Groundbreaking Aromantic & Demisexual representation in Baker Thief

Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are The Ace Couple. And we are here today with another representation episode. I am so excited to talk about this book. I’ve been dying, in fact, to talk about this book for a very long time, and I don’t know what is wrong with me, why we haven’t gotten to it sooner. But we are going to discuss Baker Thief by Claudie Arseneault.

Royce: So, quick question.

Courtney: Quick answer.

Royce: Is this a baker who is also a thief? Is it a thief that steals pastries? Is it a thief that steals bakers —

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: — to run an underground black market donut shop? Like, there are just all of these bakers chained to their little kitchens.

Courtney: So, it is a baker who is also a thief. However, there is also…

Royce: An underground donut shop?

Courtney: It’s not a donut shop, but people are getting kidnapped. There is definitely some human trafficking at play here.

Courtney: And I’ve said it before — that independent, Own Voices writing is always going to be years ahead of traditional or establishment media, and this book is the perfect representation of that.

Courtney: As far as Aspec identity is concerned, our sort of two main characters in this book are Adèle, who is a Demisexual woman. She is romantically inclined. It’s sort of hinted at the fact that that may be more heavily weighted toward women. When she meets a man that she might have an interest in, it says that she hasn’t ever been with a man before, but is certainly open to the idea. And then our second main character here is Aromantic but allosexual, which we do not see a lot of in any media at all, so that is super appreciated.

Courtney: This character is also genderfluid in a very bigender kind of way. So we have sort of two distinct gender presentations that this person puts out into the world at different times and different contexts, and along with that two different names and sets of pronouns. So we have Claude, who uses he/him pronouns, and we have Claire, who goes by she/her. And I’ll get into it a little more when we start getting into the story and some of the notes I took, but I really really liked the way that this bigender character was written and presented.

Courtney: And aside from these primary two, there is a rather large cast of other variously marginalized characters in and around them. Well, I say “marginalized” not necessarily in the context of this world, but would be in ours. So, a marginalized person in our world would be reading about these characters and could feel represented — with various kinds of disabilities represented, people of color, and a lot of diverse queer representation as well.

Courtney: But in this world, it really doesn’t seem like queer identities are especially marginalized, at least not in this time and place where our characters are. Most of the queer characters are out and very open about talking about their experiences and don’t experience marginalization in this story as a result of that. But that also doesn’t mean that everyone’s queer identity is super straightforward, uncomplicated. It doesn’t mean that everyone is 100% out to everybody either. For example, in the case of Claude and Claire: not out to everybody. A couple of close friends and family know what’s going on, but for the most part, friends and family know what’s going on, but for the most part, Claude is the owner of the bakery. Claude is the baker. So if anyone comes in to order a croissant, to have some coffee, they just know Claude, the owner of this bakery. So a lot of people who aren’t especially close to Claude don’t know Claire’s side of his identity. So I do really like how that was handled, because we get to hear a lot of Claude’s internal thoughts and feelings and complications, so it is certainly something that I think can be very relatable to people who have varying presentations of genderfluidity.

Courtney: And I’m gonna get into the plot. I’m gonna read some of my favorite moments to sort of demonstrate how some of this queer representation is portrayed. I’ve also said this before: it’s really hard for me to know how much to give away and how much to say in these representation reviews, because I really, really want to encourage you to buy and read this book on your own. And me, in my mind, I don’t like spoilers. I like going into media being surprised by whatever it is that I find. But I’ve also met people who I can’t relate to at all, who say, like, “I want all the spoilers before I go into anything. I want to know exactly what to expect, and if I don’t have that, I don’t even want to go into something.” If you are one of those folks, I don’t understand you, but I will give you quite a bit, I think. So I’ll give that as a preface. For those of you who don’t like spoilers, don’t listen for very long. Go read the book first. We’ll have a link in the show notes description and all that where you can find it.

Courtney: But before getting into too many specifics, another couple of very interesting points about this book. There is quite a bit of an integration with French language in here. There are obviously a lot of Francophone characters in the book. The author is Francophone. And I think it’s handled in a way that is really nice. If you don’t know any French at all, you aren’t going to be completely lost when there are situations of wordplay, as an example. It might not be given away immediately, right off the bat, to you, like it’s trying to handhold you, but it will be sort of naturally described and incorporated, so you won’t be missing anything. And I personally love when books do that, even if it’s a language that I’m less familiar with, because the extent of my French is ballet terms and a few very specific Victorian-era hair work terms. Other than that, I am not a French speaker myself.

Courtney: And although the story does involve a relationship, it is incredibly nuanced. Because, as I said, our two main characters would be in a very mixed-orientation type of relationship. We have a Demisexual character and an Aromantic allosexual character. So, even as a relationship begins to be desired, or we start seeing the seeds of a relationship being planted, it’s not your typical romance novel. There’s a lot of complexities to their relationship that needs to be navigated. And I think it is navigated in a very succinct way.

