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Josie

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I didn't know what category to put this topic in, but I think it goes in here even though it's more complaining about lack of fanfiction than actually providing good aro fanfics. Okay, let's get to the actual topic now haha. 

 

Even if it's a little embarrassing to confess, I love reading fanfiction (supernatural fanfiction to be more precise). What sucks is that it is very difficult to find fanfiction that actually suits me as an aromantic person. I have never liked fanfiction written like the reader is in a romantic relationship with the character/person and that made so much sense to me when I realised I was aro. It just sucks though that pretty much all fanfiction is so extremely focused on dating the character or whatever. Like all I want is fluffy fanfics where the reader and the character/person are really good friends who cuddle. Is that really too much to ask for? Since I'm not asexual i also like smuttier fanfictions but the only ones where the characters aren't dating always end up with them confessing their eternal and undying love for eachother after they have had sex and it's just so exhausting haha. 

 

So, what are your opinions on fanfictions as a-spec people, and how do you find good fanfiction that actually suits you? If you have any good recommendations ( it doesn't have to be supernatural) I would love it if you could link some in a comment! Thanks and take care.

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I don't really read fanfics, but we were talking about the lack of representation of aromantic experiences in popular culture in general in this thread.

 

If the fanfiction you'd like to read doesn't currently exist, have you thought about writing it yourself? :)  

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I don't read fanfiction much (I tend to only like it if I haven't seen the original story), but I do know that Archive of Our Own lets you search for tags, and there are aromantic fanfictions on there. So try searching for aromantic tags? For example, I believe aro-het Dean Winchester is presented in some fanfics.          

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I read Harry Potter and the Methods of rationality which I found very fascinating. I'm not sure I'd recommend it because it is Really weird. No romance or sex in it though, cause most of the characters are 11. It's this alternative HP story where Harry is a child genius (for reasons the story later reveals) who's spend his childhood learning muggle science and is trying to use that to make sense of the wizarding world.

Other than that I haven't read much, but I approve of fanfic in general. I think it's a good way for someone to work on their writing skills and show appreciation for some content.

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  • 1 month later...

I love reading, so I have a special place in my heart and mind for well written fanfic. I tend to read ones about obviously non-a spectrum characters so there is no disappointment in where the fanfic author takes the story and characters. I also never read POV fanfics, I don't want to imagine myself in the story, I would much rather see it unfold as me as an objective observer. That said. I do read quite a lot of slow burn sotries, especially where both characters are repressing their feelings. There is no functional romance in those stories, piles of angst usually! and if the burn is slow enough you normally get many enjoyable chapters of character development before the sex happens. 

I agree with @Ettina Archive Of Our Own is probably the easiest site to find what you want with the advanced search, hotlink tag auto-searches, and the synonym tag linking that is done behind the scenes. Plus there are all sorts of warnings and tag warnings so you can avoid what you don't want to read. 

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On 22/06/2017 at 9:04 PM, Holmbo said:

I read Harry Potter and the Methods of rationality which I found very fascinating. I'm not sure I'd recommend it because it is Really weird. No romance or sex in it though, cause most of the characters are 11. It's this alternative HP story where Harry is a child genius (for reasons the story later reveals) who's spend his childhood learning muggle science and is trying to use that to make sense of the wizarding world.

Other than that I haven't read much, but I approve of fanfic in general. I think it's a good way for someone to work on their writing skills and show appreciation for some content.

This sounds super good, I'll check it out sometime :)

 

I read fanfiction when I want more of a story/characters, or a certain outcome. So I'll read the fics of that to get my 'fix' :D

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  • 4 months later...

