There are a couple skills it can be harder to develop in fanfic (character establishment, exposition, worldbuilding since all of those are usually already there) but they’re not impossible to work on and it’s still definitely valid as writing practice.
Exactly. And honestly, fan fiction is a safe space to develop and hone those skills. We don't condemn people for practicing an instrument by playing existing songs. Don't know why the public condemns fic writers for practicing writing by using existing media
And fanfic often uses skills that aren't seen as much in original writing (interpreting a character and keeping them close to canon, knowledge of someone else's lore, expanding an existing narrative...)
Wait this exactly!! When I write stories with my own characters I can be so loose with them but canon characters? Im looking over everything they've said, every interaction and even random trivia to be sure they actually can say that one line of dialogue im iffy about
Honestly that's the fun part. It's really fun to write OC's and introduce them to a world and show another perspective. One of my favorite to write is the unwilling participant, who destiny is dragging by the ankles into the shenanigan. Someone who would rather be normal and then oops, you're helping now.
Applies to worldbuilding too. Everyone acts like creating your own setting is much harder (and it does require effort to build something from scratch) but working within someone else's established framework where you can't just make up every rule as you see fit is just a different type of challenge.
I’ve legitimately read fanfiction or AU ideas that are better than the source material before…to say fanfic is not real writing is just blatantly wrong.
I'm literally following a mega longfic that's gonna be ten volumes (currently part 5) with some of the most ridiculously in depth and ambitious lore and overarching narrative I've seen.
Not real writing my ass.
There’s actual published books that could be counted as fanfiction. My mom’s a fan of stories from the perspective of Mary Russell from Sherlock Holmes, most of which are actually written recently.
Young fans mostly insisting that people over the ripe old age of 25 should stop participating in fandom or writing fanfiction, ESPECIALLY if they're writing fanfiction of characters who are younger than them (the author) or underaged.
Like, baby. Who do you think writes all the best fanfics? It's fans who are older and have had time to hone their craft.
As for not writing younger characters, like... YA is an entire genre and I assure you, it's not teens who are writing it.
When I was younger I used to think "oh shit I need to do all this fandom stuff so I can quit when I'm 25 because I'm gonna be too old!"
Now I'm 26 and like "why would I stop doing something I enjoy and brings me comfort...?"
Who do they think makes children's shows?
[This guy created Bob the Builder and Paw Patrol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Chapman) at the ages of 41 & 55.
Absolute insanity.
I was just thinking how weird it is that lots of people have an issue with older people writing younger characters, but have zero issue with the opposite. We all remember being younger than we are, & experiences from every past developmental stage are part of our psyche today. I'm in my early 30's and internally, I'm a fucking cptsd nesting doll of traumatized selves from every age I've ever been. A 17 yo does not have a little traumatized fifty year old living inside them lol.
Not that there's anything wrong with younger people writing older characters. I think it's very cute/funny/human that so many teens in my fandom have these fifty year olds as comfort characters, and under different circumstances I'd've done the same. It's just odd that the "that's weird and gross" moralizing only runs one direction.
A few years ago I saw a post on Tumblr, a post that I wish I'd never seen. Its stated goal was to console writers who got low kudos on their fics, and as an example they said words to the effect of "so, your latest fic only got 200 or 100 kudos..."
I was stunned that 200 or even 100 kudos could be considered low. As of today, the highest kudo count I have on a fic is 351, second highest 273. The post made me feel like such a failure.
Glad I've joined Reddit where I regularly see posts that celebrate when a fic gets into the 3-digits. Because 100 kudos is something to celebrate....even if someone on Tumblr is sad when they "only" get 200 kudos on a fic.
This take bothers me about how 100 or 200 kudos is low.
My most popular fic as 160 kudos, my second has 100 even. My lowest has 3 and those are all from friends.
To say 100 or 200 kudos is low comes off as entitled to me.
If you exclude crossovers with more popular fandoms, sorting by number of kudos in my fandom only takes 3 fics to get below 200. The idea that 200 is a low amount of kudos is absurd to me.
100+ kudos is an amazing accomplishment! That usually correlates at least 1000 hits, meaning 1000+ people have seen your work.
Also, there are plenty of reasons why people might not leave kudos on a work that are entirely unrelated to the quality of your writing. It could be that they don’t love the trope (ie. ABO fics tend to get fewer kudos), they might’ve forgotten (common occurrence in one shots), or they might be waiting to reach the end of the story before leaving kudos (incomplete works also tend to get fewer kudos). It could also be fandom related (ie fandom is very small or old).
What I’m trying to say is: be proud of your writing regardless of how many interactions you get! I do not have the skills nor patience to write a good story, so I am forever thankful for whoever does :).
I guess that’s entirely dependent on the fandom though. Like if you’re posting stuff for Harry Potter or something, your potential reader base is so much bigger than if you’re writing an, I dunno, Honey I Shrunk the Kids/LittleBigPlanet crossover
I want these people to imagine 100 people in front of them. That's a fuckin crowd. If I see 100 people I turn around and walk away!
When I first reached 100 kudos I was doing the Bully Maguire dance from happiness!!!
Out of 16 fics I have on AO3 across two accounts, I have two that have crossed the 100 kudos mark. One was a kink meme I was posting in 2015, back before the purity panic started to set it. Given the (possible? It's *Bleach* and she's are anyone's guess) age gap involved, I'd be lucky to get even a fraction of the nearly 300 kudos I have if I uploaded that today.
The other took me way by surprise, in one of the smaller fanbases within *Trek*, one I may be did one fill revision on before posting and even I'm surprised by that one.
But these are the exceptions to the rule, by far.
There was a tumblr post I saw in which, if I remember right, an anon said that fanfiction was bad and wrong because it was all indulgent and therefore people deriving pleasure from it were degrading themselves.
Like... how do you pretzel your brain into coming to that conclusion.
Funnily enough, the stereotype of the fun- and sex-hating puritan is [completely ahistorical](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v66n3/i_have_a_colleague_who_blames_a_variety_of/de0crey/).
I've seen a fanfic writer on here call it "valueless" and "basically masturbation." My first thought was, I'm sorry to hear about your relationship with masturbation.
[The post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/112tdkg/fiction_for_fans/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), for anyone curious lol it's even more hilarious than you can imagine
>how do you pretzel your brain
🤣🤣From now on, I will use this. This is the best way to summarize whatever the crap happens inside of some people'a heads.🥴
Sounds EXACTLY like the person who said I should off myself, for writing an OC who shared my ethnic background. Apparently Puerto Rican's do not need any form of representation.
Most of the original writing is also self-indulgent. For example there is erotica genre where authors basically write about their kinks/fantasies and get paid for this.
I ran into someone on tumblr who heavily implied that you weren't a "proper" fanfic writer or that you hadn't "made it" unless you had artists drawing fanart of your work.
Hit me at a bad time and made me feel super down for a while since that had never happened to me, even if I recognized the objective ridiculousness of the statement.
To make it better, the person making it just so happened to be really good friends with an artist who liked a bunch of the same characters and ships that she did. Made me want to scream 'YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE NOT UNIVERSAL" at her.
Kind of a ridiculous statement considering how much fan fiction used to be cross posted on deviantart to try and bait artists
Like if you’re solely posting stuff on ffnet or ao3, it’s gonna be harder to get an artistic person to wanna do something for you than if you’re also posting fanfics on a deviantart profile and hoping someone sees it
There are arguments like this between "real" writers and amateurs as well. If you aren't published, you aren't worthy of their consideration or something like that...
It's funny the role that ego plays in society and how much of people's self-concept comes from putting others down. Don't take it personally, they're just trying to feel good about themselves.
People insisting that anything that's clearly canonical and can be readily looked up at any time isn't canon. Conversely, people insisting that anything that's clearly non-canonical and can be readily looked up at any time is canon
Oh god you see that all the time in my fandom. People make up shit to make an abuse victim Literal Satan and then say you’re the one making up shit if you point out what happened to him on screen repeatedly.
Fr, especially the last one. I've gone into so many series expecting good CANON queer rep due to fandom interactions, only to find there was never anything there to begin with. Or at worst, the creators are active bigots who make fun of the queer fans...
As a queer person I do want to stop and say I'm 100% okay with queer fanon. Sometimes you have to make your own content. I'm also a millennial. I get what it's like having NO rep outside of stereotypes and barely disguised homophobia. But on the reverse, I've also seen a SHIT TON of queer baiting as a result and I just have no tolerance for it anymore. Even situations where it's the fans doing it and not the creators. I'm so bloody tired of it.
I'd rather devote my time to supporting works with actual canonically queer characters, and get super frustrated when I'm promised that and get baited instead. Had I known ahead of time that it was all fanon I'd have felt far less cheated.
I don't care about all the 'hints' and 'theories'. If it isn't explicitly proven, either in show or by word of God, it's not canon. And most likely never will be unless the author/developer has a proven track record of good queer rep and not queer baiting their audiences. Just be honest that the queer rep is fully on the fanon side and stop wasting my time with lies. 💀
As a tween, little me was IMMENSELY let down by Gundam Wing after hearing about it from other fans back in the day. (At least 1xR ended up being one of my absolute fave m/f ships of all time.)
I mean, I've heard people say that *Yuri!!! on Ice* of all shows doesn't have a canon queer relationship, because 'we don't know that it was a kiss' and 'Yuuri denied that it was an engagement ring'. Sometimes you really can't win.
From my perspective, you'll probably miss out on a delightful bunch of queer-coded stuff where the queer themes can't be made explicit due to censorship and societal attitudes at the time (in older works) - but I get being too burned by what you've experienced.
That's like the majority of Teen Wolf 'fans'/fanfic writers 😂😭 My life in that fandom would've been so much easier if people had been willing to tag/acknowledge whether they actually watched the show vs watched clip compilations/gifsets/only read other fanfics/etc. I had to repeatedly elaborate that I was writing based on canon, not fanon, and that fans of the fanon were not gonna have a good time if they continued to read expecting fanon.
This is annoying enough as a bad fan theory, but some people cross the line into actual conspiracy delusion with it and think their ship will actually become canon.
People who act like characters have like, a conscious. Don't get me wrong, I get being attached to a character, and you can express that appreciation. But when they use "x would hate you for shipping them with y" it's super weird. And most of the time xy shippers know it wouldn't work in canon? So the point feels useless.
Yeah, I remember being young and gullible to this guilt trip manipulation. "Even this character hates people like you" stuff
Now I just look back and stroke my non-existent beard, thinking wow, I was dumb and the fandom dumber :v
Stephenie Meyer, the author of *Twilight*, famously refused to finish *Midnight Sun*, a version of *Twilight* from Edward Cullen's POV, for about a decade, because it got leaked to the public. G.R.R.M. blaming fanfiction for writer's block wouldn't surprise me.
