Asexuality in Manga 4: My Astilbe, Shades of A, & She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat

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 we are back for yet another Royce-led episode. So soon? What has this been, like, two weeks?

Royce: Well, I got all of these comics prepped I didn’t want to wait another 2 years and have to refresh myself on all of them again.

Courtney: Yeah, do you know how devastated the listeners would be if they found out that you were holding out on them again?! Unforgivable.

Royce: I’m sure they’d be fine.

Courtney: Unforgivable! So what do we have for today then? Lay it on me.

Royce: Well, I wanted to start by going back and talking a little bit more about She Loves to Cook And She Loves to Eat. I breezed through that pretty quickly last episode, mostly mentioning the, I guess, main protagonist, or the, the original protagonist, the person who we see first because it is a duo who is— takes up most of the screen time. Her friend was an overtly ace lesbian who brought asexuality explicitly into the conversation, and I didn’t really have a lot more to talk about than that. So I went back to see if I missed anything and did end up catching up on what’s currently released of the manga. And there were a couple of things that I had forgotten about or that I had missed. Both of our characters, Yuki and Totoko, did start to question the nature of relationship within, like, the half of the story that I had read before we talked about it last time. Chapter 15-ish, they do say that what they feel is more than just a friendship, but they aren’t sure how to classify it at that point.

Courtney: Ah, that sounds extremely queerplatonic of them.

Royce: Well, it ends up being more explicitly romantic, but that’s how it starts at least. There is also a bit of backstory here where Yuki, as an adolescent, is in a position where everyone else is sort of moving on and– moving on and dating. She searches online for the definition of romantic feelings and ends up taking a sexuality quiz.

Courtney: Oh my.

Royce: It comes back lesbian. I think it says ‘cisgender woman/lesbian’, but the shot of the laptop is zoomed in, so I can’t— I couldn’t tell the edges of some of those words.

Courtney: So she got her internet diagnosis.

Royce: Right. But then she searches lesbian and a bunch of porn comes up and she—.

Courtney: Oh no!

Royce: She immediately shuts the laptop.

Courtney: Oh no, poor thing! [laughs] So lesbian is only half the story. The internet quizzes is interesting because that is increasingly becoming more of a trope in these ‘understanding your sexuality’ type stories.

Royce: But there is a little bit more around the figuring out of the relationship, whether this is a queerplatonic sort of thing or just a queer romance sort of thing. Yuki does say at one point, quote, “I totally want to be with Kasuga,” the last name of the other character. We do get to see some of Kasuga’s family life. It’s pretty rough. And it’s mentioned while thinking through these things that they know that, like, found family is a thing that exists, but they say that it’s not really a common concept over where they’re at in Japan, that there are a lot of more traditional family values. But Kasuga says that she wants Yuki to be her family, and then she sits on that for a moment and thinks, “I want us to be together.” And then does say, “Well, I’m in love with her.” Takes a moment to get there, but that is kind of how their relationship gets established.

Royce: I mentioned in the past episode that I saw an author comment of them both being demi. I did not see any written evidence of that in the manga itself.

Courtney: But it was like, one is demisexual and the other is demiromantic, or...?

Royce: That’s what I thought I saw, but I don’t remember where I saw it. And if it was like on a wiki or something like that, you can’t always trust, you know. I didn’t follow the sources back. I’m not completely sure. I think that was maybe the intent. That might not matter for ace rep because one of their best friends is explicitly ace.

Courtney: Right. I do like the idea because it’s– it’s not so oversaturated yet that I am bothered by the online quiz sections in, I guess, more broadly queer rep in general. I mean, it’s usually not aces who are doing that. I mean, the really big high-profile one recently I can think of was the a quiz in Heartstopper to discover bisexuality.

Royce: Oh, right. Because didn’t we see, like, shots of, like, a phone or a laptop as they were searching it?

Courtney: Yeah, and so it’s, it’s not so oversaturated yet. I think since it is becoming more common, that’s something I’m going to start thinking about as I see more. But there is a very refreshing addition to that concept that I think enriches it when you get into things like asexuality, aromanticism, even the gray areas, even the demi areas. Because a lot of those quizzes might not have all of those nuances accounted for. And so I like the concept of someone doing a quiz and being told like, yeah, you’re a lesbian, and then trying to take that research further, looking into lesbians, and then being like, “Whoa, wait a second, this doesn’t seem totally correct.” Like, we already have in this very story an asexual lesbian, so the concept of lesbian is not just one thing. There can be different ways to be a lesbian. There can be additional orientations that can go alongside the label and identity of lesbian. But I don’t— don’t know, I like that. I think that is a more interesting use of the internet quiz than someone who takes the quiz and is like, “You’re right, that is who I am, and I just have to accept it now.”

Royce: Speaking of the other character who is a lesbian ace, a little bit further I took note of a comment she made towards the main character saying, “As someone who’s known she liked women since childhood, I can’t help but think of her as a baby lesbian learning to stand on her own two feet.”

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: Just a bit— very new, just self-discovery later in life. But anyway, to follow the food theme here, the ace friend Yako specifically doesn’t cook.

Courtney: But does she eat?

Royce: She does eat, but it’s all microwave meals and disposable dishware. And so there– there’s a bit of a house party where she invites everyone over because she got a wide variety of, like, new kinds of instant meals or like microwavable meals, and they were going to try all of them and compare. And they bring the fourth character, a new character who is a new neighbor at the main pair’s apartment complex named Sina, and they don’t eat. [Courtney gasps] They have a type of phobia characterized by a fear of eating with or around others.

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: From childhood family trauma. It’s all family trauma.

Courtney: So they don’t eat. Do they cook?

Royce: No.

