Oh, Alice. I mean, just Alice. Over the last handful of years, I’ve done write-ups on every ace or ace-ish character I can get my hands on. I’ve loved all of them just for existing, and certain ones have admittedly meant more to me than others, largely as a result of their prominence in the story and the quality of the representation. However, Alice joins my beloved Jughead Jones (comics version, please) as an ace character that I adore.
Seriously, what don’t I love about Alice? Just from a basic standpoint, I love that she’s a total fangirl who obsesses over her favorite characters, who writes essays about her favorite shows and ships. Not all of her fan interests align with mine (I never got into Supernatural, and just knowing how many seasons it ran makes me reluctant to start now,) but others bowl straight down the middle for me (pour one out for the Ichabod/Abbie that might have been.) I like that she’s in her head a lot, that she’s very concerned about keeping people happy and that she doesn’t always handle it well when she can’t avoid conflict. I appreciate her effusive love for great food, even if she doesn’t have much of an inclination for making it for herself (which, thinking back to my college years and early 20s, is also relatable.)
Then, there’s Alice as an asexual character. As far as ace representation goes, this is the entire kit and caboodle, which is almost overwhelming after so many drips-and-drabs experiences. Not all the characters I’ve covered in this feature are for-sure identified as actually being ace, and even among those that do, the mere inclusion of the word “asexual” isn’t necessarily a guarantee. But with Alice, not only do we get “asexual,” but we get “biromantic” and “aesthetic attraction” and all kinds of ace goodness. Because Alice is in her head about a lot of things but especially certain aspects of her asexuality - her difficulties coming out to anyone, her past romantic flameouts, her confusing feelings for Takumi - she articulates a lot of these sorts of things to herself and to the very few people who know about her identity. She gives voice to things that are hard, like people who are otherwise down with LGBTQ folks thinking her disinterest in sex is a disorder rather than an identity, or the frustrating fact that coming out to anyone as ace almost inevitably means delivering a crash course on Asexuality 101 at the same time. She spends time parsing out different kinds of attraction, her own as well as other people’s - I get a kick out of her Cutie Code, and I love that she can apply it to anything that she finds aethestically compelling, not just people (i.e., kitten videos are in the top ranking.)
One thing I will say: her interactions with a therapist make me jealous. Back when I was first figuring out my identity and thinking about coming out, I got a recommendation for a counselor on campus who was specifically noted for dealing with LGBTQ issues. I told him about being asexual/aromantic and explained to him what those things were, and the next week he came back telling me that, after having done some research, he agreed with me that I might be asexual and not just experiencing a low sex drive due to depression (even though he said I hadn’t seemed depressed to him.) By contrast, the therapist Alice sees is an absolute dream. Appreciate your therapist, Alice!
As I mentioned in my review, I also really love how much weight Alice places on all her relationships. Takumi sends her head spinning, and she spends a huge chunk of the book trying to sort through her feelings on that, but her non-potentially-romantic relationships don’t mean any less to her. As much as her family can drive her crazy with their micro-managing and assuming they know what’s best for her, she loves each of them in a unique way, and her fear of disappointing them is so strong that she’s nearly willing to put what she wants on hold for their sake. And her relationships with Feenie and Ryan - I like that, even though Feenie is her best friend, Alice has a deep, distinct friendship with Ryan too, and I love the three of them as a unit, not quite as cohesive as they ought to be as Alice worries that she won’t fit with them anymore once they get married. Her thoughts imagining their married life, imagining them moving on from her, is probably what hits me hardest as an aro, though obviously romantics have those feelings too. That fear of friends drifting away because they’re preoccupied with something deeper than friendship, when we know that romantic relationships aren’t an inherently better kind of love, just a different one. Man, do I feel for her in these scenes. Even as I recognize her as an imperfect character who causes some of her own messes and I appreciate her for those flaws, I also want to protect her from that kind of heartache.
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