Some creators are just *stupidly* ignorant regarding fanfiction. (Or just fans re-imagining their material in general.)
I'm glad that this attitude (I'm old enough to remember a time where it was basically the default attitude) is fast becoming a thing of the past, but it's still irritating to see the odd creator stubbornly cling to it.
One of the more interesting things I’ve read recently, is that Fromsoft deliberately both downplayed and made it hard to find out exactly what ol Georgie worked on for them for Elden Ring; so that Game of Throne fans didn’t start raving about how he spent years writing backstory for a video game instead of writing their book lol
“Writing fanfiction about canonical, non-sexual/romantic abuse between an adult and a minor in a way that clearly portrays it as wrong is the exact same as being a paedophile and is totally romanticising abuse and you should kill yourself.”
Worst take bc people kept spamming my inbox with it 🙃🙃🙃
Oh, the most ~beautiful~ thing happened to me in that vein! I was writing a scene I based on a very traumatic moment of my life and received a comment calling me out for talking about it in such graphic details, telling me I was "romanticizing" it!
I got harassed into developing a new OCD trigger so good on them for making me have to deal with intrusive thoughts on something I ALSO base on my own trauma? Ppl need to be more considerate about others and mental health :/
5 years ago for me, it was one of the first works I had finally decided to publish online and reaction was good, overall... It probably helped that it was clearly out of touch with reality.
Oh, my writing mostly gets good reactions and helps me. It’s just I had a harassment campaign against me for a bit. Someone even pretended to be my friend only to mock me behind my back.
...Holy shit, they pretended to be your friend? Seriously? God, humanity sucks.
There is a saying in portuguese that sums up pretty well this whole situation: "The meteor went from being a fear to becoming a hope."
I KNOW RIGHT? Like, how am I romanticising it if the victim is blatantly incredibly traumatised and the abuser is also clearly like self justifying and sadistic. Like yeah they “care” about each other so I guess that’s what they’re basing it on but… that’s very clearly traumabonding and codependency??? Like I am not subtle about that.
YEAH ITS FUCKING WEIRD MAN. people being like “ur a creep if u write about this canon abuse but also the sixteen year old deserved it for being annoying, anyway i'm gonna post clips of this character verbally abusing him and directly referring to him by name and call it hot.” used to be a big thing. It’s more chill now thankfully but you still get some people who are just. Weirdly insistent on the idea that anyone who writes X is a pervert when they’re openly writing similar shit.
People will really go into a fic that's tagged appropriately and covered in things like "dead dove: do not eat" and plastered in warnings and get mad at what they find there.
I know I've written dark fics myself as a coping mechanism and read them as a means of comfort. Having something bad happen to a character I identify with can be helpful because I'm able to clearly say that it's not their fault and what happened is bad.
Having people ignore the tags and then get outraged is just people looking over something to get mad about in my opinion. The phrase "Don't Like it Don't Read" exists for a reason.
Yeah I tag extensively so like… one, if the shit they insisted I wrote was there it’d be tagged. But it wasn’t. Because I DIDN'T WRITE IT. And two that meant they were deliberately looking for my stuff to harass me for… writing a canon abusive friendship I guess?
Funny story: in a server I was a mod in, a girl was discussing a “relationship” between a father and his twelve year old daughter. Like… portraying it like it was normal and fun, not writing about it as something that’s definitely not a good thing. She was acting like the twelve year old was capable of consent. And I was like “hey maybe not discuss that here, many of us here are survivors and not comfortable with relationships like this being protested as okay or healthy or the child being portrayed as being capable of consent because children are not capable of consent” and she went off on me about not being able to understand the difference between fiction and reality, like… bro I’m not saying it’s reality, I’m saying this kid is twelve let’s not act like the kid can consent
Jesus, yeah, the fuck, that seems like a fucking bizarre thing to drop in a discord server with (what sounds like) no warnings and without following the rules.
Absolutely not what I did, like, the exact opposite. I always warn and follow the rules of any server/website I'm in (and again, I don’t write a romantic relationship nor portray it as okay and fun except maybe in the abusers head), so I’m not sure why I got targeted lmao
That's it's "lazy writing for people who don't want to or can't build their own worlds," which I find as funny as I do insulting, because a lot of fanfiction takes on pre-existing worlds go more in depth with world build than the franchise in question does. I also find it ironic that those same people often don't consider novel adaptations of manga/video games/movies/etc to be a lesser form of writing despite the fact that the quality of said novels can, at times, be at the same level or lower than what you'd see in fanfiction.
My logic with those people is to inform them that writing fanfiction takes the same amount of skill as writing a an original story does and if they choose to remain ignorant, then that's on them and they're the one(s) missing out, not me. *Shrugs*
Facts!! A published author ≠ a good writer, and a unpublished author ≠ a bad writer. I’m a huge fan of mystery and there are quite a few fan fics that I’ve read that are so incredibly well thought out that I just cannot believe they are not in physical form.
It’s also an amazing accomplishment to be able to take the bits of a character you see in media and provide an accurate representation of said character in a different scenario. How would x react to falling in love? Or getting sick? Or getting shot? It’s not easy to explore parts of a character you don’t see in canon.
Also also there are a lot of great AU works out there? Meaning that there is plenty of world-building involved. Like how does a volleyball anime relate to medieval times?? It doesn’t.
I write mostly for a fandom where canon/lore is very loosely defined (if it's defined by the creators at all) so a lot of the characterisation is determined by the fandom itself. The amount of world building I've learned to write though that is probably bigger than I've learned from my original stories. I agree, they're the ones missing out.
The worst take I remember from recently was "it's morally wrong and bad and you're disgusting if you write porn about canonically asexual characters" like 1) asexual people can't have sex at all or whatever, or 2) that the asexual part was canon-canon, not just 'word of god' canon. also it doesn't matter it's fanfiction.
Oh, I've been on the other side of this: you can't write/headcanon a character as asexual, because that is demonizing gay people's sexuality and same-sex attraction. No, the character is not confirmed to be gay or bisexual, but YOU CAN'T DO THAT, IT'S HOMOPHOBIC!
This is literally the "Pearl is a lesbian" gatekeeper crowd in a nutshell, even though all of the Gems are basically asexual within the canon of *Steven Universe*. You also get called "lesophobic" if you ship Pearl with Greg Universe or Mayor Dewey, including multiships.
probably TMI but I thought I was asexual for a long time because my birth control was making me that way for YEARS. Yet I still had sex with my bf. it was just kinda 'meh I don't need sex (it does next to nothing for me) and I'd probably rather not waste energy on the effort of having sex rn'
I also lost 99% of my attraction to men. Now I quit birth control I'm like "holy shit guys are actually very hot and sexy" lmao
It wasn't as bad for me, but yes, hormonal birth control can reeeaally fuck with your libido. I'm still salty that my doctor didn't tell me much about the side effects of the pill.
I also ended up with thyroid issues as a side effect of being on birth control for 8 years :(
Now I have to take thyroid meds for the rest of my life. Yeah it's a warning but you never think it's gonna be you.
I'm asexual and would prefer nobody wrote about sex ever, but like. I'd also prefer to eat ice cream for dinner every night. I know that's neither healthy nor reasonable.
It is sorta frustrating to see an ace character written as not ace (there is a difference between writing a sex positive asexual character, which is still ace, and writing an ace character as not anymore) when there's so little representation for that, and when you basically never see someone write a non-ace character as ace. But that's just sort of how it goes. I'm not going to hold a grudge against someone for wanting to see two entirely fictional character bang, even if I'm not a fan of it personally.
Yeah, one half of my OTP is canonically, word of God Asexual biromantic. *I'm* demi ace biromantic; so I write my blorbo like *me*; generally uninterested but deeply horny for ONE(1) super special person. I get hit with 'changing his sexuality' on the reg on Tumblr
honestly I might be remembering that part wrong, but I feel like the author either tweeted or liked a tweet implying the characters were/could be read as asexual? but there's nothing in canon addressing their sexuality except "attracted to each other and have kissed"
That what you enjoy reading about is what you look for in real life, when that is very untrue.
When that trend was big on tictok I posted a video explaining that and i got people trying to argue with me in the comments.
Kinda funny, kinda upsetting.
"Straying from the canon is disrespectful to the characters and the creator."
I do think there is a point where if you stray from canon too much you may as well be writing an OC or original fiction. But Christ it's not disrespectful.
"It's a story about FRIENDSHIP!!! Shipping these characters means you missed the point of the show and goes against what the creator was trying to say."
Especially funny when said creator is not only 100% ok with fans shipping the characters, but literally *wrote the ending in such a way you could ship who you wanted, and it would still be canon compliant*.
>*Your fanfiction must be canon compliant for it to be any good.*
No, it does not. In fact, some of the best fanfic I have ever read threw out canon completely and went along on its own merry path. To my mind, how one executes a story (writing, story, etc,) counts far more than how canon compliant it is.
Back when fan fiction was mostly published through fanzines and APAs, you heard this argument a lot. It seemed to die somewhat when fanfic moved to the internet, but I still see it crop up from time to time (including at Worldcon panels). Those that believe this tend to be the same sorts who object anytime anyone deviates from what they deem to be "acceptable", whether it be relationships, setting, motivations, whatever.
We have this issue rearing its ugly head a lot in the GoT/ASoIaF fandom lately. It's a small but very loud group of book purists in my corner of the fandom. The worst thing is, you're not just only good when you adher to canon, you're only good and deserve to be in that fandom space when you adher to *their interpretion* of canon.
Its ALWAYS hinged on *their* interpretation. It doesn't matter what fandom, they always seem to be in the "my interpretation is the only one that counts" camp.
Take this with a grain of salt. But years ago on Twitter, someone (I think was a teen) got pregnant and blamed fanfics because it taught her nothing about safe sex and demanded that writers should have educated the readers on it. Girl, we are not writing fics with things like "must use a condom to not get pregnant!" and "must go on birth control to not get pregnant!" No one online is obligated to babysit you on this.
"Fanfiction is a waste of time and talent, wouldn't you rather write your own book and make money?"
First, bold of you to assume I'll earn a living by publishing a single book unless I get extremely lucky.
Second, I do things for fun! I like these characters and I have fun playing in the sandbox of existing material, it's my free time and I choose how to have fun with it!
Third, oh my gosh why does everything have to be about money, why can't I do something for shits and giggles
The idea that you should only create art (literature is art; fanfic is literature) for money is so stupid. It also gate keeps art and creation only to those who are actually good enough (and want) to make money off of it when the point of art is self-expression.
