[I'm aware this is an emotional reaction for this specific instance. Don't be weird. Don't be a dick. Don't be aroace-phobic. Do be gay and aro and ace and trans and-]

[the-yearning-astronaut]

Do people know there's a difference between:

an aro spec character being "cured" of their aromanticism by their "one true love" by the end of the narrative

And:

An aro spec character who finds one of the few people they happen to click with in an amorous (but not necessarily romantic) way by the end of the narrative

Does anyone understand that aromanticism is a SPECTRUM and that someone writing an aro character finding someone they want to be in a relationship with might be doing so for reasons other than 'curing' them?

And the same thing for ace spec characters! And, you know, actual people.

[dollopheadsandclotpoles]

Kinda fucked how even authors of queer literature or creators of queer media refuse to use the word "asexual" in relation to their characters. Why do I keep seeing these people say things like "yeah I consider this character ace but I didn't want to commit to it in the text"

[tangents-within-tangents]

You know what I realized? I might actually like romance stories if people just freaking wrote them well!

Like if they were just actually cute, compelling, realistic, and NOT straight up problematic and creepy half the time

[boredom-reigns]

just a take, but people who headcanon characters as aroace just to make them as wingman/sidekick characters to their main ship without being a possible love interest have the same vibes as people who headcanon a female character as a wingwomanning lesbian so she doesn't "get in the way" of a mlm ship