Courtney: And another thing I’ve said before is that my own personal tastes are that I don’t mind relationships in media, but I tend to prefer when relationships are not the main focus. They aren’t the only thing going on. The development of the relationship itself is not the entirety of the plot. And with this, I’m happy to say there is a lot of other intriguing things going on.

Courtney: And it is genre fiction. It is… There are fantasy elements to this. There are sort of… sort of a fantasy technology kind of a thing, I wanted to equate it almost to, like, a solar punk or a steampunk, but solar and steam are not the modes of energy for this particular story. So, it does have sort of a sci-fi energy punk kind of a vibe with some fantasy in it. So, I love when we can get representation in genre fiction as well. The energy in question here comes from what they call exocores. And it is a newer technology. Many people within the city are starting to implement it.

Courtney: And the story opens with our character Adèle, and she has recently come to this area. She’s actually a police officer, which took me some time to get used to; I’m not gonna lie about that. She has been, like, totally relocated, transferred to a new precinct. And she wakes up in the middle of the night when a purple-haired thief has come into her home and is attempting to steal her exocore. And, unbeknownst to her at the time, this thief is Claire.

Courtney: However, coming into the bakery before work one day, she meets face-to-face Claude first. So we’ve got sort of a secret identity, kind of a slow-burn mystery kind of thing happening. And the audience does become aware of Claire and Claude being the same person long before Adèle does, so. But it is in this bakery where she does take sort of an initial interest in Claude but decides not to do anything about it right away. She’s new here, she started a new job, she wants to get settled in that first. And the quote here is, “Besides, it might give her time for a bond to form and the sexual attraction that sometimes came with it.” Which I also really like, because, although a lot of Demisexual representation does pose, you know, romance as sort of a prerequisite to experience sexual attraction, and that can be very accurate to a lot of people’s real life experience, what does get left out of the conversation sometimes is that that is not always a linear path that is always going to go in that same direction every time. It’s not like, “Oh, I developed romantic attraction. Therefore, 100% of the time, without fail, I am now sexually attracted, too,” because that’s not how that works for everyone.

Courtney: And although I say that we don’t necessarily see any persecution of queer people in this story on the grounds of just being queer, there is very clearly a conflict of a marginalized class in this book, and that is against witches. Witches are clearly magic users. In this setting, they’re able to sort of harness a natural magic that is theorized to just be around. It’s all around us. And witches are the ones who can harness it to perform various acts. And each one sort of has their own thing they can do; they have their own specializations, their own individual powers. And we learn very early on that Claude is a witch. And at the same time, we learn that a lot of witches have actually fled this area because of a history of persecution. And even though much of Claude’s family even left, he decided to stay back. So, he is still in this area. There are fewer witches now than they were. And this is an identity that is very much kept secret from the public.

Courtney: And it is said, too, that one of the reasons why he didn’t want to flee was, well, not only is this his home, but being alone, without his family there, granted him a little more time and space to start exploring what genderfluidity meant to him. His genderfluidity of which is described as not so simple. A quote from the book here is, “His gender swung between male and female, sometimes firmly on one end for weeks, sometimes shifting after a day. Claire and Claude were both full expressions of himself, and they helped him handle his fluidity.”

Courtney: And one thing that I think the author did extremely well, given the fact that we’ve got this sort of hidden identity trope here, I think a concern could potentially be, with a bigender lead like this, well, if you’re putting on —you know, you’re changing your hair color, you’re changing the shape of your body by either choosing to wear a binder or not, a concern could be that, well, you’re putting on a costume, right? Like, one is your real identity, and then you put on a costume and you’re sort of playing a part, you’re being someone else. And that would certainly be a fear for me trying to write such a character, is that I wouldn’t want the audience to get that impression of, “This is the costume; this is the real one.”

Courtney: So, given the complexity and nuance of the identities of Claude and Claire, there is still an element of dysphoria here. There are some instances where Claude is presenting as male, as Claude, in his bakery, but he is not Claude right now, he doesn’t feel male, but his customers don’t know that he’s bigender. So there are instances where we’re getting this sort of internal dialogue of just feeling wrong, like, “I am in the wrong identity right now.” So we still have that sort of dysphoric… I guess, representation? The dysphoric representation? Because it’s a lot more complicated than just, “Oh well, I figured it out! I can be Claude when I feel like Claude and I can be Claire when I feel like Claire.” There are still social hurdles to being their true, authentic selves 100% of the time.

