Methodology

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This research is an exploratory look at aro/ace fanfic through the voices of its writers. As such, I am guided by research questions rather than hypotheses which allow for flexibility in how you interpret your data and the answers you arrive at. My research questions are as follows:

How do writers negotiate their identities when writing aro/ace fanfiction?
How do writers translate canon characteristics, i.e., characters’ perceived sexualities, into fanfiction?
How does aro/ace fanfic fit into the wider fanfiction landscape?
And how have recent changes in the media landscape contributed to the ease of which aromanticism and asexuality can be placed onto characters?

To do so, I employ intersectionality and situated knowledge (Wylie, 2004) to describe how writers understand their own identities and write them into their fanfiction. They bring the multiplicities of their identities (race, gender, age, disability, etc.) into their writing and engage with the identities of their characters to create a situated telling of their aromanticism/asexuality. The knowledge that aro/ace fanfic writers have is based on their own confrontations with aromanticism and asexuality, whether or not they identify as aro/ace themselves.

I draw upon asexuality studies as conceptualized by Cerankowski and Milks (2010) and its disconnect from queer theory, as mentioned. I also use the concepts of allonormativity, amatonormativity, and compulsory sexuality to position aromanticism and asexuality as outside the norm and thus aro/ace fanfic as outside the predominant shipping culture.

I view aromanticism and asexuality as queer in the sense of their political orientation. However, my use of queerness as a politic does not mean that all aro/ace people identify as queer; rather, I am invoking queerness in its broadest sense of nonnormativity. Queerness is not just about sexuality, it connects to other facets of life and requires a conscious challenging of societal norms like compulsory heterosexuality (Ahmed, 2006). Though queerness has historically excluded aromanticism and asexuality, their shared desire to break the mold of normative sexuality is a point of connection. In being queer, aromanticism and asexuality contest the foundations of what we consider intimate relationships. This is essential to how many aro/ace fanfics reside within, actively resist, or quietly disregard shipping culture.

And although aro/ace fanfic may be oppositional (Hall, 1991) or subversive and resistant (Jones, 2014) at times, not all instances seek to critique the media on which they’re based. As such, though aro/ace fanfic is subcultural and tied to trends within media—both in news media reportings on asexuality in the 2000s and in entertainment media with increasing representations of queerness in film and television (GLAAD, 2022)—the meaning behind a fanfic and the intentions of its writer are better understood with attention to individual emotional and affective relationships to particular texts (Busse, 2017; Grossberg, 1992, p. 59; Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005).

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I focus on Jenkins’ (1992) conceptualization of de Certeau’s poaching to illustrate how fans appropriate media for their own benefit. Without placing emphasis on how these appropriations are juxtaposed against the intents of the authors and producers of these media texts. While Hall’s (1991) notion of dominant, oppositional, and negotiated readings may apply to some of the ways fanfic writers poach from their texts, their motivations and behaviors are much more complex. Some interpretations might align with how a character is canonically represented. But another might contest authorial intent and make demands of subtext that could be oppositional to one writer and dominant to another.

Finally, I draw upon the importance of the internet and online communities in the formation and sustenance of fanfiction and aro/ace communities. Though the internet can be hostile for some people, others find comfort in its affordances and value it as a safe space away from the cisgender, heteronormative, and heterosexist realities of the physical world (Llewellyn, 2022). They form communities around shared interests, however this community must be differentiated from how they exist in real life (Bury, 2017). Though fans can participate in fandom online, the depth of these interactions vary. As such, my use of the term community can be understood more as a collective affinity for writing, publishing, and engaging with aro/ace fanfiction.

The following pages in this section describe the methods used to collect my data as well as how I analyzed the data once it was collected.