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Asexuality and Asexual Characters in Films & Series - a Collection


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This thread is everything 🙌 Big thanks, @Quasar.w, for making this available.
 

If anyone would like to help potentially bring Australia's first asexual protagonist to our TV screens, my team and I are currently sourcing opinions/comments/musings on what it would mean to ace individuals to have more widespread and mainstream representation 👉 


We're in the final stages of submitting for significant development funding for our ace series, which — if successful — would be a first for a major Australian TV network. 

Obviously no pressure, but we really do feel presenting these insights alongside our application could get this one over the line. And hopefully make a few less people assume themselves "broken" 🙏

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  • 2 weeks later...

Someone in an aro/ace group pointed this out:

 

https://mydramalist.com/713777-koi-senu-futari

 

Quote
About two people who are aromantic and asexual and begin living together. Sakuko finds it difficult to live in a society which operates under the assumption that people will fall in love with each other. She meets supermarket employee Takahashi when she goes to support a “fall-in-love” campaign by her junior at work. She is startled when she hears him say that there are people who don’t fall in love. As Sakuko’s mother keeps hurrying her to get married, she decides to move out and rent an apartment with her friend but her friend backs out at the last minute after reconciling with her ex-boyfriend. Just when Sakuko is about to give up, she ends up living with Takahashi under one roof because of their similar values towards romance.

IMDB (empty, of course): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16277002/

 

Still getting through the first episode - it is new, and does not have any international release - but main characters that are aro is like finding two unicorns.

 

And I certainly would never violate the law and be able to share with anyone who can not find totally legal ways to watch it, so whatever you do, absolutely do not PM me asking. 😉

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Series — Science Fiction — Confirmed

 

DC's Legends of Tomorrow (S7 E10 "The Fixed Point"): Esperanza 'Spooner' Cruz came out as asexual in a nice scene with character Zari.

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nutterwithasolderingiron

so it's never canonically stated and i feel i bring this up all the time but daria morgendorffer from daria. she's romantic but there's an episode called my night at daria's in the final season where her and her boyfriend arrange to have sex but she just can't bring herself to do it. 

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Tori is a side character in Heartstopper on Netflix who is confirmed to be ace. The author of the Heartstopper graphic novels says they plan to have her come out in the next book. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

recently, despite not being an anime watcher beforehand, watched an anime purely because wikipedia told me it had an aroace character which expressed their sexuality towards another character.

 

i've never seen an on-screen aroace character before.

 

i've read books with asexual characters, yet there's something that's so special about on-screen representation in comparison to book representation. the anime is called, "the case files of jeweler richard", if anyone is interested and the character explains their experiences with romantic attraction on episode 8, which is what i watched up until.

 

despite knowing what was about to happen, i immediately broke down crying. happy tears. hearing someone perfectly describe having a lack of romantic attraction in a tv show just felt so relieving and i felt seen like i had never been seen before.

 

my biggest desire with aroace representation is having it shown and explained in a show or a movie i can sit down with my parents at watch, point at the screen and say, "hey, that person is like me!" and not have to explain it myself. if there's any other heartstopper fans out there, you'd know that in the show, one of the new characters, isaac, is canonically aroace. it hasn't been expressed by him in the show yet but since the author of the original comic, alice oseman, is aroace themselves and expressed she has, "big asexual plans for season 2," i am very very excited. it truly cannot only go up from here, and seeing more aro and/or ace representation on screen will help so many more people understand quicker that they don't have to pretend to be allosexual to fit in :]

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I think I watched The case files of Jeweler Richard a couple of years ago, but I completely forgot about the aroace character! I'm thankful I read your post, it refreshed my memory 🙂
By the way, as an old Heartstopper graphic novel reader I liked the tv show regardless of it being kinda different from the original story, and I'm excited for Isaac's character as well! We DO need more representation in these types of tvshows.

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Milque Toast

It's not much, but the only on-screen aroace rep I think I've ever seen is Florence from Sex Education? But even then her inclusion in the show was so minimal it's not worth watching the whole show if you're only watching for her, like I did. Just watch the clip- it's really helpful if you need to explain romantic asexuality to someone.

 

and also apparently Spongebob Squarepants is canonically asexual, but... there's no actual mention of it in the show, so..