Courtney: And this was sort of… it took me time to get used to Adèle being a cop, and her boss and all of her co-workers being cops, because I’m not the biggest fan of cops. [laughs] And I had to kind of — I had to force myself to set that aside. Because when she gets into this new precinct, it’s like, everyone here is queer. Everyone here is queer and/or disabled. You know, there’s someone in this department who uses they/them pronouns. There’s — like, on the very first day of work, when coworkers are just chatting, one’s like, “Oh yeah, let me tell you about going binder shopping,” and the other is like, “Yeah, I was just in the club with my polyamorous partners, and we were looking for new women.” And those are all just, like, really fast lines and some of our first introduction to some of these characters. So, it comes on a little strong. Like, since those characters aren’t the main characters, we aren’t going to get a fully fleshed out, nuanced description of their lives, so it’s just sort of sprinkled in there, like, “Oh, by the way, we also have a polyamorous character. We also have, you know, da da da da da.” And while reading that, I was like, “Well, that’s nice, but they are all cops.” [laughs] So I was like, “Why is the queer community cops?” I really, really had to set that aside. [laughs] It took me several chapters to get over that.

Courtney: Because I personally identified more with the thieves. The thieves and the witches. [laughs] Which, if you haven’t deduced it by now, Claire is our baker thief. She is the one who goes out in the nights, and she is on a mission to steal exocores. She doesn’t totally know why yet, but she knows there’s something wrong with them. She doesn’t like them, doesn’t think people should have them. It’s just a sense, a feeling.

Courtney: And it is even stated in the book that Claude’s method of exploring these two genders was, even before becoming a thief and stealing these exocores, it was sort of, “Well, I’m Claude during the day, and then, at night, I can be Claire.” And so, now, there’s an extra wrench in the plans because Claire becomes a wanted woman. Obviously, Claire just tried to steal from a cop who saw her trying to steal, and word is getting out of this exocore thief. So, now not only is there the social concern of not being ready to be out to everybody, but also, [laughs] one part of your identity is just a known criminal right now. So that’s not an ideal time to come out either. [laughs]

Courtney: And I want to talk about pronoun usage in this book. Because clearly the ideal would be Claude, he/him, when feeling male, Claire, she/her, when feeling female. But because of this complicated situation, there are some times where, like I said, there is experiencing gender dysphoria. And in situations like that, I was very keen to take note of how the author used pronouns in those situations. Because, especially in an Own Voices book written by a queer person, I don’t think there’s a wrong way to navigate that, but there are certainly some ways that I think might feel more uncomfortable than others for concern of misgendering. And what the author did here was sort of did use the wrong pronouns in situations of explaining the wrongness that comes with those feelings of dysphoria.

Courtney: So, here’s the first example I found of that. “Claude’s simple shirt had felt wrong to wear all day, and the feeling had only worsened now that the sun had set. Nights had been Claire’s long before he had started stealing exocores, and over the last few days his gender had slipped firmly to woman. He had picked up his shirt with embroidery and laced a purple ribbon into his hair, little reminders of femininity that helped him deal with the wrongness brought by male presentation, until he could bust out the skirts again.” So that’s just one example of sort of… in instances when explaining, “This character’s presentation doesn’t match internal identity right now,” the pronouns that were used tend to be what the outward presentation is right now. So, while presenting as Claude, even though he is Claire right now, the name Claude and he/him pronouns are used, but we’re told, “This is not right right now. This feels wrong.”

Royce: Yeah, the way that that was written, it was… The paragraph was phrased — like, the name and names and the pronouns matched in those cases.

Courtney: Yes. The names and the pronouns match, and it all aligns with outward presentation at this point in time — which I think works. I could see a situation where an author might be trying to figure that out, like, “Should I use the correct name and pronoun at the correct time for this character? Should I not? How does that work?” Because, in a way, you could almost say that this is misgendering the character in the writing. But I think it’s really, really effective to explain the dysphoric feelings in those situations.

Courtney: There were also… In talking about pronouns, I’ll just say this now, because I don’t think I’m going to talk about these characters at length. But there are, if I recall, at least two characters that use neopronouns in this book. And for those of us in community with people who use neopronouns, they aren’t even, like, especially popular ones. I know, for example, I’ve known several people over the years who have used ze/zir pronouns, either with a Z or an X. The Spivak pronouns, e/em/eir, have gotten a lot more popular. But there’s really no bounds to neopronouns. There are so many options out there. And so both of these characters who use neopronouns are very different ones, and they aren’t especially common ones. So that is… honestly, I think reading a book like this might be one of the best ways to get people used to that, because you have to see the pronouns written out repeatedly. It’s already written for you, so it isn’t in, like, a conversation and dialogue where, if you are someone who isn’t used to using neopronouns, you don’t have to sort of trip over your words trying to think, “Is it right?” Or sometimes people do that thing where they try to avoid the pronouns altogether. If it’s just written out for you, and you see it time and time again, and you see two different characters with two different neopronouns, there’s sort of an air of, like, you have time to sit with it for it to start hopefully becoming normalized, if you aren’t already in community with people who use them.

Royce: Yeah, I think that’s something that’s often easier in writing. Because there are some neopronouns that I have trouble both hearing and processing in conversation, particularly if we’re, like, at a group event where there’s a lot of chatter that’s, like, bleeding into the edge of my hearing.

