Embracing the robotic: Products of neuroqueer reclamation on AO3

Abstract

Fan works about queer and neurodivergent characters depicted as robots are common on Archive of Our Own (AO3). The robot archetype has historically been used to other groups and individuals, especially on the basis of presentation or performance of affect and hierarchical care dynamics. American cultural institutions use mechanistic comparisons, archetypes, and allegories to define difference; mechanistic discourse in cultural spaces spanning from popular media to medicine therefore plays a part in the historically intertwined cultural constructions of neurodivergence and queerness. By examining works on AO3, I found a pattern of reclamation, wherein many authors and their communities chose to embrace the mechanistic allegory of neuroqueerness critically. This critical approach is inseparable from the culture of fandom that generated the archive that hosts these works. Ultimately, authors conceptualize and use AO3 as a neuroqueer platform.