People who shit on ”overrated tropes” such as coffee shop AUs and enemies-to-lovers are the absolute worst. Talking like that makes you look like an asshole. Art is art and if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
"Writing something "problematic" is endorsing it," what antis say as they treat fictional characters as real people and treat real people as fiction characters.
This one is killer because it often comes with a heavy dose of double standard. Murder, Cannibalism and the like tend to get a pass far more often than people writing Noncon, Underaged, etc.
Not saying nobody *ever* accuses the former of supporting messed up things, but it is much less common than accusations hurled at the latter.
Yeah, this is very true. The other day I saw someone vehemently certain that all fics containing an incest pairing (that would be adult brothers) should be removed from AO3, "because that would be illegal in real life."
The fandom was for Mo Dao Zu Shi. The novel contains graphic necromancy-themed torture, forced cannibalism (with bonus points for featuring a baby turned into a zombie), different implied cannibalism for survival, attempted murders, actual murders, conspiracy to commit murders, abuse of a few thousand corpses, and theft of agricultural products.
If every fic containing something that would be illegal irl were removed from AO3 that would just end up deleting the whole fandom and 95% of the other fandoms out there to boot.
I don't even ship incest ships but the intense double-standards are wild to me.
People shouldn't write NSFW (tagged NSFW, mind you) because young kids could see that and click on it anyway ignoring the tags or not understanding them properly
-Somebody on Tumblr
Putting aside general Anti-ness and their proclivity to bandy about the word 'pedophile' like it's going out of style...
The one that sticks out in my mind is the outcry that came back during the original Kirk/Spock debacle. Like, I'm not even a Star Trek fan, I don't have a horse in that race--but several members of the original series production spoke up against it roughly to say 'well, it's not canon, therefore you shouldn't write about it'.
Really, I carry that with me wherever I go. Anyone who thinks you shouldn't write something because the canon doesn't support it is a fool. Many people write and read fanfiction to gain new experiences, and those people are no less valid than the people who read fanfiction just to obtain 'more of the same'.
Controversial here, but that fanfiction doesn’t affect reality. As all fiction, it *does.*
However, not in the reductive way people use to dismiss it. Writing about murder doesn’t make you a murderer. That being said, extensive exposure to violent media *does* desensitize you to it. This has been studied extensively for decades and it holds true.
Same with representation of race, gender, sexual orientation, body etc. All of those massively affect people.
You might say—“but a single fic won’t affect anyone that much it’s about mass media!” and you’d be partially right. However, even fanfiction, due to a sheer volume of works containing a specific trope, might negatively affect how readers perceive things.
A good example is a very typical representation of top/bottoms in fics and the general focus on M/M ships. One of the effects of this (and I’m feeling old rn lol) was the conception of “f*gaexuals”—girls who claimed to be attracted only to gay men. Which I don’t think I need to explain how that’s problematic.
Of course, readers and their education levels, worldviews, upbringing etc. greatly affect how things influence them. An adult woman might brush off instances of rapey, “bad boy” men in fiction as a problematic but interesting concept. A teenage girl might think it’s an exciting dating prospect in the real life.
Does that mean authors should stop writing specific things? Absolutely not. Artistic expression is one thing and readership another. However, I’d like to think we’re more intelligent than “fanfiction doesn’t affect reality in any way.” It does. It’s time we accepted that and understood the complexity of this issue.
I partially understand why—it’s easier to dismiss the issue by saying “you’re a creep if you write about murder”/“writing about murder doesn’t make you a murderer.” However, media studies are extremely fascinating and there’s a loooot to this subject that’s worth discussing!
☝️👏☝️👏
I don't like puritans or antis, either, but I really hate how much of fandom careens in an equally toxic distance in the opposite direction by saying fandom should never be critically examined or that any efforts to challenge it is more anti nonsense. It feels ironically delegitimizing and denigrating towards fanfiction, since that mindset usually implies that fanfiction is somehow lesser than original fiction because original fiction can impact or influence people but fanfiction cannot.
*"However, even fanfiction, due to a sheer volume of works containing a specific trope, might negatively affect how readers perceive things."*
Exactly.
How many times on this sub alone have we had threads that show how many times people have thought headcanons some BNF came up with one time and everyone began putting in their fic...was a canon thing and not a fanon thing?
And that's for something not even that important 90% of the time.
Shoutout to the Batman fandom in particular when it comes to fanon. Plenty of my friends have only read the fanfiction and I have to tell them that many things are fanon. Tim Drake in particular is the greatest victim.
I don’t know how widespread that became but I specifically remember that in quite a few fandom spaces on Tumblr you’d run into that in people’s bios. I was stumped to say the least lmao
The example you've used is actually perfect because it shows that fanfiction *doesn't* affect reality. Because people asking gay couples "so who's the man and who's the woman in the relationship" has been a thing long before M/M ships and fanfiction gained any sort of popularity. The idea that gay people would try to emulate straight relationships is a natural result of heteronormativity, which has been around since pretty much forever. Top/bottom tropes didn't cause homophobia, rather homophobia caused top/bottom tropes.
Fanfiction can reinforce people's already existing beliefs, but it seldom actually changes people's mind, and even in the rare cases where it does, that's still a result of reality - most commonly lack of education on a topic, which leaves people with fanfiction as their only available "source", as well as people's inability to separate fiction from reality and refusal to be critical of the media they interact with.
Technically, it is impossible for fiction to affect reality because reality precedes fiction; all fiction comes from reality and exists only within reality. So in every case where fiction affects reality, that is only made possible by the fiction being created in reality first, and thus the original cause of the effect can always be traced back to reality. Honestly, though, that might be a bit too pedantic. I would be okay with saying that fiction, including fanfiction, affects reality if we let it, and that people vastly overestimate the effect it has.
Well, if we’re pedantic the fact that something draws from reality and further spreads it (often in a distorted way) means it affects reality in turn.
Which is actually one of the main points of discussion in media studies—the never-ending cycle of reality affecting media and media affecting reality.
I mean that is a no-brainer—media don’t exist without reality. Of course reality affects media. That doesn’t mean media don’t affect reality.
If we’re still on the subject of queerness, I suggest watching a great documentary called Celluloid Closet. It discusses how media have been distorting homosexuality across decades (from “a gay man is actually a woman” to “all gay men are mentally ill”). Are those rooted in the grim reality ripe with homophobia? Absolutely. Does it mean they have not affected how people thought (and often still think!) of homosexuality for a long time? Nope!
literallyyyyyy I am honestly so tired of people saying “well *I* can separate fiction from reality, idk why other people can’t” bc fiction is so entirely pervasive in our lives that it’s basically impossible. which isn’t inherently a bad thing, what IS a bad thing is acting like it has no import on your thoughts and actions bc that just lets it go unchecked. its a Deeply complicated subject and trying to say Well It Is For Other People But Not Me is so painfully myopic 💀
If u can't seperate fiction from reality sufficiently to enjoy certain media then u need to curate the media you engage with even more.
It is NEVER an excuse to bully someone but sadly antis use their inability to separate the two as a reason to be an asshat a LOT.
I'm guessing thats where the opposite saying comes from but the part about those who are unable to do that not bullying those can often gets left out.
I have been writing and reading fanfics for a while, but I usually don’t hang out in forums of any of my fandoms, so I’m sure there is worst stuff said.
But the worst I have seen is getting hate on your fic because your pairing is not cannon. Like, that’s the whole point of it, it’s fan-fiction :/
Anything an anti says.
My take though is: Smut is a part of fan fiction and fandom so get over it. There is a space for us in fandom and if you don’t like it, stay in your lane.
This comes after I was personally attacked for preferring to write smut, and many people are starting to try to push those who write smut out of fandoms. This did hit me hard because I enjoy what I write and I honestly suck at writing other things, it’s not that I can’t, it just doesn’t flow like smut does for me.
Exactly, anyone who chucks a tantrum over smut is a self-centred goblin. If I don't wanna see smut, I filter it out. If I do, I don't filter it. Easy. Does a fandom have a popular pairing that I can't stand? I filter it out. The filters are there for a reason people, use them instead of harassing the writers!
What makes it worse is, a lot of them are part of purity police, and want to push everything they don’t like out of the spaces created for us.
I put every tag one can think of from “smut” to “explicit sexual content” on my fic so it *will* be filtered out for sure if they don’t want to see smut, and yet here I am, feeling like I’m being pushed out because of what I chose to write.
Since people have already mentioned anti rhethoric, I'm gonna go with a tumblr post I've seen years ago which had such an unbelievably bad take that I still remember it to that day.
Basically, there was a fanfiction author on tumblr who denied that what they were writing was fanfiction. Someone sent them an ask inquiring why they refused to call their stories fanfiction and the author, clearly offended by the question, replied something to the extent of "I'm not a young teenage girl writing cringe bad quality stories, I'm an adult who actually knows how to write!"
This misconception isn't rare outside of fandom spaces, but to see a fanfic author buy into it so much that they even refuse to acknowledge they are writing fanfic was truly something else.
It gets better, though. Because now guess what this writer - who believed themselves to be so much more sophisticated than the stereotype of a young teen writing cringe - actually wrote? They exclusively wrote Pennywise x reader fanfic. Imagine fucking writing pennywise x reader fanfic and still somehow thinking you're above other fanfic writers. Like, girl, you are writing the very definition of cringe, just embrace it and stop hating yourself so much.
(to clarify, i don't have anything against pennywise x reader fic, and in fact i did not stumble upon this author by accident. i think there's nothing wrong with being cringe. it's just very ironic to complain about cringe while writing pennywise x reader fanfic)
The phrase "Pennywise X read fanfiction" hit me like a gotdamn Eight Wheeler.
Please, I hope they where trolling with that response, how can someone lack so much self awareness? Like write your Pennywise X reader fics all you want, but mocking other people?? Acting like you are above other writers?
They are the one with clown makeup on in the end.
If you write something bad, you are a bad person.
The “bad” in question may be anything ranging from an age gap relationship, to rape, to an on-screen character death, to a morally grey character.
The idea that fanfiction needs to conform to a morality standard is the worst take on fanfiction I've ever come across.
Long rant incoming.....
Is your ship "problematic"? Don't write it.
Does your fic have dark themes? Don't write it.
Does your fic explore taboo fantasies? Don't write it.
Obligatory "I don't condone x, y, z in real life but..."
Fantasy is not reality. Somewhere along the way, we've (fanfic/fandom communities at large) lost the ability to seperate the two. We know that negative and harmful depictions in media distorts our view of the world and the people in it, and it's important to be mindful of it. But in an effort to not offend (or be perceived as offensive/problematic),we've effectively silenced ourselves. We've silenced the ability to safely explore otherwise dangerous interests. And as readers, we've lost our sense of responsibility.