Courtney: [gasps] Do they know what manga they’re in?

Royce: They will have drinks while around people, but no, no solid food.

Courtney: Do they elaborate on what this family trauma is, or do they just say family trauma?

Royce: They— I believe it was that they grew up in a household where they were forced to eat, pretty much, when they didn’t want to or when they weren’t hungry or foods that they didn’t like, and that built up a lot of anxiety about other people and food.

Courtney: Okay. Okay, so it was explained.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: All right. I didn’t necessarily need the whole story, but there was a little part of me where it’s like, if they don’t explain what this trauma is and just leave it at, “I don’t eat in front of people because of family trauma,” I was going to have thoughts. Because depending on how it’s presented, either that’s trying to be comedy and it’s kind of camp, or it then leaves the readers to be like, “But what, what was it? What?” And I feel like a certain percentage of readers have the type of brains that are going to take it to, like, the worst possible extremes, and I wasn’t sure how I was gonna feel about that as a writing choice. So glad, glad to hear it was explained.

Royce: Well, the next big shift in the plot, or in the relationship, comes from Kasuga. She completely cuts off her family. They’re trying to invoice her for growing up, like college, utility bills, staying at home.

Courtney: Oh no.

Royce: They’ve been separate for a while, but I believe there’s a couple of events where they’re like trying to get her to come back home and help out. Maybe a relative is sick or something like that. But they’re trying to just use her for money or labor, and she fully cuts them off but starts getting like actual invoices. They know where she lives and her phone number, so she decides the solution is to change phone number, move to a new apartment, just completely separate. And the two of them use that as a reason to move in together in a new place together, which brings up a whole big discussion about housing discrimination and how to classify their relationship.

Courtney: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that housing discrimination is mentioned because that is such a real world thing that we have talked about politically. And obviously we are in a different country, but.

Royce: Well, I took note of a line here that was just: “Good old Japan clinging to heteromarital supremacy at all costs.”

Courtney: [sighs] Japan, why are you clinging to–

Royce: Heteromarital supremacy?

Courtney: Heteromarital supremacy. I’m very disappointed in you.

Royce: But there’s a lot of searching, not a lot of luck, until they finally find a very queer-friendly apartment.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: The person who is interviewing them is queer themselves.

Courtney: Amazing.

Royce: And they understand all of it.

Courtney: Big gay apartment building. Let’s go.

Royce: They actually gave them some tips in how— oh, I forget exactly what it was. It was like there was a way to file things through like some kind of third party so it kept them more anonymous or something like that to avoid other aspects of discrimination. But it was interesting. That was a whole big part of the manga was the housing situation.

Courtney: Oh, I love that. I love that they’re depicting that! Are the apartments they’re looking at— do they, do they have nice kitchens? I hope they do for them.

Royce: They have nice enough kitchens to be functional. I mean, they didn’t really have a lot of choice, they found one apartment complex.

Courtney: I know, but–

Royce: They like their new place.

Courtney: Their– their options are already limited, but she loves to cook and she loves to eat, and I just want them to have a really nice kitchen.

Royce: So there’s honestly not a lot more than that. I think there are 48 chapters out. This is still in progress. I do have a few more character notes, I guess, on the sort of other side of people not getting it, or perhaps just the split side. Yako, the ace character, is publicly out as a lesbian at work and to her parents, but is annoyed when her parents keep asking her if she’s single and when she’s going to bring a girl over.

Courtney: Relatable.

Royce: The other character, Sena, the one with the phobia about eating with people, is I think non-binary. I think that’s pretty clear or explicit. It’s not like the word isn’t used, but there was an early panel soon after they they were, were introduced – it may have even been in like a bonus chapter – where they were saying like, “Imagine yourself as a cookie. The shape of that cookie can change over time.” And they were showing like cut-out cookies out of dough because this entire manga is food themed. But they also said like, “Well, some people don’t have a clear form,” and it showed Sena taking just like a uniform square out of a pan of dough, without any, like, shape to it. And in a later chapter, they also say that they have felt that they don’t fit in anywhere and don’t really understand what that means themselves.

Courtney: I like it. It’s cute. It’s got a theme, a strong theme. It’s got a diversity of characters within the spectrum. It’s got—

Royce: Particularly for such a small cast.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying too. That’s, that’s incredible. And depicting, like, real-world issues that queer people, like, deal with still and regularly, including ace people, which is very under-discussed in the broader queer community. So I love seeing that depicted in fiction.

Royce: Okay, that’s that. I don’t know how often She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat gets updated. I assume it will be going for quite some time. Who knows if we’ll talk about it again sometime in the future.

Courtney: Who knows, we’ve already talked about it twice in short proximity.

Royce: Well, the next one I have here is called My Astilbe. Astilbe is a type of flower. It’s a type of flower that I may be planting in a few months depending on if the seeds grow.

Courtney: How big is your plant spreadsheet these days?

Royce: I mean, I think the better question is how big is the seed order that I need to put out in a week or two going to be? It’s reasonable.

Courtney: Reasonable. [chuckles] But there will be astilbes.

Royce: Hopefully.

Courtney: Hopefully. So tell me about My Astilbe.

Royce: So this is a one-shot.

Royce: It’s a rather lengthy one-shot. It says on the cover, the two main characters are holding an astilbe flowers, saying, “What is normal, what isn’t normal.” And a little blurb just says: 89 pages of a complicated human drama about the mind and way of life. It opens up in a bar. The main character, Aoi, has never had a boyfriend, and her friends are trying to hook her up.

Courtney: Of course. Against her will, or is she pretty neutral towards it, or even excited about the concept? What’s the vibe here?