Courtney: Well, that’s always a problem with you, because — on account of Autism. [laughs]

Royce: Yeah. And, I mean, I don’t know how much dyslexia has with auditory processing. It’s a big mixed bag. But there are some neopronouns where I can’t tell if I heard that correctly or if I just missed the first part of the sound that was coming out or what happened. So that repetition is useful, and it’s very clear in writing.

Courtney: Mhm. What I also really like is that these characters do have — even if it’s small, they do have a close community of people around them who do just really get them, they really understand around them who do just really get them, they really understand. There’s a character close to Claude, for example, who, while presenting as Claude, this friend says, like, “Oh, you’re Claire right now. I can tell by your smile,” and just sort of says, like, “Depending on how masculine you feel, I’ve noticed that your smile changes.”

Courtney: And in the case of Adèle, who’s sort of saying, like, “Oh, you know, I met this baker who’s kind of piquing my interest,” there’s someone very close to her that says, “Go on a date! It’ll be fun! Get to know him. See how it evolves,” all of that good stuff, and then says, “Who knows, you might even add ‘sexy’ to his list of qualities after a while.” So that’s very clearly like, okay, you, you know how Demisexuality works for Adèle.

Courtney: And it does tend to happen in this book, with Claudie’s writing style, is that when you get one-off lines like that from someone external in dialogue, it’s very normal to then have the character’s internal monologue start to explain in even more nuance. So, following that, like, “Who knows, maybe you’ll add ‘sexy’ to the list,” then we get from Adèle’s thoughts: “Claude might never draw any flutter of desire from her. He had a beautiful smile and laugh and was easy on the eye, but her mind balked at the idea of kisses, or more, this early on. They hadn’t known each other all that long, though, and she was Demisexual. Strangers did not raise goosebumps on her arms or send her heart hammering with want. When it happened to her, it was with people she felt deeply connected with and was wrapped in a need for a new kind of intimacy. Even without that attraction, however, her romantic interest in Claude was undeniable.”

Courtney: So as a result of that conversation and that stewing in her thoughts, she decides to just blurt it out one day in the bakery and just says, “Hey, do you want to go out with me?” And Claude just goes, “I’m sorry, what?” [laughs] “That was the last thing he’d expected this morning, and he wasn’t ready for the mix of want and stress it brought. She wanted to go out with him and his very Aromantic ass?”

Royce: At this point in time, is Claude aware that Adèle’s house was one of the houses that they broke into?

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Okay. I didn’t know how much they, like, were able to see a person at that point in time.

Courtney: So, yeah, there’s the, “Oh no, I’m Aromantic and she’s romantically interested in me, but she’s also Demisexual and I’m allosexual and I am sexually attracted to her, so how’s that gonna work? But also, I’m a thief and she’s a cop, and I’m the thief that was in her house.” [laughs] You know, a normal start to any relationship. And it even says, “His gut twisted at the idea of romancing Adèle. He had more at stake than someone misunderstanding his Aromanticism.” And he even says aloud during this exchange, not only, “I’m Aromantic,” but he even adds the caveat of, “I’m Aromantic and not interested,” which I think is nice, especially, for people who really do understand Aspec identities. Because, obviously, anyone who is Asexual and/or Aromantic themselves reading this is likely to know that being Aromantic doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t want a romantic relationship, and ditto with sexual relationships and people on the Asexual spectrum. But the author is able to throw in “Aro and uninterested” without sort of having to go into the, “Let me educate the readers right here and now that this doesn’t necessarily mean that.” Because I do get pretty tired of those, like, PSAs — like, “Let me teach the audience something.” I think this was able to weave in the nuance well. The only things that are really explained to you at length are, for the most part, each respective character’s internal monologue and their own thoughts on their own identities, which I like quite a lot better.

Courtney: So, interspersed with the navigation of identities, we obviously get the intrigue of these exocores and the persecution of witches. And Claire, we learn, is actually a twin, and her twin has been vanished. Her twin has gone missing. And through being able to connect with other witches, some of whom are very long-term close friends, they are able to meet at a witch-owned establishment, sort of an underground kind of a place, and put their heads together. And it turns out, with the witches each having different specialties that they’re able to accomplish — I don’t think I’ve even mentioned what Claire’s is, but she’s able to sort of harness her magic to imbue her muscles with extra strength, and it’s a very temporary situation. So, as a thief in the night, as she’s stealing these exocores, she’s able to infuse magic into her muscles to be able to leap to great heights and literally leap onto a rooftop or run faster or lift inhuman amounts of weight.

Royce: I know you’re going to get to this eventually, but I do have to ask, on the off-chance that this is correct —

Courtney: [laughs] Let’s hear it. What are your fan theories?

Royce: Well, no. Is the author doing the Final Fantasy VI thing where the power source for the magical technology is killing magical beings and using some sort of crystal from them as the cores?

Courtney: I have not played Final Fantasy, so I did not know that was a Final Fantasy VI thing. But yes, that is exactly what is happening.