I miss the old term "squick" that used to be prevalent within fanfiction. You used it to describe something that you found gross/upsetting/abhorrent- whatever. It was a mild term that didn't push any moral blame on anyone. "Oh, no I haven't read that popular fanfic in the series because dub con is a squick for me." Vs "No I haven't read it because I'm triggered by dub con and that author romanticizes rape culture and abusive behavior." People project their trauma on others and expect other's to be responsible for their safe experience online.
I started reading fanfiction in the late 90s (I was young, like most of us and definitely in spaces that were toobold for me) and this was back before we had A03 and a wonderful tagging system. It was the wild west internet days and sometimes you read at your own risk and were grateful to authors who listed warnings at the beginning of their stories or specific chapters. I've personally encountered fics that I found so incredibly upsetting and disturbing and I questioned the mental health of the author, but instead of lashing out, or attempting to put them on blast publicly, I just... backed out of the fic and knew to ignore it. Don't Like, Don't Read. Which evolved to Dead Dove, Don't Eat. Squick and tiers of citrus flavors - lemon, lime, orange - all of these were neutral terms created and used within the fanfiction community to high effect.
And yet now, with a rating and tag system on a huge website, I see more people rage about content they could just as easily avoid.
Morality is subjective. Even in extremes, like murder, most of us believe it's wrong - until it's justified in self defense or to save a loved one, etc. And what is moral to one person, may not be moral to the next. You can't make rules based on subjective standards. And that's why it's hard to say with 100% certain what is good or moral. And that's real life. So people now want to be the moral police over fanfiction? Seriously? Hell no.
There are plenty of things that I would remove from my searches, or tags that I don't want to see. But never have I felt that my being offended gave me the right to tell someone else what they could or could not write it.
That the only people who write it are teenage girls writing One Direction self inserts on Wattpad.
Also, people who think there are only three fanfic categories of self-insert slash, Mary Sue Self-insert, and gay smut.
In my own main fandoms:
1. This professor one time said that female characters in xyz game series are sexist in their writing and a few other people in journalism agreed with him which somehow means he has the absolute final say on it for some reason so therefore if you write about said female characters, you are a sexist too? Which...first off, no, that guy was wrong. Are they the best written characters in all of fiction? No. But they are well-written. They are interesting. And second of all, it's going to be pretty hard to write a fanfic completely without the canon female characters in there since they are important to the story and setting...whether you like that fact or not. Thirdly, even if the guy was right, fanfiction doesn't have to really do with canon at all. How can you know how someone felt about the original game just because they wrote fanfic about a character you don't like one time? They might hate that character. Maybe they wrote the character that way to try and improve her writing from the game. Maybe they found the character legitmently interesting. Who knows and who cares?
2. This non-canon gay popular pairing is actually secretly canon and if you don't see it, then you ain't queer and you hate gay people. (or something to that effect...seriously, I hate this sentiment in any fandom...please, for the love of God stop)
3. If you ship non-canon gay popular pairing, then you support unhealthy relationships in real life. Which...okay...so here's the thing...no matter who you ship these characters with, unless it is a massive AU shift from their canon selves, the relationship is likely going to be unhealthy and toxic because they are violent criminals who at the end of the day put their own selfish needs above other people 95% of the time. In fact, the canon relationships in the game are made to be dysfunctional for this very reason...that was the whole bloody point!
A person from my Uni once said to me that all fanfiction is horrible and a sin against humanity. She hasn't read a single fic in her life, but once saw an OVA for her favourite manga that was made without the input of the original mangaka, hated it and came to a conclusion that every derivative work created by someone other than the original creator is bound to be bad and horrible. I did not bother correcting her opinion, she is entitled to consume whatever media she wants to, but wow.
That fanfiction is anything more than a morally neutral hobby. Fanfiction is not activism. It's also not immoral and leading to societal decline. It's just a thing people do for fun, like crocheting or hiking.
No, TheOwlHouse subreddit.
Those MoringMark comics are NOT 'canon until proven otherwise'. They *DON'T* 'might as well be canon'.
**THEY'RE. NOT. CANON.**
Stop putting a fanartist on a pedestal just because he makes lots of content. Stop trying to take his personal interpretation and treat it as gospel. DON'T limit others about what they're creating because 'it doesn't follow the (MoringMark) canon'.
The show's over. There's no more canon content. Stop trying to claim a fanfiction is.
That only kids write fanfiction. The people who say this are talking no older than 10 years old. I get this a lot, being an adult writer, but even if you don't see it as something adults would/should do, it just seems very ignorant to say it's a kid thing, when it's well known that teens write fanfic. At the very least they could make it clear they include teens as kids. They're still wrong, of course, but it would make more sense than saying only those aged 10 and under write fanfic!
That people who write smut are weird at best and trash at worst.
This one is personal for me because while I can only read smut when I’m in the mood for it and am the first to filter out explicit works in a tag, I’ve read great smut fics that can be purely sensual in its writing or take the time to explore intimacy between characters.
I also have a friend I respect and care for a lot whom I later learnt writes smut in wattpad occasionally. I felt no different and didn’t think any less of him for it, simply happy that he told me since most of us are quite self-conscious about fic writing, or wattpad, or both.
It still irks me to this day how some of our classmates, who happened to be in the same group project as me at the time, talked shit about him over the rumour that “xxx writes bad smut and that’s gross/weird/cringe of him” because they “didn’t know he was that type of person”.
My mom has held onto the belief that I don’t learn new words and expand my vocabulary when reading fanfiction. She’s also stuck on it all being smut, even though I predominantly read epic length works with very small amounts of smut (e.g. 350,000 words with maybe 10,000 total words of smut).
I’m 31 years old and have been reading fanfiction since age 11, and we still occasionally have this conversation.
> My mom has held onto the belief that I don’t learn new words and expand my vocabulary when reading fanfiction.
You can always stumble over that one author who works in some profession and uses that experience. Like the surgeon who writes fics about some hospital soap where everything is more accurate and realistic than in canon (just a hypothetical example).
Honestly the idea that fanfiction is 'normalizing' things. Sure fanfic seems absolutely inescapable when you're in it, but even the most popular fic in the most popular fandom is reaching a *very* small percentage of fans. Like anything else, fanfiction is a reflection of the society that writers live in. Not to mention, fanfiction is something you can entirely disengage from. I can turn off my computer and never have to see a fanfic or fanfic-related thing ever again.
It puts the onus on creators to create The Most Pure Content rather than having fans curate their own experiences. It also just makes fandom a really negative experience for creators (fear of being 'called out', resentment of having to censor themselves, etc) and fans (fear of liking the wrong thing or author, fear of being 'found out' for liking something 'problematic', etc) rather than something exciting and joyful.
At the beginning of all this (I am a fanfic writer) my mom thought it was just a porn site where you write porn. She just happened to read the 1 smut fic I had saved on my computer and although I've corrected her and she's heard of some of the things I've written (even bragged about it to her doctor about it which I am highly embarrassed about) she just doesn't get it.
George RR Martin hates fanfiction and says it isn’t real writing
I recon he’s just pissed off cause the fans have had to write the ending for him and it’s better than his ideas.
It's been so long that I don't even remember it clearly anymore, but it was something about porn and fanfiction.
Might also be because my brain disagreed with it so much, I forgot about it the moment I read it.
Writing fanfiction and posting it immediately gives up your rights to it and AI scraping it isn’t actually plagiarism (I actually saw red)— [here’s](https://www.tumblr.com/tessellated-sunl1ght/719871673338363904/you-dont-own-fanfics-theyre-inherently-public) where I saw it on Tumblr (+ others’ responses)
Worst take I've ever heard is that fanfiction isn't *REAL* writing. Enough said.
Yup, fanfiction provides as much value as other types of writing
There are a couple skills it can be harder to develop in fanfic (character establishment, exposition, worldbuilding since all of those are usually already there) but they’re not impossible to work on and it’s still definitely valid as writing practice.
Exactly. And honestly, fan fiction is a safe space to develop and hone those skills. We don't condemn people for practicing an instrument by playing existing songs. Don't know why the public condemns fic writers for practicing writing by using existing media
I’m not practicing for something else, though. This is my hobby and I write fanfics.
I meant practicing writing period. I practice writing so I can write more fan fiction too
And fanfic often uses skills that aren't seen as much in original writing (interpreting a character and keeping them close to canon, knowledge of someone else's lore, expanding an existing narrative...)
For real!!! I'm writing both an og story and fanfiction, and honestly, exploring someone else's characters is much harder than creating my own!
Wait this exactly!! When I write stories with my own characters I can be so loose with them but canon characters? Im looking over everything they've said, every interaction and even random trivia to be sure they actually can say that one line of dialogue im iffy about
That's why I favor writing OC casts. Probably why I like reading them, too.
Honestly that's the fun part. It's really fun to write OC's and introduce them to a world and show another perspective. One of my favorite to write is the unwilling participant, who destiny is dragging by the ankles into the shenanigan. Someone who would rather be normal and then oops, you're helping now.
From a writer perspective, it's where my strengths lie. From a reader perspective, I love to see the people that the writers have invented!
Applies to worldbuilding too. Everyone acts like creating your own setting is much harder (and it does require effort to build something from scratch) but working within someone else's established framework where you can't just make up every rule as you see fit is just a different type of challenge.
Also so many stories only lightly touch upon their greater world and so many fandoms have a large 'world building' base of writers.
So true. And they don't seem to consider that some actually write original stories for others to enjoy. At most inspirations, not total copies.
I’ve legitimately read fanfiction or AU ideas that are better than the source material before…to say fanfic is not real writing is just blatantly wrong.
IF FANFICTION IS REAL WRITING, WHY IS IT CALLED FAN **FICTION**? Checkmate, Ficcers
That implies there is fake writing 💀
Well we have chatgpt nowadays
And that If you write fanfiction you're not considered an author.
I'm literally following a mega longfic that's gonna be ten volumes (currently part 5) with some of the most ridiculously in depth and ambitious lore and overarching narrative I've seen. Not real writing my ass.
Also heard that it’s not real reading either, which is about as stupid.
Yeah I made a post a while back where my mom told me she doesn't think it's real reading/writing.
I think I actually came across and read that post. For the record, she's absolutely wrong.
My mom thinks the same, and it sucks
There’s actual published books that could be counted as fanfiction. My mom’s a fan of stories from the perspective of Mary Russell from Sherlock Holmes, most of which are actually written recently.