Royce: They’re being a little pushy. They’re saying, “Why don’t you go try to talk to someone? You’ve got this.” And she says, “Yeah, I’ll... I’ll try. I want... a boyfriend, I think.”

Courtney: I think? [laughs] “I’ve been told I want a boyfriend.”

Royce: Panel or two later, she says, “I don’t really get the concept of love. The thought of looking at men as objects makes my blood run cold.” And she chickens out from going to actually talk to someone. But right after that, she runs into our secondary main character, Kanade, who shares a drink with her. Our main character asks, like, “Are you sure? Do you want to share a drink with a woman?” Because everyone in this bar seems to be coupling up. And she says, “Who cares? Meeting men and women doesn’t have to be like that, you know?” And very shortly thereafter, she gets the whole story. Her friends are trying to hook her up. She says, “Your friends should really mind their own business.” Asks who the main character likes— men, women, anyone. She explains that that’s not really how she works. She can’t really explain it. It’s weird. And Kanade says, “It’s not weird. You must also be aromantic and asexual, huh?”

Courtney: [gasps] Is– is this the queer elder-ex-machina?

Royce: Uh, I mean, they’re around the same age, I think.

Courtney: Yeah, yeah, but I use that loosely.

Royce: Yeah, yeah.

Courtney: The mysterious–

Royce: The more experienced one.

Courtney: The mysterious ace elder who comes around at exactly the right moment to explain to the protagonist what asexuality and/or aromanticism is.

Royce: Pretty much. I’m gonna describe this a little bit out of order. It is a one-shot.

Courtney: You know, I should probably not hate on this trope as much as I do. Because it actually has been quite astonishing how many times I have been in a conversation with, like, a stranger or an acquaintance or just a group of people, most of whom I’m not familiar with, and the topic of asexuality does come up. And as soon as someone learns that I am ace and very experienced in this orientation and culture and community, I get a lot of questions. And sometimes, I can always tell when those questions are pointed enough that this person might be contemplating this orientation for themself. And sometimes by the end of that conversation, the other person is left going, “Well, fuck, I am asexual, huh?” So these conversations do actually happen in real life, and I shouldn’t hate the trope because it’s actually kind of realistic.

Courtney: I actually had a conversation recently about queerplatonic relationships. Someone said something very misguided about queerplatonic relationships in the same room that I was in, so of course, my spidey senses were tingling. I heard it from like across the room, lots of people around. But the moment like QPR is mentioned, laser focused, pop over that conversation. And like by the end of the conversation, the person who had originally said something very misguided about this type of relationship was like, “Oh fuck, am I in a QPR? Is– is that what I have with this person who’s in my life right now?” So like, the— these things do happen more often than you would expect. Although I suppose for most people who are having that first lightbulb conversation with someone who knows more than them about this orientation and community, like, that only happens to them once. Being the queer elder who introduces the concepts to people? I’m having like a lot of those conversations. Dozens.

Royce: So to back up this scene, I’m going to jump later towards, I guess, around the climax of this manga, then walk backwards a little bit. But where Kanade’s life has gone, she has just been looking for someone special for a long time, and she figured out her own orientation while dating a girl. Things started to get physical, and the girl who she was with pulled back and said, you know, “I don’t want to do this with someone who isn’t into it,” and clocked her as aroace. From that point on, Kanade has been struggling with this, wondering “Is that actually how I am, or maybe I just haven’t met the right person?” So she decided, “I’m gonna meet 1,000 people and talk to them all.” And people of all ages, men and women, and then maybe someone will be different. And the main character was her 1,000th person [Courtney gasps] and was also the first aroace person. They’re presumably the first ace-spec person they ran into.

Courtney: Oh wow. Kind of, kind of dig that as a concept.

Royce: They continue talking, they start to get closer. The main character says that life has felt like she’s been stuck standing on the ground while everyone is off flying, but this new information is starting to make her feel lighter. But as it continues on, the situation gets a little more complicated. The main character does start developing a new feeling for a guy she meets. Which is both surprising and confusing to her considering the recent revelations. And this ends up being very upsetting to Kanade because she thought, “Oh, I finally found someone who is like me,” and it turns out the story isn’t exactly that way. Whether the other friend is actually maybe more demi or something, it just isn’t— her developing romantic feelings for someone hits really hard. The two of them have some big arguments about that.

Courtney: Oof.

Royce: But again, this is the one-shot. It’s pretty short. It does end with them maintaining a friendship into the future, and they say that special friendships of the like are also a form of happiness.

Courtney: Ow, that sounds like an emotional roller coaster for a one-shot.

Royce: Uh-huh.

Courtney: Like, there’s a lot of ups and downs and misdirections there. Huh. I like the note it ends on though. Also a form of happiness.

Royce: Oh, and the— I just pulled up the final page. The symbolic meaning of astilbe is a promise to wait for someone.

Courtney: Oh, okay! I’m glad you explained that because I had already forgotten the title of this oneshot.

Royce: The plants are also hardy, which is exactly why I want to plant some, and that that can represent the power and endurance of love.

Courtney: Love! So what you’re saying is it’s actually going to be really romantic when you plant astilbes for me this year?

Royce: Sure.

Courtney: [laughs] Sometimes I– I actually don’t. We’re never gonna do it, but every now and then I kind of wish this was a video podcast just so the listeners could see the look on your face that you just gave me.

Royce: The “I’m trying to think of how to answer this” look. I’m hoping to plant a lot of things, and I’m hoping the outside of our house looks a lot better, but that depends on a lot of factors like seeds germinating and me actually knowing what I’m doing.

Courtney: You’re learning some stuff. You’ve been planting more and more things over the years.

Royce: But I haven’t tried to space out garden areas from tiny little seedlings and had them grow into that correctly.

