No.4
About Ace Attorney, now that I played the TGAA compilation I'm suddenly in the mood for Narumitsu fanfics, I'll look them up on AO3 since the kink meme is pretty much dead by now. I'm also in the mood for a pairing involving spoiler characters from TGAA but there's barely anything about them, I guess the game was released to recently.
No.55
It's been so long since I stopped reading fanfics. The last time I tried I wanted to read Sylvain/Felix and Dedue/Dimitri fics when Fire Emblem Three Houses got released but once I read the fics that had the most kudos all that was left was fics that turned Felix into a kawawii insecure uwu FTM, ooc melodrama, and Dedue was perpetually ignored by the fandom because everyone was too worried about being perceived as racist for being into a blond, blue-eyed pretty man. After that I tried to look for Vergil/Dante fics but I quickly gave up because most of them seemed to be in Russia' or Chinese. Nowadays the pairings I want to read about aren't popular enough or are too recent to have good fanfics of them, or the series and manga they come from are kind of old so I would have more chance finding things on ff.net.
I hate modern AUs so much because the stories I like are either taking place in a modern, semi-realistic setting already so the writers suddenly just make everyone American for no reason whatsoever, or the stories take place in very different settings and the writers also make everyone American instead of altering the setting. I don't know, why the hell would I want to read about a Sylvain/Felix coffee shop AU fic taking place in an American Starbucks instead of, say, trying to adapt the place where they already live and make it a modern version of that setting instead? I guess that's too much work.
I'm ESL so I don't write fics. It's been over a decade ago since I read fics in my first language.
No.57
>>55i find that the farther back i go (let's say roughly, pre-2017-ish) and/or the farther away i get from fandoms that are mainstream (genshin impact, fire emblem anything, etc.) the better the fics tend to be. like i'm currently really into 'omniscient reader's viewpoint' and everything i've hit up thus far has been great. no trans shit in sight (then again, don't forget about filters – you can always filter that crap out.)
here's one of my favorites, actually;
https://archiveofourown.org/works/26422468it's a simple pwp so you don't really need to know anything about the source material.
so maybe try seeking out things from the more obscure hobbies you have? or comb through the bookmarks of authors you enjoy.
No.58
>>57popularity really is a double-edged sword, huh? i think it's also a matter of accessibility - the closer the media is to actual 'literature,' the better the 'fic tends to be. games and anime fandoms often have worse writers than book series fandoms.
i am not going to go on a sperg rant about how much i love omniscient reader's viewpoint so instead, i'll ask: any other 'fic recommendations? i'm personally fond of threecrossings' work but unlike >>147 i am a sucker for modern AUs in every shape and form. the cultural issues usually go right over my head, probably because i'm american enough that i don't notice the american-isms.
No.59
>>58any interest in jjk? this is another good pwp:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611135 con to dubcon in fact ohohoho No.194
i love one room, one bed so much despite only having read a handful of fics concerning it. bonus points if like, the characters that have to sleep together hate one another (and are too stubborn to just sleep on the floor/allow the other person the comfort of a bed alone).
No.196
I hate most fanfic tropes. I want more originality, I mean I know we're talking about fanfic here, but I don't understand how people can read the same formulaic shit over and over. Isn't anyone else tired of coffee shop fake dating soulmates #2938383?
No.197
>>196My friend made a
prostate exam clinic AU with our other friend's OCs, too bad she doesn't post any of her stuff online.
No.198
>>196i can't stand soulmate or tattoo parlor AUs, but i've read something like twenty or thirty fake dating stories for one of my favorite pairings and i'm still not sick of the trope. i guess i'm the target audience.
No.199
>>196> I don't understand how people can read the same formulaic shit over and overthink of it as food. i would eat a slice of cheesecake every day if i could. and there are so many types of cheesecake out there to enjoy (strawberry, chocolate, fried, etc.) so it will be difficult for me to get bored, even though i'm consuming the same thing all the time.
i feel this way about tropes. everyone writes them differently, while sticking to the core essence of said trope.
No.201
>>199Considering your analogy, I guess I already hate cheesecake in the first place so I can't help but be disappointed when the menu is full of cheesecake and less of anything else. I make my own cake, but I admit I am not the best baker and my recipes are something probably only few people would enjoy.
No.202
2010-2014 were some stellar years for fanfic for the fandoms I was in at the time. Then they got overrun by gendies and the based elders had to seek underground. It did however make me write actual fanfic too and damn if it ain’t nice getting some validation.
I mostly just want to read something exactly like what I’ve written myself but sadly my brain works so well very few others get it.
Personally I like weird au combos, fucked up character introspection time and bittersweet ness that ruins your entire night. There isn’t anything more delicious than well written angst and resentment, especially when it comes to my personal trauma dump projection characters. It makes it all worth it. Suffer puppet, I love to see you dance this horrible cha cha.
No.251
>>199Going on a tangent here but while I enjoy reading different takes on the same concepts as much as anyone else (though to be fair the tropes I tend to gravitate towards are usually aren't the kinds that significantly alter canon settings/tone/themes except occasionally to make it darker; fluff really isn't my thing) I think in practice two cakes theory could be negatively impacting the general quality of fanworks as a whole. There's certainly a variety of factors leading to the decline of AO3's quality of posts (a major one being the decreasing average age of authors) I think the assumption that a fic will already have an inbuilt audience if it uses certain popular tropes has led to a flood of poorer quality tropefics being posted. Why bother putting in effort if you know you'll get those sweet kudos either way? It does kind of pain me to generalize audiences like this though. I'd like to think we're all more discerning.
No.308
>>251It's hard to combat against the tropefic effect. It even gets old authors sometimes, unfortunately.
No.309
Thanks nonas, this thread is inspiring me to write again. I grew up on low quality fic written by literal children, so I'm still surprisingly tolerant of it. I kind of have to be since I'm in a terrible fandom right now. If anyone else is into Bungou Stray Dogs, this is my all time favourite Porn With Plot series for Soukoku.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/938178It exemplifies everything I want in a fanfic: tension, drama, introspection, angst, smut, complex character relationships…. not to mention the author's awesome writing style. I also like that it takes place in universe. I don't have anything against AU's, but I think inexperienced/uncreative/lazy authors use them to cheat their way out of developing the characters or working within the limits of the setting.
No.311
i like reading fics abt losers, seeing men be pathetic or force my own problems onto them, makes me feel better. my friends call me a sadist for the stuff i write for them at times, but who doesn't love a good story abt fag suicidal alcoholics w trauma and pretty faces ?
No.318
Can I post western fandom fic here or would that go on the /wes/ board? I want to sperg about the best fic I've ever read.
No.336
>>318Go ahead, I don't think anyone will mind. You can start a thread in /wes/ once it becomes a lot of posts maybe.
No.338
>>335>>336>>337Ok fam here we go
https://archiveofourown.org/works/690108/chapters/1267922It's moriarty/moran, and I know bbc sherlock is an absolute pleb cringe fandom but you don't need to be familiar with the canon to enjoy this. Slow burn with nice characterization, engaging plot, and even the OCs are absolutely palatable. No explicit sex but interesting enough to keep a degenerate like me reading for 340k words.
Also the author has no other social media and basically disappeared after posting this which, given the general state of fandom, is an epic power move.
No.342
>>338Holy fucking shit, nona, I haven't read this in almost a decade. God, along with Sodomquake's much-maligned Sympathy Crime, this was my first big introduction to what fic could really be. The dynamics and themes of this fic served as the basis of what I look for in fic to this day. Maybe I'm past due for a reread.
No.357
>>342>The dynamics and themes of this fic served as the basis of what I look for in fic to this day. Same but it's so rare to find anything with similar depth that manages to "show not tell". I love the dynamic too, it's such a great and unique balance of volatility and warmth. I hope you do end up re-reading, I'm planning on doing so soon too.
No.401
Top 100 pairings on AO3 sorted by number of works posted in 2021. There sure is a bunch of MCYT, isn't there…
https://archiveofourown.org/works/36126787(I'm aware this looks like a fic link but it's the full stats being hosted on the site.)
No.402
>>401>no incest>genshin impact>rpf shitthe girls of the modern day are not doing okay
No.403
>>401My decision to stay out of fandom and mostly quit reading fic is proven correct once again. (I just stick with old favs.)
No.406
>>401sakuatsu making it to 5000+ new 'fics in the past year is always hilarious to me because no one, not even the shippers themselves, understands how this collective delusion got so popular. there are like, 13 whole panels of the two of them interacting in a 400-chapter manga. we are just a crackship that's escaped containment.
No.408
>>406AYRT I have such a soft spot for SakuAtsu. It feels so much like pre-Check Please hockey RPF even down to the unusually high percentage of magical realism AUs. It's nice to find something as comfy as 1988 fic was for me prior to the Great Mass Deletion of August 2015, though I agree that as a pairing it's a huge anomaly.
No.447
>>57>>58I've thought this for ages and had nobody to talk to about it.
Anime fandoms tend to have very little good quality fanfiction. When the fandoms are really big, the few good stories tend to rise to the top - but even then you'll only find 3 or 4 genuinely good reads. Finding good One Punch Man stories is almost impossible for some reason.
Western media that gets too popular for its own good is cursed to a similar fate, usually if it's a film/tv show rather than a book. The weirdest example of this for me was Les Miserables, which got heavily tumblrized after the film came out.
Every now and again you'll find a niche pairing within a niche fandom that just has wall-to-wall gold. I've found that most Black Sails fanfiction is good, specifically Flint/Silver.
No.449
>>448fr those zoomers aren't living properly.
No.450
>someone compliments my work
>i check out their profile because i'm a huge snoop
>they write roblox fanfiction
i'm definitely not going to complain, but i really wasn't expecting that.
No.454
>>450This is one of my fears. That I'll leave a review for something, and then the author will click on my profile and see the Batman fanfiction I wrote as a preteen.
No.457
>>454honestly, i'd find that really endearing. their work was published pretty recently, so i'm not sure how to feel about it.
No.462
>>450>roblox fanfictioni didn't really parse this the first time i read it and now i'm just pondering it. video game fanfiction i understand, but roblox? are there even characters in roblox? what are you even supposed to ship in this?
please don't answer these questions. my curiosity is piqued, but i simply do not want to know.
No.468
Why are most Ace Attorney fics so OOC? I want Klavier to bully Apollo and tease him while fucking him in the ass, not to worship the ground he walks on. And for some reason people don't get that Apollo and Klavier actually get along even if Apollo is lowkey jealous of Klavier's good looks and charisma. He's just a bit tsundere for him, although I guess I can also blame the retarded AA5 and AA6 writer for making both of them a little OOC as well. Don't get me started on Phoenix and Edgeworth always being lovey dovey instead of having the sexual tension they have in the games. It's like only newfags who never played the games and only read some shittt headcanons on tumblr once write these fics. I've noticed that many fakebois write Apollo as a fakeboi just because he's short. And please, no more random german words in Klavier's lines. I'm sick of it. This shit is awful, people need to stop abusing Google Translate like this. Maybe I'm biased because I played AA4 in French and Klavier uses normal English words in his French sentences which seems way less quirky and is actually kinda normal irl.
No.589
>>454Could get a 2nd account just for commenting? I wouldn't comment from the same account I have work on these days, people started putting dni conditions in author's notes. Not worth it.
No.595
>>589>people started putting dni conditions in author's notesDo they really? I've never seen that, though I don't often stray outside my circle of Dead Dove.
No.596
>>595Depends on the fandom and ship, I've only seen it on "soft" stuff, but thankfully they keep it short.
Some of the bios, however, are getting ridiculous…
No.600
>>589Luckily I left my cringiest shit on my old fanfiction.net account, and the stuff on my AO3 isn't too objectionable. The fandoms I'm in at the moment thankfully don't have any of the hardcore DNI people anyway.
>>596I would simply read this person's fic and not leave kudos. Even if the story is good, they don't deserve it kek.
No.603
>>595What does dead dove means? I've seen some people talking about fics using this phrase but without enough context so I can't guess what that means and I'm a bit worried about what I'll find if I look it up on google.
No.604
>>603>dead dove: do not eatit's from arrested development. there's a scene where a character finds a bag saying 'dead dove: do not eat' on it, opens it up, and lo and behold, there's a dead dove in there.
it basically means this 'fic contains problematic content, and if you continue reading, you shouldn't complain about it being there because you've been warned.
No.608
>>604Wait, is it that scene where the guy looks inside the bag and goes "I don't know what I expected.", because I only know that line and nothing else from that show.
No.611
>>608yep, that's exactly the line! dunno how it ended up being used for problematic 'fic, but it sure fits.
No.612
>>603>>611According to Fanlore, the term was proposed by a tumblr user back in 2015 and has steadily risen in popularity since.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Dead_Dove:_Do_Not_Eat No.732
I hate fake dating with a passion.
No.733
does anyone have any recs for hisoillu fics or anything about the adultrio? I've read cigarette teeth twice which is a master piece but it's so hard to find good fanfics about manga…
No.740
>>732same. fake dating and coffee aus.
No.742
I want to write incest fic so badly for a game that has been completely overrun by genderspecials and that not a single soul has ever wrote incest fic for for the characters (this is a 10+ year old game to boot, not even pixiv has enough content) but the fear of getting targetted for it scares me too much.
No.743
>>742I know your feeling but with characters of dubious age.
No.745
>>742Which fandom? If it's a series I like like Ace Attorney or Devil May Cry I'd like to read it, I'll give you kudos.
No.747
>>745It's persona, oldsona even. So I'm pretty much fucked, and I can't even rely on nips for this either.
I'm just going to hope the game gets a remake so maybe there'll be less 15yos into it
No.748
>>747You could plop it on a throwaway account and watch the fire from afar. I've always wanted to do that with ships I don't even like just to troll the fanbase but I can't write.
No.749
>>747Suou brothers? Toudou twins? I can't think of any more siblings from the early games.
No.750
>>749Suou brothers, yes. I feel in a special kind of degenerate agony where it genuinely feels like I'm the only one who ships them. Like not even the biggest degenerates out there are willing to ship them.