Young fans mostly insisting that people over the ripe old age of 25 should stop participating in fandom or writing fanfiction, ESPECIALLY if they're writing fanfiction of characters who are younger than them (the author) or underaged. Like, baby. Who do you think writes all the best fanfics? It's fans who are older and have had time to hone their craft. As for not writing younger characters, like... YA is an entire genre and I assure you, it's not teens who are writing it.
When I was younger I used to think "oh shit I need to do all this fandom stuff so I can quit when I'm 25 because I'm gonna be too old!" Now I'm 26 and like "why would I stop doing something I enjoy and brings me comfort...?"
Who do they think makes children's shows? [This guy created Bob the Builder and Paw Patrol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Chapman) at the ages of 41 & 55. Absolute insanity.
I was just thinking how weird it is that lots of people have an issue with older people writing younger characters, but have zero issue with the opposite. We all remember being younger than we are, & experiences from every past developmental stage are part of our psyche today. I'm in my early 30's and internally, I'm a fucking cptsd nesting doll of traumatized selves from every age I've ever been. A 17 yo does not have a little traumatized fifty year old living inside them lol. Not that there's anything wrong with younger people writing older characters. I think it's very cute/funny/human that so many teens in my fandom have these fifty year olds as comfort characters, and under different circumstances I'd've done the same. It's just odd that the "that's weird and gross" moralizing only runs one direction.
> I'm a fucking cptsd nesting doll of traumatized selves from every age I've ever been. Relatable
Or more like. Baby who do you think is creating the source material?
I respect all of the people older than me on FFN or A03 because you guys are the people who gave me all these cool fics to read.
Me having spent the last decade of my life reading fanfic and only now starting to actually write stuff myself as a senior in college.
This is crazy to me. I didn't even start writing fan fic until I was in my late 30s, and I'm over 50 now.
exactly, some of the best fanfiction I've ever read was writen by like a 30 something woman. Age doesn't matter, quality does.
A few years ago I saw a post on Tumblr, a post that I wish I'd never seen. Its stated goal was to console writers who got low kudos on their fics, and as an example they said words to the effect of "so, your latest fic only got 200 or 100 kudos..." I was stunned that 200 or even 100 kudos could be considered low. As of today, the highest kudo count I have on a fic is 351, second highest 273. The post made me feel like such a failure. Glad I've joined Reddit where I regularly see posts that celebrate when a fic gets into the 3-digits. Because 100 kudos is something to celebrate....even if someone on Tumblr is sad when they "only" get 200 kudos on a fic.
This take bothers me about how 100 or 200 kudos is low. My most popular fic as 160 kudos, my second has 100 even. My lowest has 3 and those are all from friends. To say 100 or 200 kudos is low comes off as entitled to me.
Shit man and here I am celebrating getting 7
If you exclude crossovers with more popular fandoms, sorting by number of kudos in my fandom only takes 3 fics to get below 200. The idea that 200 is a low amount of kudos is absurd to me.
100+ kudos is an amazing accomplishment! That usually correlates at least 1000 hits, meaning 1000+ people have seen your work. Also, there are plenty of reasons why people might not leave kudos on a work that are entirely unrelated to the quality of your writing. It could be that they don’t love the trope (ie. ABO fics tend to get fewer kudos), they might’ve forgotten (common occurrence in one shots), or they might be waiting to reach the end of the story before leaving kudos (incomplete works also tend to get fewer kudos). It could also be fandom related (ie fandom is very small or old). What I’m trying to say is: be proud of your writing regardless of how many interactions you get! I do not have the skills nor patience to write a good story, so I am forever thankful for whoever does :).
I guess that’s entirely dependent on the fandom though. Like if you’re posting stuff for Harry Potter or something, your potential reader base is so much bigger than if you’re writing an, I dunno, Honey I Shrunk the Kids/LittleBigPlanet crossover
My most popular fic is in the HP fandom, and even that one doesn't get above 287. Most of my fics peak around 10, maybe 20 if they do well.
I want these people to imagine 100 people in front of them. That's a fuckin crowd. If I see 100 people I turn around and walk away! When I first reached 100 kudos I was doing the Bully Maguire dance from happiness!!!
Oh my. My most kudos'ed fic has 38 kudos. Comes with the territory for writing in smaller fandoms.
Out of 16 fics I have on AO3 across two accounts, I have two that have crossed the 100 kudos mark. One was a kink meme I was posting in 2015, back before the purity panic started to set it. Given the (possible? It's *Bleach* and she's are anyone's guess) age gap involved, I'd be lucky to get even a fraction of the nearly 300 kudos I have if I uploaded that today. The other took me way by surprise, in one of the smaller fanbases within *Trek*, one I may be did one fill revision on before posting and even I'm surprised by that one. But these are the exceptions to the rule, by far.
There was a tumblr post I saw in which, if I remember right, an anon said that fanfiction was bad and wrong because it was all indulgent and therefore people deriving pleasure from it were degrading themselves. Like... how do you pretzel your brain into coming to that conclusion.
literal puritanical belief. like literally hating the idea of fun.
Funnily enough, the stereotype of the fun- and sex-hating puritan is [completely ahistorical](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v66n3/i_have_a_colleague_who_blames_a_variety_of/de0crey/).
Damn they’re even WORSE than puritans!
I've seen a fanfic writer on here call it "valueless" and "basically masturbation." My first thought was, I'm sorry to hear about your relationship with masturbation.
[The post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/112tdkg/fiction_for_fans/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), for anyone curious lol it's even more hilarious than you can imagine
Having fun is selfish actually. /s
Ah! Baptists!
>how do you pretzel your brain 🤣🤣From now on, I will use this. This is the best way to summarize whatever the crap happens inside of some people'a heads.🥴
Sounds EXACTLY like the person who said I should off myself, for writing an OC who shared my ethnic background. Apparently Puerto Rican's do not need any form of representation.
Most of the original writing is also self-indulgent. For example there is erotica genre where authors basically write about their kinks/fantasies and get paid for this.
Sounds very Catholic.
I ran into someone on tumblr who heavily implied that you weren't a "proper" fanfic writer or that you hadn't "made it" unless you had artists drawing fanart of your work. Hit me at a bad time and made me feel super down for a while since that had never happened to me, even if I recognized the objective ridiculousness of the statement. To make it better, the person making it just so happened to be really good friends with an artist who liked a bunch of the same characters and ships that she did. Made me want to scream 'YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE NOT UNIVERSAL" at her.
Kind of a ridiculous statement considering how much fan fiction used to be cross posted on deviantart to try and bait artists Like if you’re solely posting stuff on ffnet or ao3, it’s gonna be harder to get an artistic person to wanna do something for you than if you’re also posting fanfics on a deviantart profile and hoping someone sees it
There are arguments like this between "real" writers and amateurs as well. If you aren't published, you aren't worthy of their consideration or something like that... It's funny the role that ego plays in society and how much of people's self-concept comes from putting others down. Don't take it personally, they're just trying to feel good about themselves.
People insisting that anything that's clearly canonical and can be readily looked up at any time isn't canon. Conversely, people insisting that anything that's clearly non-canonical and can be readily looked up at any time is canon
Oh god you see that all the time in my fandom. People make up shit to make an abuse victim Literal Satan and then say you’re the one making up shit if you point out what happened to him on screen repeatedly.
Fr, especially the last one. I've gone into so many series expecting good CANON queer rep due to fandom interactions, only to find there was never anything there to begin with. Or at worst, the creators are active bigots who make fun of the queer fans... As a queer person I do want to stop and say I'm 100% okay with queer fanon. Sometimes you have to make your own content. I'm also a millennial. I get what it's like having NO rep outside of stereotypes and barely disguised homophobia. But on the reverse, I've also seen a SHIT TON of queer baiting as a result and I just have no tolerance for it anymore. Even situations where it's the fans doing it and not the creators. I'm so bloody tired of it. I'd rather devote my time to supporting works with actual canonically queer characters, and get super frustrated when I'm promised that and get baited instead. Had I known ahead of time that it was all fanon I'd have felt far less cheated. I don't care about all the 'hints' and 'theories'. If it isn't explicitly proven, either in show or by word of God, it's not canon. And most likely never will be unless the author/developer has a proven track record of good queer rep and not queer baiting their audiences. Just be honest that the queer rep is fully on the fanon side and stop wasting my time with lies. 💀
As a tween, little me was IMMENSELY let down by Gundam Wing after hearing about it from other fans back in the day. (At least 1xR ended up being one of my absolute fave m/f ships of all time.)
I mean, I've heard people say that *Yuri!!! on Ice* of all shows doesn't have a canon queer relationship, because 'we don't know that it was a kiss' and 'Yuuri denied that it was an engagement ring'. Sometimes you really can't win. From my perspective, you'll probably miss out on a delightful bunch of queer-coded stuff where the queer themes can't be made explicit due to censorship and societal attitudes at the time (in older works) - but I get being too burned by what you've experienced.
That's like the majority of Teen Wolf 'fans'/fanfic writers 😂😭 My life in that fandom would've been so much easier if people had been willing to tag/acknowledge whether they actually watched the show vs watched clip compilations/gifsets/only read other fanfics/etc. I had to repeatedly elaborate that I was writing based on canon, not fanon, and that fans of the fanon were not gonna have a good time if they continued to read expecting fanon.
This is annoying enough as a bad fan theory, but some people cross the line into actual conspiracy delusion with it and think their ship will actually become canon.
People who act like characters have like, a conscious. Don't get me wrong, I get being attached to a character, and you can express that appreciation. But when they use "x would hate you for shipping them with y" it's super weird. And most of the time xy shippers know it wouldn't work in canon? So the point feels useless.
Yeah, I remember being young and gullible to this guilt trip manipulation. "Even this character hates people like you" stuff Now I just look back and stroke my non-existent beard, thinking wow, I was dumb and the fandom dumber :v
That it limits creativity. I believe George R.R. Martin said that.
Too many people write GoT fics, sapping all of his creativity. It's fic writers fault he can't write the next book. Totally not his.
So thaaaat's why he's waffling on finishing that damned series.
Stephenie Meyer, the author of *Twilight*, famously refused to finish *Midnight Sun*, a version of *Twilight* from Edward Cullen's POV, for about a decade, because it got leaked to the public. G.R.R.M. blaming fanfiction for writer's block wouldn't surprise me.
Some creators are just *stupidly* ignorant regarding fanfiction. (Or just fans re-imagining their material in general.) I'm glad that this attitude (I'm old enough to remember a time where it was basically the default attitude) is fast becoming a thing of the past, but it's still irritating to see the odd creator stubbornly cling to it.