Courtney: Well, yeah, that’s hard, but we’re trying.

Royce: So I think during the last episode I mentioned that this is probably going to be a three-parter. I do have two more manga that I have completed. They’re both a little lengthy. We can talk about them next time. But for now, I think we will slip in the old recording of Shades of A from late 2022.

Courtney: This is terrifying.

Royce: Why?

Courtney: Well, because it’s an old recording that is only now being released. Like, I don’t know, every now and then we’ll get, like, an email from someone that’s like, “Hey, I’m listening to your episode from 2022,” and I’m like, “What did I say in it?” [laughs] I don’t know. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure all of my opinions and words and thoughts age, like, a fine wine 100% of the time.

Royce: Well, let’s find out. So, Shades of A, a comic posted on Discord Comics written by Tab Kimpton. It’s actually two comics, Shades of A and Shades After. Altogether they’re around 260, 270 pages, but they, at least in the beginning, loosely follow the Fifty Shades of Grey series, which is a franchise that I’m not really familiar with. Basically the only things that I’ve heard about it are the criticisms from the kink community.

Courtney: Yeah, I believe I bought that book at one time just because I actually wanted to have my own opinion on what everyone was talking about. But I never read it. And I think I’ve shared a story before of when I first moved to Kansas City, and I like tried to join a book club, and it was like all elderly women and then like young adult Courtney. Which I was not mad about, but at the first meeting we were trying to figure out what book to read and they were all like, “I’ve heard so many good things about this book. This new Fifty Shades of Grey book.” And I was like, I don’t know if this book club is for me.

Royce: So this is a webcomic. The writer is in the UK, I believe, which means it is a bit of a different format than the manga that I’ve been reviewing recently because these were individual pages that were being posted every now and then on whatever the release cycle was instead of entire chapters. And so one interesting thing about this format is that at the bottom of each page, which is each an individual post, there will always be a little bit of detail. And sometimes it’s something simple— a joke, a couple of words— sometimes it’s a description of the scene and what they’re trying to convey. And I found this really helpful because I know nothing about the series.

Courtney: [laughs] So it was actually explaining, like, what the references were.

Royce: There were some, yes.

Courtney: That’s helpful.

Royce: And also their surprise or frustration that this silly little parody that they started had been going on for so long and they were so invested in it.

Courtney: [laughs] You know, sometimes your own projects sneak up on you. What can I say?

Royce: So this comic starts out with a guy, Anwar, sitting at a computer saying, “So I went to a fetish club last night. I know, right?” And right off the bat, the main character of the Fifty Shades media franchise. Her name is Ana, so that’s where the naming similarity comes from.

Courtney: Oh, okay.

Royce: They had gotten roped in by their friend JD, who really wanted to go to this fetish club but wanted someone non-judgmental to accompany them, quote, “just in case all the scary deviant people are mean to them.”

Courtney: Oh...

Royce: This was said in jest because Anwar is like, “Why did you invite me?” Which— JD is visibly queer. They look non-binary. And I think part of this discussion between them and Anwar is, why didn’t you invite some of your more, like, openly queer friends to this? And they said, “Well, you’re the least judgmental friend of mine.”

Courtney: Wow.

Royce: They get into the club and are told that there’s a whipping demonstration going on right now, and they can catch the end of it if they’re quick. And they head up and they see a topless woman being whipped across the breasts in the middle of this fetish club. And narrating this, Anwar says, “I’m gonna put this in my most bizarre evening of my life box.” [Courtney laughs] The guy running the session is explaining the technique behind whipping and mentions a safe way to practice, and also says that if you’re going to try to learn this using an actual whip and a person, someone experienced should be in the room at the time as this is being done. So the whole thing is meant to be informative.

Royce: Afterwards, Anwar is getting drinks, interacting with a few people, struggling a little with how to address people in this environment. They’re having some problems speaking to a bunch of people they don’t know in a setting where pretty much everyone is dressed in unconventional attire, whether it’s something fetish-related or whatever. And Anwar is clearly very anxious. During one conversation – this is pretty early in the comic, this is like page 8 – they say as an introduction, “I’m Anwar, dragged here by a friend, predominantly asexual and terrified of everyone.”

Courtney: [laughs] That’s great. That’s a wonderful line.

Royce: But they, they do end up having a good time, mainly because they make friends with a man named Chris who is a self-described transvestite known in these clubs in these areas as Mr. Red Vixen. And this character, his name is Chris Slate. The character in Fifty Shades is Christian Grey. Again–

Courtney: Slate gray. I see, I see what they did there.

Royce: But shortly after this first scene at the fetish club, it shows Anwar at work at a hardware store, and Chris comes in in normal day-to-day masculine attire to pick something up after work. And the two of them have a sort of somewhat embarrassed conversation, just meeting each other outside of the fetish environment. And the notes for this was a bit interesting because the author said that this scene reflected something from the Fifty Shades franchise. The shopping basket that Chris was carrying was an exact copy of the shopping basket that Christian Grey from the Fifty Shades series was purchasing at a hardware store. And that was the point where I really started to read these author notes to see the parallels. There was another note here that was critiquing Fifty Shades’ use of masking tape for bondage because masking tape was in the basket. And the author says, “I tested this with a friend once and she broke out of it faster than you can say inefficient bondage.”

Courtney: [laughs] Oh, okay.

Royce: But time continues and Anwar and Chris spend some more time together. There’s a page where they say, “I think I accidentally had a first date.”

Courtney: Mm, relatable.

