Archive of Our Own ^beta

What This Is

This collection is intended to provide a space to encourage the appreciation, creation, and discussion of fanworks that do not focus on romantic relationships. Romantic relationships feature prominently in many fannish communities, which can make it difficult for people who do not enjoy romance in their literature and art to find like-minded people to share the things they do enjoy with.

GenRecs invites fans to add bookmarks of nonromantic or gen fanworks that they would recommend to this collection. The purpose of this is twofold- to provide a way for readers to find fanworks they might enjoy and to encourage fancreators to share their gen fanworks. A person may create for themself, but they share for other people. Let’s show people who create the kind of works we enjoy some appreciation.

Please do read the rules, leave kudos and comments if you can, and have a good time.

Aren't there other collections like this?

Yep! This is another one.

Why bookmarks?

Because collections on Ao3 were originally designed to be used for events, a collection's manager can hide all the works that are part of that collection. To prevent this, some fans on Ao3 don't allow their fics to be added to collections. A bookmark in a collection is only hidden if the work is, so the creator retains control of the work.

If some works are in a collection as bookmarks and some are in a collection directly, they're separated. This collection is therefore only accepting bookmarks.

What counts as a "Nonromantic Fanwork"?

A "Nonromantic Fanwork" is a fanwork that isn't about romance. If there are main characters, they should not be having a romance. Background characters having romances are acceptable, but if the main character spends the work arranging for these background romances, that doesn't count. This isn't the place for stories that are tragedies because the protagonist wants a romance and doesn't get one, either.

Sexually explicit visual art doesn't go here.

If a work contains masturbation but isn't primarily about masturbation, that's welcome.

Meta (commentary) about a relationship that frames it as romantic is also not Nonromantic.

A Nonromantic Fanwork hosted on Ao3 is likely to be listed as "Gen", but since there isn't an official option for queerplatonic relationships, sometimes people will indicate those with a / or list the relationship using both / and &. Some people are trying to get a # accepted as indicating a queerplatonic relationship. If the work explicitly refers to the relationship as queerplatonic in the tags or the text, it's welcome here.

Is this collection only for aromantics?

The spade aro flag in the icon might suggest that, but I think everyone can enjoy art that doesn't center romance. This is a place that aromantic people are specifically welcome in, but alloromantic people and people who don't find romantic attraction a useful concept are also welcome.

Do not use this collection to harass people.

I hope I didn't need to say that.

Add bookmarks to this collection. Do not add works directly.

Adding bookmarks instead of works allows the creators of the works to retain control of them. Add a bookmark while making the bookmark or from your bookmarks page.

Add works by other people. Do not add your own.

We know the image you have in your head is beautiful. If someone else recommends your work, we can trust that image they got from it was beautiful, too.

Please leave a comment on works on the archive letting creators know that you've recommended that work.

After all, it's not very encouraging to find out that people are loving your work without bothering to tell you about it.

If you wouldn't recommend it, don't put it here.

This collection is not an exhaustive list of all the gen works on the archive. That's what the search function is for.

If you are adding notes to a bookmark, please frame them in a positive way.

This is a list of recommendations. It might be helpful to think about adding notes to these bookmarks as helping people find what they'll like. For example, a note like 'Recommended for people who enjoy introspection and character analysis' would be a more helpful note than 'All in Bruce's head.'

All works bookmarked here must use the Archive Warnings correctly.

Using "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" with another Archive Warning is considered correct for this purpose; using "No Archive Warnings Apply" with a warning, even "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings", is not correct.

No works created using generative "AI".

A work is considered to be created using generative "AI" if the creator publicly states that generative "AI" created a significant part of the final result. Generative "AI" includes large language models like ChatGPT and diffusion image generators like StableDiffusion. Autocomplete and some forms of spellcheck operate on the same principles as ChatGPT; their use is not prohibited.

This collection's purpose is to facilitate and encourage the creation and discussion of a particular kind of art as part of communication and community formation among people. Giving a prompt to a text or image generator doesn't require the kind of thought that creating a set of text or an image yourself does, nor does the resulting text or image communicate in the same way.

I will not be going through submissions looking for signs that the creators used generative programs. Many of the things that people look for in works to try to determine if a work is generated are things the programs picked up from the training data or things that a person might choose to do to make a point.

No Harry Potter.

I recognize that Harry Potter is an enormous fandom and has meant a great deal to many people. However, J.K. Rowling uses the money she makes from Harry Potter to fund attacks on trans rights. Fanworks do not directly give money to Rowling, but they do keep HP relevant. There are Harry Potter specific gen collections already.