>>748I was thinking of that, but the amount of related fics for the game is already small enough that I'd be recognized instantly anyway.
On a different note, to kinda not derail the thread yet go from what I'm talking about, any other anons have a ship that you thought would have something/be popular but has little to no content whatsoever in Ao3?
No.753
>>752Samfag, I mean I want Tatsuya to have a crush on Katsuya but I've made a stupid typo.
No.757
>>752>>753Oh anon those are my exact thoughts as well! It's a bit spoilery, but I really do love the idea of reciprocated tsun brocon Tacchan. There's so much I could tell you but this isn't the thread for it haha.
All I can say is that if you ever play EP in some way, you'll end up loving their complicated relationship imo.
Funnily enough, I also very much like DMC as well. Spardacest is like the bane of vidya incest ships, and DMCV even added more on top of it (with Nero/V).
It's kinda funny how a lot of the DMC fics these days are all in Chinese, you can always trust the chinese to be incest connoisseurs.
Thank you anon, now I feel a tad bit less guilty and more motivated to make the fic that is in my mind.
No.764
>>757>Thank you anon, now I feel a tad bit less guilty and more motivated to make the fic that is in my mindAlways happy to help. Not sure how AO3 works for logged in users because I only lurk but if it's possible to block people who post shitty comments to accuse you of whatever, don't hesitate to block. Channel your inner Hideki Kamiya.
No.776
>>3I've worked up the courage to finally shill this fic I wrote just recently;
https://archiveofourown.org/works/37699495Supes is hurt and ends up getting assaulted by a dude in an alley. If that interests you, I hope you like it! I wrote it over the course of like a week and it was an enjoyable experience.
No.888
>>776this fic is hot. love the bit where the guy is reminded he's about to bad touch fucking
superman of all people.
No.1089
>>750>any other anons have a ship that you thought would have something/be popular but has little to no content whatsoever in Ao3?After starting to read Chainsaw Man last year I was convinced there would be shit tons of Denji/Aki fic, but when I went on ao3 it wasn't even popular enough to be in the fandom's relationship filter.
But there seems to be a few more stories now, so it was probably just a case of me arriving too early to the fandom.
No.1092
>Fan of a niche video game
>Almost all of the bl fics of the game are TIF troon shit
It's all so tiresome
No.1093
>>1092Modern western BL ships are overrun with TIFs who try and say "This is a TRANSMASC ONLY fandom, no GIRLS allowed"
I'd like a lot more indie content ships if it weren't for this NLOG mindset.
No.1096
>>1092What game? 13 Sentinels? Some atelier?
>>1093They are everywhere, a manga I got recently had troon dropping fanart on AO3. If some character is any way feminine he automatically gets 50% trans fanart. For some reason they are obsessed with giving men vaginas. Funny stuff, they taut themselves are "progressive" but I bet they'd never ask a gay man how they feel about that.
No.1098
>>1096>What game? 13 Sentinels? Some atelier?Library of Ruina, or I should just say Project Moon games in general. The western side of the fanbase is filled with a bunch of genderspecials
No.1099
>>1098I heard the name before, but I'm not surprised, I think it's fairly popular on twitter.
No.1291
Gascoigne/Henryk from Bloodborne is so underrated for having so many classic tropes fujos love, mostly size gap and angst and them working together. SOMEHOW a fanbase as horny as bloodborne missed all the potential with these two. So to get the fanfics that I wanted I stopped being a fag and wrote some works to beef up their ao3 tag. It's not nearly as indulgent as I wanted them to be but they're my first and so far only foray into writing fic which… I want to start up again lol. Though it feels better when you do it knowing you can be super indulgent and niche and other rarepair fujos will still love it.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/19276303 if anyone wants to take a look. I have more fics on my profile too lol.
No.1346
>>742In the end, after contemplating for 4 months, I did it.
Got a bunch of other ideas too, considering they're so niche I'll just take it upon myself to revitalize their popularity as a ship.
It's P2, unpopular to begin with but I want more of them.
It's a bit cheesy, trying to keep the character's personalities consistent with a lot of plot points of the game mixed in so there's quite some spoilers in there.
But I hope it's good…had never written porn before.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/40501389 No.1384
Why is it that when it comes to fics for animanga the fic writers are either a)completely illiterate or b)literary masters? No in between. Whereas fics for western books and movies (even video games to some extent) aren't like this at all. Sure there's bad writers in all fandoms but the gap in skill level is nowhere near this extreme. Maybe it's just confirmation bias but I've noticed the effect is amplified if the anime is somewhat popular with a large non english speaking fanbase. You get fics that have obviously been through google translate at least 3 times and then on the other hand you have fics written by people who have to be published novelists or something. It's baffling.
On another note, don't you hate it when you find a fic that's been written by literally god and then you find out that author doesn't write anymore? It's the most frustrating feeling in the world. And then you try to find other fics like it but it's just not the same. I would write myself if I weren't esl and were capable of writing stories beyond a 5th grade level. Honestly how do some writers do it? It's like magic or some shit.
No.1386
>>1384>don't you hate it when you find a fic that's been written by literally god and then you find out that author doesn't write anymoreYou wanna know pain?
I remember stumbling upon a SPlatinum/Jotaro fic eons ago and really liking it, had the page bookmarked on my phone and everything. Some point later on in time I went to go and give it my annual read-through and find it has been deleted. I've long since unbookmarked it and have even forgotten the name so trying to find a reupload of it is impossible. It already sucked it was incomplete, but now I just straight can't read it anymore. The kicker? The author is inactive and has nothing left but stuff I can only liken as shitposts. Seriously, take a peak yourself;
https://archiveofourown.org/users/BastardoftheEarthThe fic itself was competently written, I have no idea what the hell happened.
No.1389
>>401Despite my dislike of RPF, it's a little heartwarming to see Gen that high.
No.1390
>>553H was my first brush with a new+popular fandom in a very, very long time and watching the "uwu AU with no bite written by people who watched a CF playthough on youtube" fics overtake the "set in-universe written by people who have played every route" fics in real time was just wretched.
I hate what being able to "play" a game through a secondary source has done to the quality of game fanfics.
No.1395
>>55Man I hear these complaints so often I guess I am very lucky for never stumbling upon any kind of fic in which my favorite characters are turned into trans guys/women or Americans. Maybe they are too muscular or masculine for such headcanons. I almost never like AUs I think though, there is only one exception I can think of but it's properly done as you say. An AU in actual modern Japan and the broken and fucked up character is still broken and fucked up as it should be.
No.1396
>>401There isn't a single series in this chart that I ever gave a shit about. And what the fuck is video blogging even supposed to be?
Anyway I am glad the series I am into are getting a few fics daily and none of those I have seen ever had any gender shit or blatant ooc in them. It's just men acting like men things and/or fucking.
No.1403
>>1402How long till Destial is dethroned?
No.1404
>>1402Every time I see these I always get soooo jealous of the people who get to enjoy these numbers. Even if just 1% of these fics are good you are still eating well.
No.1406
>>1402>Shipping Minecraft letsplayes I thought people shipped them ironically as a joke, like fanart of SpongeBob and squidward
No.1407
>>1406If there's one thing I've learned about ironic shipping, it's that it doesn't stay ironic for very long.
No.1408
>>1406Spongbob and Squidward have actual chemistry and I wish there were more serious fics of them.
I assume most people who ship Minecraft youtubers are actual children who are growing up watching it. As opposed to having your formative years and first brush with yaoi be cartoon characters it's now Streamers and Youtubers.
Question for anyone who watches Dream: Is he playing a character or are people shipping what they perceive to be the "real" him?
No.1409
>>1408my nephew used to watch him and so I have been reluctantly forced to watch Dream SMP's, and its literally just any letsplay with a bunch of dudes, literally nothing about it is special and it is so hard to keep track of whose who
No.1410
>>342>Sodomquake's much-maligned Sympathy CrimeIt's been years and I'm still mad about how much shit they got for this. Probably my earliest memory of what would become today's fan police. Up until then all fandom drama had been funny to some degree.
No.1411
Are there any AUs people don't hate? Usually prefer my stuff canon-compliant but I've recently been digging wing-fics.
Not angel or mythology AUs but fanfics where one character either gains wings or has been hiding them all along.
No.1431
I always see a bunch of people who have trouble searching on A03 so I figured I'd share the settings I use bookmarked. If anyone has anymore tips please share so we can help people find the good stuff in the wave of OOC garbage!
Sort By: Word Count. While you might want to set it to newest if the pool is small and you've read it all before word count is great for weeding out children and teenagers who don't know what they're doing. While you might need to wade through some 500k fantasy-AUs I do think setting it up this way makes is quicker to find the good stuff.
Ratings: Default. I exclude E if not in the mood for PWP.
Warnings: Default. Might filter for rape or violence if looking for a dark fic.
Categories: M/M of course! Exclude multi, f/f, and other in big fandoms or else prepare for poly ships and gender-BS.
Fandoms: Usually default. For big media franchises like DC, Disney, or Marvel you might need to exclude specific iterations of a property here.
Characters: Select your ship here!
Relationships: Ditto! You can also exclude Pairings you hate.
Additional tags: Exclude garbage you don't want to see here. I personally remove - trans, High School AU, Modern AU, Fantasy AU, Stripper AU, Angels and Demons, Mythology AU, OOC, PWP, Established Relationship, a/b/o, soulmates.
Crossovers: Do not include unless you're looking for a specific crossover. People who publish short story compilations with a million fandom tags need to kill themselves. Collections exist for a reason.
Completion Status: Complete. Unless you're actively looking for ongoing work, you'll just wind up with a ton of unfished pieces.
Word Count: Set if desired. I personally think 10k-50k is my favorite story length.
Date Updated: Doesn't matter unless looking for ongoing work.
Language: Set to what you speak or English.
Search within results: This can be great for finding episode specific works that don't have an actual tag.
I don't know if anyone else has a better way of filtering but this is what works for me.
No.1433
>>1431My default when looking at a new fandom is to plug in the ship, sort by bookmarks, then set the minimum word count to 10k. From there I check out the profiles of the good fic authors and they usually have more work in that fandom or a solid list of bookmarks themselves.
What I really want is for Ao3 to finally add a way to tag a pairing as the focus of a work. People who tag X/Y as a pairing when it's a side pairing or a throwaway line in their A/B story need to have their ears boxed. In one particular fandom I used to have to put no less than 3 other ships into the damn exclusion tag to even hope of hitting a story that is focused on the ship I actually wanted to read about. It was a large part as to why I stopped bothering with fic there.
>>1411If an author I trust writes one I'm game. AUs I would otherwise skip have been served to me on a silver platter.
No.1439
Bump because I like fanfiction and hate scrotes and don’t want anyone to see the CP spam.
No.1440
Nonnas… Do you know the pain of kowing that a really good fic will never be finished?
I found one of the best fics I know of a manga I love dearly and a character that I adore, it has 18 chapters, it was so intriguing that I could not stop reading it… Everything was so well put together, all the characters beautifully written, the story interesting… and it ended up unfinished on a cliff-hanger.
Sometimes I wonder how the person who wrote it is going, I hope that they're doing fine with life and are happy… even if there's sorrow that the fic won't see it's ending, atleast I'm happy for the memories I made… It's… a really unique feeling. I still have it bookmarked, hoping for the writer to miraculously return and finish it.
The fic is of Soul Eater for any fans who want to read it
https://archiveofourown.org/works/3857236/chapters/8613679 .
No.1441
>>1440I don't think there is a single person on this site who can say they aren't waiting on at least one dead fic to miraculously return to life and finish.
Do yourself a favor and save a copy if you haven't already. Sometimes an author's "return" is simply to delete their old stuff and disappear forever.
No.1442
>>1441>Do yourself a favor and save a copy if you haven't already. Sometimes an author's "return" is simply to delete their old stuff and disappear forever.How do I make a copy?
No.1443
>>1442Upper righthand corner there is a "Download" button you can click, then pick the format you want.
No.1444
>>1443Oh okay, thank you.
No.1445
>>1441>Sometimes an author's "return" is simply to delete their old stuff and disappear forever.This reminds me of a tumblr post I can't find, but the gist of it was that there was a surviving copy of some lost fanfic because somebody printed it and put it in a binder. Which then reminded me that some people get into bookbinding for fanfics.
Do you guys have any fanfic you'd make a physical copy of? I used to print stuff I liked, but it was never more than a few pages of smut. I have a friend who writes fanfic and if she ever finishes her looooong one, commissioning a binding of it would make a really good gift I think.
No.1446
>>1440Conviction, a Wesker/Chris fic.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5961952/1/ There are a few more, but this one is definitely up there simply because of how long it's been. I read it for the first time recently-ish, and seeing how in just a few days it'll have been dead for TWELVE YEARS, I'm not holding out much hope. I still like to read through it every now and then, even still.
No.1447
>>1446>seeing how in just a few days it'll have been dead for TWELVE YEARS, I'm not holding out much hopeWhen does your hope die for a fic to return? Mine dies when it's been longer than 3 years.
No.1448
>>1447For me it's 5. I usually check an author's activity and socials to see if they are alive or even still in the fandom they were writing for. If they're still in it there's a good chance they will come back, if not I try to let it go.
No.1449
On the subject of backing up fanfiction. I found some old kink memes from Livejournal and since it is only a matter of time before Livejournal closes I'm considering dumping the stories from the kink memes into AO3. I'm just hesitating to do this since I feel bad about reposting other people's work without permission, but since it's anonymous I guess it would be all right? Some authors chose to repost their work from the anonymous kink memes to AO3 but not everyone does it so I that's why I think an AO3 kink meme archive could be neat.
I also found this really old and obscure fanfiction site which doesn't get much tracking and I don't think anyone posts fics on it anymore, so I'm also tempted to see if I can get in contact with some authors there and ask if I can repost their works to AO3.
Honestly it's mostly because I'm obsessed with archiving stuff and I would be sad if old fics would disappear and the only way to acces them was trough the waybackmachine. I'm in lots of old fandoms and I really enjoy reading old fics because it's interesting to see how the fandom's characterisations and opinions of certain characters change.
