#yes this spawned from me reading a lot of jarchie fanfic leave me alone

[opossumanon]

Asexuality in fanfiction (Please read tags for warnings yall)

The awkward thing about asexuality is that when reading fanfic about a character who's ace, usually the fics I read will either

Make the character not asexual

Has the character be asexual and despises sex (Which leads to that character basically being raped by their romantic interest; seriously this trope happens WAAAAAAAY more often than I'd like)

Maybe occasionally has the character's ace-ness be nuanced, but it only goes as far as "I'm bored by sex but I'm chill with doing stuff to my partner" which only shows one other way to be asexual

This particularly annoys me because I'm asexual. I probably fall into the sex-positive category. The reason I am still ace is because I do experience arousal, I would like to have sexual experiences with others (Wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't but it's still something I'd like to do), but I don't get "turned on" by other people. Basically if someone who's hot were to walk up to me naked I wouldn't be guaranteed to have a reaction but sometimes I can just be sitting and then suddenly have the urge to do the horizontal mambo. (I know there's probably a micro label for this, I just don't give a shit)

I know my case is rare, I know that aces like me are only brought up to try and excuse asexual erasure (I fucking hate it), but I still can't help but be disappointed that the only options for asexuality (In fanfic) are being 100%, being 0%, being some version of a stone, or being raped.

What about aces like me? What about aces who aren't like me but are still different than the three types listed above?

It's funny too cuz I remember this one fic that had smut between two characters (Consensual and both parties actually enjoyed it), one of which is ace in his original/comic book form, and the writer was all "I feel bad cuz [character] is ace in the comics and us aces get so little rep already" and I'm wondering how the author, who's ace themself, forgot about how asexuality is a spectrum?

You can have an ace character who gets horny and likes sex but just doesn't get turned on by people!

You can have an ace character who doesn't want anything to do with sex 99% of the time, but every once in a blue moon decides they want to roll in the sheets with their partner that night!

You can have an ace character who only gets aroused in specific circumstances, such as how long they've known the object of their arousal for!

Asexuality is such a wide spectrum that includes so much nuance, and seeing fic writers basically spit on it is so disheartening as a writer myself. One of the main ingredients to being a good writer, in my personal opinion, is to be able to take an aspect of your character and explore it/redefine it/expand on it in a way that satisfies the story!!!!

I don't know how to end this post tbh, I just wanna say that asexuality is more than three subtypes and you're allowed to narrow in on certain parts of the spectrum for your character, regardless of how "well-known" that part you're focusing on might be.