Time to read: 4 minutes
A master’s program is only two years long; and with other classes and obligations, there is even less time to dedicate to theses and reports. For some, this amount of time may still seem large. But once you dig into your project, it both narrows and infinitely expands beyond your capacity. As researchers, we must learn to prioritize only the most important and most interesting finds, even though almost everything we find is interesting and worth pursuing. In cutting down our projects to manageable sizes, there are paths we can’t pursue, connections we can’t make, and questions we can’t answer.
And as a single researcher, 988 survey participants and 12 interviewees produce an amount of data that I could not reasonably analyze within the time allotted. So while this project does touch on a lot of topics, there were so many more just as exciting. Here I list some of those topics as well as further directions this research could be taken.
Methods: This research would also be interesting if interviews were conducted with a small number of writers as opposed to a wide-reaching survey. In this way, certain fandoms could be targeted, especially those with significant—or perhaps insignificant— amounts of aro/ace fanfic.
Survey Distribution: In addition to the spaces I reached out to, I could have asked where participants found out about the survey to understand what communities they’re active in.
Genfic: In retrospect, the survey may have also leaned too much on shipping, and I could have been more deliberate in my inclusion of genfic. Further research could focus more on genfic by asking how writers include aro/ace characters when their fanfic does not discuss romance or sex.
Fic Length: Participants alluded to fic length in ways I did not originally include in the survey. While a 100k word fic and a 500 word fic both count as one fic, their capacity for aro/ace themes and characters varies greatly. Additionally, the impact that a longer fic has versus even several shorter fic on both writer and reader satisfaction is important to consider.
Coming Out: I mentioned coming out narratives and how writers can mirror their experiences in their characters. But this could also be expanded into its own analysis of how characters reveal themselves to friends, family, and partners and how those anxieties are based on writers’ experiences. Also, the experiences of aro/ace writers and characters could be analyzed alongside other types of shipping like slash. For example, how prevalent is it to write characters that make their sexuality known versus characters that do not come out?
Media Representation: Given the wide expanse of participants’ ages, further look into how their age has affected the media they consume, including the aro/ace representation available to them, warrants further study.
Also, it seems interesting that many of the canonically ace or heavily ace-coded characters are men: Todd Chavez, Sherlock Holmes, Jonathan Sims, Jughead Jones. However, these may just be the ones fandom has fixated on.
Along with this, more attention could be paid to non-American media, as well as media other than film and television. For example, Japanese manga has had a few stories of asexual characters.
- I Want to Be a Wall by Honami Shirono
- Is Love the Answer? By Isaki Uta
- Mine-kun is Asexual by Isaki Uta
- Our Dreams at Dusk by Shimanami Tasogare
Future research could also consider how many canon and ace-coded characters are also coded as aromantic. Because society conflates the two, perhaps aro-coded characters are more prevalent than can be gleaned from only considering explicit aro representation.
Along with these stones unturned, researchers are not exempt from human error. In my creation of the survey, I relied too much on personal knowledge at times. This led to an incorrect usage of some terminologies and imperfect answer options relating to gender, sexuality, and race. Though it would be easy to blame these mistakes solely on a lack of time, I acknowledge that my knowledge was incomplete; and it never will be as these concepts continue to evolve. This project has also been a learning process in which my personal knowledge has benefitted. And I am thankful for all the scholars, fans, and activists that have created the knowledge that I draw upon.
Aromanticism & Asexuality in Fanfiction Writing 