Time to read: 11 minutes
With the many reasons why participants write aro/ace fanfiction, at least some of them have solutions. Aside from an obvious realignment of society away from allonormativity, amatonormativity, and compulsory sexuality, the following are more tangible yet still difficult recommendations within fanfiction and media that can make them more welcoming to aromanticism and asexuality.
Fanfiction
Shipping culture is not going anywhere, but perhaps it can make room for more nuanced relationships. We must write romantic relationships with sex and sexual relationships without romance in ways that are also inclusive of aromanticism and asexuality. Fluff is great, and its usual lack of sex can make it a space in which asexuality is readily explored. And smut fics are fine, but if we also allow ourselves to explain their lack of romance from an aromantic angle, the possibilities for our fanfic become even more expansive. By reconfiguring what we already have to be more aro/ace friendly, there is less pressure on aro/ace fanfic writers to mark their fics as different and outside the expected norm.
The same sentiment applies to the tropes and genres we employ. Participants have done this by challenging well-established conventions like soulmates, omegaverse, and found family to allow for aro/ace characters. Questioning how an aromantic person without a soulmark, a sex-repulsed person in omegaverse, and even how found families work with QPRs are all ways in which the fanfiction we love can be have been and can continue to be expanded upon by other writers.
Additionally, we should collectively strive to write more types of aro/ace fanfic. While individual writers are free to write as they please, some participants would like to see a drift away from identity discovery and coming out fics. For example, fics where characters “Just Happen” to be aro/ace and their sexuality is unimportant to the plot can contribute to the normalization of aromanticism and asexuality. These fics would make aromanticism and asexuality banal and commonplace and make them less of a spectacle or abnormality.
Also, more fics in which aro/ace characters are in different stages of the journeys would be more reflective of the diversity in the aro/ace community. Participant 502 mentions how there’s a certain point in life in which labels can become unhelpful and older queer people try to “simply be who they are.” This desire to simply exist can be reflected in writing aro/ace characters that are also content and “settled in their identity” to quote Participant 674. Of course, any and all types of aro/ace fanfic are needed, but there is no downside to diversifying its range.
Along with this diversity, we should be accepting of these characters come into being. It is true that some writers use stereotypes to create their aro/ace characters. However, these stereotypes can also be truths for those writers; e.g., stereotypes of emotionally distant and touch-averse characters can be relatable to those that are autistic as with Jordan and their attachment to Leonard Snart. We must be careful to critique these renditions but also not disparage those that do find comfort in them.
In relation to QPRs, participants mentioned some discussions of our tagging conventions on AO3. The use of the “/” and “&” to denote sexual and/or romantic and platonic relationships, respectively, is difficult for QPRs in which the lines between romantic, sexual, and platonic are blurry at best. In fact, in writing fanfic for Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir (2015- present), also known as Miraculous Ladybug, Amar tagged their fic along the lines of “I didn’t know whether this counted as F/M or Gen because they’re both aro af, but it’s definitely Adrimi” in reference to the the characters Adrien and Kagami. In this fic both characters are aromantic and in a queerplatonic relationship.
Their relationship is close but does not exactly fit what most people would consider appropriate use of the “/” symbol, but the “&” also doesn’t fully catch the nuances of their relationship. In the end, Amar did tag this fic as F/M and as Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Kagami Tsurugi. Perhaps this system does not need to be entirely uprooted, but we should continue to advocate for a better format for QPRs, if such an alternative is possible.
Media
The lack of aro/ace characters in fanfiction can also be attributed to their absence in media. Without many canon aro/ace characters to draw upon, writers are forced to extract them from stereotypical representations of aromanticism and asexuality. The least that could be done is reduce the harm produced by such stereotypes. The characters that are deemed undesirable—the old, ugly, disabled, neurodivergent, non-white, etc.—should be allowed to experience love and should only be labeled aro/ace, or coded as such, if it is a deliberate decision to make them so. That is, if a character is going to be in any way loveless or uninterested in sex/romance, there should be a reason other than perceived undesirability.
Their behavior should feel as if they have decided to act that way themselves and not because their creator could not perceive them as having any sexual or romantic capacity. For example, a character that constantly says they’re not interested in relationships should be saying so from their own perspective and not from the perspective of their creator who wrote them that way out of convenience and prejudice. If canon aro/ace characters are not going to be created, then undesirable or otherwise aro/ace-coded characters could at least be given the courtesy of not being laden with discriminatory stereotypes.
But even when there are canon aro/ace characters, there is no guarantee of their quality, authenticity, or accuracy.
Voodoo on Sirens was the first ace character I ever saw. Unfortunately, that was the extent of her character, that she was just weird overall and her whole arc was her boyfriend trying to understand her asexuality in a way that while it may have been good-intentioned, felt kind of offensive. He’d ask her questions but it felt like interrogation. He would try to turn her on or get her to turn him on and be let down when it didn’t do anything. And there was a conversation where she tries to explain it as being on a different plane of existence compared to other relationships (???) and her boyfriend was like “so you think you’re better than everyone?” That just didn’t sit right with me.
