#fanfic discourse

[myfandomrealitea]

"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."

Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.

AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.

AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:

Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.

AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.

[webshood]

I'm a Jason Todd drug denier, if you write him doing drugs we're actually enemies. /lh

If you write kid him smoking cigarettes, that's okay because it's canon and nicotine is appetite suppressing, you can use it to make a good fic of him dealing with starvation and homelessness. However, the moment you make him (adult or kid) smoke weed, just know I'll be outside your door and you'll start coughing blood in three days

[wileycap]

[spoilers for atla]

I don't like (and at the same time I like it very much) how fandom makes Zuko into a Soft Widdle Ducky.

Like, yeah, he's awkward and traumatized. But he is very much a warrior prince at the same time. Look at his confrontation with Ozai: "you're going to listen, or I'm going to cut you in two with my swords".

During the series, Zuko almost never struggles with immediate action and decisions - but he's really terrible at measured, considered action and decisions.

I want to see that side of Zuko in fic. Like, a former war minister gets out of line? "Right. Let's take this outside. Do you want fire or steel." Sure, by the end of the series he's much more mature, grounded and peaceful, but so many fics I read, he just kind of folds when people get aggressive with him, when his more canonically true self would likely just go "yup, that's a threat, first you're going to get your ass beat and then I'm throwing you in jail, I don't really care how influential you are." And I want to see him deal with that.

That being said, I still enjoy all those fics where Zuko's personality is basically 🥺🔥

[cutebutalsostabby]

"People need to stop doing x in y fanfics"

You will take the free, adequately content-warned, non-commercial transformative works you are given, and you will LIKE them. That or use the back button.

[mywitchcultblr]

[cinewhore]

re: fanfic as content…i think that’s why i feel so disconnected from it lol. Everything is fucking content and if you are not mass producing it/staying relevant/appealing to every single person then it’s pointless to engage in the art.

I wish a very die to the word content i hate it and i hate how much the internet has capitalized off this shit. Not everyone wants to be content creators. Some folks just want to make weird art and connect with others.

[klarion-the-witch-boy]

This is in defense of Jason's "hand me down" friends.

I've seen some folks upset that Jason "doesn't have friends of his own" or "gets Dick's hand me down friends" and like. No need to shout you don't have similar aged siblings, my man (kidding, kidding). More seriously: hand me down friends are a thing for some sibling sets.

I adopted the friends that belonged to my older sibling as my older sibling drifted from them. I also watched one of my younger siblings drift from their bestie and that bestie end up another younger sibling's best friend. It just be like that sometimes. That doesn't make a friendship any less important or authentic.

Those younger siblings? Sibling A doesn't actually talk to that once-bestie anymore, besides casually, whole Sibling B talks to them all the time. That's a bit of an extreme (though still a very amicable drifting-away for Sib A and Ex-Bestie), but like. Jason and Roy? They make complete sense to me, both as a Sib that adopted another Sib's old friend and as a Sib that watched other sibs trade friends.

Anyway. Sometimes a sibling drifts away from a friend while another sibling drifts toward them. It happens. Sometimes it's only a bit of drift, sometimes it's a shared custody situation (one of my Sibs and I shared one friend, as a bestie for each of us, for years). Is what it is. But what it isn't is unrealistic or whatever. It also isn't unrealistic for Jason to lose touch with old friends and make new ones, even if those new ones are hand me downs.

That's all, thanks for reading.

[aadmelioraa]

everyone who makes snide posts about rings of power being bAd fAnFiC owes me $5. congrats on not understanding what fanfic is, you're incorrect and unoriginal but hey, at least you're also deeply annoying.

[deadbunnybar]

“Star tears” this “Hanahaki Disease” that

Mf have you ever heard of the GLASS DELUSION??

Apparently back in the 15th-16th centuries there was a common delusion that a person thought they were made to shatter somehow. Whether it be through their “glass limbs” or “eating” something that was glass. People with this delusion were called “melancholy” since at the time “melancholy” was another word for madness except for the twist that the person was also sad.

If any romantic writers or fanfic writers are out there PLEASE DEAR GOD USE THIS!!

[ourdreamsareneon]

it's crazy the level of discourse there is about antis/pros and how teenagers just devolve into purity culture so quick. I'm sure I used to be like that, but somewhere between dating gang members and reading copious amounts of philosophy the world became a lot more gray to me when I entered my twenties and I've realised three things that I think are important for teenagers to know:

To quote my favourite childhood book series: "People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict." Sure, going to car meets, selling drugs, drunk driving, stealing cars, playing chicken with cops are all examples of bad things that you shouldn't do but am I going to sit in my lovers bed and tell him that this life he was born into that saw all his friends die in drive bys and that saw his own dad pull a gun on him when he was a kid makes him a shitty person? Even though I can see all of the good in him, and can tell he doesn't want to do this, I should ignore it and focus on the negatitives? We have all done bad things, we all do bad things, and we all will do bad things. It doesn't make you a bad person.