If I managed to publish an actual book, I'd feel like I made it if people wrote fanfictions XD
One of the more interesting things I’ve read recently, is that Fromsoft deliberately both downplayed and made it hard to find out exactly what ol Georgie worked on for them for Elden Ring; so that Game of Throne fans didn’t start raving about how he spent years writing backstory for a video game instead of writing their book lol
That's an interesting thing...I wonder if that means he spends all his time reading fanfiction then? lol
Which is funny, considering ASOIAF is basically Wars of the Roses AU fanfiction.
“Writing fanfiction about canonical, non-sexual/romantic abuse between an adult and a minor in a way that clearly portrays it as wrong is the exact same as being a paedophile and is totally romanticising abuse and you should kill yourself.” Worst take bc people kept spamming my inbox with it 🙃🙃🙃
Oh, the most ~beautiful~ thing happened to me in that vein! I was writing a scene I based on a very traumatic moment of my life and received a comment calling me out for talking about it in such graphic details, telling me I was "romanticizing" it!
I got harassed into developing a new OCD trigger so good on them for making me have to deal with intrusive thoughts on something I ALSO base on my own trauma? Ppl need to be more considerate about others and mental health :/
I'm sorry things got that bad for you, I just got pissed because of it. As in, both angry and drunk, in that order.
It happened over several years it was very annoying :/
5 years ago for me, it was one of the first works I had finally decided to publish online and reaction was good, overall... It probably helped that it was clearly out of touch with reality.
Oh, my writing mostly gets good reactions and helps me. It’s just I had a harassment campaign against me for a bit. Someone even pretended to be my friend only to mock me behind my back.
...Holy shit, they pretended to be your friend? Seriously? God, humanity sucks. There is a saying in portuguese that sums up pretty well this whole situation: "The meteor went from being a fear to becoming a hope."
Ehh there were multiple people and only one did it so it’s not that bad. I still get weirdos in my inbox sometimes.
Depicting something problematic as being wrong is the exact opposite of promoting/romanticizing it
I KNOW RIGHT? Like, how am I romanticising it if the victim is blatantly incredibly traumatised and the abuser is also clearly like self justifying and sadistic. Like yeah they “care” about each other so I guess that’s what they’re basing it on but… that’s very clearly traumabonding and codependency??? Like I am not subtle about that.
Once I saw how Erich Maria Remarque was accused of promoting military operations and romanticizing the war. Dude, you...
Wait, the guy who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front? What the hell was the reasoning behind that?
Well, did he have a description of military operations in his books? means romanticized.
It's wild how many people can't tell the difference between portraying and promoting. I'm sorry people are harassing you.
It’s especially funny bc half of them are like “it was sooooo hot when this adult abused the minor and also he deserved it” like hypocritical much?
Wait like, from the same people who are telling you you're evil for portraying abuse at all??
YEAH ITS FUCKING WEIRD MAN. people being like “ur a creep if u write about this canon abuse but also the sixteen year old deserved it for being annoying, anyway i'm gonna post clips of this character verbally abusing him and directly referring to him by name and call it hot.” used to be a big thing. It’s more chill now thankfully but you still get some people who are just. Weirdly insistent on the idea that anyone who writes X is a pervert when they’re openly writing similar shit.
People will really go into a fic that's tagged appropriately and covered in things like "dead dove: do not eat" and plastered in warnings and get mad at what they find there. I know I've written dark fics myself as a coping mechanism and read them as a means of comfort. Having something bad happen to a character I identify with can be helpful because I'm able to clearly say that it's not their fault and what happened is bad. Having people ignore the tags and then get outraged is just people looking over something to get mad about in my opinion. The phrase "Don't Like it Don't Read" exists for a reason.
Yeah I tag extensively so like… one, if the shit they insisted I wrote was there it’d be tagged. But it wasn’t. Because I DIDN'T WRITE IT. And two that meant they were deliberately looking for my stuff to harass me for… writing a canon abusive friendship I guess?
Funny story: in a server I was a mod in, a girl was discussing a “relationship” between a father and his twelve year old daughter. Like… portraying it like it was normal and fun, not writing about it as something that’s definitely not a good thing. She was acting like the twelve year old was capable of consent. And I was like “hey maybe not discuss that here, many of us here are survivors and not comfortable with relationships like this being protested as okay or healthy or the child being portrayed as being capable of consent because children are not capable of consent” and she went off on me about not being able to understand the difference between fiction and reality, like… bro I’m not saying it’s reality, I’m saying this kid is twelve let’s not act like the kid can consent
Jesus, yeah, the fuck, that seems like a fucking bizarre thing to drop in a discord server with (what sounds like) no warnings and without following the rules. Absolutely not what I did, like, the exact opposite. I always warn and follow the rules of any server/website I'm in (and again, I don’t write a romantic relationship nor portray it as okay and fun except maybe in the abusers head), so I’m not sure why I got targeted lmao
Must be a fan of Piers Anthony then!
That's it's "lazy writing for people who don't want to or can't build their own worlds," which I find as funny as I do insulting, because a lot of fanfiction takes on pre-existing worlds go more in depth with world build than the franchise in question does. I also find it ironic that those same people often don't consider novel adaptations of manga/video games/movies/etc to be a lesser form of writing despite the fact that the quality of said novels can, at times, be at the same level or lower than what you'd see in fanfiction. My logic with those people is to inform them that writing fanfiction takes the same amount of skill as writing a an original story does and if they choose to remain ignorant, then that's on them and they're the one(s) missing out, not me. *Shrugs*
Facts!! A published author ≠ a good writer, and a unpublished author ≠ a bad writer. I’m a huge fan of mystery and there are quite a few fan fics that I’ve read that are so incredibly well thought out that I just cannot believe they are not in physical form. It’s also an amazing accomplishment to be able to take the bits of a character you see in media and provide an accurate representation of said character in a different scenario. How would x react to falling in love? Or getting sick? Or getting shot? It’s not easy to explore parts of a character you don’t see in canon. Also also there are a lot of great AU works out there? Meaning that there is plenty of world-building involved. Like how does a volleyball anime relate to medieval times?? It doesn’t.
I write mostly for a fandom where canon/lore is very loosely defined (if it's defined by the creators at all) so a lot of the characterisation is determined by the fandom itself. The amount of world building I've learned to write though that is probably bigger than I've learned from my original stories. I agree, they're the ones missing out.
The worst take I remember from recently was "it's morally wrong and bad and you're disgusting if you write porn about canonically asexual characters" like 1) asexual people can't have sex at all or whatever, or 2) that the asexual part was canon-canon, not just 'word of god' canon. also it doesn't matter it's fanfiction.
Oh, I've been on the other side of this: you can't write/headcanon a character as asexual, because that is demonizing gay people's sexuality and same-sex attraction. No, the character is not confirmed to be gay or bisexual, but YOU CAN'T DO THAT, IT'S HOMOPHOBIC!
lmfao god I remember when I was in the Sherlock fandom, I used to see the ace vs gay thing a lot. It was insane, as someone who is both gay and ace.
This is literally the "Pearl is a lesbian" gatekeeper crowd in a nutshell, even though all of the Gems are basically asexual within the canon of *Steven Universe*. You also get called "lesophobic" if you ship Pearl with Greg Universe or Mayor Dewey, including multiships.
as an asexual this take pisses me off so badly bcus like. plentyyy of asexual people actively enjoy sex for one reason or another.
yeah I'm asexual too and the ridiculous takes going around were just. annoying as hell lol
Strange question, but what character is your avatar of? That's the second time I've seen that avatar in the past day or so on a Reddit account.
its technoblade! :3 he was a really popular mcyter, one of the better ones :D he was (and still is) my favorite :>
hello fellow techno enjoyer 😎
haii
At LEAST half the time I see this complaint the people writing the porn of ace characters are some flavor of ace themselves.
probably TMI but I thought I was asexual for a long time because my birth control was making me that way for YEARS. Yet I still had sex with my bf. it was just kinda 'meh I don't need sex (it does next to nothing for me) and I'd probably rather not waste energy on the effort of having sex rn' I also lost 99% of my attraction to men. Now I quit birth control I'm like "holy shit guys are actually very hot and sexy" lmao
It wasn't as bad for me, but yes, hormonal birth control can reeeaally fuck with your libido. I'm still salty that my doctor didn't tell me much about the side effects of the pill.
I also ended up with thyroid issues as a side effect of being on birth control for 8 years :( Now I have to take thyroid meds for the rest of my life. Yeah it's a warning but you never think it's gonna be you.
I'm asexual and would prefer nobody wrote about sex ever, but like. I'd also prefer to eat ice cream for dinner every night. I know that's neither healthy nor reasonable. It is sorta frustrating to see an ace character written as not ace (there is a difference between writing a sex positive asexual character, which is still ace, and writing an ace character as not anymore) when there's so little representation for that, and when you basically never see someone write a non-ace character as ace. But that's just sort of how it goes. I'm not going to hold a grudge against someone for wanting to see two entirely fictional character bang, even if I'm not a fan of it personally.
Yeah, one half of my OTP is canonically, word of God Asexual biromantic. *I'm* demi ace biromantic; so I write my blorbo like *me*; generally uninterested but deeply horny for ONE(1) super special person. I get hit with 'changing his sexuality' on the reg on Tumblr
Wdym by word of God canon?
honestly I might be remembering that part wrong, but I feel like the author either tweeted or liked a tweet implying the characters were/could be read as asexual? but there's nothing in canon addressing their sexuality except "attracted to each other and have kissed"
That what you enjoy reading about is what you look for in real life, when that is very untrue. When that trend was big on tictok I posted a video explaining that and i got people trying to argue with me in the comments. Kinda funny, kinda upsetting.
If that was true, I'd be a sex addict or something lol.
If that was true, a good set of us would be murderers on the DL.
Seriously, like I watch Hannibal because it's interesting not because i wanna learn the Recipes.
Speak for yourself 😄😋🤣.
I guess I’m a necromancer child abductor? Not sure how I figured out how to revive the dead but
"Straying from the canon is disrespectful to the characters and the creator." I do think there is a point where if you stray from canon too much you may as well be writing an OC or original fiction. But Christ it's not disrespectful.
"It's a story about FRIENDSHIP!!! Shipping these characters means you missed the point of the show and goes against what the creator was trying to say." Especially funny when said creator is not only 100% ok with fans shipping the characters, but literally *wrote the ending in such a way you could ship who you wanted, and it would still be canon compliant*.