(Marian)
Sirens (2014-15) premiered on USA Network before GLAAD began compiling data on asexual representation. Voodoo is explicitly written as asexual, and her asexuality is a recurrent motif across many episodes. While some in an AVEN forum see Voodoo’s asexuality as a win, Marian sees it as somewhat problematic. Of course both things can be true at the same same, but as one AVEN user points out:
This is kind of the problem with having an asexual character in a tv show right now. Since she’s the ONLY one really, she’s stuck representing everybody, and we all very [sic] so much. She should really only stand for herself, but since she might very well be one of the only openly ace characters, she might very well end up being what people think of when they think ace.
(AVEN user)
Though tokenism implies a more deliberate effort to create a monolithic representation of a particular group, the invisibility of aro/ace characters overall also contributes to this monolithic portrayal of aro/ace people as only romance and sex-repulsed where there is in fact much variety in the aro/ace spectrums. Therefore, not only do we need more aro/ace characters, we also need aro/ace characters representative of the diversity in the aro/ace community with respect to the voices and experiences of aro/ace people.
Perhaps the most concrete way to improve media representations of aromanticism and asexuality would be having characters say “I am aromantic/asexual.” Doing so would reduce the ambiguity in phrases like “I’m just not into dating/I don’t like casual sex/I’m too busy with my career” and behaviors like never having “serious” relationships, brushing off blind dates, and being emotionally unavailable that can take on different meanings.
A character that’s too busy with their career or whatever the plot has in store could just be construed as serious and committed. But if the intent is to have this character show no interest in sex or romance, then there should be a more explicit commitment to telling the audience that character is aro/ace. However, as participants mentioned in fanfiction, there are many reasons why forcing a label onto a character is not always appropriate or possible. Therefore, leaning into this ambiguity could also be a good thing.
Ambiguity (Russo, 2015) allows their characterization to expand in various ways, and viewers can read the character however they desire. A character that dislikes attention from the women around him might be seen as gay, but he could also be seen as aro/ace depending on who you ask. Spurring on this ambiguity—playing into it—can allow fans to envision the text however they like rather than pigeonholing the character into a single identity. This becomes useful for creators when attracting and defining their audiences; they cannot cater only to what one demographic would like to see.
Generally speaking, straight and queer audiences are not perfectly aligned on how much queerness belongs in the content they consume. So creators must toe the line between these groups and be strategic about who they’re catering to at any moment in time. This is assuming creators care at all about how viewers perceive and interact with their productions. Queerbaiting is all too familiar terrain, and creators can and will queerbait their audiences if it draws them in (McDermott, 2021). If they can pander to an audience that wants to see aro/ace characters, it can be done in such an ambiguous way that allows aro/ace people to draw their aro/ace conclusions without upsetting other viewers. As viewers, we must be wary of how creators capitalize on queerness.
The double bind fans face is that, within the corporate schemas of entertainment, mainstream visibility equates with profitability… Even allowing for the importance of positive representation, we need to bear in mind the stake and conditions of framing visibility in the corporate media’s terms.
(Russo, 2015, p. 458)
Thus the dilemma of making characters explicitly/canonically aro/ace is two-fold. Wherever queer characters appear in media, we must question whose interests they serve: the creators or the audience? Also, Marian brings up this great point:
Straight people don’t have to come out as straight, and no one questions them. Why do LGBTQ ppl have to jump through hoops to be perceived as what they are? And even if they explicitly come out and say “I am trans/ace/etc,” there’s still a lot of ppl irl and in [fandom] that refuse to accept it.
(Marian)
Regardless of the creators intent or even how good, accurate, and authentic the character’s aromanticism/asexuality is portrayed, not everyone wants to see aro/ace people and characters or normalize their experiences. And this is where fanfiction enters the room.
For participants, and for many others as well, fanfiction is a collage of individual and fannish desires sometimes mixed with activist/political needs to educate and reform our fanfiction and media culture. We must navigate “the desire to revel in comforting tropes and the demands of real world concerns” (Busse, 2017, p. 76). That is, we have to balance the fun of playing with our characters, making them aro/ace, with the reality that aromanticism and asexuality are widely misunderstood, ignored, and discriminated against. For some, their fanfiction is an effort to change those negative conceptions and connotations. But for others, the need to defy the negativity is secondary to their own self-preservation and desire to write characters that they can see themselves in.
As writers of aro/ace fanfiction, you have the ability to craft your own representation, craft it for others, or forget about representation entirely and just have fun. Write your comfort character being told they’re not broken. Write the character that everyone in your fandom says is allo as aro/ace instead. Write your characters and then realize that you made them aro/ace on accident because that’s your default. Write the aro/ace characters that the source material was too afraid of. And finally, write the aro/ace characters you need because the odds are that other people need them too.
Aromanticism & Asexuality in Fanfiction Writing 