No.1450
>>1449I think it's a great idea although I will beg you right now to go through the trouble of listing them as individual entries in a series rather than a chaptered work. I hate getting slapped in the face by mile-long kinkmeme tags.
>interesting to see how the fandom's characterisations and opinions of certain characters change.This is cool, post a little about what you've seen. For my own experience the treatment of Kuwabara from YYH has gotten way better over the years. Back in the day it was all Hiei/Kurama kawaii yaoi time with little regard for the rest of the cast.
No.1451
>>1449I think this would be fine since everyone is anon anyway. Just as long as you also post them as anon.
Seconding
>>1450 though. I hate seeing massive 100k works which are just a bunch of stories. Use the series option.
No.1452
>>1450My original plan was just to post them in one long chapter fic and then just write the genre, tropes etc. at the beginning of the chapter so I didn't have to write them in the tags. I didn't consider posting them individually but that probably makes them easier to find so maybe I do that.
I can't recall any specific character right now but probably the biggest change I have seen is just how poorly female characters used to be treated in early slash fics(do people even use that term anymore?) but that isn't so surprising. Also comic relief characters didn't get much attention unlike today where people will latch a backstory unto them. Those old slash fics I have read from the late 90s and early 00s has more an atmosphere of… tragedy I guess? Kinda like old BL manga. I feel like it wasn't until mid 00's people tried to put in more comedic elements and memeable stuff into their fics.But this probably says more about the fandoms I'm in that the actual trends of the era.
No.1453
>>1452Oh yeah, this reminds me of [character]-bashing fics. Usually the victim was the lady who was closest to or outright the canon ship with a popular m/m character (Relena to Heero, Sakura to Sasuke, etc). Couldn't throw a rock without hitting a yaoi fic that had [her] has a villain. I saw this a lot in anime/jrpg fandoms but it rarely leaked into western ones. I want to say it was because male fans weren't as antagonistic about slash as they were yaoi (western slash had its own spaces for a very long time, western yaoi very often "contaminated" shared weeaboo spaces), but who actually knows.
You're also right about the atmosphere, so much angst. I think at the time it might have just been a reflection of real life, given how much more homophobic in general things were back then.
Thanks a lot for putting this all out here, you've unlocked a lot of memories. I feel like I'd get secondhand embarrassment from revisiting my old haunts but I think I'll try to this weekend anyway. Is that website you were talking about mediaminer.org by any chance? I used to crosspost fics/art there, it was cool that it hosted both.
No.1454
>>1447I don't ever really stop hoping, but I do come to accept I'm being unrealistic after the third or so year. Unless the author is still active, in which case I'll hope until the sun burns out.
No.1455
>>1453Lol character hate was on a different level back then. If you hated a character you /really/ hated a character and would dedicate so much time into it. It almost came off as trolly. Back then it seemed kinda random why a character would get hate tbh nowadays but now it's usually because of what the character represent or their behaviour. Honestly I kinda miss the unapologetic character bashing. While it was annoying seeing hate for you're favourite character the whole absurdity of it was kinda funny(it was also super satisfying seeing hate for you're least fave but I'm also kinda petty).
>You're also right about the atmosphere, so much angst. I think at the time it might have just been a reflection of real life, given how much more homophobic in general things were back then. You're probably right about this. It is a wonderful thing that homophobia is starting to become less prevalent. And it is kinda fascinating how that is being reflected in fan fiction. I have also seen some gay fan fic author say that they use it as a form for escapism so that is probably also why angst isn't as common.
>mediaminer.orgI have never heard about this site but thanks for mentioning it! I love discovering sites dedicated to fanworks! The site I was talking about is adult-fanfiction.org and as it's name imply it's dedicated to NSFW fics. there seems to be mostly het ships on it too. You can't really find those angsty fics I where talking about on this site since it's mostly smut.
Honestly my favourite place to find fan fiction is by finding old fansites trough Fanlore or thewayback machine. Some movies, like Dead Poet Society for example, actually seemed like having a semi active following in 99.
No.1456
>>1455>adult-fanfiction.orgHurts me somewhere deep to hear that called really old and obscure haha. I was posting there when I was 17, don't tell anybody! I remember the exodus to there after the NC-17 purge on ff.net but naturally not a lot of people stuck around because it just wasn't a good website. I'm so glad Ao3 saved us all from fanfic diaspora.
Since making my last post I've been scrolling through old fandoms on mediaminer and laughing myself stupid at the usernames/summaries/fics themselves. Its own little time capsule, peak early 00s stuff. Despite being so young, a lot of them have their own websites in their profiles, some of which you can wayback machine. It's so cute, you just don't see personal sites anymore.
No.1457
>>1456Oh no I didn't mean to hurt you:( I only assumed the website was old because I have never heard of it. I do remember when people switched from FF to AO3 but adult-fanfiction must have slipped me by that time. Honestly I'm glad that we just have AO3 now it's nice to just have one place where everyone posts fanfictions so you don't have to switch around different websites depending on what rating you want(now we also need a website to post fanart that has a better layout than Twitter and then I'm happy).
> It's so cute, you just don't see personal sites anymoreIt's really a shame. Early 00s web was so endearing! I think the closes we have today is probably Tumblr since you can customize your blog and put whatever you want on it.
No.1474
Does anyone else think that older fanfiction is a higher quality than modern fanfiction? Not to say that they didn't write bad fanfiction back in the day. For every good fanfiction you would find there would be a thousand terrible ones filled with author notes where the author is conversing with the characters. But I just feel like good old fanfiction is better than good new fanfiction. You can tell that some old fanfiction authors respected writing as a craft and used alot of prose in their writing.
While if you find a new fanfiction it just feels like it's drifting from scene to scene. It's not necessarily badly written but you can tell that they primarily get their writing inspiration from other fanfiction authors and don't really study/practice writing as a craft.
I don't really mind to be honest since it is just a hobby and I'm grateful that people are putting it up for free for me to read. But I have never read a modern fanfiction and thought "this is good enough to be published", even when reading a really good one. But I have occasionally thought that when reading older fanfiction.
No.1475
>>1474apologize for samefagging but I know I'm rambling like a madman I'm just extremely sleep deprived LOL
No.1476
>>1474I feel like the average age of someone writing fanfiction has decreased, so writers in general come across as more amateurish and immature because they just…are. Maybe this is just my perception, I have no concrete evidence to back it up, but most fic writers back when I was a youth(00's/early 10's) started out in the mid-late teens, where nowadays it seems like starting as a preteen/very young teen is more common. It probably has something to do with the internet being more available to kids now than it was back then.
No.1477
>>1476You reminded me of when I recently saw an explicit Klavier/Apollo fic and the first thing in the author's note was the writer writing like a brat and saying that she was a kissless virgin but she did her best to write these two adult characters having a highly qualified office job and having sex on a regular basis.
No.1478
>>1477Why would somebody self humiliate like that? If she thinks that she isn't experienced enough to write fanfics of this sort, why did she even bother in the first place?
I've never actually seen bad author notes, they seem to be quite rare.
No.1480
>>1474I don't think this is true, it's just the pool of fanfiction has increased so much there is both way more good and bad fics.
If you go on Fanfiction.net and look at a lot of 2003/2004 fics it is a lot of garbage. Characters watching the show they're from, or characters reacting to yaoi of themselves. There's L33TSpeak, song fics, and just overall worse spelling.
I'm not saying all fanfiction from this era is bad, quite the opposite! As you mentioned in a lot of closed fandom-specific communities you got novel-legnth stories that were worthy of being published. Its just that overall due to the sheer volume of people writing at any given time you'll always see a lot of shit.
Speaking specifically of prose and writing artistry… I'd say the same thing about published works. I don't read many novels published after the year 2000, no specific reason outside of the fact that they don't often catch my eye, but when I do find one that suits my fancy I'm always struck by how different they feel. Like the author takes more inspiration from movies than other written works. Not to say that's a bad thing, at the end of the day the core plot still matters most, but there is a definite difference in the writing style that extends beyond the author and their stylistic approach.
No.1481
>>1474Very broad generalization incoming: prior to the smartphone/social media flood of ~2010, the bulk of people dorky enough to have an online life, much less write fanfic, were more likely to be voracious readers themselves. The media literacy of people floating around online back then was simply higher on average.
In addition to this, a lot of fandom spaces were community-based (forums, livejournal groups) and often had older writers and BNFs in them, giving a young writer an unofficial metric by which to judge their own work. Sometimes they'd even be available to beta read or just talk shop, it was like being able to go to the fanfic temple and chat with a living god! There is currently no writer-centric community hub, Twitter is nowhere near as fun for writers as it is for artists (I HATE book/writer Twitter so much). I still read fanfic for my current fandoms but if you held a gun to my head and asked me to name some BNFs or die, you'd just have to shoot me. Typing this reply is what made me realize this last part, kind of sad.
>But I have never read a modern fanfiction and thought "this is good enough to be published",I've read plenty of covid era (lol) fic that is better than its modern published equivalent. Might just be a fandom or ship you aren't into that is currently producing the good stuff. It's also important to remember that "published" isn't synonymous with "high quality"!
>>1480>Like the author takes more inspiration from movies than other written worksThis is a very real problem and I'm unsure if there's an official name for it, but I regularly see it discussed in regards to the quality dip in anime over the years. Setting aside that there is simply more anime to browse now, more and more of it is made by otaku for otaku rather than having a creator who has learned how to tell a story from lived experience and/or higher quality media. I like to compare it to the energy pyramid–modern creators across all mediums simply aren't eating their vegetables and it shows. I think you can extend this to fanfic writers as well.
I've seen a bit of pushback toward this theory on the wretchedly aforementioned book/writer Twitter. It comes off as "classist" to suggest creators read more to improve their writing, especially if it's a book above middle school level. That one can learn to write without reading much. Regressive stuff. Eat your damn vegetables.
>If you go on Fanfiction.net and look at a lot of 2003/2004 fics it is a lot of garbage>closed fandom-specific communities you got novel-legnth stories that were worthy of being publishedI looooooooooved those privately curated fanfic sites where a work usually had to be good to get hosted. Lotta potential for drama there, but damn if it didn't get results. I remember a lot of them were dedicated to specific pairings, which ruled in the days of no pairing filters.
No.1485
>>1480I dont' mean that older fanfiction is better. In fact I think that old bad fanfiction is much worse than modern fanfiction. It's just when I finally do find something good on Livejournal or Fanfiction it's usually a higher quality than those modern fanfictions that gets praised by the fandom.
>I don't read many novels published after the year 2000, no specific reason outside of the fact that they don't often catch my eyeSame. I don't read many newer books either for the same reason you do. Also the book industry has become really weird the last couple of years specially when it comes to marketing(and social media is partly to blame). Tinfoil but I feel like there has become a weird focus on finding a demographic so it just reduces to the reader to a consumer you are selling a product to rather than someone who actually wants to enjoy and appreciate a book for what it is. This is particularly prevalent in any youth oriented genre. I get the impression that most authors has to think more like business people("what tropes are popular" "what qoute can go viral" etc.) rather than artist. I don't think it helps either that alot of people online are becoming more vocal about hating books that contains alot of descriptions and big words. This mentality may also have subconsciously affect young amateur authors who writes fanfiction….
No.1486
>>1474I think you just described why I dislike some "well written" fics on AO3. It feels like a lot of the fics are just bits and pieces of scenes put together that don't really transition well into each other on a narrative level. Maybe it's because I prefer slow burn, but I really enjoy reading about the small details in between big scenes, you know? And I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like there's a certain style or prose that a lot of popular AO3 fics have (present tense, lots of introspection for example) that I can't really get into because it feels so copy-and-paste.
No.1487
>>1484I don't want to sound like a schizo but this gives me ayyden vibes for some reason
No.1488
>>1474It's just a consequence of having more I think. Also no kink meme means it may be hard to hit that one specific fetish
No.1490
>>1488i miss kink memes so much. some fandoms still has one on dreamwidth but they aren't very active and when people do fill a prompt they just upload it on their own social media and not on the meme itself so you have no idea if a prompt has been filled or not which just kinda defeats the purpose of a kink meme
No.1492
>>1484At least one person actually did admit it though.
No.1493
>>1492thats true. but i cant help thinking that it feels weirdly homophobic how the author say that they are only going to write straight parrings and if they are writing a gay one they are basically just going to turn one character into a girl.
people can criticize fujos all they want but at least we dont say crap like this. het shippers have it too easy
No.1494
>>1493>homophobicI mean yeah, it is, but that person is at least self aware instead of acting like making the bottom ultra feminine, or making their fave bottoms trans so they can write PiV or draw them with tits is super progressive.
No.1495
>>1481>I've seen a bit of pushback toward this theory on the wretchedly aforementioned book/writer Twitter. It comes off as "classist" to suggest creators read more to improve their writing, especially if it's a book above middle school level. That one can learn to write without reading much. Regressive stuff. Eat your damn vegetables.I feel like the Harry Potter/Hunger Games/*Insert popular YA novel here* boom in the mid 2000s might be responsible for that. The standard for popular written works IS middle school fiction. And while it's fine for a book aiming at a child and tween demographic it shouldn't be the standard for adult centric works.
Popcorn fiction is fine, I love a good pulply sci-fi, but when subpar works start topping "best of" lists and being held in such high regards it's frustrating.
Anyway, to bring this back around to fanfiction. I always have to laugh when people pretend longform fanfiction is somehow lesser than actual written works. Besides 50 Shades another fanfic that got defandomized and turned into a giant runaway hit was City of Bones. Quality of the works aside, it seems like the general market is quite receptive to the tropes found in fanfiction. I wouldn't be surprised if a not-insignificant portion of romance novels on the market were inspired by, or even completely rebranded releases of fanfiction.
No.1496
>>1495>I always have to laugh when people pretend longform fanfiction is somehow lesser than actual written works. Same. Fanfiction has largely replaced my "light" reading because like the previous anons I just don't vibe with a lot of modern fiction.
As I've aged I've gotten really open about praising fanfiction. So much of the hate is rooted in man's love of shitting on stuff girls like.