Royce: The two of them get closer and it’s clear that there’s at least some kind of interest between the two of them. And again, during this point, the author’s notes mention that it’s at least loosely tracking the plot points of Fifty Shades of Grey, albeit in a much healthier fashion. There are some points where on a particular page they say, “We’re roughly this page in the book.” But it becomes pretty clear to Anwar that something is going on here, and they start to get a little upset. They can tell that they like Chris in some way, but they also know that Chris is into at least some amount of kink, and Anwar says he only wants to cuddle. While hanging out with their friend JD, they also mentioned that the line between best friend and what they want in a relationship occasionally blur a bit, and they have trouble telling the difference between the two. And this just gives us a bit of perspective into what they want, where their boundaries are, that sort of thing.

Courtney: Also a little quoiromantic. A little WTF-romantic. What the f-romantic.

Royce: Time moves on and Anwar goes through a rough period where they’re worried about their exams that are coming up, and they one night get really, really drunk and they just wake up and they’re in Chris’s bedroom.

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: And a flashback reveals that they didn’t do anything, and the author’s notes show a much creepier Fifty Shades parallel scene. But Anwar had drunkenly called Chris. Chris came and got them, but Anwar was so drunk that he couldn’t give directions to his own house.

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: So Chris just took him back home and was very adamant about nothing happening that night.

Royce: But around that time, the two of them get a little awkward. They sit down to try to clarify the nature of the relationship and, you know, set boundaries and expectations. Chris is confused about where exactly Anwar stands being ace and like where their personal boundaries are. And Anwar is confused about where Chris stands as, quote, “A straight guy who likes ladies who tie him up.”

Courtney: [laughs] That’s an orientation.

Royce: And Chris says, “Well, yeah, there’s that, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy romance.” And so the two of them talk things out a little bit and try to come to something that works for the two of them in their relationship. And in Anwar’s thoughts, he just says, “I asked for what I wanted and I actually got it.”

Courtney: Wow.

Royce: And it’s funny because this sort of wants and needs and boundaries discussion runs parallel to a scene in Fifty Shades where Christian Grey writes basically a dom/sub contract for Ana to sign.

Courtney: I see.

Royce: The one issue that will continue to come back up with Anwar and Chris is that Chris still wants to see a dom, and they try to navigate that. They talk about it a bit. Anwar is not into kink at all and is trying to figure out what their role in this relationship should be, but they kind of keep falling back on the dynamics of a traditional monogamous relationship in a way that doesn’t work here. And they’ve—

Courtney: That’s just kind of out of habit?

Royce: It seems like it. There’s definitely some, like, feelings of self-worth or jealousy here where they want to be able to, you know, provide for their partner, to do something that their partner likes, but also knowing that this really isn’t for them. And so they go back and forth on that a lot throughout this series. And there is at one point where they even bring up, “Well, maybe I can try taking over this role a bit.” And Chris, pretty bluntly – this is a little ways into, like, an argument – is like, “No offense, but I’m not letting an unexperienced baby dom who’s not even into it anywhere near me.”

Courtney: Whoa!

Royce: Because some of their play is pretty intense. They mentioned that it’s not consistent, but they do do blood play at times.

Courtney: Oh!

Royce: And so that is something where–

Courtney: That could be dangerous.

Royce: As far as they’re going, it could be very dangerous. And Anwar, thinking back on his own experiences, says, “I’ve had sex before and it was all right.” They mentioned that they like making their partner happy, but a problem always arises where the other person wants Anwar to like it as much as they do.

Courtney: Ah, yep, there it is. That, that’s actually an issue that I wish more people in the Ace Community would talk about, because especially on like forums where people are asking for advice or trying to talk to other people, there’s so often this like, “Oh, I’m ace but my partner’s not and my partner wants to have sex, what should I do?” The, like, two biggest responses I at least used to see when I was looking at this a couple years ago pretty regularly – I hope things have changed a bit since then – is like, “Well, aces can have sex and and you can still enjoy doing it for the sake of your partner,” which is not gonna work for every ace anyway. Or you could try non-monogamy, which is also not gonna work for every ace. But people rarely talk about the allo partner in these situations.

Courtney: Because I have actually spoken to many an ace who, whether they wanted to, or often if they didn’t want to, have tried to do things for the sake of their partner and for the sake of the relationship, and that still wasn’t enough for the partner. Because the partner also, like, wants to feel just, like, viscerally desired. And it’s like, if that underlying feeling isn’t there, there are a lot of allos who will feel, possibly unfairly so, but like put off, or they’ll feel really self-conscious about it. Or they’ll feel either like there’s still something wrong with their partner, or sometimes that there’s something wrong with them. And sometimes that can get really manipulative where they’ll be like, “Why don’t you see me this way?” And of course this is not gonna be every allo in a relationship with an ace. But I never hear people talk about that dynamic. And that is a thing that happens. I have experienced that in past relationships with allos. I’ve spoken to many aces who have. So I’m really—

Royce: I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned more because I think it’s a very common occurrence in ace-allo relationships.

Courtney: Yeah, and the, the talking points are usually like, aces can have sex, and sometimes aces even like having sex, and sometimes aces will have sex for the sake of their partner. But I rarely see people take it a step further where it’s like, that’s not the end-all be-all. That’s not the end of every story. And that’s not a solution in every relationship. And so that’s really cool to see this depicted. Already there are so many things that we don’t get in like mainstream ace representation. We have the kink component, we have that component, and an ace of Color.

Royce: And an ace of Color. I haven’t really mentioned much about the characters. I was about to clarify a couple of things. I believe Anwar is— I don’t think it’s exactly said what his ethnicity is, but he’s Arabic in some way. His family is Islamic.

Courtney: Just doesn’t necessarily say like he’s from Pakistan, he’s from–

Royce: Yeah, well–

Courtney: Like, doesn’t give a country necessarily?

