#maybe block the user if i REALLY hated the way they portrayed my faves. seriously Tumblr makes it easy to curate your content.

[no-psi-nan]

Okay I love when the community engages with posts so I'm gonna share some of the reactions (and my reactions to their reactions lol).

I love this thought about whether Asou was trying to sneak in as much queerness and I def wish we could just ask him about it lol. There IS a lot of fun representation in the show so it would be great to be able to thank him for it too!

Ok this comment almost killed me fucking dead LOL. Yeah, you're right, I don't think that sort of thing would be romantic material for almost anyone. XD XD Whatever is going on there, Saiki needs to go to jail over it a little bit at least lol.

I think that's a good point about Saiki setting up Satou with Hii. Personally, I read it as almost a high romantic sacrifice where he let Satou be with the girl who makes him happy, which also allows the girl to live a normal and happy life (very Cyrano de Bergerac) but I can totes see how other people would read it other ways. I've probably just read too much French literature XD XD (some of the stuff I've read... haunts me)

But Saiki's obsession with Satou could be more like a celebrity crush, where you wouldn't reasonably expect them to interact with you but if they ever did... 👀! I think that's my preferred interpretation personally. It still doesn't seem platonic though XD

Ok this is great feedback from the aroace community, thank you! Now obvs I hope you haven't been mean to anyone over this, but I think this is a super valid discomfort to have.

However, I do want to point out that the aromantic and asexual spectrum is broad enough that there can be many different experiences, and they may not all align with yours.

Someone who identified as grayromantic pointed out that they always thought they were aroace until they met One Particular Person, and suddenly got hit with the romance bug for them only. To a reader who's only being shown the romantic part, it would SEEM allo because they're missing the context of all the other hundreds and hundreds of people who inspired no interest at all.

Also many aroaces, by definition, haven't experienced romantic attraction, so when writing it they depend on tropes primarily developed by allos, which may not read as "authentic". And the other way around, there may certainly be allos trying to write grey/demi attraction and just not doing it quite right because they haven't been there.

It wouldn't be right to bash on the creator in any of these cases, but it is certainly natural and fine to not want to engage with that particular piece and just hit the back button or scroll away. And if you've got a little time + energy, create content that DOES align with your lived experience, which could help fellow aroaces identify themselves and help allos be better allies.

Okay, you know what? I personally agree that canon points towards Saiki being some flavor of aro and some flavor of ace.

But we cannot say that Saiki is canonically aroace when Satou is literally right there.

I can't claim to know what's going on in Saiki's head there, but he's clearly got some sort of crush on Satou.

And let's be real... Considering that Saiki watches Satou literally use the bathroom and is super happy about it, that crush is definitely NOT platonic lol.

He basically tries to lay himself out on a silver platter in front of the whole dang school to try to become besties with Satou. And we know that Saiki seems to think that romance is a level beyond besties due to how he reacts during the Chiyo confession chapter (which points to him being demiromantic imo).

I know it hurts to not have representation and it's super valid to headcanon characters any way you like. But I see a lot of bashing on people who ship Saiki because he's "canonically aroace" when it's simply not true.

Let's save that energy for creating the explicitly aroace content you want to see and for supporting creators who purposefully create aroace characters and narratives.