GLAAD’s 2025 media report ignores the precious few Asexual characters

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

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 for the third year in a row, we are here to talk about GLAAD’s Where We Are On TV report. The first year we reviewed this report was not especially favorable because their coverage of asexual representation specifically was bad. If I recall, they alleged that there were six asexual characters, but maybe there were only four and even less than that if you take our standards.

Royce: I’m trying to find that. I hear you saying in that first episode, “At most there are three and only two are probably going to be explored in the future.”

Courtney: ’Cause I think they said there were six, but they said there were the twins on Chucky, which shocked the hell out of us and actually made us watch Chucky – which was a fabulous TV show, actually – but they were not asexual. They were non-binary.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: So if we take those away, it would be four. But then there was the goofy character from Umbrella Academy.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: That all we could find was, like, a social media post of the actor playing that character saying like, “Oh yeah, I definitely played her as an asexual.” And we were like, [buzzer noise] “Doesn’t cut it.”

Royce: Yeah, okay, I’m skimming the transcript. There was some confusion in that first episode because there was like a PR statement that erroneously said eight.

Courtney: Oh yeah!

Royce: And then the report had six, but not everyone in the six was mentioned by name. So we had to, like, do some inferring of what was present.

Courtney: That gave me the biggest headache, because I saw the article saying, “There were eight characters on TV.” And I was like, where?

Royce: Yeah. So the three that we counted were Ca$h, from Heartbreak High?

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Elijah, from Big Mouth.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And Abbi, from The Imperfects.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And Ca$h was the only one of those that got a season two.

Courtney: Yes. Because we already knew Imperfects was canceled and not gonna get another season. And as I posited at the time, they were not going to bring Elijah back after he was no longer exploring a relationship with the allosexual lead, which did happen. Final season came out, he is not a character. So, one was a theory, one was definitely confirmed. So there’s that. So I was obviously very frustrated with their reporting first saying eight and then saying six and then having to dig way into the paper to be like, where are–? Who are you talking about? Who are these characters? Last year they did a little better. I believe last year they had a much fairer number that wasn’t all over the place.

Royce: I’m skimming, but I think in our last report we were looking over four characters. Those were: Ca$h in the next season of Heartbreak High, Isaac from Heartstopper, O from Sex Education, and they mentioned Elijah from Big Mouth. And we didn’t know if that was a case of the season of Big Mouth sort of hitting the boundary lines where it was being counted for two reports or what was happening there.

Courtney: Interesting. So yeah, I think with that one the only error they might have made was, like, “We counted this number of asexual characters, which has changed to this number from the year before.” And it’s like, well, your number the year before was bad. But other than that, I think I had a lot fewer qualms with them. So I’m going to say that this year’s report is probably between those two. It’s not as good as last year’s, but I don’t think it’s as egregiously bad as two years ago. But it’s honestly, like, as someone who has been so deep in the ace discourse, the Asexual Community, as someone who has explored so many examples – good and bad – of ace representation, I feel like this year’s report just, like, completely forgot about the asexual characters. In a way that feels so sadly on the nose paralleling what we actually get in representation. Like I’m– I’m kinda sad. And it’s probably just like realistically an issue of maybe too many cooks in the kitchen, maybe too many people writing different parts of this report. They didn’t have like a really good amount of time to do proofreading and editing before they posted this. I do feel like this came out a lot later in the year than it usually does. To the point where I’ve been looking for it and wasn’t even sure if it was going to come out this year.

Royce: Our last two episodes on this topic were in April and May.

Courtney: Well, and often they’ll release it before the end of their, like, calendar year for the studio. So sometimes they’re like, “There’s a hidden secret character we can’t talk about yet!” Which was also very frustrating that first year because it’s like, is there someone that hasn’t come out yet? But okay, so we obviously review a lot of ace representation in the media. So I’m going to play a game with you and our listeners, play along at home. How many asexual characters do you think they reported this year? And who do you think they were?