Royce: It isn’t talked about much. Now that you say it, I think that Anwar’s family is from Pakistan.

Courtney: Oh, I called it!

Royce: But I can’t quite remember, so I want to put that detail with an asterisk. I just now wasn’t able to search for this character and find anything on them or land on a page.

Courtney: Too hard to look up real quick, right?

Royce: And it’s— there are some scenes with his family, and I think it’s mentioned like once or twice.

Courtney: Which is amazing, I can’t think of any other ace characters with that identity. None that I’ve come across yet, and certainly none in mainstream ace media rep. So that’s another huge bonus to look at smaller independent projects.

Royce: And for the other characters, one thing about Chris— there is a noticeable age gap between Chris and Anwar. And I assume this was to parallel. I assume that the Fifty Shades parallel characters, there was also an age gap between them. I don’t know that for sure.

Courtney: Yeah, that could be. That would sound consistent with past criticisms I have heard.

Royce: But getting back to where we left off, the conversation between Anwar and Chris concludes. They discuss their boundaries in the relationship. Chris is going to continue to see their established dom when they need to. It is something that they feel that they need to do periodically, and it’s something that they have tried to repress or stop doing in the past, and it led to the failure of their previous marriage.

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: And they talk that through. They discuss basically what happens during those sessions and what the rough frequency is going to be and agree to those terms. And then immediately after that, Anwar makes Chris watch Mean Girls because he’s never seen it. [Courtney laughs] Chris is a little older and has a copy of Mean Girls, but it’s his teenage daughter’s movie.

Courtney: Wow.

Royce: So a bit of time passes, and the next big conflict that happens, happens when Anwar goes back to the kink club. He meets up with Chris’s dom and talks to her a little bit and mostly has a good time until he spots his friend JD playing out in the open with a couple that they’ve gotten involved with. Since the first night that the two of them came here together, they met a couple and a polyamorous relationship began between the three of them. And it’s revealed around this time— it hadn’t been said much up to this point— but JD is also Anwar’s ex.

Courtney: Oh...

Royce: And this sends him on a bit of a spiral because Anwar’s sexuality was part of the conflict, part of the reason why they broke up, and they ended up maintaining a friendship afterwards but it’s clear that there are still some feelings left over from that point. And so seeing their ex performing a scene out in the open with their new partners has Anwar feeling really insecure about his own relationship and whether or not Chris is actually happy and getting everything that they need. And so he runs over to Chris’s house and tries to rush into having sex with Chris. And Chris is very concerned about where all this is coming from and what state of mind he’s in and all of that. Anwar goes on to mention that he doesn’t understand how to figure out the dynamics of a relationship that they both want and also doesn’t involve sex, and is worried about not being able to provide what Chris wants or needs.

Courtney: It’s good that as a partner they, like, noticed that this was completely out of character and treated that with concern and curiosity rather than, like, “Well, heck yeah, finally, let’s do this.”

Royce: Yeah. Chris handles all of this pretty calmly. Anwar, at one point, who is pretty down, is very much in his own head, asks why Chris is even bothering with him. And Chris says that he isn’t all about sex, he just wants to be wooed. And Anwar is like, “I can woo you, I grew up on ’90s rom-coms, I’ve been preparing for this my entire life.”

Courtney: [laughs] Beautiful!

Royce: So that is a rough moment for Anwar, but they do end up coming to a reconciliation. And not long after that, we get some flashbacks of Anwar and JD’s relationship and how it ended. And JD at that point in time was and still is a very sexual person. And this goes back to some of the other things that Anwar has already mentioned, where they were perfectly fine doing things for a partner, but as soon as that came around— back around them and they were supposed to be enjoying what was going on, conflict arose.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And so their relationship had ended in a not very well communicated fight that Anwar still kind of regrets, where they were trying to figure out what was going on and how they felt, but they just kind of stormed off and cut off the conversation before actually resolving things. And so there’s— there are still some feelings about that situation, and that’s why that scene in the club hit them so much. But anyway, the first series, Shades of A, ends with Anwar and JD having a conversation. They both kind of agree, like, “Hey, this might not be the best place for you to just show up to unannounced. We should communicate better, particularly if something like that is going to be out in the open.”

Royce: JD does fess up that they could have changed plans. They could have taken this scene into a private room for Anwar’s benefit, but they also had some unresolved issues from the past relationship, and that’s why they did intentionally have the scene out in the open. And they have a conversation about all of that and have a real talk about what boundaries they need to have to maintain their friendship. And that is where that ends, and the story picks up after a time gap in Shades After. So in the next series, we see Anwar going on about his life. The early panels have him mentioning that he’s met other aces online. It shows posts from AVEN. It’s mentioned in the author’s notes that they basically took the forums of AVEN, kind of copied the style of that, and, you know, didn’t put the details for the usernames or anything like that.

Courtney: Oh, so they are direct one-to-one, like these are actually comments on an AVEN post somewhere?

Royce: Yes. Okay. And right next to the forums for AVEN are advertisements for how to, like, increase your penis size or things like that, because that’s the nature of the internet.

Courtney: Yeah, is anyone surprised about that? Like, especially if the internet algorithm gods have picked up on the fact that you are asexual, you’re gonna start getting ads for Addyi for the– for the female libido. Pill for Viagra for– I don’t, I don’t know, what would you call these? Penis pills. [laughs]

Royce: I mentioned this scene to you a while back after I read it, and I couldn’t come up with a word for it, and I said penis pills, and you just cracked up.