No.1548
>>1485>Livejournal or Fanfiction What fandoms are you finding gems in? I only ask because I want to go trawling myself, but so far, at least in anime fandoms, I'm coming up mostly with shortfics (LJ) or utter garbage (FF)
No.1560
>>1548I actually wrote that post after reading some of hollycombs fanfiction. She is mostly known in the South Park fandom. She was on Ao3 too
No.1569
Any writers here? I was just wondering how you find Beta-readers. I've been writing fanfiction on and off since I was in middle school and have never been able to find someone to proofread my work. Do you approach IRL friends or are there specific fandom communities you go to?
No.1573
>>1569I've never found a beta reader but I've been a beta reader. Fanfiction.net actually has an opt-in beta reader system (www.fanfiction.net/betareaders/) but who knows if anybody on that list is even active anymore. You can even sort it by fandom! It was amazing when that site wasn't so shitty and I'm surprised Ao3 doesn't have anything similar (of which I'm aware).
I was either contacted through that system or hit up by a fandom friend. There is also needabeta.tumblr.com but I have no personal experience with it.
No.1578
>>1569I haven't used it myself but I browse the r/fanficfion subreddit occasionally and there's a lot of people offering to beta there, and a good portion of them seems open minded in terms of content, maybe you can try that.
No.1579
>>1575What ship is it? Maybe a nonna would be nice enough do something for you
No.1588
>>1579Sorry for the late reply lol
I actually have many rarepairs like that
If any fellow fujo likes fire force, I would appreciate an Obi/Shinra fic :3
No.1592
>>1591zoomers are discovering harry potter i guess
No.1594
>>1593Wow imagine having your own fanfic get a proper wiki page. Good lord!
No.1595
>>1593One fanfic out of the blue just changed the whole course of a fandom, huh? Good for them!
I've read most of AtYD, and it is really, really excellent. The Shoebox Project will always hold a special sentimental place in my heart, but AtYDs is possibly the most well-written and engaging fanfic I have ever read. I didn't realize it was so popular that people were making wikipedia articles about it, but if any fic deserves that honor it would be this one.
I am glad that a new generation gets to know these characters the way I did, before the movies horribly miscast them and ruined their characterizations. Wolfstar was always the superior ship over Drarry, it deserves it's day in the sun.
No.1596
>>1593ngl it's surreal to see a fanfic on wikipedia of all places
No.1597
>>1596>>1594Yeah when I was googling it to double check the name my eyes popped out of their head cartoon style. The TikTok bit I had no idea about and that is very likely what really caused the jump in numbers. I often forget how big fandom TikTok is.
>>1595>One fanfic out of the blue just changed the whole course of a fandom, huh? That appears to be the case. I am both in awe and mildly jealous. I'd love to command this kind of revival for my older ships haha.
For whatever reason I was never into Sirius/Lupin but still felt the sting of Lupin getting a canon love interest (and a cringe-tier manic pixie one at that). Like you KNEW Harry wasn't getting out of the series without getting a girl, but Tonks specifically felt like she was made to curtail Sirius/Lupin shippers. Kind of like the Akito reveal in Fruits Basket.
No.1599
>>1598>I should reread themin English and maybe try to read fics someday.As an adult I think the books themselves are mid, but they provide context for some very good fanfiction.
No.1600
>>1597>Tonks specifically felt like she was made to curtail Sirius/Lupin shippersMaybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight, but I 100% believe that was the case. Tonk's personality did a 180 in the 6th book once she started pining for Remus. The pairing made no sense, seeing as how they were 14 years apart in age, which felt doubly inappropriate given that Lupin was seen as a kind teacher everyone had a crush on. Both of them seemed miserable in the relationship, and the whole thing seemed to serve no narrative purpose other than to slandarize Remus as the kind of guy who walks out on his pregnant wife.
I really think it only existed to sink wolfstar because JKR specifically made a point of announcing that Remus had never been in love with anyone before he met Tonk, just to dash the dreams of any hopium-huffing shippers that though he might have been bisexual and previously in a relationship with Sirius. She wasn't satisfied with just sinking the ship, she also had to shoot the survivors.
AtYD included a dig at the Tonks/Lupin pairing in a scene where a 15 year old
Remus is at the same Christmas party as a 1 year old Tonks, and I really appreciated that.
>>1598A green-eyed Harry? It's a miracle! They should just do an anime. It's not like it would hurt the franchise any more than it has been hurt already.
>I never really even thought about Sirius/Lupin being a thing at all back in the days In the early 2000s they were a really popular ship, even considered canon by a lot of fans. The movies kind of killed it by casting actors 20 years older who were not exactly as aesthetically pleasing as they were described to be in the books. People who became fans of the franchise through the movies never saw the same appeal, and they weren't seeing details like Sirius living at Lupin's house, joint Christmas presents, and all sorts of looks and touches that people latched onto in the books.
No.1601
>>1600>they were 14 years apart in age, which felt doubly inappropriate given that Lupin was seen as a kind teacher everyone had a crush onThese two qualities are like catnip for antis when the ship is m/m lol. I didn't know about that bit about him never being in love before and that makes me think it was DEFINITELY a calculated move. If you needed more proof, Rowling's new book is solid evidence that she writes while seething about stuff online.
No.1603
>>1600> People who became fans of the franchise through the movies I watched the very first movie as a kid in theater but I read the books right after that, I was obsessed kek, so I don't think I was too biased by the movies. I was so mad that the 4th movie wasn't an accurate adaptation of the book back when it was on TV once that I decided to not watch the next movies and to just stick to the books.
> The movies kind of killed it by casting actors 20 years olderLet's be real, it's not nearly as bad as Harry's parents looking like they're in their 50s despite dying in their 20s in photographs and flashbacks. Even back then I found this retarded. Again, I was never too involved with the fandom because it was in the 2000s, there was the language barrier, I didn't think it was a good idea to talk to adults about the books in forums as a middle schooler, etc. I don't know if I missed out on a lot of things or not, now that I think about it. I bet it was super fun at the time but I hate fandoms nowadays.
No.1604
>>1602i dont know who these characters are but that art style is sexy as fuck
No.1605
>>1604IKR! It was actually this art that got me to watch the series
No.1629
>>1626It's fetuses crossposting from Wattpad. Literally, that's just it. Fics are called books on there.
No.1632
>>1629That explains so much. I didn't even see it until I joined a fandom with lots of young fans
No.1634
>>1633This still happens in zine form sometimes, although it plays second banana to the fanart these days. People also bookbind fanfic as a hobby.
I really wish the west had doujin equivalents. Zines really aren't on the same tier. Honestly if my LCS could serve as a fandom gathering point instead of whatever dumb shit dudes like I'd love to put money into it.
No.1635
>>1633it would be interesting but personally I am one cheap bitch so I'm glad fics are free
No.1636
>>1633tbh the thing I love about fanfiction is that it's free and made by pure passion for the characters. Though I wouldn't mind paying for a nice printed copy of my favourite fanfictions. I know that the goal for some doujin mangaka is to break even and not make profit
No.1637
>>1633And ao3 would be clogged up with people posting samples of their next work like Pixiv's fic section? For all the things I don't like about english-speaking fandom, at least we don't have that.
But then again, Pixiv isn't clogged up with people posting 'imagines' or 'ideas' or placeholders for fic that hasn't even been written yet. Ugh.
No.1638
>>1634I used to see free fan comics back on deviantart and sometimes I see them still pop up on tumblr. Though I don't think I ever seen anyone finish those.
I know that Japan's comic market works on a different plan and most mangakas gets their breakthrough with doujinshis but I still find it odd that English-speaking nerd market never got something equivalent to doujinshis. It's not that the American comic market is small either
No.1639
>>1633They do! It depends on the fandom but there are usually a few people selling print fafiction at conventions or "unofficial" novels. As for widespread purchase? I know a few small indie companies used to print shitty fanfic erotic but I have no idea where they are now. I was looking for any and it looks like the only thriving commercial market is Minecraft fanfics.
Weird that this property above anything else has hundreds of print works.
No.1640
>>1639Minecraft fanfics? But I don't remember any storyline or individual characters from the game, who are they writing about? Or is it that whole minecraft youtuber thing?
No.1641
>>1638Part of me wishes that selling your own doujins at cons was a thing in western fandom. Comiket seems like such a cool experience, and I would have loved both to visit one and sell djs at one. It makes me a bit sad to think about it sometimes.
Not as sad as thinking about all the djs lost to time never reposted online of my rare pairings that I'll never get to see, though.
No.1642
>>1640I haven't read them, but judging by the descriptions it looks like mostly OC characters set in the minecraft universe.
No.1644
>>1643they dooo I bought some when I went to comicon
No.1648
>>1644I guess I'm not so out of luck after all :)
BTW what are anime cons like for fujos? Is it possible to meet other fujoshi there? Are there any booths dedicated to ships?
No.1649
I think the closest thing the west has had to a doujinshi culture were the Tijuana bibles.
There have been lawsuits galore over shit like this from the west and companies like Disney and Marvel are extremely protective of their properties. Even just giving your dead kid a Spiderman themed grave will get you a lawsuit. People will fellate these companies too so every now and then you'll get uppity "discourse" over the ethics of selling fanmerch "omg you're stealing moniez from da miltibillion dollar corpz!" when people selling fanmerch barely break even.
No.1652
>>1649oh shit i never considered the copyright angle before
that actually makes a lot of sense now wow
No.1656
>>1648I went to a fujo con in my city in Europe years ago, it was very small and the organizers decided to move to the capital city right after that one. It was fun but only because I went with friends. And even then, one of them isn't a fujo and wouldn't stop saying how she feels out of place it was a bit annoying. The con goers I saw… we didn't talk, I felt like everyone just went there with their friends and the ones who actually talked to strangers were the cosplayers. There was a high concentration of fakebois kek, which made the few actual gay guys there stand out a lot.
No.1657
>>1656What are these cons called exactly? BL cons?
No.1659
>>1657I don't think they have a specific name for that category of cons. I don't even remember the name of the con I went to, now that I think about it, just that hamletmachine was a guest for some reason.
No.1660
>>1643The BL doujin selection at western cons is a little disappointing, even the big ones (AX, Otakon, etc). Also the markup sucks. I was young so I ended up with mild Paris syndrome when I walked out of my first con with two very vanilla Suikoden doujins and $30 poorer ("first con" indeed lmao). This was in 2005 so it's gotten better, but IMO it's better to just shop/buy them online.
No.1670
I was going to say that printing your own doujinshi is perfectly normal and happens all the time, but then I remembered the English speaking artists I follow on Twitter are all Malay/Indo/Singaporean or Chinese diaspora and just expect to put these things together to sell at cons. I've also seen the drama over fic writers getting treated like shit by zine organisers and removed without warning before going to print, and I think fic inclusion must be at its lowest point there. Despite that there's been a huge rise in cook book zines since 2021 which shows people are more than willing to buy printed text. They're always trying to throw in physical items like keyrings and standees though. Japan meanwhile has "print it yourself" codes that has made online events really convenient if you live in reach of a Japanese 7-11, but means the ends of some fics have a time limit to acquire.
Before I ever saw "zines" going around online I was buying Holmes pastiches as small time published books, and there were always small self published magazine booklets in science fiction collector stores. I feel like printing some plain black text on coloured paper was cheaper pre-00s. Now everyone wants glossy full colour shit with illustrations or it "won't sell". Too much of the Western drama over self publication is about popularity and selling stock. The Asian artists put together something nice and it sells out within hours of going on their shop front. There's no big planning committee, they just make something they love and tell everyone there'll be 50 of it.
Never seen actual doujins at an in person convention in my country though. Always bought them from Manda or elsewhere. Closest was original comics/writing in an artist area, so I guess there is a fear of copyright infringement.
No.1673
>>1648I don't go to cons very often these days, but in general I have not found them to be good places to meet people. Most people are already there with friends, and the ones who are not are too awkward to socialize with. In regards to finding fujoshi, my impression has always been that you DO NOT talk about BL at a con. Fujoshi have always been on the bottom rung of the otaku social hierarchy, and that has solidly been the status quo since the yaoi paddle debacle about a decade ago.
If you don't know, a certain large doujin reseller that was huge in the con circuit used to sell these god-forsaken wooden boat oars with the words "yaoi" "uke" or "seme" on them. The most autismal among us would go around using these to physically assault other con-goers, often complete strangers, resulting in more than a few injuries and a complete ban on the items in virtually every con. Even without the paddles, fujoshi became synonymous with a reputation of sexually harassing cosplayers who dressed as characters that they shipped before cringe culture put a damper on such things.
Nowadays it's considered cool and progressive to like BL, but you can't call it BL. It's queer/lgbt+ anime. And if you specifically like m/m romance written by women for women and you are not equally enthusiastic about f/f romance or m/m romance written by men then you are a fetishist and therefore a homophobe. And if you like ships that have toxic elements that fujoshi have historically enjoyed like incest or dubcon then that is the moral equivalent of endorsing real-life abuse and people will think you are a weird creep. So it's best to just keep your mouth shut.
You can find some doujins there, but the selection usually isn't great. You might find some shipping fanart in the artist's alley. That would probably be your best bet for finding like-minded fujos.
No.1676
>>1670I gotta be honest but I find the keyrings and other goodies really off putting in zines. Most of the time they don't look very good(I'm just in general not fond of chibis which keyrings normally are) and I think they only drive the price up for a zine. As for the "glossy"ness of zines…. I kinda do find it off putting too. Not to fall for the soul vs soulless meme but alot of zines just feels like coffe table books rather than passion projects. And I know it's cruel thing to say since they are passion projects whenever I like it or not.
It just feels like zines are needlessly "big". I don't get why they need to have so many artists attached with so much planning that always ends up in some minor drama and there is too much to keep up with both as a buyer and a participant.