Royce: I was going to say, I feel like we have seen less TV this past year than the prior year. Either that or it’s all just a blur to me. And this report does go over movies and TV shows, but– Right? Right? But in the past?

Courtney: No, not movies.

Royce: Okay.

Courtney: This is specifically Where We Are On TV. Although they do a separate report on movies that I do want to mention before we wrap up this episode, because that I found interesting from an ace perspective also. But I want to start with TV alone. So this is Where We Are On TV 2024 to 2025.

Royce: And do you have those months?

Courtney: Yes, the season is counted as June 1st, 2024, and May 31st, 2025.

Royce: Okay.

Courtney: In the bullet points of their executive summary, they don’t mention asexuality at all.

Royce: Okay, good start.

Courtney: Which is, I think, normally where they say, like, “Oh, there were six asexual characters, which is up from–” which, incorrect. Sometimes it’s incorrect, but it’s normally in these bullet points. So in no bullet points, you have to go down to the actual graph and percentage data here to see total LGBTQ characters counted for that season are 489. Asexual says two. The smallest sliver on this pie chart.

Royce: Uh-huh. So we counted, amending GLAAD’s reports the last two years, three two years ago, four last year.

Courtney: And now we have two. And I immediately thought, Isaac on Heartstopper. And then I was like, who’s the other one? I assumed – because I was testing myself as I was reading this – Viktor from Arcane.

Royce: Oh.

Courtney: Which– I said it before in those episodes, and I’ll say it again right here: I wanted that conversation about Viktor as an asexual character to be a lot more nuanced pertaining to what makes an obviously ace character. But unfortunately, the fandom was shipping him with another dude so heavily that when the creator said, “I intended this character to be asexual the entire time,” everyone called him homophobic. And because that is a disabled character, everyone wanted to say, “Well, it’s also problematic to make the disabled character the asexual one, so we don’t want him to be asexual anyway.” I have issues with both of these points of view. So now everyone else’s opinion is so bad and problematic that I now feel like I have to defend that yes, Viktor is actually asexual, thank you very much. But given the time frame, those were the two things I thought of instantly. And we have already talked about those characters in past episodes. So, very familiar with them. So I was curious to continue with the report. Under the summary of broadcast findings, specifically, there are no asexual characters counted on broadcast for the 2024-25 season. Not terribly shocking.

Royce: Streaming is a separate category?

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And I feel like that is where most of the representation in the past has come from?

Courtney: Yes, overwhelmingly. Because then it goes on to summary of cable findings, there were no asexual characters counted on cable. “A consistent finding with previous year,” it states. So then we get to streaming findings. Here we do get a bullet point in the summary: “Two of the 372 LGBTQ characters, or 0.5%, are asexual. A decrease of two characters and a half a percentage point from the previous season. Those characters are Isaac on Heartstopper and Viktor on–” that’s it. The sentence ends there.

Royce: Can we get a quick list of Viktor’s?

Courtney: Well, here’s- here’s-

Royce: How’s it spelled?

Courtney: [laughs] Here’s what drove me batty about this. Because here, in my mind, I was already thinking it’s probably Viktor from Arcane because there was a lot of discourse about it. The creator specifically said he is asexual in interviews. So I’m sure that’s what they do. But here it just says ‘Viktor on–’. But in the same page, if you scroll down in full sentence paragraphs, in the same paragraph here, no less, we have: “Other series that will not be continuing at Netflix include Arcane, the popular series based on the League of Legends games, which included a prominent romance between lead characters Vi and Caitlyn.” No mention of that, Viktor. Further down in the same paragraph: “The final season of the Umbrella Academy aired in fall of 2024, which features Viktor and Klaus Hargreeves, a trans man and queer man respectively, who were two of the core group of siblings.” That Viktor is spelled the same way, they are both spelled with a K.

