Time to read: 10 minutes
History
Fanfiction has a rich history both pre and post expansion of the internet into the public. Here I will lay out broad moments in the fanfiction timeline, but check out the Timeline for more details. A rudimentary definition of fanfiction is given by Hellekson and Busse (2014): “as a derivative amateur writing—that is, texts written based on another text, and not for professional publication” (pp. 5-7). This definition is applicable all the way back to the times of Sherlock Holmes and the works of Jane Austen. What can be defined as fanfiction changes when you add elements of collective storytelling (the Odyssey might count), legality (the invention of copyright), the necessity of a fan community surrounding the work (fan-written Sherlock Holmes stories), or transformation (the rewriting of shared media) (p. 6). This is where the contemporary understanding takes shape.
Spanning from 1960s science fiction fandom and its zine culture, fanfiction became solidified as “historically situated within the last [fifty] years, tending to respond to a specific form of media texts, and encompassing a specific amateur infrastructure for its creation, distribution, and reception” (Hellekson and Busse, 2014, p. 7). Star Trek (1966-69) and its female fans can be thanked for their contribution to fanfiction culture. The shipping of Kirk and Spock specifically gave way to fanfiction’s most prominent genre, discussed below. More broadly, the focus on sci-fi expanded to include other genres like spy shows, romance, and mystery. This culture soon attached itself to other media like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) and later shows like Starsky and Hutch (1975-1979), and Doctor Who (on air since 1963). Cult television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Supernatural (2005-2020) as well as larger non-television franchises like Harry Potter or the Marvel Cinematic Universe have also been popular for fanfiction writing.
Just as the internet has boosted and evolved the aro/ace communities (Renninger, 2015), it has also been instrumental in the formation of fandom culture. Numerous websites and blogs have hosted fandoms throughout the years; Usenet, LiveJournal, and mailing lists have given way to sites like Tumblr and Twitter. And though FanFiction.Net and other archiving sites brought publicly accessible fanfiction numbers into the millions, the Organization of Transformative Works (OTW) and Archive of Our Own (AO3) has launched fandom into a new age.
Born from the frustrations of Web 2.0, fan creators, specifically women, took matters into their own hands in order to make an online space not owned, mediated, or regulated by corporations seeking to mine user-generated content (De Kosnik, 2016). The OTW was established in 2007 with AO3 opening in 2009 to be a “noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fan works using open-source archiving software” (Archive of Our Own, n.d.).
It was women that brought these projects to fruition; their labor was instrumental in establishing and sustaining them through the mentorship and training of other women. They created coders and developers that could contribute voluntarily and professionally to these technical communities. AO3 was a dream for many fanfiction writers including Francesca Coppa, a founder of the OTW: “The story of the OTW and the AO3 is the history of a community, and of the triumph of fannish organization over the power of venture capital” (De Kosnik, 2016, p. 308).
AO3, and other fanfiction archives and websites, operate as counterinstitutions against the Raymond Williams’s concept of selective tradition in which the experts within a majority are solely responsible for the preservation of culture and curation of canon (Williams, 2009). De Kosnik (2016) describes the political potential of fanfiction archives. Marginalized groups use them to build their own cultural memory sites outside of traditional institutions; these traditional institutions (museums, libraries, archives, etc.) are state and capitalist endeavors with the authority to overwrite, forget, and delete anything deemed unworthy.
Additionally, fan fiction archives are crucial for female and queer cultural creativity, and doing so creates a “safety in numbers” effect that strengthens community bonds (De Kosnik, 2016, p. 135). Because much of fan fiction is sexually explicit, and written by women for women, its positioning outside of traditional institutions allow for more freedom and expression. Fanfiction archives exceed the bounds of heteronormativity both in the content they accrue and the queerness of the readers that use them. However, their exceeding of allonormativity and amatonormativity are called into question as the erotic nature of fan fiction can sometimes make it an unwelcoming space for aro/ace people.
Shipping
The shipping of Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock has been highly influential in the years following the birth of modern fanfiction culture. The shipping of these characters into a male/male pairing would become termed slash; its female/female counterpart femslash is less popular. Slashing has become a dominant lens in which fanfiction is viewed by fans and academics alike. Interestingly, a chapter on bodily autonomy in asexual slashfic (Westberg Gabriel) appears in the 2018 edited collection The Darker Side of Slash Fan Fiction: Essays on Power, Consent and the Body (Spacey). Westberg Gabriel argues that asexual slashfic shares the same nod to equality that allo slashfics contains. It is about “placing the conversation about body, relationship, power, and love in a setting where heteronormative patriarchy cannot reach” (Westberg Gabriel, 2018, p. 46). This work focused on asexual slashfic whereas this research considers asexual (and aromantic) fanfic in its entirety.
Because fanfiction has historically been women’s domain, there have been many explorations of the motivations behind writing slash. Some explanations are presented below in no particular order:
- Slashfic allows women, of any sexuality, to explore their desires and sexual agency through identifying with male bodies and imagining utopic “ideal partnerships” distanced from gender/sexual dynamics of heterosexual relationships (Cicioni, 1998; Green et al., 1998; Penley, 2014).
- Additionally, nonhuman characters in sci-fi based slashfics may be a stand-in for the female reader. His alienness (e.g. Spock as half-man, half-Vulcan) disrupts the literal definition of homosexuality thus creating space for women to write themselves into this dynamic and project onto the nonhuman character (Russ, 2014).