I wish smaller zines with a 2-3 artists and writers where more common. I wouldn't even mind if it was printed in black and white since b/w art van look gorgeous if the artist know what they are doing
No.1678
>>1676The last zine I almost bought I ended up not getting because the only keyring I cared for could only be purchased with some standees and shit I didn't like the look of - and those add postage costs and take up room in my house. There was a washitape option that I could have used on mail to friends, but naturally you couldn't get that with the keyring, only another standee I didn't fancy and some thing full of gel that you can just barely shake about plastic pieces inside of (why the fuck do people keep making these? They don't even work?).
>just feels like coffee table books rather than passion projectsI know exactly what you mean. They try to be as professional looking as possible but it ends up feeling very formulaic and filler-y. The books put together by a single artist, usually just slapping all the stuff they made anyway into a print form, feel so much more alive and honest. There's no only-doing-so-much-to-pad-out-a-booklet, just content and ideas.
I've seen discussion from fic writers about trying to revive cheaply printed (1-2 colour) fic focused projects, but they never get anywhere. I think they need to consider print versions of fics people already love and hype, with some bonus like, as you say, b&w illustrations, to add to its value. Would have a classic novel vibe. It's easier to get people on board with experimental projects if it's something they know they like and want to experience more of. Build some trust and awareness before going entirely new works.
Of course, this is just one more discussion that'll go no where. Ha.
No.1679
>>1678>I've seen discussion from fic writers about trying to revive cheaply printed (1-2 colour) fic focused projectsooooh I would love that. Imagine if this actually became a trend… how nice. Too bad that it's not happening and yeah it probably is because of lack of interests…
I have seen some authors print their own fics and also sometimes people print their friend's fics but I don't think I ever have seen people sell their own printed fics in English speaking fan communities. It's weird because artists do sell prints and zines with their fanart but authors never sell their works.
Is it because social media is visually-based, so people just associate fandom with art and therefore push written work to the side? I know fanzines with fics in them where common in the 70-90 so I wonder if it's social media's instant gratification that has made people less appreciate of fanfics. Because people do read them but they don't seem interested in paying for them the same way they pay for fanart. There also is the fact that fanart and fan merch looks better on pictures than written text so it's easier to show off your collection of fanart and fanmerch.
Something something consumerismsorry for going off topic with tinfoil
No.1682
>>1679No it's fine, I think we're reaching a paradigm shift on the value of fanfiction. We went for a good decade shitting on it and using the term as shorthand for bad amateur writing, but more and more I see people turning to fics to get more from media that failed them, and acknowledging their potential. It's easy at a glance to judge visual art, but writing takes time to digest, and you never know if it'll shit the bed before it's done either. People are justified in treating it with some caution, but at the same time, regular fic writers and readers know how forgiving you can be when there's not much out there, or when a story > the language skills telling it. There are a billion unfinished fics that people still love to death because the ride was everything they hoped for from canon. We did get complacent expecting that level of entertainment for free and in rapid succession, which is why I'd suggest any zine organisers highlight the difference the same way pretty art on a computer screen isn't the same as holding it and putting it on your wall.
Personally I always read fics longer than a chapter using an ereader, hit the download button on Ao3 and load shit up for a weekend. I find the analogue style reading experience way easier to concentrate on, and it just feels better than text confined on a phone screen or something. I want to believe if more people saw fics in print or in eink they'd get the same feeling. Nothing beats being able to carry something with you somewhere and read it uninterrupted by notifications and (you)s. Text
does look good on paper, people do love just that feeling of something fitting in their hand that they can open and indulge in. This has reminded me, some Japanese print fics I've seen are more book sized than the standard A4-ish doujins, so that would definitely be something.
I don't think there's much more to say on the subject though. Unless one of you has a whole epic fanfic waiting to print and bind like one of those longer than War and Peace brony fics so we can oogle the process. As you can see I am procrastinating from working on mine.
No.1686
>>1679>Because people do read them but they don't seem interested in paying for them the same way they pay for fanart. For whatever reason it is much more taboo/illegal to make money off of fanfiction than it is fanart. Fanartists can pull living wages off of Patreon, fanfic writers on Patreon would be staring down the long dick of the law before they made $5.
No.1688
>>1686Makes sense, if you decided to write and sell a book with characters you don't own that that haven't entered the public domain yet, prepared to be sued to oblivion because it will be seen as stealing by the original authors, but fanart is often seen as a free way to promote an IP because it's fans who are doing it for free and it doesn't really replace story telling the same way a fanfic does. Now with the internet fanart are promoted way more than original art, and they make people discover new IPs so only Disney will maybe try to start shit with artists who sell prints in anime cons.
No.1692
>>1691Anon you are too cute. Come show us what you got whenever you end up getting it, hope you have a better time than me.
>>1682>No it's fine, I think we're reaching a paradigm shift on the value of fanfiction.I hope so. I'm not shy about defending fanfic when I see it disparaged. I'm sick of fanart getting all the social acceptability. I am the change I want to see, but damn if I wouldn't love to see more of it.
We can see from Ao3 stats (even ignoring the rogue kudos bot) that a SHITLOAD of people currently read fanfiction, so it always leaves me mildly butthurt that you never really experience the feeling of that number once you aren't on Ao3. Tumblr seems to respect the humble fic writer, but now that Twitter is the de facto fandom site writers once again are second banana.
No.1693
>>1692reminds me how there's a thriving fic community on jp twitter. usually they'll take prompts or do polls or some shit then write something on privatter or related place.
No.1694
>>1693It would be nice if English fandoms started promoting fanfics too over social media instead of having ao3 be a "containment" site for fics where people "dump" fics on so they can ignore them for other stuff. But I just hate Twitters layout. It's bad for fics and it's bad for art. I hate privatter too since it's annoying that you are being redirected to another site
not to mention most people who use it wants you to guess some cryptic password and I know it's a good thing that an author/artists gets to control who can and who can't see their work but tbh if you didn't want people to see it why promote it on your public twitter kek. It isn't a big deal I know, but it's just the convenience of staying on the same site whenever you click a link.
I like Ao3s layout and it works great for fics so I would be sad if people stopped using it. But it would be nice to see fics on your social media feed too. I like when people crosspost their fics on social media and on ao3 but I understand why authors would prefer not to do that
No.1695
>>1694Whenever I've seen passwords they've always been straightforward with basic Japanese. I suspect they do that mostly to keep out wandering twitter kids from overseas. Recently saw a JP fanartist I follow get a callout post (with instructions on where to find the oh-so-terrible content of course!) even though they clearly stated what the content was going to be with an 18+ warning and everything. They proceeded to delete a bunch of shit and put a password on everything else. On average Japs are already shy enough as it is, add fujo with social anxiety on top of that and they get really scared about literally everything.
No.1696
>>1695That is understandable. Most artists I follow though are pretty open about that they don't care about callouts and block people who try to start shit with them. Yet they still add hard to guess passwords. But I guess it's only a basic precaution. Ideally a simple "are you over 18 y/n" should be enough cuz then it's people's own responsibility what they see but of course things aren't that simple cuz of dramawhores
>with instructions on where to find the oh-so-terrible content of course!I gotta admit I'm probably more uncomfortable with certain things compared to other fujos on this site but I will never understand this shit. I think I have been exposed to more gross content against my will trough callouts than actually stumbling upon it myself
No.1697
>>1696sorry for samefagging but I wanted to specify that when I said gross content I meant stuff that just went over my personal level of comfort. Not stuff that was actually gross
No.1699
>>1686>>1688It really doesn't help that AO3 has brought the fear of god in everyone by threatening litigation and banning and all these awful things if you claim you wrote a fic for profit or anything like that.
No.1701
>>1692>Anon you are too cutethanks :)
I just got into anime and manga in December 2021 so I'm just new to the scene. I want to explore so much about this medium. Even just buying 10 dollar manga from B&N makes me so excited!!!
No.1702
>>1699I don't blame Ao3 for being vigilant. A lot of people involved with the site are old enough to remember how it was in the 90s/00s. It's why so many fics on ff.net have shit like "I don't own this don't sue" in the header.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Professional_Author_Fanfic_Policies#Authors_Who_Discourage.2Fd_Fanfic_About_Their_WorkA few of the links above will lead to a legal kerfuffle. Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne Rice are the most infamous ones I think.
Ultimately I understand WHY it has to be this way, but I'm just jealous that fanart comms are basically an open-air drug market and fanfic comms are, like, somebody hiking 5 miles into the woods at 3AM to dead drop a sack of cash. I'm glad when writers have some kind of tip jar on their socials so I can slip them some money for writing what I want to read so well.
No.1704
>>1695>Whenever I've seen passwords they've always been straightforward with basic JapaneseI wish this was always the case, my fandom uses shit like "fandom code + date when the episode the characters first met aired" and I don't have the patience for any of that shit.
No.1706
>>1702> "I don't own this don't sue"Apparently this doesn't mean shit legally speaking and you can still be sued, but correct me if I'm wrong.
No.1707
>>1706Oh absolutely, but it didn't stop the disclaimers lol
No.1790
>>1789>is it weird to always choose the same name?absolutely not anon. i'd even say it's a lot less weirder than choosing a different name every time if you can clearly tell it's the same person commenting each time. hell, maybe I'm the autistic one here but I notice this even when going through comments on other people's multichap fics. whenever there's an anon with a very unique typing style and they choose a different name each time it makes me wonder why they're even trying when most people can tell they're the same person.
>I just think I come off as a obsessed weirdo when I use the same name.then what do you say to the registered users who comment under every chapter with the same name? do you think they're weirdos too? I promise no one cares anon. I think most authors would even be flattered if you were 'obsessed' with their work. even if your comments are just generic compliments, fic authors are glad to receive them all anyway so just have fun with it :>
No.1794
>>1789I think it's weird to change your name every time actually. If I realized that there was one reader constantly changing their name to comment on my fics I'd be a little baffled as to why they would do that.
Actually it makes me feel much better to get a comment from a long time reader. I used to post things specifically to see certain people in the comments because it was just a mood booster.
No.1796
>>1790>I promise no one cares anon. I think most authors would even be flattered if you were 'obsessed' with their work. even if your comments are just generic compliments, fic authors are glad to receive them all anyway so just have fun with it :>>>1794>I used to post things specifically to see certain people in the comments because it was just a mood booster.Thank you for your replies! It gave me some perspective so I think I'm just going to go by the same name now when I comment. I normally just assume that people find me annoying even when I praise them but I guess it doesn't really matter since fic authors are happy to recive comments anyway and I comment anonymous so it's not like they can track me down or anything
not that they would if they could of course, I just worry about everything No.1797
>>1795>I really want to start writing myself, but I've absolutely no idea where to startI asked the same in another thread a month
time really flies huh =-= ago at >>248 (apologies if the link doesn't works). An anon suggested that I read On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
I'm kinda tempted to create a thread at /oc/ that helps beginner writers if anyone is interested
No.1798
>>1795Well, have you got a base idea in mind for what you wanna happen specifically? Is your fic going to be just smut? Smut with plot? If it's going to have plot, will it be plot heavy? Muilti-chap? Wanting your dude to get dicked is a noble desire and is perfect for giving you the push to actually put your ideas to paper, or uh, Wordpad ig.
In short, just figure out the absolute baseline of what your fic is going to be about. Ex;
>Char B gets drunk, lets Char A sleep with himIf smut is all you're going for, that right there is good enough. If you're going for a tiny bit of plot, expand from there…
>Char B gets drunk, sleeps with Char A, the next day Char A feels nervous/bad and thinks he took advantage of Char B, Char B says he has liked Char A for a long time and getting drunk let him finally act on those feelingsNow that you've got your absolute basics in order, all that remains is to put it to prose. Just keep it in mind as you write and things will fill out naturally.
>If Char B is drunk and Char A is with him, I guess they could be returning from a bar…>I could have Char A's house be the closest to the bar, so they go there…>Once they arrive Char B can start getting really flirty/handsy, and then…See? Just like that. I hope this helps a little.
>>1797I wouldn't be against it!
No.1802
>>1801As somebody who only knows about MHA through fandom osmosis, this is way closer than I thought it would be. Dying to know what that last big top Bakugou spike is from.
No.1803
What do you guys think about reading old fics that have been jossed by the canon? I was looking through my collection of old saved fanfics and read a few One Piece ones from back when the fandom thought Sanji might have a scar or missing eye due to his hairstyle. Another fandom I read a lot of jossed fanfics from is Harry Potter. Honestly it feels like 90% of fanfics for the series are unintentionally non-compliant just due to where the series ended up going.
Anyway I'm curious what you guy think. Is it distracting, do you just take it as a pseudo AU, or does it not even bother you at all?
>>1802As someone who watched the fist season I'm equally surprised. Also what happened to cause the spike?>>1801
No.1804
>>1803For me it is a big annoyance since I take fanfics seriously, I feel like sometimes canon have ruined the experience that the fanfiction has given me and because of this it led me to not read fanfiction until a series has finished airing or at has some established elements in it that won't bother me.
No.1805
>>1803Actually, I like it. I always keep the publish dates of fics in mind, and I’m very nostalgic for old fandom. Seeing forgotten theories and headcanons that were once widespread across the community being used in fanworks brings a smile to my face. It’s a cozy, fuzzy feeling.
No.1806
>>1803I like to think of it as "untagged canon divergence". I have yet to trip over one that has really bothered me, but I won't rule out the possibility.
No.1807
>>1803It can feel a little bit jarring but then I just look at the date the fic is from and it stops bothering me.
The author just wrote with the information they had at the time so I really don't blame them or hold it against them
No.1808
>>1801>>1803I suspect majority of the bottom katsuki tags are from kiribaku fics rather then dakebaku
No.1809
>>1691Wow, this is such a cute gif. What's it from?
No.1810
>>1809nta but it's Robot Carnival! Very good anthology film that reminds me a lot of Memories and Neo Tokyo.
No.1812
>>1386Hey, I did some searching! Was it Tearing Me Up by
Plonke/BastardoftheEarth? They switched names over the years, and it might be a different ver, but:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161229155734/http://archiveofourown.org:80/works/8826100/chapters/20296243>>1458 kek
No.1813
>>1812That's exactly it! I can't believe it had actually gotten archived! Dude tysm, I figured it was completely lost to the wind!