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11 hours ago, vin3g4r said:

I think I watched The case files of Jeweler Richard a couple of years ago, but I completely forgot about the aroace character! I'm thankful I read your post, it refreshed my memory 🙂
By the way, as an old Heartstopper graphic novel reader I liked the tv show regardless of it being kinda different from the original story, and I'm excited for Isaac's character as well! We DO need more representation in these types of tvshows.

yeah!! i’ve been a fan of heartstopper for 3/4 years now and although i would genuinely die for aled last, im really glad we have isaac in the show because i just know he’ll be huge in terms of aroace representation. even then, aled himself is such good representation with him being demisexual!! maybe i’m biased because radio silence is my favourite book…

 

as much as i would love to see an adaptation be page by page i will admit that it would just be predictable, i loved being able to sit down and watch heartstopper thinking i know what i’m getting myself into and then just be completely wrong… i love it i can’t wait for the next seasons!!

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10 hours ago, Milque Toast said:

It's not much, but the only on-screen aroace rep I think I've ever seen is Florence from Sex Education? But even then her inclusion in the show was so minimal it's not worth watching the whole show if you're only watching for her, like I did. Just watch the clip- it's really helpful if you need to explain romantic asexuality to someone.

 

and also apparently Spongebob Squarepants is canonically asexual, but... there's no actual mention of it in the show, so..

YES i love sex education that show means the world to me… sex education was definitely one of the shows that let me understand asexuality better and probably pushed me to feeling better in labelling myself as such.

 

plus, florence is scottish and so am i so honestly it was a 2 in 1 for representation… downfall IS is that i would never in my life want to sit down and watch sex education with my parents phewwww… i couldn’t even watch it with my friends if i wanted to i just hate sitting through sex scenes with other people! (typical very much sex-repulsed asexual behaviour…)

 

also yeah i heard about spongebob.. honestly makes sense they were right to make that canon… but as you said it is implied rather than anything else but hey, we’re getting there!

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10 hours ago, sleepytess said:

yeah!! i’ve been a fan of heartstopper for 3/4 years now and although i would genuinely die for aled last, im really glad we have isaac in the show because i just know he’ll be huge in terms of aroace representation. even then, aled himself is such good representation with him being demisexual!! maybe i’m biased because radio silence is my favourite book…

 

as much as i would love to see an adaptation be page by page i will admit that it would just be predictable, i loved being able to sit down and watch heartstopper thinking i know what i’m getting myself into and then just be completely wrong… i love it i can’t wait for the next seasons!!

I still haven't read Radio Silence but it's on my list! I got very curious about him when reading the novel.
Yeah I agree on the adaptation thing, sometimes it's not even a good idea to keep everything as it is because some things are either difficult to adapt or don't work on screen for other reasons. I remember bingeing the show on the plane and I was invested because there were a few elements that I wasn't expecting so I enjoyed it very much! 

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AstrophelDragon

Fantasy:

Reyna Ramírez-Arellano (C) from Trials of Apollo (Percy Jackson world)--canon bc Riordan said so, not explicitly mentioned in the books.

She's not a super main character so don't read the books just to read about an ace character, but I just wanted to add her to the list

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On 7/15/2022 at 10:56 PM, AstrophelDragon said:

Reyna RamĂ­rez-Arellano

I'd forgotten that Reyna is ace! Thanks for the reminder, I love her character. :)

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  • 3 months later...

I saw where there is an archive that includes media mentions but says WIP so I thought I’d just drop it here. New season of Big Mouth on Netflix was pretty great. New asexual character and discussion on raising kids gender neutral. I haven’t seen sex education but I saw it mentioned in the archive so maybe watch that next. Any media suggestions? I’m partial to animation but I’m open to all genres. 🤓

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@GogoDelgato (Below is an official, green, mod message.)

 

Hello! I'm just letting you know I've merged your thread from the Asexual Musings and Rantings forum to this World Watch thread.

 

Here's more info in the Site Comments FAQ, about how Admods can help members move threads, posts, etc. I hope this helps!

 

LeChat,

Welcome Lounge, Announcements, and Alternate Language moderator

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Almost_something

From the brazillian novela (soap opera) "Travessias", there is CaĂ­que (c). He's asexual alloromantic (I think he's heteroromantic, but I'm not sure).

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The main character in RABBIT by Kyle Prue is asexual! It's not focused on much, it's not super plot relevant, the story is just about Rabbit's criminal shenanigans, he's just a guy who happens to be asexual and it's honestly great. 