Courtney: So in the paragraph where you are talking about Arcane, the only name of Viktor that comes up is from the Umbrella Academy. And so I worry that someone reading this is going to think that Viktor Hargreeves is also asexual. But then I remembered from two years ago that random character on Umbrella Academy that they were asserting was ace, seemingly out of nowhere, and I was like surely, surely the ‘Viktor on–’ wasn’t meant to end with ‘the Umbrella Academy’ surely. But I didn’t know, I did not know! There are no other mentions of Arcane or Viktor or asexual in this entire section. You didn’t give asexual representation a bullet point in the full summary of the report. Not even under the section about, like, recommendations. “Here’s our recommendation to the industry about how to do better.” There wasn’t even a mention of maybe more asexual characters? Because they already have hardly any and the numbers are going down.

Courtney: The one bullet point you give us? You don’t finish the sentence! We have two characters, you can name them both. And tell us what shows they’re from. I am so flustered. And that’s another, like, you don’t even need an ace person advising on this report to read that sentence and point out, “Hey, that’s wrong. Let’s fix that.” So I had to once again get clever and try to use context clues from other sections of the report to confirm definitively, without a doubt, that Viktor from Arcane is the one that they meant and not Viktor Hargreeves from Umbrella Academy, for some reason or any– who– Maybe there’s another Viktor I haven’t heard about that some actor randomly on Instagram was like, “Yeah, totally ace,” for no reason.

Royce: If it is Viktor from Arcane, doesn’t this bring us back to our criticisms of the first year that we did this report audit? Because I thought that their methodology said off-screen confirmations don’t count.

Courtney: I think that was in last year’s, I don’t know if that was said in two years ago or not. Or maybe it was, and then I was criticizing them for breaking their own methodology.

Royce: Yeah, I think they stuck to their methodology a bit better in the next year, last year’s report.

Courtney: Well, that is a great point because I also looked at their methodology this year, and so it may be worth mentioning that they could be changing their process year to year on this. But they have an entire section called Representation of LGBTQ Characters with Disabilities. So I went down to this entire section on representation of LGBTQ characters with disabilities. Because surely, if they meant, “Viktor on Arcane is asexual,” he would be listed here. That was his whole thing. That was part of the reason why so many people in the fandom did not want him to be considered an asexual character. But he uses a mobility aid. He walks with a cane. He has chronic illness. So surely, surely he would be counted here. Well, they say there were nine LGBTQ characters counted who have a disability. That’s nine of 372, only two percent.

Courtney: The characters mentioned are Dr. Klak on Prime Video’s Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, who has anxiety. Bibi on Apple TV’s Bad Sisters, who has a vision impairment. Cris Miró on HBO Max’s Cris Miró, who is living with HIV. And Joyce on the PIt, who has sickle cell disease. The rest of the characters appear on Netflix series: Wilson on Bandidos, who is an amputee; Horace on Beauty in Black, who has cancer; Felix on Heartstopper is a wheelchair user; Franco in Nothing to See Here has cerebral palsy; and Amaya on the Dragon Prince who is Deaf. Where is Viktor? And now either– either that Viktor they mentioned is not the Viktor on Arcane, in which case I have no flipping clue what Viktor they’re talking about or why. Or they totally just forgot to even count him in the section on LGBTQ characters with disabilities. And I don’t know which is worse.

Courtney: I feel like the latter is maybe a little bit worse, because it kind of means a lot to have a disabled ace character in television. Because a) there are so few, and b) they are extremely divisive. And that is why we need more of this representation. And so he just didn’t get counted. They just– The media reporting organization, who is trying to say that there is not enough representation for these identities, forgot the asexual disabled character in their count explicitly calling attention to disabled queer characters. Ouch. Why? It really, really makes me wonder of all of the errors we saw two years ago, and these errors this year, we’re mainly only focusing on the asexual portions of this, because that’s what we know very well. How many other numbers are they messing up? Because we’re the tiniest slice of the pie chart. We should be the easiest one to get the count right on, I would think.