Royce: It wasn’t witches. They’re the beings in the Final Fantasy series that are normally used as, like, summonable creatures.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But there is an ancient war. And that sort of universe or that sort of idea of magitek is used in more than one game.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But in Final Fantasy VI specifically, there is a big war where a lot of those creatures were killed for their magical properties.

Courtney: Mhm. Well, and that is a fantasy trope in and of itself. Like, even though I haven’t played Final Fantasy, I have encountered different versions of this before, so. I know I personally, as I was reading it, I wasn’t shocked to learn that the exocores are witches. But it wasn’t boring. Even though I wasn’t shocked by it, it was still a satisfying narrative, and I liked the pacing of the revelation.

Royce: Yeah, tropes aren’t always bad. And they aren’t always handled in exactly the same way, even if they have similarities. And sometimes, things become tropes because a lot of people like them.

Courtney: Yeah, there’s a reason they’re tropes, absolutely. So, in this situation, they’re able to sort of find out that the exocores are witches, because one of the witches’ abilities is to sort of sense and seek out and locate other witches, so they’re able to sort of approach an exocore and just know and sense, like, “Oh my gosh, this is the life essence of a witch in here.” And that sort of solidifies — once Claire learns that, she’s like, “I knew there was something wrong about this. Like, this is the reason why. Now I know what’s been so off about these things.”

Courtney: And the way — since you predicted that, we can go ahead and talk about that now. The way that this works, or the way that this is explained: the exocores are made by sort of draining the witches of their magic, and they drain it from their bodies to put into the exocore, and then the exocore is basically, like, magical battery now. But especially the witches in this story who are trying to find who’s doing this and stop them, they know that, you know, witches aren’t an infinite source of magic, and even the magic in their own bodies has limitations; there’s only so much they can do at one point — which I also really like. I like when magic systems in books have built-in limitations and rules. Like, it is magical, it’s fantastical, they can do extraordinary things, but it’s not totally without limit where they can just do whatever they want.

Royce: Yeah, I almost asked, when you were trying to peg a genre and you were saying, like, solar punk, eco punk, and then you mentioned an exocore, I almost asked about that right then.

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: Because, even though, like, the Final Fantasy series often has different iterations of combinations of magic and technology, “magitek” is a word that is used in a few entries, and similar manifestations are called different things in other instances.

Courtney: Oh, yeah.

Royce: But that series is one where, in some instances, they’re pulling the energy straight out of the planet — like, the life energy of everything on the planet.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Sometimes it’s a specific magical creature. Sometimes… it’s not uncommon for crystals or, you know, something that is in the planet to be an area where magic has coalesced and is being used as power, so.

Courtney: Mhm. Yeah, definitely. And the way it sort of manifests in this isn’t, like, a clean, “The bad guys doing this are able to just pull the magic out of the witches, and now they’re mundane humans.” It’s like, the magic is so interwoven into their very existence and life essence that it is draining them of their life to do this. And that’s why, once the magic is put into these exocores, they’re sensing, like, “This is a witch. This is the life essence of a witch. This is someone, not something.” So, yeah, now we have witches who are being kidnapped, enslaved, drained of their life essence. We’ve got a full-blown genocide on our hands, all in the name of tech advancement and commerce.

Courtney: So, one of Claire’s close friends is Zita. And at one point, Zita takes particular note of how Claire has definitely come to start caring for Adèle. And Zita asks, “How much do you love her?” And the response was just, “What? That is not a logical question to continue this conversation.” And Claire says, “I’m not going to put myself in another romantic relationship. I’d hate it.” And then, outside of quotes, just ruminating in her head, she says, “Zita would understand more than anyone else. They’d tried dating for almost an entire year before admitting it didn’t work. The experience had instilled a constant sense of unease in Claire, as if everyone expected something new of her — a different kind of feeling, and it refused to show up. She had struggled to get ‘je t’aime’ past her lips, and even then she had known, on the deepest level, that she did not mean the same thing as others did. She had felt like a liar and hated herself for it.”

Courtney: And I think that’s very interesting, even in a story where our queer characters aren’t necessarily facing external bigotry. Because there are still just societal normativities — amatonormativity, allonormativity, heteronormativity — that even if there isn’t someone trying to force you to be someone that you’re not, there are plenty of queer experiences where people might try to conform to what society views as more normal or more acceptable, even if there isn’t necessarily direct bigotry aimed at them. And it just goes to show even further that navigating one’s own identity, determining when and how and who to come out to, these are all very personal journeys. There’s even a moment where Claire is saying, you know, “Man, when I first opened my bakery, I wish I just let everyone know that I’m genderfluid and that some days I’m Claire and some days I’m Claude, so I can just be who I am each individual day. That would have made it easier. And other people do it, so why didn’t I do it? Why wasn’t I ready to take this step?” — to show that she didn’t necessarily think that she would experience hatred as a result of that. She thought it would be relatively accepted, at least among her customer base. But there was something internal that she was still coming to terms with.