 

It's free to watch on YouTube, it's only like an hour long, 5 short episodes, and here's the trailer! Please do give it a watch, it's really incredible!

 

 

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@Vegetarian Person (Below is an official, green, mod message.)

 

Hello. I'm just letting you know your thread about asexual movies was moved from the Chatterbox sub-forum of the Just for Fun forum to AVEN's main Asexuality and Asexual Characters in Film and Series thread (in the World Watch forum).

 

There are lists of films in the first few posts in this thread.

I hope this helps!

 

LeChat,

Welcome Lounge, Announcements, and Alternate Language moderator

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I can't believe nobody has mentioned Elsa from Frozen. I know there are some who say she's a lesbian and yes, she could be both. But you never see her with either a man or a woman and she seems very indifferent to the idea of being with anybody, mostly because she thinks she'd kill anybody she touches. So I think those who assume a sexuality for her need to let it go, let it go ...

I watched a Christmas movie called "A Year from Now" where the character goes home for Christmas and every day she wakes up and a year has passed. She seems very upset by her sister's relationship with the guy she marries, her parents keep pushing her to be with someone and she seems uncomfortable with the idea, by the end she marries a guy but he turns out to be a huge arsehole and she dumps him. So I think she was ace all along and just married the guy because it was what everybody in her life wanted her to do.

 

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I watched most of the Walking Dead and Darryl had a girlfriend towards the end of the series. Things ended badly with her but they imply something between him and Beth early on. I would have said Eugene but he ends up finding towards the end too. It's not always easy to find the right person in the zombie apocalypse.

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AstrophelDragon
12 hours ago, Ace_Reporter said:

Elsa from Frozen

Yeah I agree. I also just love how the plot of Frozen works out (*SPOILER ALERT*) because Ana tries to marry some prince she just met like a lot of princesses do, but he turned out to be evil so she ends up not getting married by the end of the movie. Elsa has no romantic love interest, and the true love that saves Ana in the end is the love of her sister instead of Hans or Kristoff.

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  • 2 months later...
dusktodawn
On 7/15/2022 at 3:44 AM, sleepytess said:

Snip

 

Late to the party, but surprised your icon hasn't been mentioned yet 🤪 Lilith is mood af

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Exoplanetarian

I don't know if this is the right place to put this but I had massive aroace vibes from this one:

 

On 2/6/2023 at 11:33 AM, AstrophelDragon said:

and the true love that saves Ana in the end is the love of her sister instead of Hans or Kristo

I was so extremely happy about this plot twist that I cried like a child in front of my laptop

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AstrophelDragon
17 hours ago, Exoplanetarian said:

I don't know if this is the right place to put this but I had massive aroace vibes from this one:

😭😭😭

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Exoplanetarian

Also - DI Richard Poole from Death in Paradise (P) is aroace in my head and I can't remember any canonical incident that would disprove that.

 

I don't think it's been said anywhere or discussed "back then" when he was the lead on the show but re-watching it and him being completely oblivious to it when he's being flirted with or being very confused by people in bikinis I kind of get excited because it feels like representation, even if it's not being canonically mentioned. 

I also really love that he clearly has deep feelings for his partner Camille and there are these moments of deep connection and massive chemistry between them but it's never explicitly romantic and whilst she sort of tries to get an in with him by stuff like suggesting to stay over at his place or believing she's been set up on a blind date with him which turns out to be a misunderstanding, he seems very content with the type of connection they have and it's like he doesn't want it to be any different which I rate so much. 

And he also throughout the show has moments where he admits he's aesthetically attracted to someone but it never goes anywhere. When Camille asks him if he's ever been in love, he just dodges the question with silence. 

 

Also the moment where they try to get him to join Valentine's Day Celebrations and are like "oh but it's the festival of the voodoo Goddess of love" and he says something like "yes I'd love to but unfortunately, it coincides with a very important English festival: Staying-at-home-and-reading-a-good-book-week." lives forever rent-free in my head, heart and soul.

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1 hour ago, Exoplanetarian said:

very important English festival: Staying-at-home-and-reading-a-good-book-week

:D I celebrate that often. Glad to know it's a thing. ;) :lol: 

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Exoplanetarian
5 hours ago, daveb said:

I celebrate that often. Glad to know it's a thing. ;) :lol: 

Yep - it is now ; ))))

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