Time to read: 5 minutes
Sex sells. And so does romance. Fanfiction thrives on both of them, and society perpetuates allonormativity , amatonormativity, and compulsory sexuality so that love, sex, and desire are practically requirements to be considered human. And yet aro/ace people have spent the past two decades asserting their humanity and campaigning for visibility. This movement, the activism of David Jay and AVEN (see Timeline), just like much of today’s fanfiction communities can be found online; the diverse nature of the internet has brought together so many voices and rallied them even in spaces where they may not seem to belong. Aro/ace fanfic writers operate outside fanfiction’s preoccupation with shipping and defy notions of who can and cannot be loved and how that love can be shown. Aro/ace fanfic is just as misunderstood, contested, and overlooked as any other marginalized part of fandom. However, there is a unique level of normalization that must be overcome before aro/ace fanfic can fully claim its space and be both legitimated by the rest of fan fiction and challenge its very foundations. Thus, the purpose of this project is to bring aromanticism and asexuality from the margins of fanfiction and academia and in conversation with the dominant narratives that pervade our society.
Fanfiction is the place for people to explore the characters and worlds of their favorite shows, games, movies, books, and any other piece of media. No matter the length or genre, fanfic is the place where character dynamics and relationships shine. And its emphasis on how those dynamics and relationships are constructed have led to a diverse range of topics, tropes, and themes especially related to sex and romance. Popular tags on Archive of Our Own (AO3) include the likes of Falling in Love, Kissing, Pining, Sexual Content and a myriad of tags that are not inherently romantic or sexual (e.g. Alternate Universe, Friendship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping), though delving into virtually any fandom will show a preference for shipping, the romantic and sexual pairing of characters into relationships.
Though fanfiction is published in a wide array of forms and venues (or not published at all), AO3’s popularity is befitting because of its ease of use and tagging functions. Of the 87% of participants that publish their fanfic, 87.3% of them have AO3 as their number one site. Though sites like Tumblr, Twitter, and Discord are used for crossposting and shorter fics, they are much less preferred. Other sites like Dreamwidth and LiveJournal were once popular but have faded out, and alternative sites like Asianfanfics.com and Pillowfort have their small number of supporters. As such, this project pays specific attention to AO3’s positioning within fanfiction culture.
When looking at the asexual person, however, no matter their gender presentation or ethnicity they exist under a similar socially-induced muteness… So where does this leave the asexual reader and the asexual character, other than in a constant struggle to either ignore and suppress their own desires, or to battle society’s notion of what desire is and of how sex is performed and expressed?
(Westberg Gabriel, 2018, p. 34)
Westberg Gabriel writes on bodily autonomy in asexual slash fanfiction. Her argument can also be extended to aromanticism in which aromantic people and characters must contend with fanfiction’s preoccupation with romance.
As mentioned, the overwhelming interest in romantic and sexual relationships evokes many questions as to how platonic relationships, genfic, and fanfictions featuring aromantic and asexual characters fit into this scheme. Not all fan fiction is sexy or romantic, so what becomes of fan fiction outside of this realm? And what about those who write it? This project explores the positioning of aromantic and asexual people in media and society as well as within fanfiction. I explore the many configurations of representation and identity in relation to aro/ace fanfiction and its writers.
Note: The term aro/ace will be used throughout this project as a shortened form of “aromantic and/or asexual” and invoking the full spectrum of aro/ace identities. Aro/ace differs from the aroace identity in which an individual identifies as aromantic AND asexual. Additionally, the term aro/ace fanfic refers to fanfictions with aro/ace characters regardless of the importance of sexuality to the fanfic itself. More details on the terminology used in this project can be found here.
This project is broken up into several sections.
Background
This section sets the stage for my discussion of aromanticism, asexuality, and fanfiction. I contextualize our current time with brief overviews of the histories of fanfiction and the understandings of aromanticism and asexuality.
Methodology
This section details how I collected and analyzed my data as well as the theory informing my arguments.
Results
I divided the results into smaller sections. The Demographics section explains the types of people that participated in the survey (age, gender, race, etc.). The Social Conditioning section describes the ideals around aromanticism and asexuality that make aro/ace people feel out of place. The Crafting Aro/Ace Characters section describes how writers translate characters from their canon worlds into aro/ace fanfiction. The particular conventions of aro/ace fanfiction are explored in the Within Aro/Ace Fanfic section.
Why Are We Writing Aro/Ace Characters?
This section acts as a sort of summary of the results with a full perspective on all the reasons why aro/ace fanfic is written.
How Do We Fix It?
This section details potential solutions to the sidelining of aromanticism and asexuality both in fanfic and media.
Extras
A Timeline and list of Definitions provide for easy access to relevant historical moments and concepts. Media Recs is a list of characters from different media that participants described as canon aro/ace and aro/ace coded. Resources and Works Cited lists my citations as well as links to other related research. The Further Considerations page describes the other paths and questions this research could have answered.
Contact
This section gives some information about myself as relevant to why I’m conducting this project as an act of public scholarship.
Aromanticism & Asexuality in Fanfiction Writing 