Courtney: And so then still not having a definitive answer for if this is Viktor in Arcane that they are counting, I did go to try to see what methodology was. And I learned that a character must appear in at least a third of episodes in a season to be considered recurring. TV movies, episodic anthologies with new casts each episode, and one-off episode film specials are not included. But how do they determine which characters count as queer and more specifically what type of queer? For example, I mean, just off the top of my head, Vi and Caitlyn you see them in a very sapphic situation here, but are they lesbians? Are they bisexual? Hard to say in shows where they don’t actually say a label. So I’ve always been very curious about how they determine those.

Courtney: So according to their methodology: [Reading] “Characters were quantified based on story elements present in the series itself. For example, explicitly stating their identity, discussing and/or showing their relationship or partner, romantic history, and/or expressing attraction, use of they/them pronouns, and more. The total number of LGBTQ regular and recurring characters was recorded for each series as well as those characters’ race, ethnicity, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. For the context of this report, where characters must be specifically quantified, those characters who have been explicitly confirmed as queer and who do not use any other label have been marked as such. Characters who interchangeably use queer with lesbian, gay, or bisexual+ label have been recorded under the most specific label applicable to them. Queer is only used to refer to sexual orientation in this study. GLAAD reserves the final right to define a character’s identity based on what is presented on screen. As well as through information provided by the network or streaming service. As of the publication of this study, the information found inside is accurate.”

Courtney: So vibes, I guess. GLAAD gets to pick. Did they pick Viktor from Arcane to be asexual? I don’t know. If they did pick Viktor from Arcane to be asexual, why did they not pick him to be disabled? I’m so flabbergasted. And please do better. Since that’s really all for the Where We Are On TV report. There are no other, you know, mentions of asexual. There’s no other characters mentioned. Viktor and Arcane are not mentioned in the same sentence as each other. And that’s like, that’s another problem, too. Because they mention Arcane, they mention Vi and Caitlyn in the paragraph where they’re saying this isn’t going to be renewed. So if we don’t have new characters entering to replace them, these numbers of queer representation are going to dwindle. Why would the asexual character not also get a mention there when we only have two? I’m sure there are people out there who would argue we only have one because I saw way too many arguments that Viktor is not asexual.

Courtney: Although I guess the one kind of interesting note here is the glossary of terms. Going in alphabetical order, we have asexual first, followed by bisexual. And I think it’s just a little funny how the definitions are so lightly different. Like asexual says it is an adjective used to describe people who do not experience sexual attraction, e.g. asexual person. A person can also be aromantic, meaning they do not experience romantic attraction. Parentheses: for more information visit asexuality.org, that’s AVEN. So asexual is an adjective, but the definition of bisexual is a person who has the capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions to those of the same gender or to those of another gender. But bisexual is a person, and asexual is an adjective?

Royce: What are the other sexualities mentioned as, like if you look at gay or lesbian or anything else there?

Courtney: Oh, those aren’t defined.

Royce: Oh, they just assume we already know.

Courtney: They just assume we already know.

Royce: I mean, that could be a case of not having one editor making sure all of the words align in how they’re described.

Courtney: Yeah, because we have: queer is an adjective, and transgender is an adjective. But why is bisexual a person and not an adjective? That’s the only one here that is listed. Which, like– linguistically speaking, like, yeah, you don’t hear people in the trans community saying, “I am a trans.” So, like, yeah, I’ll take that. That is how that is used. I have heard people say, “I’m bisexual” or, “I’m a bisexual.” That’s just, like, personal choice, I guess. But, like, asexual is the same way. Like, it can be used either– either way. Like, I absolutely hear people and have said myself, like, “I am an asexual.” Well, for that matter, I’ve heard people say, “I’m a queer,” too. But maybe for the purposes of a definition for a broader audience, they’re like, that’s a little too close to being, like, a potential slur. So I don’t know. I just think it’s odd that bisexual is the one where it’s, like, a person.

Royce: Well, I think all of those cases you just mentioned of people saying, “I am this thing” are just cases of people playing with language. Like, linguistically, it doesn’t really track. It’s just people trying to be funny with words.