Courtney: Okay, so that, that’s why that was buzzing around in my head. Because of course! Facebook was always like the worst for me, like the day I signed up, or I joined like asexual groups on Facebook years ago, I started just– every single ad on my feed was about, you know, “This can fix your libido.” It’s like, oh my god. Terrible. That was actually something. ’Cause we recently decided to turn on monetization on our YouTube channel. And that was one like major concern we had, ’cause we’re like, we don’t want all of our listeners to just be getting ads for sex pills. And we know that that’s highly likely to happen with any ace content. So Royce, like, went through ad options to, like, deselect those as things that could come up.

Royce: Yeah, the AdSense options are pretty granular, and that was one specific thing that I found that could be unchecked. But anyway, at this point in time, Anwar has graduated from school. It says that he didn’t get exactly what he wanted, but that it was time to move on. Chris and JD both attend the graduation ceremony along with Anwar’s family. It is shown that JD brought Chris along by surprise, assuming that he would want to be there. But at this point, Chris is introduced to Anwar’s family as Anwar’s boyfriend, to the surprise of most of them, except one, like, cousin or uncle who’s like, “Called it.” And so there’s a flashback that shows before this is resolved, it shows Anwar upset, having broken up with JD recently, and his mom asks what’s wrong, and he kind of comes out in that moment saying he didn’t want to have sex. And his mom just kind of brushes it off as a religious thing. They’re Muslim. And she says, “Oh, it would– would be okay for you to do this.” Like, that’s, it’s not going to be considered a sin or something like that. And we see Anwar thinking, “She just doesn’t understand, and I’m not sure if she ever will.”

Courtney: Mm, sure.

Royce: So they snap back to the graduation scene, and there is a bit of a fight about Chris. Not about their gender or the orientation, but the fact that Chris is significantly older than Anwar and has kids of his own. And so they storm out. The argument continues. Anwar’s mom accuses him of dating Chris for money. Sex comes up again with her assuming that that has to be happening, that has to be why this relationship is happening.

Courtney: Of course, why else would it happen?

Royce: Because of the age gap. And Anwar comes out again, more firmly this time, saying he doesn’t want to have sex, that’s not happening. But his mom responds with, “Well, just because you don’t want sex doesn’t mean you should have such low standards.”

Courtney: Whoa.

Royce: And so there’s a scene with JD later where JD apologizes for being the one that brought Chris to the graduation in the first place. And the two of them talk about JD’s coming out experience. And they say that, well, basically they were told it’s just a phase enough times that they now have a mutual understanding to not understand each other with their family.

Courtney: Ah, okay.

Royce: In another scene, it shows Anwar’s mother grasping at straws trying to explain this. I believe this scene is like in her kitchen alone. She’s wondering if she did something wrong when Anwar was a kid and then lamenting how he won’t be able to have any children. And at the same time, Anwar alone is shown thinking it turns out you can fail your parents in far worse ways than bad grades. Because college and exams and everything was on his mind recently. And so he goes online to try to talk to some other people and see if the community can help, and makes a post about accidentally outing myself at graduation, only to be told quote, “Like you even need to come out as ace. Some of us have real problems.” [Courtney groans] And so he slams his laptop shut and goes to bed.

Courtney: I literally, earlier today, saw a tweet of someone talking about how ridiculous it is that asexuals feel like they need to come out, or that it’s like an emotional difficult thing, and it had like thousands of retweets. I literally saw that today.

Royce: So the story continues. Anwar and Chris’s relationship continues. They have some conversation about the whole family of it all, both Anwar’s family and Chris’s situation with his ex-wife and his two children. And they continue talking about their relationship and activities and boundaries and things, as they have been. Anwar starts to question their own labels, since they sometimes engage in some sex-adjacent things. But in speaking with JD, Jay says, “Labels just help you find people you like. They aren’t perfect descriptions of the human condition.”

Courtney: Mm, that’s very true.

Royce: Time passes on, things start to settle in, Anwar’s relationship with his mother does slowly get better. He also starts attending religious gatherings again because he was starting to question that a bit, mostly assuming that his community would ostracize him both for being asexual and for being in a relationship with another man.

Courtney: Which is fabulous because usually the predominant conversation about asexuality and religion is Christianity. And then far, far less often but still occasionally Judaism. But I don’t see that a lot with Islam. Or any of the non-Abrahamic religions for that matter.

Royce: And yeah, through these few pages here, Anwar does start to get back in with his community, with his family, with his church group. Things start to come together. The next couple of arcs focus more on his relationship with Chris specifically than the other people around him. And there is one night where he comes over to Chris’s house, just brings some takeout. I believe maybe they got their schedules mixed up a little bit, but he comes in and both of Chris’s kids are there. One of them is a teenager who is still pretty mad at Chris for the divorce. The other one is a bit younger. I can’t remember exactly how old. But they all get along pretty well. It is a bit shaky at first until the teenager starts to ask questions about Anwar’s life, and Anwar’s answering them, and she inadvertently runs into a question about Anwar’s family, and Anwar mentions that his dad has died when he was younger. And there’s an immediate look of like, “Oh no, what did I do?”

Courtney: Oh-oh.

Royce: And after that, they kind of settle in and get along pretty well. Time passes a bit, and the next big conflict comes up in a scene just after Chris has had a session with their dom, and it’s a bit tense. It’s the first time that Anwar has seen Chris with prominent markings on their body, because Chris comes in and takes their shirt off and there are big red marks all over the back. And just seeing this firsthand scares Anwar a little bit, and Chris gets into a pretty personal discussion of past trauma, abuse they’ve had in relationships in the past, like physical abuse that they’ve been through that they kind of wrote off due to the nature of it being a kink relationship. They had partners in the past that didn’t respect boundaries and whatnot. And they’ve learned from that, and that now at this point in time, they know their own body, they know their own limits. And even though this looks like a lot right now, since Anwar is not used to it, like, it’s nothing to be worried about.