Courtney: So the bakery’s name, I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet, but it’s Croissant-toi, which I did not know until it was explained later. And, like I said, when French is used and there’s wordplay that I wasn’t able to pick up on my own, I liked the organic way it was brought up. Because a character, at one point — one of the antagonists, no less — sort of confronts Claire and is like, “You’re not a very good thief, are you?” And Claire sort of is like, “But I’m…” And if I remember right, this character is one that uses neopronouns. I think this is the one that uses ol. So ol kind of cuts her off and is like, “Oh, I know, you’re a baker,” and just sort of flippantly says, “Isn’t it the one with the cutesy pun name? Believe in yourself?” And until that happened, I didn’t know that Croissant-toi was a cutesy pun name. But then she goes on to say, “Yeah, that’s actually why it’s the bakery’s name, so that the reminders are all around me. Every day as I work, I see the message and remember that I am who I say when I say it, even when it feels like my business will run into the ground or like my mind can’t decide what it wants, or like I should be Loving people with a capital L.” And I just thought that was very cute, not only for the French pun but also this very meaningful business. I mean, baking ends up being Claude’s main form of creativity and relaxing and having time to himself. And having his own place that is so significant and meaningful to him being named as a reminder to himself that he is enough and his identities are valid — I just thought that was really nice, very special.

Courtney: So, once they’ve sort of come to understand what is going on at this facility, how they’re making the exocores, who’s behind it, there’s sort of a big unveiling scheduled, a large bridge powered entirely by exocores, a big presentation. And, of course, they want to stop it. They want to save Claire’s sister, because at this point, they know that she has been kidnapped, as well, to attempt to make one of these things.

Courtney: And in order to get more people with authority in on this — as they’re sort of plotting, “How are we going to stop this?” — they solicit the help of a politician named Denise Jalbert, who actually happens to be a friend of Claire’s family, but she hadn’t seen Denise in years at this point. But Denise — and I thought it was kind of interesting, especially now. I mean, recently, we’ve, of course, been talking about the current political landscape in the United States and the attack on childless cat ladies and all these very prominent politicians advocating things like parents should get extra votes for their children or people who don’t have kids shouldn’t get to vote at all — all these horrible things. So it’s really nice that the politician in this story has been single all her life, into her old age.

Courtney: It’s pretty heavily suggested that she is also Aromantic. It says, for example, “She’d let younger Claire assault her with questions about Aromanticism, helping her work her identity out.” So if Denise herself is not outright Aromantic, she’s at least very knowledgeable of Aromanticism. And they call her “The Spinster.” Quote, “Dubbed this way by political opponents eager to paint her as an old, crooked lady without a husband or children, and, as such, unworthy of trust, it hadn’t worked. Rather, Denise Jalbert had made it work in her favor. He — ” Claude — “had been a teenager during the elections, old enough to understand why they’d tried to paint Denise Jalbert’s single status as a mark against her humanity and to cheer on her victory. She had taught him Aromanticism was no hindrance to a full and happy life and that he should be proud of himself and even flaunt it if others attempted to diminish him for it.”

Courtney: So, I think that’s just such a power move. I love The Spinster so much. It sounds like she totally just owns, like, “Yeah, I’m The Spinster. [laughs] What of it?” [laughs] She’s also just, like, exceptionally badass. When Claude goes to find her to ask for her help, she’s just, like, in a bathrobe in a recliner with, like, robes with spiderwebs on it, drinking whiskey, and reading a book in the middle of the night in her own home alone. And, like, honestly, she might be the best character in this whole book. I love her so much.

Courtney: But what I also really love is that… We’ve sort of started noticing that there has become a trope that’s starting to emerge in AroAce representation lately, where there is, like, a mysteriously convenient older Aspec person who just finds the person who’s questioning their identity and explains AroAce-dom to them, and they’re like, “Wow, that me! Thanks, mysterious older Ace that just popped out of nowhere and will never be seen again!” Even if there’s a little more to it than that, even if the mysterious elder Ace trope is, you know, a character that has a little more significance to the story than just popping in for a PSA and then leaving, that is becoming how more and more characters in representation learn about their identity.

Courtney: In this one, going in, all of our main characters already know their identity. This older Aromantic character that we have now just gets to be a badass and isn’t here just to teach the younger Aro person what Aromanticism is. And so I like this so much better. Because it’s also — it’s older characters, too. If you took these same characters and aged them down and made this Claude’s learning what Aromanticism is and made that the main plot, that would be very different. Then we’d have, you know, another, “Let me ask this older person these questions and help find my identity.”

Royce: If we think about self-discovery as a major plot beat that takes a long time to resolve, is the joke name for this sudden elder Ace character “Deus Ace Machina”?

Courtney: I mean, it is now. I mean, it is now! [laughs]

Royce: It doesn’t work if you try to actually define the terms, but maybe that’s fine.