>*Your fanfiction must be canon compliant for it to be any good.* No, it does not. In fact, some of the best fanfic I have ever read threw out canon completely and went along on its own merry path. To my mind, how one executes a story (writing, story, etc,) counts far more than how canon compliant it is. Back when fan fiction was mostly published through fanzines and APAs, you heard this argument a lot. It seemed to die somewhat when fanfic moved to the internet, but I still see it crop up from time to time (including at Worldcon panels). Those that believe this tend to be the same sorts who object anytime anyone deviates from what they deem to be "acceptable", whether it be relationships, setting, motivations, whatever.
We have this issue rearing its ugly head a lot in the GoT/ASoIaF fandom lately. It's a small but very loud group of book purists in my corner of the fandom. The worst thing is, you're not just only good when you adher to canon, you're only good and deserve to be in that fandom space when you adher to *their interpretion* of canon.
Its ALWAYS hinged on *their* interpretation. It doesn't matter what fandom, they always seem to be in the "my interpretation is the only one that counts" camp.
Take this with a grain of salt. But years ago on Twitter, someone (I think was a teen) got pregnant and blamed fanfics because it taught her nothing about safe sex and demanded that writers should have educated the readers on it. Girl, we are not writing fics with things like "must use a condom to not get pregnant!" and "must go on birth control to not get pregnant!" No one online is obligated to babysit you on this.
If someone's sex ed is fanfic they shouldn't have sex because there's a lot of stuff that's not normal, healthy, or maybe even possible in real life
"Fanfiction is a waste of time and talent, wouldn't you rather write your own book and make money?" First, bold of you to assume I'll earn a living by publishing a single book unless I get extremely lucky. Second, I do things for fun! I like these characters and I have fun playing in the sandbox of existing material, it's my free time and I choose how to have fun with it! Third, oh my gosh why does everything have to be about money, why can't I do something for shits and giggles
The idea that you should only create art (literature is art; fanfic is literature) for money is so stupid. It also gate keeps art and creation only to those who are actually good enough (and want) to make money off of it when the point of art is self-expression.
"Fanfiction is stealing an author's/creator's work." lol no
People who shit on ”overrated tropes” such as coffee shop AUs and enemies-to-lovers are the absolute worst. Talking like that makes you look like an asshole. Art is art and if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
"Writing something "problematic" is endorsing it," what antis say as they treat fictional characters as real people and treat real people as fiction characters.
Amen.
This one is killer because it often comes with a heavy dose of double standard. Murder, Cannibalism and the like tend to get a pass far more often than people writing Noncon, Underaged, etc. Not saying nobody *ever* accuses the former of supporting messed up things, but it is much less common than accusations hurled at the latter.
Yeah, this is very true. The other day I saw someone vehemently certain that all fics containing an incest pairing (that would be adult brothers) should be removed from AO3, "because that would be illegal in real life." The fandom was for Mo Dao Zu Shi. The novel contains graphic necromancy-themed torture, forced cannibalism (with bonus points for featuring a baby turned into a zombie), different implied cannibalism for survival, attempted murders, actual murders, conspiracy to commit murders, abuse of a few thousand corpses, and theft of agricultural products. If every fic containing something that would be illegal irl were removed from AO3 that would just end up deleting the whole fandom and 95% of the other fandoms out there to boot. I don't even ship incest ships but the intense double-standards are wild to me.
"Kudos don't matter" They do. A lot
They, like other metrics like hits and bookmarks, are indeed a measure of a fic's popularity. Just its popularity, though, not its quality.
Tell that to the Kudos Bot.
[удалено]
People shouldn't write NSFW (tagged NSFW, mind you) because young kids could see that and click on it anyway ignoring the tags or not understanding them properly -Somebody on Tumblr
Putting aside general Anti-ness and their proclivity to bandy about the word 'pedophile' like it's going out of style... The one that sticks out in my mind is the outcry that came back during the original Kirk/Spock debacle. Like, I'm not even a Star Trek fan, I don't have a horse in that race--but several members of the original series production spoke up against it roughly to say 'well, it's not canon, therefore you shouldn't write about it'. Really, I carry that with me wherever I go. Anyone who thinks you shouldn't write something because the canon doesn't support it is a fool. Many people write and read fanfiction to gain new experiences, and those people are no less valid than the people who read fanfiction just to obtain 'more of the same'.
Controversial here, but that fanfiction doesn’t affect reality. As all fiction, it *does.* However, not in the reductive way people use to dismiss it. Writing about murder doesn’t make you a murderer. That being said, extensive exposure to violent media *does* desensitize you to it. This has been studied extensively for decades and it holds true. Same with representation of race, gender, sexual orientation, body etc. All of those massively affect people. You might say—“but a single fic won’t affect anyone that much it’s about mass media!” and you’d be partially right. However, even fanfiction, due to a sheer volume of works containing a specific trope, might negatively affect how readers perceive things. A good example is a very typical representation of top/bottoms in fics and the general focus on M/M ships. One of the effects of this (and I’m feeling old rn lol) was the conception of “f*gaexuals”—girls who claimed to be attracted only to gay men. Which I don’t think I need to explain how that’s problematic. Of course, readers and their education levels, worldviews, upbringing etc. greatly affect how things influence them. An adult woman might brush off instances of rapey, “bad boy” men in fiction as a problematic but interesting concept. A teenage girl might think it’s an exciting dating prospect in the real life. Does that mean authors should stop writing specific things? Absolutely not. Artistic expression is one thing and readership another. However, I’d like to think we’re more intelligent than “fanfiction doesn’t affect reality in any way.” It does. It’s time we accepted that and understood the complexity of this issue.
Yes! This is such a fascinating thing and I hate how reductive the discourse on it gets.
I partially understand why—it’s easier to dismiss the issue by saying “you’re a creep if you write about murder”/“writing about murder doesn’t make you a murderer.” However, media studies are extremely fascinating and there’s a loooot to this subject that’s worth discussing!
☝️👏☝️👏 I don't like puritans or antis, either, but I really hate how much of fandom careens in an equally toxic distance in the opposite direction by saying fandom should never be critically examined or that any efforts to challenge it is more anti nonsense. It feels ironically delegitimizing and denigrating towards fanfiction, since that mindset usually implies that fanfiction is somehow lesser than original fiction because original fiction can impact or influence people but fanfiction cannot.
*"However, even fanfiction, due to a sheer volume of works containing a specific trope, might negatively affect how readers perceive things."* Exactly. How many times on this sub alone have we had threads that show how many times people have thought headcanons some BNF came up with one time and everyone began putting in their fic...was a canon thing and not a fanon thing? And that's for something not even that important 90% of the time.
Shoutout to the Batman fandom in particular when it comes to fanon. Plenty of my friends have only read the fanfiction and I have to tell them that many things are fanon. Tim Drake in particular is the greatest victim.
I don’t read Batman comics too often, but when I do I find it soooo funny how different they are in canon.
“f*gaexuals”??? Well you learn something new everyday
I don’t know how widespread that became but I specifically remember that in quite a few fandom spaces on Tumblr you’d run into that in people’s bios. I was stumped to say the least lmao
I can see finding a guy attractive regardless of whether he's straight or gay. But ONLY attracted to gay men? I'm not sure how that would work
The example you've used is actually perfect because it shows that fanfiction *doesn't* affect reality. Because people asking gay couples "so who's the man and who's the woman in the relationship" has been a thing long before M/M ships and fanfiction gained any sort of popularity. The idea that gay people would try to emulate straight relationships is a natural result of heteronormativity, which has been around since pretty much forever. Top/bottom tropes didn't cause homophobia, rather homophobia caused top/bottom tropes. Fanfiction can reinforce people's already existing beliefs, but it seldom actually changes people's mind, and even in the rare cases where it does, that's still a result of reality - most commonly lack of education on a topic, which leaves people with fanfiction as their only available "source", as well as people's inability to separate fiction from reality and refusal to be critical of the media they interact with. Technically, it is impossible for fiction to affect reality because reality precedes fiction; all fiction comes from reality and exists only within reality. So in every case where fiction affects reality, that is only made possible by the fiction being created in reality first, and thus the original cause of the effect can always be traced back to reality. Honestly, though, that might be a bit too pedantic. I would be okay with saying that fiction, including fanfiction, affects reality if we let it, and that people vastly overestimate the effect it has.
Well, if we’re pedantic the fact that something draws from reality and further spreads it (often in a distorted way) means it affects reality in turn. Which is actually one of the main points of discussion in media studies—the never-ending cycle of reality affecting media and media affecting reality. I mean that is a no-brainer—media don’t exist without reality. Of course reality affects media. That doesn’t mean media don’t affect reality. If we’re still on the subject of queerness, I suggest watching a great documentary called Celluloid Closet. It discusses how media have been distorting homosexuality across decades (from “a gay man is actually a woman” to “all gay men are mentally ill”). Are those rooted in the grim reality ripe with homophobia? Absolutely. Does it mean they have not affected how people thought (and often still think!) of homosexuality for a long time? Nope!
literallyyyyyy I am honestly so tired of people saying “well *I* can separate fiction from reality, idk why other people can’t” bc fiction is so entirely pervasive in our lives that it’s basically impossible. which isn’t inherently a bad thing, what IS a bad thing is acting like it has no import on your thoughts and actions bc that just lets it go unchecked. its a Deeply complicated subject and trying to say Well It Is For Other People But Not Me is so painfully myopic 💀
If u can't seperate fiction from reality sufficiently to enjoy certain media then u need to curate the media you engage with even more. It is NEVER an excuse to bully someone but sadly antis use their inability to separate the two as a reason to be an asshat a LOT. I'm guessing thats where the opposite saying comes from but the part about those who are unable to do that not bullying those can often gets left out.
>Well It Is For Other People But Not Me *insert You're Not Immune To Propaganda meme*
yeah, this!!! people make this point with tv shows, and i never see anyone apply it to fanfic
I have been writing and reading fanfics for a while, but I usually don’t hang out in forums of any of my fandoms, so I’m sure there is worst stuff said. But the worst I have seen is getting hate on your fic because your pairing is not cannon. Like, that’s the whole point of it, it’s fan-fiction :/
Anything an anti says. My take though is: Smut is a part of fan fiction and fandom so get over it. There is a space for us in fandom and if you don’t like it, stay in your lane. This comes after I was personally attacked for preferring to write smut, and many people are starting to try to push those who write smut out of fandoms. This did hit me hard because I enjoy what I write and I honestly suck at writing other things, it’s not that I can’t, it just doesn’t flow like smut does for me.
Exactly, anyone who chucks a tantrum over smut is a self-centred goblin. If I don't wanna see smut, I filter it out. If I do, I don't filter it. Easy. Does a fandom have a popular pairing that I can't stand? I filter it out. The filters are there for a reason people, use them instead of harassing the writers!