Courtney: It’s fine, it’s fine, just a little flesh wound. It’s fine.

Royce: A bit more time goes by and we get close to the ending of this series. Anwar gets a really good job proposition through a family member and is really excited to go. And is really excited about this opportunity and rushes out to tell Chris the good news, except they try to get a hold of them on the phone and they don’t answer. They text JD to see what’s going on and they decide, “Oh, they’re at the kink club tonight, I’m just going to run in and say hi.” And JD is like, “No, don’t do that.” But they don’t see the message and they rush in right in the middle of a public scene. And they already learned this once. Don’t just go to the club unannounced, always check in.

Royce: And it’s kind of a mess. It’s not awful, but Chris has to stop right in the middle of subbing, which is one thing where they show Chris saying a safe word. Which is– in this case is just like the commonly used, like, stoplight words, like green is fine, yellow is stop doing that, red is stop the scene.

Royce: And Chris steps away from the middle of the scene to try to have this conversation with Anwar, but Anwar is really upset. And this dynamic is shown where Chris is aware, like, “I’m not really in the right headspace to have this conversation.” He’s very emotional just because everything’s a bit high, like, very bluntly coming out of a session like this, interrupted–

Courtney: Needs aftercare.

Royce: Interrupted without having the time for any aftercare, or without having the time to come down. And so it’s a messy argument, but it brings up basically the same continuous issues that they’ve had throughout their relationship get brought up. Also, Anwar dumps the, “I got a job opportunity, it’s in London, I want to move,” all in this moment.

Courtney: Whoa.

Royce: And Chris is like, “My entire life is here, my kids are here, my established relationship with this kink community, with this Dom, is here, my job is here, and this is a really big thing to drop on someone right now.”

Courtney: Yeah. That is a lot.

Royce: And so the next scene happens. JD also, like, tells Anwar off, like, why did you just— why did you think this was appropriate? But is also just very sad, like, “Oh, you’re going to be leaving me too. We’ve been friends for so long.”

Courtney: Aw.

Royce: And they have a moment as friends just kind of reconciling some of this. And at that point, the comic ends with a scene change. Time has passed, Anwar has moved. It shows them in a different setting. Anwar is noticeably older. He’s on a train, he’s coming home, and he opens the door to a house with a recognizable pair of heels that Chris has worn before.

Courtney: Oh.

Royce: And Chris is waiting for him when he gets home. And that’s it.

Courtney: Lovely. Despite the direct references to Fifty Shades of Grey, did you still find that you were able to fully enjoy it as someone who isn’t familiar with the source material?

Royce: I think that if I hadn’t read the creator’s notes, I wouldn’t have even known. I think it’s an interesting bit of extra information to see the details of— this is the rough plot outline that I was going with, and this is how I changed it. I thought that was an interesting addition, but I think it stood alone as a character story.

Courtney: Excellent. I think the closest thing in media that I’ve been exposed to that I can relate it to, which are still like very different stories character-wise and definitely medium, but there were some kind of ace vibes in Love and Leashes, which is a live-action movie on Netflix that we watched. And like the, the word asexual was never mentioned and we don’t have explicit confirmation that that was going on, but there was a very sexless learning about kink and how to incorporate it into a relationship sort of a story, which was actually really good. I think when we watched it, I was like, wow, that’s one of the best movies we’ve seen in a while.

Royce: Yeah, it was— there was a lot of kink going on in that show because of the basis of the story. Woman likes a guy who she discovers has very prominent fetishes and is like, “I’m gonna figure out how to do that.”

Courtney: I don’t even know if I’d say she likes him right off the bat. I think she’s just kind of curious about this whole kink thing because she had alluded to the fact that like she doesn’t want to date, she can’t give men sex like they want it, things like that. And then this is a brand new co-worker she doesn’t know at all, and she just like happens to find this kink collar that he had ordered for himself and she’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” But yeah, maybe we should talk about that whole movie at some point, because I found it really interesting and actually very good. But that’s probably as close as I can think to have anything to compare it to, and this comic is a lot more explicit with identity language, so I like that. I like that.

Royce: So, turns out we did end up talking about Love and Leashes almost 2 years ago. That was back in March of 2024.

Courtney: See, this is why you can’t be holding out on us, Royce. We get things all out of order. I did like Love and Leashes a lot though. I do remember that. Well, presumably clipping in that bit of lost media has has brought us to that time again. That time where I send you all off with our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. And today we’re giving a huge shout out to Kayzowl, an asexual agender autistic artist who loves drawing your OCs and fan characters with a few digital zines in their shop. This is actually a very good episode to shout out Kayzowl because if you go to their website, you can see a portfolio with some illustrations, character art, but you can also see a handful of comics. And I assume if you listen to all of this episode, you are the kind of person who is predisposed to liking comics. So definitely check out what they have. And if you do scroll down, you can see all of their different links, including to Ko-fi, where you can actually see the shop with these zines in question that were mentioned.

Courtney: And for all of our D&D nerds out there, I know you are out there, there is a D&D OC zine called Ask Me About My D&D Characters, which I quite like. And we have talked a bit about Hazbin Hotel recently, and although it is not necessarily our cup of tea, I do know that there are a lot of— what are they calling it now, with all of the spin-offs? Are they calling it like the Hellaverse? Because there’s Helluva Boss. Which is same world, different story, I believe. We haven’t— we haven’t seen Helluva Boss, so I can’t speak to it personally, but there is quite a bit of Helluva Boss artwork here. So I know that is gonna be right up your alley for some of you. Links, as always, to find Kayzowl’s shop as well as all of the work that we talked about here today are going to be in the usual places. That’s the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you’re listening on YouTube. As always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.