Courtney: Right. Well, because people will say, like, “I’m a lesbian,” and that’s super normal. But if someone says, “I’m a gay,” they’re probably being silly. Like, they said that because it sounds silly. They probably are a gay, and it’s not incorrect to say that, but it sounds a little funnier than saying, “I’m gay,” you know? Just because of how we tend to hear those words used. But I also noticed that this asexual definition is the only one that gives like, “just go to this website to figure it out.” None of the other ones. It’s almost as if they anticipate that that is so baffling that they can’t possibly describe it in a single paragraph. Which, while technically true, you’re never gonna get all of the nuances of everything here, they kinda– it seems like they kinda tried harder with the bisexual one. Like here’s how it reads. I’m gonna read both of them side by side.

Courtney: The asexual one sounds like someone was trying to be as accurate as possible without getting something wrong and then referring somewhere else just in case. And the bisexual one just sounds like it was written by a passionate person who has, like, a personal stake in this definition. The bisexual one says: “A person who has the capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions to those of the same gender or to those of another gender. People may experience this attraction in differing ways and degrees over their lifetime. Bisexual people do not need to have had specific sexual experiences to be bisexual. In fact, they need not have had any romantic or sexual experience at all to identify as bisexual.” That’s a completely different tone than the asexual definition, right? That’s not just me making that up, that’s very different.

Courtney: So somewhat along the same lines, I do want to talk about their Studio Responsibility Index 2025. This is the one that talks about films. And this year, although still meager, might have been, like, proportionally an enormous year for asexual characters in film. Enormous only because there haven’t been any, ever! So when I read this, I was going to be really curious to see if there was any mention of asexual characters at all. Because we have Dear Luke, Love Me, which does count as a 2025 movie. This is one we haven’t talked about in depth yet, but we actually contributed to the initial funding of this. So we got to watch this, like, early. We watched it a while ago and didn’t feel like we could talk about it yet until it was more widely available, which now it is going to be very soon, if not already available at the time that this episode releases.

Courtney: And we also had, even though I think it’s technically a 2023 film, Slow has gotten a lot of attention this year. And when it was originally on, like, the movie circuit, like Sundance Film Festival, I wasn’t sure if it had been, you know, picked up by another distributor or what the situation was with there. But those two came to mind. But also I Saw the TV Glow I was really, really fascinated to see because that one is widely seen as a beloved example of trans representation. But when we watched it, the main character, who, although they never say the word trans, seems very much to be– also has a scene expressing what very much seems to be asexuality. And that is not nearly talked about as much as the trans representation in this film. But, you know, who knows? Who knows how they’re gonna count these things? I was curious.

Courtney: Now, immediately, Dear Luke, Love Me is out of the running because I looked into what films they were counting, and they only counted from 10 major motion picture studios. Those being A24, Amazon Studios, Apple TV, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros, Discovery, and their subsidiaries. So I recognized A24 as being the studio that came out with I Saw the TV Glow, so I was like, “Oh, let’s see here.” But this is what I found very, very fascinating. I Saw the TV Glow is in this report, not because of Owen, but because of the supporting character, Maddy. The report here says: “At one point, Maddy tells Owen that she’s only into girls when she thinks his interest is in her, not in their shared love of television.”

Courtney: And it even points out that: “Many have read this film as an allegory for Owen being a transgender person who refuses to accept that they are trans. And the director of the film has discussed this interpretation as well. This study tracks characters whose identity is clearly stated or shown, as these characters hold a unique power to connect more directly with audiences. As such, Owen was not counted as a transgender character in this tally.” Which is kinda shocking with how loosey goosey they’ve been with their Where We Are On TV report, and explicitly even stating this year that GLAAD just kinda gets the final say. But here in the report on films, they say that they are checking to see if the films pass the Vito Russo Test. I’m so sorry to everyone who’s been following us since the James Somerton saga who just got a jumpscared at the mention of the author of The Celluloid Closet.

