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swankivy — Just Like Me
Published: 2012-06-18 03:00:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 3401; Favourites: 55; Downloads: 12
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Description
From my newest comic, So You Write.We can’t win. If we write what we know, people roll their eyes and tell us we’re inserting Mary Sues. If we write about characters that aren’t at all like us, people suggest we’re acting out our fantasies through our characters. Yes, our experiences and perspectives affect our characters. But most of us are not incapable of realistically portraying characters who think and believe differently.
I have kind of written one story about an asexual person, but I’m not sure if she’s aromantic. She seemed pretty adamant about not dating until she was about eighteen, and then her relationship with a boy she lived with became not really romantic but definitely partnership-ish, and she gets jealous when he spends too much time with other people, but I think we all do that.
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Comments: 19
Oddly enough even as a aromantic asexual I quite like shipping and the romantic (clean, without you-know-what) genres. And lots of people like relatable characters so there isn't anything wrong having a character like you but it's also ok to have chatacters not like you, fudge, I have like a tons of guy OCs as well as female ones and I roleplay my guys lot sometimes. I love this comic ever so much....
(I want to shoot those two other people in the comic backgrounds a bloody death a whole awful lot now)
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Yep I know what you mean. Our characters aren't just like us in plenty of other ways too--don't know why people are so hung up on the appropriateness of how we write their sexuality.
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This is unfortunately true to how some people think. Honestly, I try avoid relationships in my writing as much as I can, but I'more of an action writer anyways. I do have a story in the works that is an asexual, but I can't say she's an insert of myself. First of all, I can't figure out what romantic orientation she is (I just assume she would figure that about her life after the story's said and done since she is 17 during the story) and I am heteroromantic. Really she is a cross between panromantic and aromantic and neither work well... at all. And we're pretty different despite the fact that we're both INFXs (I'm an INFP and she's more of an INFJ). But I haven't writte any self inserts since I was 9 and I eventually changed that character drastically when I got a bit older.
Oh and there's another asexualish character in another story of mine, but it's more natural for her not to be attracted to people because she technically turns out to be a humanoid like creature that fairly commonly pass off as humans. Is she a mary sue? She definately fits some of the requirements, but I thin she has enough flaws. Plus she never really gets the chance to be with anyone of her own species. I don't think I'd ever publish that story though.
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Yeah, I'd like to do some more writing that includes asexual characters. The character I have who's functionally asexual also has physical peculiarities that include not having gone through puberty, so her being asexual is kind of different from someone else who has been through puberty being asexual, though of course it is no less authentic.
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...Thank you for making this. ;.; See, this is part of the reason I don't tell people I write...
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Oh my gosh, I know the feeling, both as an ace and as a writer. Part of why I don't generally share my stories with people I know. XD
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Yep. The concept of us writing people that aren't there for some specific message or to represent some specific person never seems to occur to some people.
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It'd be so hard to make a story where all the characters were exactly like me. They'd all be asexual, moody, and never talk to each other. The most exciting things they'd do together would be having Pokemon battles while sitting at a coffee shop. XD
I guess it's just a writer thing. It makes sense to other writers, but most other people are baffled.
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I don't know why people seem convinced that your characters are clearly just you in story form >_< I always worry that writing any kinds of characters will make people say "Oh, so this is how you feel right?"
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That response drives me up the wall. "Wow, I didn't know you felt like this!" "I don't, that's my character." "But it's really you, right?" . . . NO. Do I have to plaster a "The ideas expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the creator" sticker on every page?
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The guy in the top panel sounds like a real tool...
To be honest, I have a female character who's an aromantic asexual, and is a LOT like me...
Except I'm neither female nor aromantic asexual. But she's more like the personification of the side of me who I don't mind seeing suffer, so I'm odd like that.
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I think we all incorporate aspects of ourselves or people we know into characters sometimes, as appropriate . . . it's true we sometimes feel more comfortable writing what we know. But that doesn't mean some similarities existing automatically suggests other similarities. Take the book Middlesex by Eugenides. The protagonist and the author have a ton in common: grew up in Detroit in the same time period, came from Greek families, in relationships with young Asian women, etc. But his protagonist was intersex. So people are always asking him if he's "secretly" intersex. Wha?
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Yeah.
To be honest, the characters not based on me heavily outweigh those that do.
And most of them were made for probable video game plots with main protagonists designed to deviate from the norm...
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Oh god this is sooooo me. Always when I write someone says that "Oh that girl is aromantic asexual? You cannot make all of the characters like you!" or "Sexual and romantic person? Whoa. You aren´t asexual aromantic then?"
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I also sometimes get the "why do you think you have the authority to write about an experience not your own? You'll probably do a crappy job!" response if I write a romantic relationship. Which is the topic of a future comic. 
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Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. This looks about right.
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