Ambiguous Name: Villainous Aromantic Asexual

Villainous Aromantic Asexual is meant to document the stereotype of villains having no interest in sex or romance to make them seem "weird" or "freakish" - however, it mostly sees use on the wiki as "villain that is asexual and/or aromantic", which isn't a trope.

From the wick check, 12/60 examples were described with complete context, while 23/60 were described with partial: 14 for an ace/aro character with no description of villiany, and 9 for a well-described villain with a passing mention of ace/aro-ness. Interestingly, the trope also sees overlap with/seems to be confused for Pragmatic Pansexuality, as I found 7 examples for that under VAA while checking wicks.

As this is a well documented stereotype, and the wick count is much better than the other asexual-related tropes, I'm suggesting a rename to firmly establish that there must be a connection between the villian's "inhuman" nature and their aro/aceness, as I believe we're looking at another case of "people not looking at the damn description".

Courtesy ping to ~Eiryu since we had a discussion about the trope shortly after I finished the sandbox.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:59:30 PM

Opening

to a rename. Can't think of any names currently.

Oddly enough, the ping didn't go through, but I am here anyway.

Link to the discussion we had on the forums about the trope already—it's a bit long, but I guess my point is: I'm not sure anything's actually wrong with this trope.

The overlap with another trope is negligible. I'm not even sure it's remarkable—Villainous Aromantic Asexual actually potholes to it as a related trope, so it's not as if no one noticed that already. So the overlap examples should really be evaluated on their own for VAA.

It does have a bit of a partial-context example problem, but many tropes do, and I'm not sure how a rename—if there's even one that could possibly be clearer—would actually help the fact that tropers just in general have a problem making the context clear.

In the discussion, I actually pointed out that I fixed a pretty significant percentage of the partial-context trope examples in a matter of minutes, and many of the others I just don't know enough about to fix but look very fixable IMO.

You also, uh, reported the results of your Wick Check inaccurately, not to mention the suggestions I suggested for reorganizing and re-sorting the examples never happened, so I'm not even sure some of this is sorted correctly. So add to that: I do have questions about the integrity of the Wick Check here.

My suggestion remains: Throw this in short term projects as a cleanup, which I would be happy to helm.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 2:37:02 PM

Apologies for not resorting - genuinely forgot.

Also, the count is inaccurate? I'm a bit tired, but I thought for sure I counted right...

Your wick check claims 12 examples were correct with full context. Your OP claims 9.

Anyway, I just don't think renaming a trope is going to help tropers shift from writing "Voldemort is the Big Bad and incapable of feeling romantic or sexual feelings," or "Voldemort is the Big Bad because he's incapable of feeling romantic and sexual feelings and thus has no idea what love is apparently."

I can't imagine any name in the world would fix that, but that's currently a significant chunk of the partial-context.

I mean, your Voldemort hypothetical itself has a pretty strong leap in logic. Voldemort doesn't know what love is and that does make him the big bad, but AFAIK the books never even say he's Asexual, he just doesn't understand the concept of love because he's a power-hungry sociopath. (And if you take Cursed Child as canon, he and Bellatrix did have a child...)

Ah, remnant of when the check ended at 50 wicks, not 60. Fixed that.

1. Being ace doesn't mean you can't have biological children wth, War Jay.
2. The trope doesn't require the words aro or ace to be used, as that is extremely uncommon, only exhibit the traits or stereotpyical traits of one, much like how a man who dates men doesn't have to use the word "gay"
3. It was an example in the wick check I was using, not even one I made.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:02:23 AM

• 1 - 2: I'm aware, but knowing how JK handled Dumbledore, you think she'd have come out at some point and said "Hey, Voldemort is Ace" if that was actually true. Also, a man dating a man could be anything from gay to pan, there's no reason to assume "gay" in that case just like there's no reason to automatically assume Voldemort is Ace. I mean, he might be, but the narrative makes no claims on it and the key here is "loveless", not "Asexual". It's a leap to assume that Voldemort being canonically loveless is the same as him being Asexual solely because of the stereotype, especially since the books don't touch on sex and mostly just discuss love as a magical, unifying rule of the universe.
• 3: Sure. That doesn't prove the example is correct. I'm just trying to point out that you're arguing you added context, but context is meaningless if the trope doesn't actually exist in the work, and in this case I don't think it actually does.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:07:32 AM

I'm not the one who sorted it in the Wick Check as "Character is aroace but not mentioned as a villain" either.

And to be frank: "loveless" is exactly the stereotype of aroace people being used in this trope. There is a book about aromantic self-discovery titled Loveless for God's sake. Someone being seen as loveless and lacking romantic love as being evil is kind of exactly the trope.