No.1832
>2AM in the morning
>Sudden Inspiration strikes
>Write 600 word minific of gross niche garbage for a character nobody cares about
>Post an hour later
>Don't use Ao3 for a day because afraid of comments
>Come back and see 2 Kudos
>One is from an author I respect.
Anxiety inducing, but I'm glad there is a audience for literally anything.
No.1833
>>1832What character? I'm curious
No.1834
>>1833Prefer not to say just because I'd be too embarrassed if someone actually found the story. lol
But it's just an older character on a show with a primarily young cast. I always end up liking teachers and parents on the shows I watch and have to create the content I want to see since they aren't as popular.
No.1849
>>1848I like hanahaki when it's altered in some way, like instead of unrequited love causing the victim to cough up flowers, it's the victim who can't admit his own feelings, when the other guy already likes him, and starts coughing up flowers one day. It adds humour to the angst lolol
No.1850
>>1848Aesthetically I find puking up flowers to be extremely cool but most soulmate AU fics are kind of weak to me.
>>1849I also have this preference for dumbass disease.
No.1851
>>1848I'm a huge angst wimp AND lover, so the right interpretations of hanahaki could destroy me. I like it when there's a spin on it like
>>1849 said. I wrote a short hanahaki fic where it was much more normalized and wrote up some notes of how it could work as an actual genetic susceptibility/parasite combo - hanahaki flower spores taking root in one's esophagus and either growing upwards to be our typical hanahaki, or downwards and poisoning its host via digestion as it absorbs nutrients from the intestinal tract. Grounding fantasy element mechanism to be more "realistic" is my super weak point.
No.1852
Is Wattpad ever worth using? I've milked all the ship content for a pair on LiveJournal, Fanfiction.net, and A03.
The layout is throwing me off and I'm not even sure how to properly search Wattpad.
No.1853
>>1852No. The only good fic I ever found on there was an ao3 crosspost. And yes, the search is absolutely awful. The only use it has is cnovel fantranslation posters.
No.1854
>>1852It seems to be used by mostly kids
No.1855
>>1852You are better off trying to find fics on japanese or russian sites and running them through a translator than using wattpad. That's how bad wattpad is.
No.1857
>>1852Wattpad is the only place where I saw ppl comment on how big some of the words are.
Better off following more of ur ship's artists on twitter, writing fics yourself, commissioning someone, or finding a new ship to eat for a while.
No.1864
>>1857>ppl comment on how big some of the words areNot to start some stupid generational warfare, but it really seems like the ipad children are actually illiterate. I've seen teachers' accounts talking about how much worse their students are now than even 5-10 years ago.
I miss the LJ/DW days. Even when they got self-important and pretentious, more fic authors used to legitimately care about the quality of their writing.
No.1866
>>1864I've noticed this over the years and am glad to hear it's actually A Thing instead of just me being snooty. I'm nearly at the point where I don't like being in newer fandoms because of how annoying it is to dig for quality fanfiction.
No.1867
>>1866No it is definitely A Thing. It depends on the fandom and average age of the fic authors, of course, but I see such a high % of fic that doesn't follow any of the MOST BASIC rules of writing fiction because the writers never learned (or were taught) them in the first fucking place.
I think the only reading these kids do is social media posts (and other bad fanfic). It's honestly sad, we need a new Harry Potter-esque phenom to get kids back into reading ACTUAL books. Even ones for children.
No.2033
>>1864>>1867I have seen so many posts on tumblr lately that tells people not to make long paragraphs and always split your text up as frequently as possible. I genuinely thought people were fearmongering when saying that kids don't know how to read but I'm beginning to think they are right
No.2034
>>2033Link some if you don't mind, I'd like to see the reasoning even if I think it's sacrilege. I get why fanfic prose tends toward being light but to actively encourage it seems wrong.
No.2036
>>1867Late, but it's always so frustrating to see a fic with an interesting premise that's 10k+ words but written completely illegibly.
For example being written completely lowercase, no quotation marks, or unusual ways of dictating speech <<like this>>. I can deal with something not being written like a traditional novel, likewise mild grammatical errors don't bug me, but I feel like a lot of these fics have errors that any basic word program would alert you too or fix automatically.
No.2037
>>2036I think quotes like <<this>> is a French thing
No.2038
>>2036It won't stop me from reading a story, but I don't really get why people write in all lowercase. For the ~aesthetic~? IMAGINE IF FICS WERE TYPED IN ALL CAPS INSTEAD. HOW FUCKING FUNNY WOULD THAT BE!!!!
Things that personally tick me off are when people use asterisks to emphasize words instead of just fucking italicizing them… it just looks so *ugly*, doesn't it? And when people type internal dialogue in quotation marks… again, just use italics!
>>2037Yep! They're called guillemets, very French but they're used in a handful of other languages as well. They're pretty unconventional in English, but I don't really mind seeing them. Fic author I like a lot uses them, actually, and people have commented on her works asking what the hell they are lol.
No.2039
>>2036>>2038IIRC it's called "lapselock" and I haaaaate it.
I also run into fics that sound like they're gonna be bretty gud but then are formatted so poorly I gotta close the tab. I just don't get how you can spend that much time in a word doc (enough to have 10k+) and not make sure it looks good when you post it.
No.2041
>>2040I haven't seen (or written lmfao) a songfic with the lyrics in the body in nearly 20 years thankfully. I like it when a lyric is given in the opening notes if it inspired the fic but I can't listen and read at the same time.
I remember it was pretty popular in the 10s on Tumblr to have a playlist for a ship or fic on 8tracks I think it was? I kind of miss that.
No.2042
>>2039Lapslock, yeah! Again, I do find it kind of stupid but it won't make me click off of a story. Just another tumblr aesthetic trend from the early 2010s, I'm honestly surprised people are still using it today.
>fics that sound like they're gonna be bretty gud but then are formatted so poorly I gotta close the tabWorst feeling ever. It's like unintentional clickbait. It's the worst when the story does actually turn out to be written really well, but the formatting is so terrible.
When that's the case, I actually whip Google Docs open and fix the formatting myself, just for my eyes. Please tell me I'm not alone on doing this.
>I just don't get how you can spend that much time in a word doc (enough to have 10k+) and not make sure it looks good when you post it.Lack of experience, I reckon. But who knows? Maybe people who don't use paragraph breaks really do think that a wall of text squeezed together is aesthetically pleasing and not at all agonizing to read.
>>2040>Lyrics in the fic?When they're interposed between paragraphs… see picrel. I just can't, the secondhand embarrassment it gives me is surreal. No disrespect to songfic authors, I personally just find them really corny. I can make exceptions though. For example, they're fine in scenes where a character is listening to music.
>"Soundtrack" playlists for the fanfic/pairing?I fucking love these, actually! When authors include playlists in the notes of their fics I'm always interested, I love music that reminds me of my OTP. I've made a few playlists for my favorite fics and ships actually, it's just fun to do. Like
>>2041 said, I miss the 8tracks era of fandom…
>Single song oneshots?Like, oneshots based around a certain song? I'm not averse to the idea at all, but I'm not too crazy about it.
No.2043
>>2041>I remember it was pretty popular in the 10s on Tumblr to have a playlist for a ship or fic on 8tracks I think it was? I kind of miss that.Yep, I have big nostalgia for listening to 8tracks playlists for pairings while collecting fanart.
I've noticed a return for fanfic playlists using Spotify, sometimes specially for the story, sometimes someone just links a 200 track playlist for their ship.
No.2044
>>2040Tbh I hate almost all in-fic mentions of music because they are super OOC. Like yeah this masculine middle aged guy from Japan is gonna be listening to the same exact 2010's tumblr indie that the author likes. Give me a break. Once in a while they're in character, but even then, spending more time than necessary on lyrics just doesn't add anything. If the guy is listening to 70's rock, I don't need to know the exact AC/DC verse he's singing along to unless there is a good plot reason. Usually there isn't. Hot opinion but I'm also not a fan of people posting music in the a/n either tbh. Music taste just seems like such a subjective and personal thing, there's a small chance it will strike the right chord with the readers. Normally I just cringe a little cause I don't like the music selections. And, to be fair, I expect people wouldn't like my shit either. It puts me off in the same way as people putting too much personal life updates in the a/n. I'm not here for your life or great song choices, I just wanna see men bang! Yes I'm fully aware I sound like a curmudgeonly asshole.
No.2045
>>2044>assholeNah you are valid, especially that bit about projecting tastes on a character or getting too specific about a song. I encounter this rarely but it is like getting slapped, even when it has narrative purpose.
No.2046
>>2044>Like yeah this masculine middle aged guy from Japan is gonna be listening to the same exact 2010's tumblr indie that the author likes. Give me a breakI always find it funny to see how the author justifies the song use. Like having the character be into "foreign music," or mention having a parent visit America and bring back a CD. This is something authors have definitely gotten better about over the years.
I agree it completely takes me out of a story when a man from 1990s Japan is listening to Fallout Boy while pining over his coworker. I think you can do English language songs, but it needs to be something like the Beatles which is actually popular in Japan.
No.2047
>>2046>Like having the character be into "foreign music," or mention having a parent visit America and bring back a CD.As long as it makes sense for the character, I can take it. But I hate how it's usually stuff mostly women like. For a lack of better term, very feminine music. That the author clearly likes. For a decidedly not feminine character.
Forgive the vent: one particularily egregious example I've read was a character fanoned as a tough, rugged, British exmilitary sniper and right-hand to a crime boss, listening to "Birdy - Skinny Love". Here he is, on his way home from another day of murdering people for a living, and he's listening to this dreck. Then, worse still, he calls his boss over to have a listen too. And, what do you know, this evil crime boss loves it as well! I simply dematerialised.
No.2048
>>2039>but then are formatted so poorly I gotta close the tabI've noticed this on AO3, and I keep wondering if it's an issue on my end? Where a bunch of fics have, like, triple spaces between each paragraph.
No.2049
>>2041>I remember it was pretty popular in the 10s on Tumblr to have a playlist for a ship or fic on 8tracks I think it was? I kind of miss that.Me too. 8tracks is such an annoying site though. I can't figure out how to make it give me the full track list instead of just skipping every broken link. I still check 8tracks for any fanmixes if I get a new OTP though haha.
I love making fanmixes. I keep debating where to drop one I made in the thread on here. I can't really think of where to post it. Do people use AO3 for fanmixes?
No.2050
>>2049>I keep debating where to drop one I made in the thread on here. I can't really think of where to post itMusic thread on /ot/ would probably be a good place for it. Off-site? Maybe tumblr?
No.2057
How do you get better at writing fanfic? I thought the answer was by reading but my writing's still ass. I can't carry a plot for the life of me either.
No.2058
>>2057It's the same as getting better at writing in general. Reading fiction alone won't help very much, you have to practice the mechanics of crafting stories intentionally. There are lots of resources if you go looking.
I'm not a great writer or anything myself, but for longer stories I find planning and outlining to be very helpful so I know where the story is going and if it makes sense and gets the characters where I want them to be. Good luck, anon.
No.2064
>>2057The first post of the Beginning Writer thread on /oc/ had a lot of resources that I thought were helpful.
Besides that just keep writing. You never know how much progress you're making until you look back later.
No.2093
>>2058>>2064Thanks nons, I'll take your advice. Didn't think to check /oc/ since I misunderstood its purpose (thought original meant OCs not fanworks). That thread looks promising. I'll be checking out the resources and I hope more get posted! Otherwise I'll search around
No.2101
Praying for a revival of the Soulmate Goose. And for 10k fics to actually mean quality, because holy shit, so many 10k fics suck ass nowadays. Also, has anyone else noticed smut fics being eerily the same nowadays? A lot is pseudo D/s shit, which is fine and maybe it's the fandoms I frequent, but it's always the same dialogue: "I got you, baby," "You take me so well, sweetheart," then random crying during sex, or the character being so out of character it's fucking hilarious.
>>2040 In a weird way, I miss them.
>>2044 NGL, I always click the link and get sorely disappointed. But I like to see it when it ties in with the fic/enhances the reading experience. When music is incorporated in fun ways, it's exciting, but it's rarely the case and often OOC.
No.2102
>>2101I feel the exact same about repetitiveness in smut and I'm probably not even in the same fandoms as you lol. This shit is spreading. To add to the list of phrases
>you're beautiful/perfect like this>cum for meI kinda feel bad for the first person to write these lines tho before they became overused lol. Maybe they were powerful once.
No.2103
>>2102Damn! I didn't think of those. The fics are always saccharine bullshit, too. I find myself reading older fics in old ass fandoms or reading actual books because it's unbearable. What do you think makes a smut fic non-repetitive? Also:
>So good for me>So pretty No.2105
Has anyone else gotten the vibe that newer fic is very influenced by literal porn? A lot of PWP fic now is kind of gross and off-putting to me. I've noticed the things you guys are saying and it seems like the dialogue makes more sense if said by a man to a woman instead of between two men.
This totally sucks because the best thing about fic is that it was written by women designed to appeal to the female id. That's why I read it in the first place.
Are a lot of younger women watching porn for men and being influenced by it? Why? I don't get it.
No.2106
>>2105I don't understand the appeal of pwp in the first place. To me the most interesting aspect of fanfic is exploring characters in a way the OG work never will.
No.2108
>>2106>the most interesting aspect of fanfic is exploring characters in a way the OG work never willYeah, when the characters I already like fuck each other like they never will in canon.
PWP just means that there is no larger plot in the fic itself, since the IP already has a plot to springboard off of. It can still be well written, have good characterization (though, like most fic, often doesn't), and most importantly be HOT. But I suppose I must beg forgiveness on fujochan of all places for enjoying smutty trash.
No.2112
>>2105Could you list some examples, anon? I personally haven't come across any, but that could be due to the fandoms I'm part of.
No.2114
>>2108I'm sorry didn't mean to offend. I more just meant the relationship itself is what's interesting to me not the porn that comes with it. Exploring more mature and serious aspects of a character and their relationship than the main narrative allows.
If a sex scene is included in a larger narrative I don't mind, but complaining about a fic being influenced by literal porn when it's a pwp in the first place is just silly to me.