Courtney: But they have their bullet points here. They say: “For a film to pass the Vito Russo Test, the following must be true: 1. The film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual+, transgender, and/or queer. 2. That character must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity (i.e. they are comprised of the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate straight/cisgender characters from one another). 3. The LGBTQ character must be tied to the plot in such a way that the character’s removal would have a significant effect, meaning the character is not there simply to provide colorful commentary, paint urban authenticity, or set up a punchline. The character must matter. And finally, 4. The LGBTQ character’s story must not be outwardly offensive. Avoids defaulting to well-known tropes or stereotypes with no further development. In films with multiple LGBTQ characters, at least one character must pass this point for the film to pass the test.”

Courtney: So according to them, by their reading of the Vito Russo Test, I Saw the TV Glow does pass, but only because of Maddy, not because of Owen. Which– The test itself, I understand wanting to quantify what meaningful and positive representation is and not defaulting to tokenism and stereotypes. So there definitely is a need for looking at this. But the very first bullet point, right off the bat, still, I think, leaves for a lot of gray area. The film contains a character that is identifiably queer? A lot of queer viewers of I Saw the TV Glow would be like, of course Owen is queer. That is an identifiably queer character. So it seems like it’s still up for interpretation if a label of lesbian or a label of gay or bi isn’t stated.

Courtney: It does seem like there’s still a very high bar to hit for them to consider it explicit enough. Which I don’t think is inherently a problem, but if you have two different people, you know, reviewing these things and making that judgment call on a year-to-year basis, like, some are going to have stricter standards than others, and that’s just how it’s gonna be. So I can’t be mad at them not considering Owen an ace character if they didn’t even consider that character to be trans. Because then at least it’s like, okay, well, they aren’t favoring one identity over the other or giving one a higher barrier of entry than the other to be considered identifiable. So at least it’s got that going for it. But the TV report doesn’t have anything bulleted this heavily or explicitly. And if they did, would Viktor on…?

Royce: Probably not.

Courtney: Even make the cut?

Royce: Probably not.

Courtney: So another year of reports come and gone. Still another aceless movie landscape. Still extremely underrepresented on TV. And we know Heartstopper is coming to a close, so we aren’t going to have Isaac on here for too much longer. We know Arcane has been canceled, so we aren’t going to have Viktor coming through again. They still don’t actually count aromantic characters. There’s just a throwaway– I don’t know if I can call it a throwaway if it’s in their definition, but it kind of is because they aren’t measuring it for different characters. They mention some ace people might be aromantic in the definition of asexuality, but we also know not every aromantic person is asexual. There are aromantic bisexual people. There are aromantic straight people. Like, I’m going to be very curious to see when and if they’re going to start counting aromantic as its own orientation within this.

Courtney: Or if they’re just going to shrug it off and say, “Oh, a romantic orientation isn’t a sexual orientation, and we only count sexual orientations.” But it seems odd to have a mention of, “Some aces are aro too, maybe, not all,” in a definition without actually exploring that further. Because Isaac, for an example, when his asexuality was first revealed in Heartstopper, a bunch of people were like, “Yes, hooray, an aroace character!” There was nothing about aromanticism in that first season where that was revealed of him. And I was like, no, we’re not gonna settle for that. We need something more explicit than this. And given who the creator of this series is, I have hope and faith that aromanticism will be explored further, and it was. But that character alone would have been a golden opportunity to start introducing a precedent for counting aromantic representation in here.

Courtney: Because you can have a season where you say Isaac on Heartstopper is asexual. This has been confirmed. We’re counting him as an ace character. Then when the next season comes out, he once again gets a count as an asexual character, but then we can add aromantic as well. And that would have been a golden opportunity to really dig into that in the report, to introduce to the audience who is reading this the difference between asexual and aromanticism and start counting how many ace characters are also aro and getting those statistics, as we hopefully continue to get more representation for both of these orientations, together and separate. But they unfortunately missed that golden opportunity. I don’t know what it’s going to take. I would be shocked and delighted if we got like an overtly aromantic character who is allosexual in something that is undeniably that identity.