If these people understood aro and ace people enough to recognize maybe they should use the word, it's much less likely they would hate the tenants of what we are. Not guaranteed, of course, it does happen, but it's actually part of the whole sinister trope that they don't even have to use the word, just describe what looks like an aroace person, is recognizably an aroace person, and cast those traits as evil.

(also your first point requires JKR to have any idea ace or aro people exist, which I must confess I'm not convinced of and would rather this way)

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:12:53 AM

If she doesn't know Ace or Aro people exist, then that's just evidence to say that Voldemort isn't meant to be Ace or Aro. Tropes don't exist by accident, most of the time they need to be there by intent. The intent wasn't "Voldemort is evil because he's Asexual", it's "Voldemort is evil because he doesn't understand love, which is a type of magic in this magical universe".

Look, you're using this example as an argument that the partial-context examples can just be fixed. I'm saying that it's not that simple since this entire case relies on a frankly pretty ambiguous and interpretive situation. There is no canon answer to whether or not Voldemort is Ace, and that's why I'm saying it doesn't apply, no matter how much context you try and add.

(By the way, I've had moments where I've wondered if I myself am Ace, so I'm not here trying to downplay that these horrible stereotypes exist. I'm only arguing that Voldemort's sexuality isn't confirmed one way or another and assigning one to him then assuming the intention of the narrative just feels wrong to me... Even if it's JKR we're talking about.)

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:14:51 AM

I think you're very much failing to understand that "This character is evil because they don't understand/experience love, represented here with romantic and sexual love" and "This character is evil because they are aromantic and asexual" are not...actually...different concepts. You seem to think they are, but they are not.

There's an example on there that the author flat out said "Yes, I did this, I made this character aromantic and asexual on purpose, although I didn't know those words existed or that concept existed at the time, but I did it on purpose." Does that not count because they didn't quite realize what they were doing even though it was intentional? That's ridiculous.

There's an author who intentionally made her villains asexual because she though asexuality was a, quote, "Broken sexuality," and later realized that's not what asexuality was. Does that not count because her understanding of asexuality was, to be quite frank, wrong? No.

They did it. They don't always realize the fullness of what they did, but it is there, on purpose, the trope is there, the implications and identity are maybe not something they intended, but that doesn't mean they fail to exist. It doesn't mean the character isn't aro or ace because they didn't know enough to use that word for them.

It doesn't mean they didn't use aromantic asexuality as a shorthand for evil.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:20:50 AM

Thing is, the love that protected Harry wasn't romantic or sexual, but familial. Voldemort doesn't understand any kind of love, be it romantic, sexual, familial, platonic, etc. That's one of the issues here- his lovelessness is all-encompassing, and he didn't just misunderstand romantic love but also the love Lily had for Harry. It's not represented by romance or sex, it's just love in general.

This is entirely off topic and about one specific example and not the trope itself, therefore I'm no longer responding to this one. Sorry, War Jay, but it's not really got anything to do with the trope itself. This is a question for the "Is this an example" thread.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:22:07 AM

Look, I only brought it up to point out that adding context to partial-context examples doesn't necessarily make those examples good, and I only used it because you used it as an example first. I really don't care about this debate, the entire point I was making is that context only matters if the trope is actually present.

The issue with ZCEs is that unless you're very familiar with the source material, adding context is always a leap based on assumptions about how the trope plays out. You might be right, you might be wrong, but unless you can verify it, the ZCE is better off assumed to be misuse so you can play it safe. Expanding them isn't an inherent fix if the trope itself encourages people to add these low-context examples, especially for something like this, where sexuality can often be assumed based on context clues regardless of the creator's intentions (or if there's no actual link and the villain is just Ace because they are).

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:25:30 AM

I don’t think this trope encourages them more than literally every other trope on this site does.

I also really don't like Harry Potter, and it's been a many, many years, but I also don't think that's misuse, which is why I even fixed it. I didn't fix a lot of the examples missing context because I don't know for sure. I think a lot of them look they're only missing a few details that could be dug up with investigation, but I didn't fix them because I don't know that.

But one of the "partial context" examples in the wick check was on a disambiguation page that was missing a few words describing the trope. Some are potholes that are arguably not ZCE because potholes aren't expected to have them as they aren't used to describe the trope with examples.

A lot of the examples could be fixed easily, I still think the wick check needs to be re-sorted, and I don't think there's anything in this particular trope name that can actually be fixed by a rename.