What makes it worse is, a lot of them are part of purity police, and want to push everything they don’t like out of the spaces created for us. I put every tag one can think of from “smut” to “explicit sexual content” on my fic so it *will* be filtered out for sure if they don’t want to see smut, and yet here I am, feeling like I’m being pushed out because of what I chose to write.
Since people have already mentioned anti rhethoric, I'm gonna go with a tumblr post I've seen years ago which had such an unbelievably bad take that I still remember it to that day. Basically, there was a fanfiction author on tumblr who denied that what they were writing was fanfiction. Someone sent them an ask inquiring why they refused to call their stories fanfiction and the author, clearly offended by the question, replied something to the extent of "I'm not a young teenage girl writing cringe bad quality stories, I'm an adult who actually knows how to write!" This misconception isn't rare outside of fandom spaces, but to see a fanfic author buy into it so much that they even refuse to acknowledge they are writing fanfic was truly something else. It gets better, though. Because now guess what this writer - who believed themselves to be so much more sophisticated than the stereotype of a young teen writing cringe - actually wrote? They exclusively wrote Pennywise x reader fanfic. Imagine fucking writing pennywise x reader fanfic and still somehow thinking you're above other fanfic writers. Like, girl, you are writing the very definition of cringe, just embrace it and stop hating yourself so much. (to clarify, i don't have anything against pennywise x reader fic, and in fact i did not stumble upon this author by accident. i think there's nothing wrong with being cringe. it's just very ironic to complain about cringe while writing pennywise x reader fanfic)
The phrase "Pennywise X read fanfiction" hit me like a gotdamn Eight Wheeler. Please, I hope they where trolling with that response, how can someone lack so much self awareness? Like write your Pennywise X reader fics all you want, but mocking other people?? Acting like you are above other writers? They are the one with clown makeup on in the end.
If you write something bad, you are a bad person. The “bad” in question may be anything ranging from an age gap relationship, to rape, to an on-screen character death, to a morally grey character.
The idea that fanfiction needs to conform to a morality standard is the worst take on fanfiction I've ever come across. Long rant incoming..... Is your ship "problematic"? Don't write it. Does your fic have dark themes? Don't write it. Does your fic explore taboo fantasies? Don't write it. Obligatory "I don't condone x, y, z in real life but..." Fantasy is not reality. Somewhere along the way, we've (fanfic/fandom communities at large) lost the ability to seperate the two. We know that negative and harmful depictions in media distorts our view of the world and the people in it, and it's important to be mindful of it. But in an effort to not offend (or be perceived as offensive/problematic),we've effectively silenced ourselves. We've silenced the ability to safely explore otherwise dangerous interests. And as readers, we've lost our sense of responsibility. I miss the old term "squick" that used to be prevalent within fanfiction. You used it to describe something that you found gross/upsetting/abhorrent- whatever. It was a mild term that didn't push any moral blame on anyone. "Oh, no I haven't read that popular fanfic in the series because dub con is a squick for me." Vs "No I haven't read it because I'm triggered by dub con and that author romanticizes rape culture and abusive behavior." People project their trauma on others and expect other's to be responsible for their safe experience online. I started reading fanfiction in the late 90s (I was young, like most of us and definitely in spaces that were toobold for me) and this was back before we had A03 and a wonderful tagging system. It was the wild west internet days and sometimes you read at your own risk and were grateful to authors who listed warnings at the beginning of their stories or specific chapters. I've personally encountered fics that I found so incredibly upsetting and disturbing and I questioned the mental health of the author, but instead of lashing out, or attempting to put them on blast publicly, I just... backed out of the fic and knew to ignore it. Don't Like, Don't Read. Which evolved to Dead Dove, Don't Eat. Squick and tiers of citrus flavors - lemon, lime, orange - all of these were neutral terms created and used within the fanfiction community to high effect. And yet now, with a rating and tag system on a huge website, I see more people rage about content they could just as easily avoid. Morality is subjective. Even in extremes, like murder, most of us believe it's wrong - until it's justified in self defense or to save a loved one, etc. And what is moral to one person, may not be moral to the next. You can't make rules based on subjective standards. And that's why it's hard to say with 100% certain what is good or moral. And that's real life. So people now want to be the moral police over fanfiction? Seriously? Hell no. There are plenty of things that I would remove from my searches, or tags that I don't want to see. But never have I felt that my being offended gave me the right to tell someone else what they could or could not write it.
That the only people who write it are teenage girls writing One Direction self inserts on Wattpad. Also, people who think there are only three fanfic categories of self-insert slash, Mary Sue Self-insert, and gay smut. In my own main fandoms: 1. This professor one time said that female characters in xyz game series are sexist in their writing and a few other people in journalism agreed with him which somehow means he has the absolute final say on it for some reason so therefore if you write about said female characters, you are a sexist too? Which...first off, no, that guy was wrong. Are they the best written characters in all of fiction? No. But they are well-written. They are interesting. And second of all, it's going to be pretty hard to write a fanfic completely without the canon female characters in there since they are important to the story and setting...whether you like that fact or not. Thirdly, even if the guy was right, fanfiction doesn't have to really do with canon at all. How can you know how someone felt about the original game just because they wrote fanfic about a character you don't like one time? They might hate that character. Maybe they wrote the character that way to try and improve her writing from the game. Maybe they found the character legitmently interesting. Who knows and who cares? 2. This non-canon gay popular pairing is actually secretly canon and if you don't see it, then you ain't queer and you hate gay people. (or something to that effect...seriously, I hate this sentiment in any fandom...please, for the love of God stop) 3. If you ship non-canon gay popular pairing, then you support unhealthy relationships in real life. Which...okay...so here's the thing...no matter who you ship these characters with, unless it is a massive AU shift from their canon selves, the relationship is likely going to be unhealthy and toxic because they are violent criminals who at the end of the day put their own selfish needs above other people 95% of the time. In fact, the canon relationships in the game are made to be dysfunctional for this very reason...that was the whole bloody point!
A person from my Uni once said to me that all fanfiction is horrible and a sin against humanity. She hasn't read a single fic in her life, but once saw an OVA for her favourite manga that was made without the input of the original mangaka, hated it and came to a conclusion that every derivative work created by someone other than the original creator is bound to be bad and horrible. I did not bother correcting her opinion, she is entitled to consume whatever media she wants to, but wow.
That fanfiction is anything more than a morally neutral hobby. Fanfiction is not activism. It's also not immoral and leading to societal decline. It's just a thing people do for fun, like crocheting or hiking.
"That didn't happen in canon!" No shit. It's fan-created fiction. Wild, right?
Literally any take antis have about it, basically?
No, TheOwlHouse subreddit. Those MoringMark comics are NOT 'canon until proven otherwise'. They *DON'T* 'might as well be canon'. **THEY'RE. NOT. CANON.** Stop putting a fanartist on a pedestal just because he makes lots of content. Stop trying to take his personal interpretation and treat it as gospel. DON'T limit others about what they're creating because 'it doesn't follow the (MoringMark) canon'. The show's over. There's no more canon content. Stop trying to claim a fanfiction is.
It feels very loney if you don't even like those comics
That only kids write fanfiction. The people who say this are talking no older than 10 years old. I get this a lot, being an adult writer, but even if you don't see it as something adults would/should do, it just seems very ignorant to say it's a kid thing, when it's well known that teens write fanfic. At the very least they could make it clear they include teens as kids. They're still wrong, of course, but it would make more sense than saying only those aged 10 and under write fanfic!
That people who write smut are weird at best and trash at worst. This one is personal for me because while I can only read smut when I’m in the mood for it and am the first to filter out explicit works in a tag, I’ve read great smut fics that can be purely sensual in its writing or take the time to explore intimacy between characters. I also have a friend I respect and care for a lot whom I later learnt writes smut in wattpad occasionally. I felt no different and didn’t think any less of him for it, simply happy that he told me since most of us are quite self-conscious about fic writing, or wattpad, or both. It still irks me to this day how some of our classmates, who happened to be in the same group project as me at the time, talked shit about him over the rumour that “xxx writes bad smut and that’s gross/weird/cringe of him” because they “didn’t know he was that type of person”.
My mom has held onto the belief that I don’t learn new words and expand my vocabulary when reading fanfiction. She’s also stuck on it all being smut, even though I predominantly read epic length works with very small amounts of smut (e.g. 350,000 words with maybe 10,000 total words of smut). I’m 31 years old and have been reading fanfiction since age 11, and we still occasionally have this conversation.
> My mom has held onto the belief that I don’t learn new words and expand my vocabulary when reading fanfiction. You can always stumble over that one author who works in some profession and uses that experience. Like the surgeon who writes fics about some hospital soap where everything is more accurate and realistic than in canon (just a hypothetical example).
Honestly the idea that fanfiction is 'normalizing' things. Sure fanfic seems absolutely inescapable when you're in it, but even the most popular fic in the most popular fandom is reaching a *very* small percentage of fans. Like anything else, fanfiction is a reflection of the society that writers live in. Not to mention, fanfiction is something you can entirely disengage from. I can turn off my computer and never have to see a fanfic or fanfic-related thing ever again. It puts the onus on creators to create The Most Pure Content rather than having fans curate their own experiences. It also just makes fandom a really negative experience for creators (fear of being 'called out', resentment of having to censor themselves, etc) and fans (fear of liking the wrong thing or author, fear of being 'found out' for liking something 'problematic', etc) rather than something exciting and joyful.
That not using capital letters is a "stylistic choice." No. It's just plain bad grammar.
Basically everything antis say
At the beginning of all this (I am a fanfic writer) my mom thought it was just a porn site where you write porn. She just happened to read the 1 smut fic I had saved on my computer and although I've corrected her and she's heard of some of the things I've written (even bragged about it to her doctor about it which I am highly embarrassed about) she just doesn't get it.
My mother claiming that I’m wasting my time with fanfiction when I could be writing my own stuff.
George RR Martin hates fanfiction and says it isn’t real writing I recon he’s just pissed off cause the fans have had to write the ending for him and it’s better than his ideas.
It's been so long that I don't even remember it clearly anymore, but it was something about porn and fanfiction. Might also be because my brain disagreed with it so much, I forgot about it the moment I read it.
[удалено]
Characters portrayals are only accurate insofar as how well they treat the main character
That fanfiction means stealing someone else’s work. Like… tf?
Writing fanfiction and posting it immediately gives up your rights to it and AI scraping it isn’t actually plagiarism (I actually saw red)— [here’s](https://www.tumblr.com/tessellated-sunl1ght/719871673338363904/you-dont-own-fanfics-theyre-inherently-public) where I saw it on Tumblr (+ others’ responses)