I LOVE How You Made Carpenter Aromantic, I Was Wondering What Was The Process Behind Making That Decision

I LOVE how you made Carpenter aromantic, I was wondering what was the process behind making that decision and how you incorporated it into the script?

Thank you very much!

Well, the issue of how social normativity (and in this case specifically amatonormativity) can put us under intense pressure to perform in certain ways - to conform into a shape that's pleasing and expected to those around us and which allows us to navigate more easily through the morass of other people but which may end up consuming us - is a big underlying theme across both of our shows, both in its own right and as an example of our wider preoccupation about how our hopeless yearning to make sense of ourselves can end up destroying us.

With that in mind, Carpenter's confident and settled aromanticism felt very appropriate as an expression of her existential self-reliance and her ability, through self-knowledge and just a little obstinacy, to avoid getting trapped into a shape that someone else has chosen for her. She goes one better than the Promised Bride in that sense (Although that said, I really did want to ensure she still felt relatable and real as an aro individual, and not just as - like she says - an allegory.)

Help

They’re so silly

he is so polite and little

my god. Hayward and Carpenter roadtrip. this is everything i ever wanted and needed in my life. my heart is full, my soul is singing. im fucking obsessed with them, these fucking people oh my god absolutely insane. i would give literally anything to be a fly on the wall of that car

caldwell establishes so fast that beverly and erlin like each other “he taught me how to do… stuff” caldwell tanner ur dedication to being a gay little boy is everything to me