Ergo: I don't think a rename is a solution here. I think it needs a cleanup, with, yes, commenting out examples that don't have context and no one can find any for.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:37:59 AM

IDK, as we just demonstrated, some cases are interpretive (as interpreting Voldemort as Ace makes sense, but so does not interpreting him as such, based on your reading and how you think of these concepts). Moreso than a lot of other tropes, since sexuality is a thing that lends itself to a lot of ambiguity in fiction if people aren't explicit about it. It's the entire reason things like Ho Yay and (while not a sexuality, it's LGBT and has a similar angle) Trans Audience Interpretation exists. If there's room to read a character as being Asexual, people will do it. People are already interpreting characters like Bruno as Ace, simply because he lacks a love interest.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:37:59 AM

Everything's interpretive, War Jay. Me calling someone with yellow hair "blond" is interpretative based on my understanding of the color yellow and the word "blond." If we're trying to find things that aren't interpretative, we may as well delete the site.

The point is with this trope is: Does this character indicate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction and/or interest and/or understanding of these things, and is that tied to their Evilness? That seems fairly straightforward as far as these things go. "Aromantic Asexual" is just the...easiest, simplest way we have to describe the bit of it that isn't Evilness, which we've got the word "Villain" for.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:43:01 AM

See, that argument kind of falls flat because this isn't a trope from the wild west days where one could just say "X, full stop" and move on; VAA was launched in 2020, in a time where we are much more stringent with examples having actual context. The trope having a notable amount of ZCEs is a concern and shouldn't just be brushed off with "well a lot of tropes have ZCEs".

Oh, there's plenty of new tropes that get ZC Es added. I have to keep cleaning them off tropes I launched myself in the last year. That's not a defunct problem.

I think the issue here is that people just sort of understand characters are the villain (The Voldemort example was lacking detail in the example that he was the villain—well, I can understand why people didn't think to add that part), or that these things are related when they haven't clarified that as much as they should have. These ZCE aren't examples of "Nothing after the trope name" or "Is this" mostly—they're tropes with insufficient clarity, which IMO is "they tried and weren't as good at example writing as they should have been."

Consider this ZCE from the wick check:

• Characters.Metal Gear Solid: Borderline villainous. Mantis has a particular distaste for the biologically universal "need for breed".

This person included the fact that they're kind of villainous, and that they express distaste for sex—which is in the trope description as a "rejection of biological imperative" or whatever. Did they use the words aro or ace? No. Did they connect those two pieces of the trope? No. But they did attempt to cover everything the trope said was required. They just failed.

And that kind ZCE? Is still incredibly common. You can see it as submissions in the TLP sometimes still even.

Or this one, which I wrote myself,

• Characters.Old Kingdom: Clariel is a heartless villain with no interest in romance or sex. Garth Nix has commented that she is meant to read as asexual and aromantic, although he didn't know much about the terms when he wrote it.

Did I clarify that the aromantic and asexual bits were connected to villainy? No, but I did say she was a "heartless" villain, and I assumed heartlessness would be obviously a "villainous" trait in that sentence, and that the lack of interest in romance or sex would be obviously connected to "heartlessness." Could it have been clearer? Yeah, and I made it clearer. But it's hardly zero-context, it was like. 90% context instead of 100%.

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 3:53:01 AM

I... What do you want me to say to this? If a character is described as being blond or fits the definition everyone universally considers blond, yes, they're blond? This is such a weird argument that I might just yeet myself from this debate entirely because I just can't.

...That said, the other bit of that comment makes me wonder if this trope would be better expressed as "Loveless Villain" or the like, if the trope really is about the broader concept of "lacking love" and not just "Ace / Aro".

And this might be my last post on this thread. This debate is starting to feel a little... I guess I'll call it heated? And I don't really want to keep falling down a rabbit hole of semantics and debates about what the trope means, if we're going to start getting into things like "what is blond".

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 5th 2022 at 5:04:21 AM

"Loveless Villain" sounds like we're then going to have to find villains who lack any kind of love when that's not what this trope is, either. This villain could dearly love their friends and that could be seen as "not enough."

Re: "Blond" — visual mediums often don't use that kind of word. The character will simply have blond hair. And yet, what about dishwater blond? Is that blond or brown? What about strawberry blond? Blond, red, or neither? What color is yellow enough to be blond and not brown? People do have different opinions on this! They have arguments about whether teal is blue or green! It's not any different from "Is this character expressing aromantic traits or just a lack of interest in romance?"

Edited by Eiryu on Apr 5th 2022 at 4:07:38 AM

Is ~Clown Prince 47 still around? Maybe they could weigh in with opinions.

Well, I wasn't the one to initially pitch it, I just launched it after it was left alone, so I'll just let you decide how to dole this out.

However, I will say that if there's a way to differentiate between Loveless Villain and a VAA, that would help. That way, you could move any examples that don't fit here, then move them there. I guess I would say if there's a correlation between being villainous and their apathy for sex.

Voldemort would still be an example in this case since his psychopathic behavior directly relates to his lack of understanding of love, so it applies in a broad sense. However, he could still qualify for a Loveless Villain if you wanna make the differentiation, but I think he counts for both.