To each their own, it just isn't what I'm looking for as the main thing in a story. I'd just browse the original category on Ao3 if my main goal was getting off.
No.2116
>>2114No worries, I was just cranky.
In my original post I wrote PWP but I meant to include sex scenes in other fic, not just PWP, because I've noticed this in longer fic as well, that's why I'm worried it might be more of a trend. Personally, I also prefer long fic to PWP but my current fandom is an absolute wasteland of garbage, so I'm reading a lot of whatever right now.
>complaining about a fic being influenced by literal porn when it's a pwp in the first place is just sillyI don't agree at all. I have always drawn a distinction between porn and erotica. Literal porn is disgusting, misogynistic, violent and insane. PWP/sex scenes in fic can be anything, even emotional or touching. I also think I have a broader view of what constitutes PWP than you do. To me, PWP is usually not JUST a sex scene, and I don't read them just to get off.
And like I tried to convey in my post, women writing smutty fic is entirely different than male-made porn. Male and female sexuality are EXTREMELY different, and female gaze-y hot smut is kind of non existent in the mainstream, so I think it's a shame if it's being pornified and removed from what made it appealing to my female id. (Also why make it more scrote-y, men don't fucking read it anyway.)
Even in non-PWP works sex scenes frequently act as an emotional climax in the story, and if it starts to read like gross porn written by a dude, I barely see any point in reading fanfic at all anymore. (In my fandom I'm not coming across a lot of literary masterpieces to enjoy on their own merit, lol) Hopefully I explained it better this time lol
No.2117
>>2112To be honest, it might just be the fandom that I'm in, that's why I thought I'd ask around to see if anyone else has noticed anything similar. I talked about it more in this post
>>2116 but it's kind of hard to describe.
I've noticed in my fandom the sex acts are all extreme, fetishistic, sometimes gross, and sex not intended to be rape written very rape-y between the main couple who are supposed to be very in love… Just in general very skeevy. And it seems like none of the sex scenes seem to convey an emotion at all. Even in non-PWP fic. That's why it reminds me more of porn than fic I've read in years past.
Smutty stories don't have to be extreme gonzo lunacy every single time, is what I'm getting at. And I can see the authors are all influencing each other so my fandom might just be fucking plagued. Serves me right reading in an anime fandom like a moron.
No.2118
>>2117I haven't read smutty fics for some months now, and I agree with some of the things you've said.
>I've noticed in my fandom the sex acts are all extreme, fetishistic, sometimes gross, and sex not intended to be rape written very rape-y between the main couple who are supposed to be very in love… I'm not having this problem with the current fandoms I'm in, but I've noticed this problem in original works. They spend time writing how much the characters love & adore each other, then BAM - the dominant character hurts their partner for no reason or without a clear explanation why (in a sexual or non-sexual context).
There's are very big differences between porn and erotica, but since many people get brainrot from porn they begin to blur the lines.
I hate it when degrading words are used or when the characters are written like animals with no self control.
Erotica is about showing the beauty of sexuality, and is considered by many as a form of art. Erotica is subtle and gentle when it comes to sex, and it's main objective isn't to turn you on, but to show you how you can view sexuality in a way that isn't bound to the flesh.
Porn is simply produced to satisfy your carnal desires the quickest way, without showing emotional connection between the characters.
No.2119
>>2116>I also think I have a broader view of what constitutes PWP than you do. To me, PWP is usually not JUST a sex scene, and I don't read them just to get off.Thanks for clarifying your post. We definitely have different definitions, since to me when I hear PWP I imagine fics racing as fast as possible to make 2 characters fuck without emotional build-up or much else.
I think a sex-scene can be really effective as the climax of a budding relationship or as a way to explore the emotional bond between two characters. A mini-relationship study can occur in a mostly plotless fic in which a sex scene occurs and I would not consider it PWP because other stuff is going on narratively beside just porn.
>like I tried to convey in my post, women writing smutty fic is entirely different than male-made porn. Male and female sexuality are EXTREMELY differentI agree to an extent, but oddly enough I think this might also be a thing unique to fujos. To clarify, I agree male-targeted porn is usually very focused on bodily functions and incredibly detailed in how it displays it's anatomy. I've seen men before describe female-targeted porn as being "too-clean" and too focused on making stuff look nice.
On the other hand on sites like A03 you get hetero porn written by women, for women, that includes grotesque stuff like hyper cocks, zoophilia, cumflation, all sorts of nasty shit. I know a small amount of men use the site too, and I assumed it must be by them, but going to the accounts I can see that the authors are also writing mushy romance that's clearly by a woman.
I think exclusive-fujo authors uniquely seem to care about the emotional components of the characters. Working on making it gratifying both for the characters and the reader. Even in those stereotypical old-school yaoi manga filled with gratuitous rape you'd have the characters react semi-realistically to the situation and not suddenly turn into a cum-brained mind-broke victim.
No.2120
>>2119You've been reading very different BL than I have, anon. All the 'hetero porn' stuff you described exists in BL fic and doujin too. Plenty of OOC all across the board, that's why it's great when I find something that feels believable for the characters.
No.2126
>>2120Well yeah there's ton of OOC, but the stories still try to be pleasant and positive even for the characters. They don't turn into porn stars begging for the seme to "fill them up" or "break them" at least not in the stuff I read. I don't know, as a whole I just find yaoi to be a lot less dehumanizing to the characters.
Also I don't think I've run yaoi with those extreme fetishes. Bara and shota aimed at men, yeah, but not actual yaoi.
No.2128
>>2126>They don't turn into porn stars begging for the seme to "fill them up" or "break them" at least not in the stuff I readAhahahaha no there's tons of that on Ao3. People especially love writing my fave as an OOC slut whenever he's a bottom. You're probably in some decent fandoms.
No.2139
>>2117>Smutty stories don't have to be extreme gonzo lunacy every single time, is what I'm getting at. And I can see the authors are all influencing each other so my fandom might just be fucking plagued.I hate when this happens. I'll admit there's heavy degeneracy that I like but I prefer to have options to get a breather from that. A certain fandom I'm in has this same issue. I don't get why there must be so many choking fics for a pair that had a flawed but overall positive and protective dynamic in canon. This character wouldn't lay his hands on the other like that. And the dialogue, I can't see these specific characters saying these porny things, ever.
The other thing I have to complain about is how that gets taken to the extreme in fics with problematic components. The darker the pairing, the worse it gets. Fic authors will inject all kinds of cringe and gross shit into ships that are bad enough already where you don't need to go that far for the sake of being edgy. Some of them use these made-up porn words that I've heard no one ever say outside of weird fakeboi horny tweets. I'm cringing just thinking about it. I'm aware of how ironic it is for me to complain when I like weird dark pairings, I should expect it as par for the course, but it's jarring when not even their canon interactions are like that. You can distinctly feel the author forcing in her own fetish and making them ooc damaged fakeboi self-inserts, and it ruins immersion to say the least.
No.2140
>>2139>Some of them use these made-up porn words that I've heard no one ever say outside of weird fakeboi horny tweetsDo tell anon! Besides chatfics I haven't seen many cringey words in my fandoms.
No.2141
>>2139> Fic authors will inject all kinds of cringe and gross shit into ships that are bad enough already where you don't need to go that far for the sake of being edgy.> You can distinctly feel the author forcing in her own fetishI do that in my writing, sorry
No.2142
>>2141>I do that in my writing, sorryAyrt, I'm not saying anyone should stop because it's your fic and you make the rules, which is the whole point! Don't apologize or feel ashamed. The fetish I'm talking about is one of the most extreme and I just don't like it, but that's me. Even though I wish the state of things were different, that's only my opinion as one fic reader. I'm starting to write my own since that's the obvious solution instead of complaining.
>>2140Wish I could remember off the top of my head but it's probably better for both of our sanity that I can't. You know how moids invented
boypussy? Shit like that but worse
No.2145
>>2142The fandom I'm in doesn't have a lot of fics with extreme content, which is why I haven't read any with fetishes I didn't like and also why I write my own. I can imagine that it would bother me if I came across one with a fetish I hated or tranny OOC shit. I think complaining is fine, especially since these things are common in your fandom. I replied because I felt called out for a moment lol. I wish you the best with your writing!
No.2146
>>2145Thanks nona, you too. Understood but still I'm sorry my post made you feel that way for a moment. If it helps I also have degen fictional fetishes and it's what I'm writing now. I mainly felt that sometimes it can get ooc in my fandoms and too much for me but hey these characters don't exist, we can do what we want! Proud of you for making the content you want to see and that your fandom is lacking.
No.2150
>>2105I think the ratio of fics like the kind you are describing ("influenced by literal porn") and what
>>2108 describes ("It can still be well written, have good characterization, and most importantly be HOT") has gotten really bad for some fandoms. The kind of PwP where you can Ctrl+H the names and have a brand new fic versus something that has no plot but is still a story about X and Y.
What I hate the most is when they use non-canon nick/petnames. "Baby" is the most porn-brained shit and is often so anachronistic and OOC that it's like the author has reached through my phone and slapped me.
No.2151
Can people stop feeling the need to write my fave with tons of past sexual experience, or even being a mega slut? This man can't even talk to people. He's 100% an awkward virgin who has probably only had experience with his childhood bf before if ever, and I accept no other headcanon, thanks. (Interestingly I think I've only had this problem with fic on Ao3 before, Japanese fandom tends to care more about ship purity and won't usually do the 'this character has fucked randos in the past or still does it on the reg' thing)
No.2157
>>2150In my experience "baby" is the tamest nickname in fics
and sometimes I like it but we've probably experienced different fandoms and shit
No.2158
>>2105I thought I was the only one who thought this lol. I have noticed that the word breeding is used a lot like wtf?? like the seme will say something "like im gonna breed you" even for a hetpairing that sounds gross. And then there is language that sounds like it's taken directly out of hentai, like calling cum for seed and describing how the uke can feel the seeds inside of him "his seeds are so warm i can feel it in my stomach >///<" it just makes my pussy dryer than a dessert. Really degrading dirty talk (you filthy slut, you are only good for sex, etc.) is also more common in fics now but too be fair dirt talk has always been a thing in PWP fics but I felt like people would at least mention when there are BDSM themes in their fics a few years back. I strongly dislike of this sort of dirty talk in general but it's so awkward when a fic makes two 16 year old who having sex for the first time talk like this without any of them getting embarrassed. I have noticed that this porny language is mostly common in anime fandoms and fandoms that overlaps with anime I have never read it other places (that non-anime fics can't be porny but they are more tasteful with it).
No.2160
On a more positive note, what do you guys like best in fic? What tropes?
Personally I love H/C, super long fic, slowburn/pining, going undercover, and when one of the pair gets kidnapped/tortured by the baddies. My tastes are a little bit dated and trashy lol.
No.2161
>>2160Time loops are pretty top-tier, I love it when its one character who hurts another and then they keep re-living the day until they stop fucking up. A tad cliche but I'm always there for it. Once read a Left for Dead fic that used video-game mechanics to have one character remember play throughs in a time loop fashion and that was pretty neat.
Besides that any long-form slow burn fic that slowly has two characters get together is nice, as long as it's canon compliant.
Did pic related a year or so ago, would probably move angst and body swap up, otherwise it's still accurate.
No.2162
>>2161This pic is great, haha. Agreed about mundane AUs, I also don't care for them. The only time-loop fic I read was a SPN one (that predated the SPN episode lol), but it was too morose. I like it when authors really enjoy a trope and just want to play with it. The sense of fun can come through in the writing, if that makes sense.
No.2163
>>1855Oh god I'm so glad I'm not the only one who does this when starved for content. Also. Ficbook has a lot of content but sometimes Google translate removes the line breaks in the stories which makes it a bit painful to use.
Anyone else have any sites they read for non-English fics?
No.2164
>>2163I did Pixiv for Japanese language fics. Also I heard lofter for Chinese language but I haven't tried it so no idea how to navigate the site. If you are brave, give it a try lol.
No.2165
>>2164Lofter's alright but it's like browsing for fics on tumblr. Also sadly, Chinese automatic censors are too strong nowadays. All the fics either cut to black, are posted as images or even mirrored images, or are linked to wland which is even trickier to navigate. I feel so bad for the shit Chinese fujos have to deal with.
No.2166
>>2160Years of being burned by shitty canon ships has made me love 100k+ slowburn fanfic. I always feel so blessed when a ship I like gets a really good one.
It's not exactly a trope but I really like it when a fic sticks with the canon setting. AUs rank kind of low for me in general and right now I'm in a fandom that is just inundated with them to the point where I only check-in for fic every few weeks underneath what feels like 100 filters aaaaaaaand this one turned into a complaint sorry. If I'm into something enough to want to read fanfic about it, it's because I really like the setting too!
No.2168
>>2160I'm a one-shot supremacist, occasionally drifting into a short multi-parter if it's complete. Canon compliant attempts, or at least canon-tone attempts, divergence is fine. PWP, or character studies with porn. I love angst.
I like sex pollen and fuck or die if it's something where those could possibly fit in canon, but when it's in a fandom where it wouldn't at all, I can't read it.
No.2170
It's cheesy, but I like the incredibly specific trope of 2 or more characters getting stranded on a deserted island and bonding via survival a d fear of death.
It's almost always a contrivance to get them there, but once they're stuck I love it.
No.2172
>>2168>I like sex pollen and fuck or die if it's something where those could possibly fit in canon, but when it's in a fandom where it wouldn't at all, I can't read it.What do you think about aphrodisiacs or drugging? As in party A is pining, drugs normally uninterested party B, and that is the catalyst for the relationship.
Too gross or grimey? I like fuck or die style tropes too and have read a lot of stories that use above scenario as a plotpoint if they don't have access to magical sex pollen or a mafia of rapists to coerce the pair.
No.2174
>>2172Not too grimy for me, love some dub/non con. I just don't really consider it a part of sex pollen/fuck or die, which I consider to be 'I/we HAVE to fuck' instead of 'I want to fuck and lost all my inhibitions/I'm going to drug you'. Maybe I'm wrong though haha.
