TW: Child Abuse, SA, Racism

TW: child abuse, SA, racism

Okay, we need to talk about the whole "Yelena Belova is AroAce" thing.

This is not canon.

It is something Devin Grayson, and literally only Devin Grayson, has ever attempted to say about the character.

Why does this matter? Because if we have to take Devin Grayson's word as gospel on everything she's ever written, than her novel Inheritance (officially published by DC comics) means that Green Arrow is canonically a pedophile. In her Nightwing comics she was also fond of putting in 'easter eggs' implying Bruce/Dick or Slade/Dick. Indeed in an interview she proposed that Dick Grayson's sexuality and understanding of relationships was such a mess he tried to put the moves on Bruce.

Speaking of Nightwing, she made him part Romani, specifically because it would make him more 'exotic', and peppered the storyline where this was revealed with slurs and negative stereotypes. She also made him a serial cheater, but an unconscious one, declaring him to be too fixated on touch and too confused about relationships to understand what he's doing.

Devin Grayson is not a good person (it took her 10 years to actually admit that she'd had a villain rape Dick Grayson, insisting on calling it 'nonconsensual sex' and being 'quirky' and coy about it before 2014) and she is not a good writer, and if you're requiring me to take her saying in an interview that Yelena is asexual as gospel, you're requiring me to take a whole lot of really bad shit as gospel too.

Now, let me be 100% clear here. It is entirely fine for Yelena to be asexual. I am in no way trying to say that Devin Grayson saying Yelena is asexual is comparable to the terrible shit she did in DC Comics. And I know we desperately need more ace and aro representation in media. And yes, there probably is some aphobia in people's reactions to this talking point that seriously needs to be addressed. I bring up the Devin Grayson stuff not to try and draw a point of comparison between that horrible shit and Yelena being Ace, but to emphasize that Devin Grayson is not a writer anybody else who is writing comics or adjacent works takes seriously or considers to be canon. And to demonstrate that what a single writer says in an interview is not considered definitive about that character.

Shipping Yelena with Kate or Bob or whoever the fuck is not erasure. It's just a different headcanon.