- Slashfic is a political act of challenging traditional masculinity through the exploration of the intimate relationships male characters have with each other (Green et al., 1998).
- Slashfic allows women to enjoy reading and writing about sexually desirable men and the sexual relationships they engage in (Green et al., 1998; Penley, 2014).
- Slashfic allows for disidentification with female characters because of their systemic lack of depth and complexity relative to male characters (Green et al., 1998). Misogyny within media creates uninteresting female characters thus making male characters more interesting in comparison. Viewers will latch onto the more interesting characters.
- Overall, fanfic writers work with what they’re given in their chosen media texts (Jones, 2014; Green et al., 1998). Where interesting male characters are plentiful on screen, they are plentiful in fanfiction.
However, it is less important to ask why women write and read these stories and more important to how they fit within wider fanfiction culture. Slash is not the only type of fanfiction, and women are not the only writers; if someone has the idea, anything can be written. All variations of romantic/sexual attraction and relationships can be found in fanfiction. Though there is a tendency toward depictions of romantic and sexual relationships, there is another type in which those relationships are not featured or even included.
Genfic, short for general fanfiction, includes fanfiction in which shipping is not a focus within the story. Aro/ace characters can work within shipping, although genfic is another hub for aro/ace fanfics. Aro/ace characters simply might not be in relationships in these fics. Additionally, these fics might not even broach the topics of romance and sex; a character’s sexuality can be entirely irrelevant.
Aro/ace fanfic can be found both inside and outside shipping culture. These fanfics can be romantic but not sexual, sexual but not romantic, or neither because romance and sex are not requirements for any fanfic. This variety of aro/ace fanfic, in addition to the varied experiences of its writers in relation to fanfiction’s shipping culture create an interesting foundation on which I construct my analysis.
Identity
In general, fans have always been conceptualized as outsiders of the dominant culture. Early stereotypes included the obsessed individual and the hysterical crowd (Jensen, 1992) with pathological justifications for their behaviors. Fans are detached from reality and too obsessed with things that don’t matter (Jenkins, 1992). Fans self-segregate from the dominant culture to form their own subcultures. (Busse, 2017). This subcultural element is important to many fans, especially those that have been marginalized in other ways outside of their fan identities.
However, fandom is not a utopic space, it is a real one that mirrors the hierarchies of our society (Busse, 2017, p. 176; MacDonald, 1998). Fans still make outsiders of one another by casting judgement upon how others consume and participate in fandom (Busse, 2017). And when an aspect of fandom is so heavily adherent to social norms that those outside of them are pushed to the edges, the sense of community becomes damaged.
The Mary Sue is an infamous example. Born from the desire to include oneself in the stories she writes, the Mary Sue is a stand-in for the “young, desirable, competent, and moral” characters women and girls write as self-inserts (Bacon-Smith, 2014, p. 142). In the Star Trek fanfic from which she hails, she is the youngest Lieutenant and winner of Captain Kirk’s heart. The women and girls that write Mary Sues are outsiders of society: too ugly, fat, smart, or different to be desirable. And in combining their intellect with the socially acceptable standards of beauty and self-sacrifice, she becomes the ultimate hero (p. 145). And at the end of the story, Mary Sue is sacrificed in the name of the writer’s transition from adolescence to enlightened maturity (p. 146). This writing of the self comes under scrutiny as an underdeveloped form of writing, and those writing it are quickly rebuffed and forced to write other stories if they wish to stay in the community.
Other forms of writing the self include the insertion versus observer fantasy (Busse, 2017). Writers may insert themselves directly as characters into their fanfiction or mold a character into their image, they may also voyeuristically observe the characters of the story leaving them undisturbed (p. 45). While Busse makes reference to celebrity fandom and popslash, insertion and observer fantasy is useful for writers of other genres. The insertion fantasy may be a site for writers to explore their gender and sexuality with the safety and comfort provided by their preferred characters and media objects.
The observer fantasy can also allow for exploration albeit with a more distanced point of view. Here fanfic writers emphasize an analysis of their characters, a more nuanced view of their true identity being constructed within the text; this then allows the writer to “prove” that what they’ve written is true to the character (Busse, 2017, p. 48). However, this proof is still subject to the writer’s own identity and desires, and so they can write it into existence that a character’s interactions with another indicate a certain sexuality. And whatever the writer decides is true can also just be what the writer wishes to explore within themself but with the benefit of that character not being a one-to-one self-insertion.
By acting out sexuality with characters that are not stand-ins for themselves, writers can engage in these topics without having to necessarily reconcile what that would mean for their own sexuality. Additionally, Busse’s understanding of voyeurism (2017) constructs writers of erotic slashfic as exploring their desires through gazing upon the relationship of their characters, and even literally acting as a conduit to facilitate their relationship and bring them together.
Thus fanfiction becomes a tool with which writers form and explore their identity. Writers can work through their experiences and problem solve their issues, and they can also use fanfiction as wish fulfillment to carry out their desires (Warburton, 2010). These desires may include characters that the writer finds pleasurable, desirable, interesting, or relatable (p. 129). Aro/ace fanfic writers may desire to fulfill what they see as a lack of visibility. Or as a less politically motivated explanation, they may be writing to figure out something about themselves or just writing because it’s interesting. This interest is hard to describe, and yet just a pure fascination and curiosity with how characters interact with aromanticism and asexuality is an equally valid reason to write.
Aromanticism & Asexuality in Fanfiction Writing 