Purity culture hurts everyone. There's a great book about this called the History of Sexuality that delves into how purity culture and the censorship of sex is at its essence the capitalist authority controlling the means of reproduction. At large scale 'pray the gay away' and 'contraception is a sin' make it so that men and women couple up more (instead of same sex coupling) and have unprotected sex. On a smaller scale 'AO3 is evil because it has pedos' and 'watersports is the grossest thing ever' do the job of the capitalist authority on a more digestible level. Us vs Them no longer is 'alt right vs communism' they use your words to make it 'pure good hobest people vs pedos who like piss play.' you are making bullets for your enemy and handing them your own damn gun. I promised I wouldn't make this whole post this one point tee hee sorry if you want me to elaborate just ask lol

Fetish ≠ real world experience. I'll build my own pyre as an example: I love me some good CNC (consensual non-consent) in my fanfics but in real life sex I have a praise kink so bad I have cried during sex multiple times. I am into tooth rotting sweet stuff and the kindest people in the world in real life. The media you consume 1000% has an effect on you, I'm not arguing that. I am however arguing that if you have media literacy and know what media is and is not harmful to you, it shouldn't effect your real life drastically unless you have other shit going on. I know this is rich coming from the "I have dated people in gangs" guy because that may show what kinda guy I'm into but prommy that's not a sexual attraction thing, it's 100% a lifestyle thing that again I will elaborate on if you want. Point being, porn ≠ reality and what gets that blood flowing isn't necessarily a reflection of how good or bad you are (ofc there are kinds of porn that are bad but that's beside the point and a very complicated thing for me to type while I'm this sleepy)

thank you for coming to my ted talk. pls I am begging on my knees for people to stop having black and white world views but i also know that's just a product of being a teen so if you are a teen pls! go out there and! consume media from different cultures and people with different lives to you! the world is at its best when it is wide!!! and full of love <3

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

still not over the time I saw some radfem condemning dead dove fic and literally saying women who read it should find better coping mechanisms it's not healthy and it romanticizes abuse while having an icon of that daisy girl from girl interrupted. like. you can't say "girls shouldn't deal with their trauma in bad ways :/" when your fucking profile picture is from THE Girls Deal With Their Trauma In Bad Ways Movie

[aquarian-airhead]

umm your ship is problematic because quantum theory says every parallel timeline is real because of potential electron positioning instance therefore the universes where they're full siblings are also real which makes it quantumcest and that means you want to show ankle to a minor on discord you should basically kys yourself

[astrabear]

A writer friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

A FB friend made a post asking if writers have any sort of ethical or moral responsibility regarding our writing. Most of the answers were about our only responsibility being to the "truth" of the story and characters, or the like. The following was my response. ---------- I guess I'll be the voice of dissent. As writers, we *absolutely* have a responsibility to the culture and times we live in--or rather, to the people who share them with us. Any piece of fiction longer than a short story (and many short stories as well) has a socio-political message. It may be minor, and it may well be unintentional, but it's there. It's there in the decisions we make about what characters to spotlight, and how we portray them. It's there in the attitudes we don't even mean to express. It's there in our choice of what struggles to showcase, and why characters on different sides of the issue make the choices they do. You can choose to craft your message deliberately, or not. But it will be there. It is our responsibility to be aware of what we're saying, and if what we're saying is harmful to people, to choose to say something else. If (to choose some random examples) your survivalist ammosexual turns out to be right, and his way of self-centered violence is the correct way forward? You're saying something that speaks to issues our society is facing right now. If your villain is Black or trans, and your heroes are all white or cis? That's a message. In a world of true equality, it might not be, but in this world? In a world of persecution and hate crimes and laws of deliberate oppression across multiple states? It's absolutely saying something. And what it's saying is harmful. It literally contributes, however small your audience may be, to a greater harmful attitude and world view. As a writer, you own that. And as writers, I believe we have an ethical and moral responsibility not to make things worse, if we can't make them better. And if doing harm is the only way you can be "true to the story"? Then you damn well tell a different story. As humans, our obligation is to our fellow humans, the marginalized most of all. Being a writer or an artist doesn't change that; it only changes how we go about it.

Me again. Now, this author writes novels and screenplays (Ari Marmell, he writes mostly fantasy with some sci-fi/horror, many of them have audiobook versions, some have been translated into other languages, see if your library carries anything but don't pirate minor authors who barely make enough to get by please) but this is the crux of the conflict I see in fanfic discourse.

And I don't know if it's possible to have constructive discussion between people who agree with these underlying principles (that everything communicates a political viewpoint, that what you put out into the world becomes part of a larger system of beliefs and values, that you are responsible for the effects of your work) and people who disagree with them.

[destiel-wings]

I'm 93k words into writing the most epic Supernatural fanfiction ever (that is nowhere near the end by the way, it's gonna be like 300k) and I'm feeling stupid every day for putting that much literary effort into this because it's fanfiction and i should be an author irl, and i think i should stop writing it but also i can't possibly stop writing it because it's too damn good dammit and am i supposed to let it be untold??? when it's so real and raging in my own mind??? it's going to be silly and romantic and seriously epic and dramatic and action-packed and angsty and a character study and filled with themes and metaphors and actual plots and storylines and interesting original characters but at the same time everything is completely ingrained in the show and its mythology and hopefully takes it to full potential providing an alternative s15 and a completely different ending for the show, it's basically a literary masterpiece but it's fanfiction and what the hell am i supposed to do with it

[xiaolangg]

I'm at my FUCKING LIMIT.i'm gonna snap fr like writers when you write "character x reader" what you don't understand in "reader"??? i just read an osamu x reader and yet reader is still describes with lavender long straight hair... it's not difficult to be inclusive.I'm upset & salty rn but i think it's not hard to not describe reader's,height,weight,body,hair or skin color...write whatever you want but reader =/= self insert .i just wanna reader some fanfic without reader being described 😭😭😭i feel like I'm whining like a baby but it's so hard to find some fanfic like this..

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

How’s Neil Gaiman gonna eye roll at fanfiction when like… brother you wrote gay fanfic about the Bible. You wanna talk Word of God trope ? ‘cause someone might have a unique conversation with a burning bush coming up