Arkady is gray-ace, like me.

I've long thought of her this way but worried outright stating it in the show would be too self-indulgent. It's funny, this show sometimes gets credit for diversity but I dragged my feet most on including my own kinda marginalized identity. (1/?)

Writing identities you don't have is hard, from a getting-it-right perspective. I'll never write it as well as someone who has lived it; I strive for the best possible version I can create but it's imperfect. Still, writing closer to home can feel really vulnerable. (2/?)

Probably the main takeaway here is that writers of color should always get more credit than I do for writing POCs. Same with trans writers writing trans characters. Same with all the other identities I don't have. (3?)

(Ugh, now it feel like I'm asking for credit for finally, in season 2, finding a way to casually mention Arkady's aceness on the show. I'm really not! It took way too long and it's only briefly mentioned!)

I only got to this point because I mentioned it as a headcanon and a few people got cautiously excited. Then I started feeling cheap bc saying "X was Y all along!" outside the official work is such a table scrap, representation-wise. (5/?)

And THEN it was like, why am I so worried about being self-indulgent? This whole ding dang show is self-indulgent as heck. Season one ends with a heist, for crying out loud. (6/?)

Starship Iris is basically the kind of ice cream sundae a little kid makes when nobody is watching, just a giant pile of tropes I loved and things I wanted more of, and like, I want to see more ace characters in media, maybe that's okay. (7/?)

In most ways I had a privileged upbringing, but when you don't even have words to describe the way you feel (and don't feel) attraction, the words that flow into that vacuum instead are pretty terrible. I felt SO WEIRD as a teen and "weird" was the nicest term I had for it. (8/?)

I really really hope this generation of ace kids has an easier time of things. They deserve better than table scraps, and it's exciting to be part of the AD community, where ace characters honestly aren't even that rare. (9/?)

This thread is kind of a mess, which to be fair, feels about right. Happy #AceVisibilityDay! (10/10)