Not Tropeworthy: Romantic Asexual

During the disambiguation of Asexual, I and some others questioned whether Romantic Asexual is necessarily a more valid trope. Romantic asexuality is a subset of asexuality, so the definition of "character is asexual but still feels romantic attraction" is still just "character has this orientation", which has precedent for not being enough to count as a trope on its own.

Wick check: Romantic Asexual Wick Check

The wick check found that 31/52 examples fall into the first four categories, which boil down to "character is asexual but not aromantic" (I separated them based on whether or not they are currently in love or in a relationship, and whether or not the character is okay with having sex for their partner's sake, but in hindsight I'm not sure if that was necessary).

The one category that I think is interesting in terms of trope value is "Asexual love troubles", which is not just about the character's orientation, but also about how it impacts their love life. It has only four examples, but more of them could perhaps be found (I already see a few just from reading the Romantic Asexual trope list).

There has been some mention of Romantic Asexual getting its tropeworthiness from the subversion of stereotypes: most people think of asexuals as being inherently aromantic, so it's surprising when someone who identifies as ace falls in love with someone. I don't think that's enough to count as tropeworthy, since this value would go away if people were more educated on the subject of sexual and romantic orientations, though I think I could be convinced otherwise.

My suggestion would be to dewick this trope, and consider making an Asexual Love Troubles TLP draft to house the good examples. Other examples could possibly be moved to Chastity Couple if they're not there already. However, not all asexuals are chaste so it would not have 100% overlap.

Opening

What other kinda love troubles are there, if we were to broaden things?

Potential asexual love troubles:

• Someone thinks an ace character is aro, and they're not (much like Mistaken for Gay), especially someone they're interested in.
• Asexual is in a romantic relationship, but the relationship hits the rocks because of the ace character's lack of sexual attraction and/or interest in sex.
• Asexual character is scared no one will want them because they are ace.
• Asexual character doesn't feel worthy of a romantic relationship because of internalized bigotry.
• Asexual character has trouble deciding if they're interested in romance or not and has to work through their own misconceptions.
• Asexual character is told no one will want them, because ace.

Other love trouble tropes that I can think of include Star-Crossed Lovers and Incompatible Orientation.

I was mostly thinking of the second one, but the other ones could also possibly work.

3, 4 and 6 seem to be possibly covered enough by "character thinks Sex Equals Love". Maybe.

Edited by Malady on Feb 8th 2022 at 6:35:20 AM

Eh, speaking as an ace person, it’s more complicated than that. Have legit seen people say being in a romantic relationship but not sexual is abusive. Have seen people say not being sexually attracted to your partner is abuse. Is not just that people think sex and love are the same, it’s this whole weird bigotry people have about people not being interested in sex being. Evil.

Ok... So possibly more Inverted Sex Is Good, in that No Sex Is Evil, not Sex Is Evil. Maybe.

I see what you mean, I'm trying to be a Devil's Advocate. Hope I'm doing it well.

Well, PlayingWith.Villainous Aromantic Asexual: Downplayed lists:

• Villainous Romantic Asexual

Huh. Would ya look at that.

Edited by Malady on Feb 8th 2022 at 8:25:49 AM

I think that kind of perception still stems from the conflation of love = romance = sex, and the logic probably goes like, "if you're in a romantic relationship with someone but is not sexually interested in them, you don't actually love them and are just using them".

...Although that's probably not covered by Sex Equals Love because that trope is narrower than the romance = sex mindset.

Edited by Adept on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:51:32 PM

It’s definitely related, yeah, but it has a very specific Flavor, I think.

Is it possible that we have enough Asexual Love Troubles wicks to retool this into that without TLP, if that's what we end up deciding to do?

I'm just asking out of curiosity; I'm currently undecided on how to vote here.

The "Exploit" idea would probably be somewhere near Gold Digger.

That "Mistaken For" Trope Trope hasn't been launched, I assume...

Edited by Malady on Feb 9th 2022 at 4:58:40 AM

Bumping to generate more discussion.

The four examples of Asexual Love Troubles on the Romantic Asexual Wick Check is not enough to create the page without TLP since TLP drafts need a minimum of 10 examples before they launch. I can look at the on page examples and see if there's anything we can lift from there.

No idea what to do with Romantic Asexual in the meantime though.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 15th 2022 at 5:59:04 AM

I'd say disambig, but are there enough tropes to do that with?

I think the only (currently extant) trope it could be disambig’ed to is Word of Gay. That’s what I see it as all the time.

Edited by Eiryu on Feb 15th 2022 at 6:05:53 AM

Redirect to Asexual, disambiguate between that and asexual angst trope if it launches.

I think that's a good solution.

I am good with doing that.

I’m on board as well with that.

Redirecting sounds good. Have any other ideas come up?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 16th 2022 at 7:23:43 AM

Would it be a fair compromise to add examples of asexual representation to UsefulNotes.Asexual? I forgot if we voted against that when we did the TRS on Asexual as a trope, but there's other UN pages that do that and it may soften the blow, since cutting LGBT tropes often attracts backlash (and that "LGBT Representation" index is still a big WIP).

I think that's fine.

Having had to clean the UsefulNotes.Japanese Pronouns page of ZCE examples that helped nothing, presumably ported over from when it was a trope page, I think we should be particular about the context the examples have.

I literally don't know why, but that was downvoted in both the bisexual and asexual TRS's. Despite the fact that UN is supposed to show how it relates to media...