Courtney: [laughs] We don’t need it. We Aspecs — we love our puns, okay? We love puns, and we love baked goods. This book has all of these things. [laughs] But I also like it, too, because not only is like… learning about Aromanticism from the older Aro character is not the plot, it’s not the point, but now, this older Aro character now just gets to be living her best Aro life. She just gets to be living as The Spinster, drinking her whiskey, reading her books in her spiderweb bathrobe. And I think that older Aces and Aros in media are important, and they need to be there not only to teach the younger generation; they need to demonstrate a future that is possible.

Courtney: And I also like the way Denise handles meeting Claude. Because now, a young man has just broken into her house who she recognizes, and she nods to that without being like, “This isn’t the gender I know you as!” Like, she isn’t explicit like that, but she does sort of… She’s very subtly affirmative, just sort of saying, like, “‘Oh, you’re Rico’s kid. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. You’ve grown so much since we last had the chance.’ He hadn’t only grown; he had found his genders. When she had visited on a regular basis, he hadn’t known how to explain the shift in them. He’d called them moods, and while, at times, he’d insisted on boyish clothes, he hadn’t yet considered he could be a man one day and a woman the next.” And so she does sort of — by saying, “Oh, you’re Rico’s kid,” she sort of avoids the concern of potentially using a deadname, because at this point, too, she doesn’t know, was this a binary transition? But she does see the masculine presentation and does roll with that instead of asking questions.

Courtney: And I just love it so much because he did just break into her house in the middle of the night while she’s drinking her whiskey and reading her book, and she just says, “Young man, did you sneak into my home?” [laughs] Like, after being like, “Oh, wait, I know you. Yes, hi, been a minute,” she’s like, “Wait a second. Wait a second!” And after the sort of, like, “Yes, yes, but here’s why I’m here. This is important. We need your help,” she says, “You look like you need a drink, son.” So I like the very affirmative “young man,” “son,” not using the name she was familiar with, and sort of… And they go through the entire conversation without her asking those specifics either, because, obviously, there are more pressing matters. There’s an important conversation to be had here. And I imagine, as a very clearly queer-affirming person even prior to this, being someone who helped him discover Aromanticism, she probably figured, “Oh, well, he’ll fill in the blanks for me if and when he feels the need to.” And on his way out, exiting that conversation, he does do a quick, “Oh, Madame Jalbert, the name’s Claude now.”

Courtney: And, in keeping with the theme of just sort of disclosing personal details when important or when it feels right, there is sort of a reintroduction process that happens once Adèle first sees Claude with his chest unbound, for example, and starts realizing, “Oh, Claude and Claire are the same people.” There is a situation where Claude is a bit disheveled, isn’t wearing a binder, and Adèle comes in and is like, “Should I call you Claude, or…?” And that’s when he says, “Please. I’m genderfluid. Claude is good at the moment.” And Adèle is also like, “Alright. That’s all I need to know for now.” And then they don’t really get into the weeds of it until later. So, I think that’s also just a really good demonstration of, you know, one way to handle when you learn more about someone is just sort of let them take the lead and not necessarily prying too much.

Courtney: And sort of in the same vein, I also like the evolution of the conversations pertaining to their developing relationship, because it does sort of happen in stages. First, it’s just all in their own heads, where, you know, Claude is very sexually attracted to Adèle. Adèle thinks, “Ooh, maybe I could form a romance with this person.” And then, once they start learning more about each other and they start working together trying to figure out who’s behind these exocores and trying to stop it, they do get to a point in a conversation where they want to try to make something happen, but they both know it will be complicated. From Claude’s point of view, he thinks, “This relationship with Adèle didn’t resemble anything he’d experienced before. Not his tight friendship with Zita, not his sibling back and forth with Livia, and not the short-lived attempts at romance he’d endured. ‘I love you’ would never be right for them, but they had their own words. ‘Do you remember, when you asked for a date, what I said about me and romance?’ He waited for her to nod. ‘I’m still Aromantic. I guess it’s one of those layers of complicated. If you kissed me looking for romance, I…’ His heart thundered across his chest, stealing his words. Adèle had always had a crush on him. What if they couldn’t work anything out? ‘You do partners in the police, don’t you?’ Adèle blinked, stunned. Then a wide smile spread across her face. ‘We do. I’d offer you the spot, but police partners usually don’t kiss. Wouldn’t we miss out?’” And so “partners” is where they sort of leave that until after they’ve completed their job, after they shut down this event. And I’ll leave the actual action of the climax sequence to you to read yourself.

Courtney: But once things are winding down, then they need to speak at more length. From Claude’s point of view, once again, we have, “She loved him, romantically loved him. That much was clear as day. Did she expect him to change? Eventually give it back? Would she grow bitter if his love remained different? But he had been honest from the start, and Adèle had acknowledged it. He had to believe she understood and accepted what it meant.” And so they basically resolve to go shut down this event, rescue Claude’s sister, and he says, “After that, we can enjoy some butter-filled goodness and define the shape of us.” And she responds, “Whatever the shape, I want you to be comfortable with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s unusual. We just need it to fit us, right?’ ‘Right.’ And that’s why she was amazing. A soft smile brightened his face. And Claude opened the door. ‘I bet it’ll be croissant-shaped,’ he added, ’because of the layers.” And I think that is adorable! It’s very, very cute.