(Revives a thread that hasn't been posted in for nearly 6 months) Parkour

 

I love fanfiction. I read it all the time, and I've been writing it pretty much since I was old enough to have a long-term memory. And honestly? Yeah. Yeah, the fanfiction community fucking sucks for aro (or at least, romance repulsed) people. I have entire fandoms where I've given up on searching for fics because nobody ever writes gen fics. And the pool is so small that it's hard to find something ideal- Sure, maybe there are genfics, but only about characters I'm not particularly interested in. Or there is one with my favorite character, but it's terribly written and short. Or maybe all such-and-such fandom's fics that actually have multiple chapters and interesting plots heavily feature one of my favorite characters in a ship that makes me uncomfortable. Hell, it's honestly really hard (in my experience) to find genfics that have complex plots and are a decent length... One of very few that I know of for the Jojo fandom, for example, has been abandoned for over a year.

 

It sucks for writers, too. Every writing prompt meme, every event, etc. seems to revolve around ships. People expect you to write ship fics. And hardly anyone actually cares about gen fics, either! I regularly watch my most polished, interesting, long, dedicated fics get less hits/kudos/comments in months or even years of being up than your average unedited ~2,000 word generic ship fic gets in a few days. And whenever I have the audacity to say I wish I had more gen fics to read? Every time, every single time, someone fucking comes into my inbox like "Ummm sweaty if you want fics write them yourself :/// Writers aren't your slaves ://///"

Buddy. Pal. Friend. Bub. Jack. I have written literally dozens of genfics. If you go on AO3 and search for only gen JJBA fics, there are currently a total of 1,076 fics. Of those, I wrote 18 of them, and I currently have a couple more in the works. I've written AUs, I've written canon compliant fics, I've written angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, horror, comedy, you name it I probably wrote it at some point. But GOD FORBID I should have an itch for a certain idea and wish I could read it without doing all the work myself, what kind of selfish asshole ever does that? Anyway I wonder if my favorite Royai author finished writing that prompt I sent them last week-

 

But it's not all bad, I guess. There are always some really good genfics out there, and a few of my fics (even if they don't get a lot of attention overall compared to others) have some dedicated fans. I also always write Jotaro as aro, and one of my friends and I organized a Gen Jojo Week event last September that we hope to run again this year.

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To add on to that, I've noticed over time that in the VERY VERY VERY rare case where someone includes an aro character in their fanfiction, they're almost always (A) an unimportant side character thrown in for ~~diversity~~ and their aromanticism is never addressed beyond a superficial "haha i'm aro what's romance" level, (B) portrayed as an obstacle in a potential romantic relationship/another character is pitied because this dirty aro won't date them :(((, or (C) they're arospec and are scared to Feel Love :((( until their One True Love fixes them :)))).

 

...I'm salty.

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7 minutes ago, techno-trashcan said:

To add on to that, I've noticed over time that in the VERY VERY VERY rare case where someone includes an aro character in their fanfiction, they're almost always (A) an unimportant side character thrown in for ~~diversity~~ and their aromanticism is never addressed beyond a superficial "haha i'm aro what's romance" level, (B) portrayed as an obstacle in a potential romantic relationship/another character is pitied because this dirty aro won't date them :(((, or (C) they're arospec and are scared to Feel Love :((( until their One True Love fixes them :)))).

 

...I'm salty.

 

You can say Voltron, it's ok

(NO BUT FOR REAL THOUGH. THIS IS TRUE AND I HATE IT.)

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2 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

 

You can say Voltron, it's ok

(NO BUT FOR REAL THOUGH. THIS IS TRUE AND I HATE IT.)

 

I haven't seen a single episode of Voltron, but from what I've seen cross my tumblr from time to time from that fanbase, I don't doubt it for a second.

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I feel your pain. Sometimes I feel like people get so caught up in writing their favorite romance they completely miss the point of a character or the book/show/movie/whatever they are writing fanfiction about. As for finding it, putting "gen fanfiction" into the search features at Livejournal or Dreamwidth can help, Archive of our own does have filters, but they aren't entirely reliable. Here's a Dreamwidth community for recommending fanfiction with no/very little romance: gensplosion

 

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