Courtney: But given the current framework, I don’t even know if GLAAD would count them. I don’t know if they would. Or if they were like, aromantic homosexual. Like, would they just count that as a gay character and not count it as an aro character at all? I don’t know. I don’t know what they would do. But I think before we get to that point where we finally have a character that challenges them enough that they really need to dig into that, I would hope that they have somebody on staff or volunteering consulting in some way, perhaps to help them really interrogate what their framework is, what their goals are, and the best way for counting that meaningful representation going forward in the hopes that there will be more representation. Because as they say they claim to set out to do is to encourage more representation from the networks, from the studios, from the individual shows. And since they’re already doing, I think, a poor job of recommending a higher quantity and diversity of asexual characters, their recommendation for aromantic characters is completely absent.

Courtney: So that is going to be all for today’s episode, which means it is time for our featured MarketplACE vendor. Today a huge shout out to Team Vietnam Roller Derby, where you can get roller skate and roller derby themed merch curated by an aroace BIPOC derby skater. I am honestly obsessed. I love a good roller derby. I actually, kid you not, a little over a year ago, got my hands on a steeply discounted pair of roller skates. They are like checkerboard, black and white, super sick, and I started going to, like, adult roller skating lessons. I made a couple skate friends who were inviting me out to the rink. And I couldn’t do it as often as I would have liked to because on days when your POTS is acting up and you’re extremely dizzy already and struggling to stay upright? Probably shouldn’t add eight wheels under your feet. But on the days where I was feeling okay, I had so much fun. I came home one day and I was like, “Royce, I’m gonna go join a roller derby.” And I was told no. [laughs]

Royce: You know why that’s a bad idea.

Courtney: There are like two activities that I think you have explicitly forbade me from engaging in. One is roller derby. The other is climbing tall ladders.

Royce: I think you’re being a little dramatic with the word forbade.

Courtney: I have been forbidden!

Royce: We did have a conversation about your frequency of injuries and how a roller derby is not a good place for that.

Courtney: But I would love it so much. I would love it so much. I absolutely– Actually my grandma, when I was a kid, started taking me to the roller derby and that was like the only live sport that I think I ever went to just to watch as a kid. And I don’t know why, but I loved it. And I always fantasized about joining a roller derby. So I get to live vicariously through Team Vietnam. Love them so much. Check out their merch because this shop got added to our MarketplACE really shortly after I got my roller skate. So I was so jazzed because I was all about skating. There are these gorgeous stickers of skates with, like, a bouquet of flowers over them. And I was struggling so hard to decide which one I wanted. But I ended up going with these with this peach design, these peach blossoms coming out of like white and blue like china pattern skates. And if you look really closely, there is like a skull bead on the laces.

Courtney: It’s all my favorite things. A roller skate, flowers, skulls, china. I love it. It’s so good. I also got a crop top that says hustle. Not normally my style, but I have been doing a lot more Tai Chi these days. And as a result, I unfortunately need more clothes to exercise in. So I’m actually, kid you not, wearing that shirt right now because we sat down to record right after exercising today, and it’s really soft and very comfortable actually. From their About section on this Ko-fi page, where you can buy not only these but a variety of other things, definitely check them out: “Team Vietnam seeks to unite derby skaters around the world and provide a space for community among skaters who share the cultural experience of being Vietnamese. We aim to be an internationally competitive roller derby team with the goal of competing at Roller Derby World Cup events.”

Courtney: Which sounds so fun and amazing. I don’t know where Roller Derby World Cup events happen, but if it’s anywhere even remotely near me in the near future and Team Vietnam’s gonna be there, count me in. I will come to the audience and cheer you on. Links, as always, to find our featured MarketplACE vendor are going to be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box on YouTube. And I will also go ahead and pop in those two GLAAD Reports that we mentioned today, if you want to check them out for yourself. I will be delighted if by the time this episode goes live, if they’ve fixed the ‘Viktor on…’ But who knows? Maybe they won’t and we will just never know. The sad, sweet poetry of the asexual who has been forgotten. As always, thank you all so much for being here and we will talk to you all next time. Bye bye!