Courtney: So once they do succeed at rescuing Livia, the sister, Claude has a conversation with her and explains, sort of, “Hey, there’s a new person in my life,” and says, “We’re something now. I’m not in love with her; that much hasn’t changed. But she’s unique to me. You’ll be seeing more of her, for sure.” Livia responds, saying, “Powerful love comes in many forms, and not all of them need to be romantic. I daresay most aren’t. I’ve been trudging happily alone. But… can I ask you something? It’s been bothering me for a while, but it never felt right to ask in a letter, and I don’t really talk about these things with my friends.” And she goes on to explain that she sometimes feels something of a spark of romance, but something that just comes on really strong for a very brief instance of time, a feeling akin to pining, and once it flickers on, it just very quickly dies out. And she sort of asks Claude, “Does that ever happen to you? Is that Aromanticism?” And Claude outright says, “I don’t think so. I never pined for anyone that way.” And Livia’s kind of disappointed in that answer. She’s clearly questioning something about her own identity and was sort of hoping for clarity by asking these questions to her sibling. And she says, “It makes me feel like I don’t know what I want, like I’m needlessly complicated.” And Claude says, “You’re fine, Livia. Believe me, all humans are needlessly complicated. You’ll figure it out. And now I’m here to help. There’s more to Aromanticism than the complete absence of romantic attraction, and yours is no less important. Give yourself time.”

Courtney: And so, once Claude rejoins Adèle, they decide to have dinner together and have sort of the boundary-defining talk of a relationship that they would like to pursue more seriously. And Adèle says, “‘But no candles or flowers, huh?’ He laughed, and his mirth was a calming balm on Adèle’s stress. Perhaps he was used to these discussions, much like she had gotten skilled at explaining to potential lovers she might never feel sexually attracted to them. ’I like candles. No idea why everyone believes they’re so romantic, but they’re good ambiance and they smell great when you snuff them out. You’re hereby in charge of bringing them. Grab wine for yourself, too, if you want any. I don’t drink.” Which I thought was just a cute little back-and-forth, [laughing] and sounds like so many Aro people. There are things that are traditionally viewed as romantic that we can still like and appreciate for different reasons. It just doesn’t necessarily have a romantic connotation to Aro people, and so that was a cute and very realistic conversation, I think. But also just a little added, “By the way, I don’t drink” without making too big a fuss about it, and Adèle doesn’t get concerned about that, she just says, “Understood.” Because there are a lot of Aro and Ace people who do not drink — percentage-wise, I would say more than the general population — which is a phenomenon that we have mentioned before, but it’s nice to see it in a book. Because this is a thing that those of us really involved in the community know. And it’s just another little sort of data point on the types of representation you see in this book: an allosexual Aromantic person who doesn’t drink.

Courtney: Claude is also — I don’t think I mentioned this at the top — I think pretty good fat representation as well. There are some instances especially in times of, like, gender euphoria, like, feeling very feminine and being out as a thief, as Claire, just absolutely feeling like herself and really appreciating the shape and size of her own body. And that’s mentioned on a number of occasions throughout the book as well.

Courtney: So, yeah, I’m not going to quote the entire chapter at you. Because I think, in terms of representation, the entire final chapter was very, very good. Because they do actually have that dinner. They sit down and they have this conversation. And I like the way that it was handled. So, if I were to explain everything I liked about it, I’d just be reading the whole last chapter to you, and I’m not gonna do that! Go buy the book yourself! But I like it.

Courtney: I am very excited to read more books by Claudie Arseneault. She is actually one of our beloved MarketplACE vendors, so it should go without saying that Claudie Arseneault is going to be our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. Please check out this book, Baker Thief. If this one didn’t sound to your taste or if you’ve already read it, Claudie has a ton of other books. In fact, when I bought this one, I also got a book called The City of Strife, which is actually a series. And I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet because I have so many books and so many new authors I also want to pursue, but I will get around to it someday. There is no question about it. So, as always, links to find this book and the author’s other works are going to be in the show notes.

Courtney: Claudie has also created an Aro and Ace database for Aro and or Ace characters in books, so if you are looking for other recommendations, we’ll put a link to that as well, so you can peruse that at your leisure. And, overall, just read more independent, Own Voices books. We, of course, want to keep pressing for more mainstream representation of Aspec identities, but so many of us in this community are just starved for seeing Aspec representation, and it is out there. They’re smaller artists, they’re independent artists, but they are doing groundbreaking work, that we won’t see nuance on this level for decades in mainstream media.

Courtney: But that is all we have for you today. And please support Claudie Arseneault. Definitely check her out for more science fiction and fantasy books centered on platonic love. I do not think you will be disappointed. Goodbye.