I never like the mafia of rapists thing in fanfic because I can never buy it (except in visuals doujins for some reason. I can suspend my disbelief for doujin a lot more than fanfic).
No.2214
I recently got into a ship that really makes me crave reading canonverse pwp with sweet lovemaking rather than the plain old horny filth with typical porn clichés (im usually more into enemies hatefucking and all that, so that's rare for me).
But it sucks because even though it's a fairly popular ship, finding good-written, introspective and loving smut is really fucking hard apparently, or maybe i have annoyingly high standards i dunno. I wasn't expecting to feel so empty going thru the tags on ao3 and seeing so much horny AU ABO bullshit, even if it's about a ship i really really like. I'm no writer but I'll seriously have to feed me and make my own shit. Just ranting a bit and being a bitch about things not being catered to me specifically.
No.2217
>>2214If you're desperate enough, try searching your ship on Pixiv and google translating Japanese fic. The ao3 side of my fandom is so infested with omegaverse and other shitty AU crap that I usually only read the pixiv fic, which is so much better even if it can have its own cliches.
No.2227
>>2101I thought I was the only one who thought that so many smut fics, regardless of what fandom they're from, reuse the same dialogue. At that point the smut becomes OOC for me because almost every smut writer seems to make the characters say the same thing for their ships. These phrases annoy me every time I see them because they're just so overused:
>You're so good for me>Look at you>Easy>Shh, it's okay>I'm here for you>That's right/just like thatplus the lines that the other nonas already mentioned
I don't even understand what the third one is supposed to mean kek. And there was one fic where the "You're so good for me" was repeated FOUR times. Like smut writers just reuse the same lines because they can't be assed to actually make up dialogue that the characters would say.
>>2103>What do you think makes a smut fic non-repetitive?If the dialogue is unique and actually sounds like the characters could say these lines. It's hard to describe, but for example I have an enemies-to-lovers ship so I love it when the dialogue in smut sounds exactly like the kind of tension they would have if it were an actual fight. You should be able to tell who the characters are and what their dynamic is even if you took out the names. That's why those overused smut lines annoy me so much, because almost everyone seems to write it in their fics regardless of if it actually makes sense for their characters and ship dynamic. Some people try to justify it by saying people act differently during sex compared to how they act in public, so it's not OOC, which just seems like cope to me lol.
>>2105There's PWP that can be emotional and hot and angsty, and then there's PWP where you can tell the author was just plain horny and didn't care about writing the characters OOC because they couldn't get off to it otherwise.
Not really related to what you were trying to say in your later posts, but I agree that it feels like a lot of dialogue in M/M smut makes more sense if it's between a man and a woman. In the non-degen fics, the top usually coddles and pampers the bottom and the bottom cries because the sex is so good and he enjoys being babied. In these types of fics, the author's projection is really clear. Like adult men are woobified and their personality suddenly changes just because they're horny and "need it now" kek.
Sorry for the ramble, I've just been annoyed because nearly every smut fic reads the exact same to me.
No.2231
>>2217What are some pixiv fic cliches?
No.2232
>>2231Omegaverse exists there too, but a bit less of it, and easier to filter out. Cliches are usually more towards the standard seme/uke characterization side, like, autism about who's allowed to touch who in what way (they warn for semes giving a blowjob), who's allowed to moan (the most you'll get from a seme is usually 「っ．．．」or something) and hentai doujin style dialogue with tons of hearts in it is also a tag. If you see that tag, 99% of the time you can guarantee it'll be as far from IC as you can get, and most of the dialogue will be the uke going ひゃあああっああああ～♡ with a bunch of doujin style sex sound effects inbetween, which sometimes also have hearts.
The uke magically attracting mob ojisans or other randos who try to perv on him is also a big thing, the seme is usually magically immune. And good luck if you want to find power bottoming or even just the uke riding the seme, but that's honestly not much more common in western fandom. The uke always spouting 'stop' and the like and not seeming into it is also cliche, where I'd say the trend in western fic is for the bottom to be ultra slutty even if they're very reserved. Characters having past experience/partners is also very common in western fic but almost nonexistent in Japanese fic because there's more autism about it. I think semes being made jealous and possessive and immediately fucking the uke over it is also way more common. Definitely more jerkish characterization even for characters who wouldn't be like that.
Also, no matter how badass an uke is in canon, they can never lose to the mob ojisans. Never.
But overall, I've had much better experience with characterization in Japanese fic. The more Japanese you know, the easier it is to pick out mistakes in google translate, and if you can recognise the characters' names you can type them into the text manually to get better results if they aren't transliterated correctly. DeepL tends to delete paragraphs or spit out junk but the translation quality is usually better otherwise so it's usually best to use both at once.
No.2233
>>2232Oh yeah, another thing I like is that there's less of the 'someone happens to have a convenient bottle of lube/oil because the author didn't want them to fuck dry even if the fic isn't even established relationship and it's completely spontaneous' thing in smutfic. It's one thing that always takes me out of ao3 fic. Lots more characters just fucking.
No.2234
>>2233Ok, something else I forgot to mention and then I'll shut up. You don't get all the transfic, but there is WAY more hetbend of BL pairings, so it's like exchanging one type of shit for another, but at least hetbend is much easier to filter out because it's all under one tag instead of a million variants of 'trans [character name]'.
No.2236
>>2232>And good luck if you want to find power bottoming or even just the uke riding the seme, but that's honestly not much more common in western fandom.This is something i'm always bitter about. Why isn't power bottoming more common with fujos, especially non-western??? come on it's hot as shit!!
>Also, no matter how badass an uke is in canon, they can never lose to the mob ojisans. Never.I suppose you meant they can never win? I lol'd but also hot
No.2237
>>2236>Why isn't power bottoming more common with fujos, especially non-western??? come on it's hot as shit!!I agree with you. I feel like a lot of people think a character can only be dominant if they're the seme. Plus, if you think about it, sticking to the well-established tropes is way easier for writers, since they know what they have to do and how to do it, and there's a wide audience that is used to said tropes.
To me writting a dominant uke gives more experimental freedom for the character's personality, butit's also more uncertain about how things will happen between the seme and uke.
No.2238
>>2236>I suppose you meant they can never win? I lol'd but also hotI mean they can never fight them off, even if they're just regular-ass human ojisans. There'll always be something. The same goes for a badass uke being unable to fight off a seme even if they should be able to (or at least put up a good fight), and they'll usually always cry, too. But yeah, the mob ojisan dick always wins.
>Why isn't power bottoming more common with fujos, especially non-western??? come on it's hot as shit!!Preach it, nonna. I wish it was more common in age gap especially, because in practice, you just get the younger charaacter turned into a typical dominant asshole seme and the older uke acting the usual boilerplate uke mode like if you were reading the reverse fic. Them being more mature is the whole point, damn it! Villains power bottoming is also hot as fuck and very rare.
No.2243
>>1291I know this post is months old but thanks for dropping your fic nona, I love this ship but I haven't lurked their bloodborne tags on ao3 yet so it's nice to have found this spontaneously. Will leave u kudos
No.2245
>>2244>xReader>It wasn't like this years ago and I hate it.Yeah, I've noticed this popping up lately in my tags too. Where the fuck did it come from? Was it sequestered in the back alleys of FF.Net or something and I just never noticed it before? Is it from Wattpad?
Is it just the modern replacement for Mary Sues fics?
No.2246
>>2244I remember that fic. My rp partner sent it to me.
It kinda sucked tbh and I didn't know what made it so popular.
No.2249
>>2245>Is it just the modern replacement for Mary Sues fics?Makes sense to me.
Maybe oc/canon and canon/reader just became interchangeable and are the wokey thing to do now.
No.2250
>>2249>Maybe oc/canon and canon/reader just became interchangeable Oh, they definitely have. A lot of readers, and even some writers, treat the self insert as her own proper character instead of as a blank state.
No.2251
>>2245>Was it sequestered in the back alleys of FF.Net or something and I just never noticed it before?I spent most of the early and mid-2010s lurking FFNet. And yeah, I remember a fair amount of x reader fics on there. They've always existed and have always been popular, but they've definitely been popping up more in recent years. Because the new wave "self-ship" crowd is very fucking loud.
No.2252
>>2244>>2248In my experience there are less people complaining about mary sues and with mediocre reader x character being professionally published it brought more people into this. To the point "Meh" fanfics on AO3 are godlike compared to the shit in irl stores and bookshelves like Colleen Hoover books.
It feels awful to see my younger sister and her friends raving about "After" and other wattpad adaptations of shit but think I'm a weirdo for reading fanfic or fujo stuff. And as a yumejo yeah, those popular xreader fics suck tend to be OOC and the blandest shit, I miss when it wasn't as popular so you couldn't just slap template fanfic + popular character. I worry something similar may happen to fujo fics if shit like heartstopper brings similar people in.
No.2253
I keep entertaining the thought of writing my own things for myself as people always encourage you to, but I finally participated in an exchange that required a full beginning-middle-end plot and it turns out I'm a fucking linguistic mess when trying to write something that isn't spur of the moment drabbles. Even if writing my own specific fetishes in my own time ups the quality I'll be the only person determined to write that shit, and every single time my ideas are the same thing but using different characters. I think I'd piss people off if I actually committed them to words instead of daydreams.
It's all AUshit too, and I get the impression the majority of people hate AUs with a passion. The last time I shared this stuff with someone, and it was the first time I'd really explained in writing the concepts and world of an AU, the person blocked me out of the blue on every platform after several months of conversations. Pretty sure my thoughts are cursed and delusional to the Nth degree. You hate ABO? Well get ready for "it's kind of like ABO but nobody is even fucking and that guy can turn into a mouse now".>>2245I've never used the site but my understanding of wattpad is that the demographic is younger and reads much shorter stories, and are all about "y/n shipping" as they call it. It took me some time to figure out it stood for "your name" and not "yes/no" like some kind of pick your own adventure quest. They ask the reader to literally insert their name into the dialogue wherever it says (your name here) or something.
I used to post fic on FF.net in about 2002-7ish and I remember people wrote self insert fics but the fear of Mary Sues meant they were never explicitly described as such. It was always an average girl next door OC who has one chance encounter, not 2nd person perspective or their name or whatever. I thought it was incredibly embarrassing when my friend wrote one with L from Death Note, which was stupid because I wrote my own in 2002 and was pretty deep into this Beyblade house party and Prince of Tennis dorm room superpowers thing. I think that's also why I think the audience must be younger, because I was 12 when I was into it.
No.2256
>>2252>I miss when it wasn't as popular so you couldn't just slap template fanfic + popular character.wow nona you just put into words perfectly the second reason why I can't digest canon/reader, the first one being the entire self insertion thing which is a massive turn off for me.
No.2257
>>2245>Is it from Wattpad?Naah. Someone being in love with a character (or a public figure) always happened and consequently these self-insert fanfics also did.
What I do believe is that wattpad contributed to this trend. I saw on wikipedia that it launched in 2007, but I think it started gaining popularity in 2010 were girls started writing y/n fanfics of One Direction (among other things).
Wattpad isn't entirely y/n tough, there's regular shipping stories and completely original stuff that has nothing to do with fanfics or romance.
The thing is that your average normie girl feels more attracted to self-insert rather than shipping, so of course this genre is going to pop out more.
Also we need to remember that smartphone/tablets has been more available since time goes on, so a whole new demographic that couldn't post back in the 2000's when you needed a pc, can do it now just by downloading an app.
No.2300
It feels like nowadays every smutty fanfic has to feature generic porn script dialogue.
No.2301
>>2300absolutely. i’m so sick of the “cum for me” spiel that’s invaded every single fic. nothing feels unique to the characters and at that point, why even bother reading fanfic over ordinary erotica?
No.2302
>>2300There was a thread on r*ddit recently (
https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/16cijys/the_impact_of_modern_porn_in_explicit_contents/) that retread the same discussion that was in this thread a little while back.
It's interesting to see non-fujos weigh in because it seems to be worse in m/f land. If I had to guess it's because m/f (and f/f) enjoyers are more likely to watch 3DPD porn and bring it into their writing whereas if you are a fujo you are usually looking at works made by your own community. In my own smut writing I've read about anal sex between men and looked at pictures more than I've studied live action gay porn, so whatever porny one-liners in there for me to pick up are dodged.
No.2303
>>2302Thanks for the link, I was the one who brought up the pornified fanfic stuff upthread so long ago. A lot of the linked thread was frustrating to read though; I think anyone who says that porn has *no* effect or that fanfic hasn't changed much over the past 10-20 years is absolutely deluded.
Gail Dines being mentioned made me fucking laugh out loud.
Though I think this reddit thread and my own observations in past years has made it clear to me that fanfic is just irrevocably headed in a direction that I can't follow. I just can't enjoy the stuff being written now anymore. It feels SO different to me, in a bad way. Old fan yells at cloud, etc.
No.2304
This thread made me check FE Fates fics for the first time in years and I tried to look for Xander/Ryoma fics but there's not that many of them that appeal to me. I guess Leo/Takumi will always be more popular for some reason.
No.2305
>>2303I really think it heavily depends on the fandom. I'm also old enough to remember lemon/lime times and I also feel frustrated with major fandoms for properties I like, but say a live action drama with 140 fics? Probably some good stuff in there. Random 1950s mystery film? 20 fics and one of them is 20k words of great yaoi tension.
Rule of thumb is that the older the target audience is the better the fanfics probably are. Recently been on a The Last Airbender kick, and while there are good fics for the series out of the 1000s that exist its hard to find them since the show is aimmed at children and animated it draws in teenagers who aren't the best authors.
Rambly, but you get the idea. Don't give up on fanfic nonna! Maybe this is the calling card to graduate to writing?
No.2306
>>2303>fanfic is just irrevocably headed in a direction that I can't follow.>>2305>I also feel frustrated with major fandoms for properties I likeBlock/mute on Ao3 has really helped tone down some of my doomer-tier thoughts about the state of fanfic. It takes some front-loaded effort, but revisiting most ship tags now is like tidying up a bonzai instead of wading through the sewer every time. If you've read this and think "just use filters you dumbass"–I do use filters! You can't filter for "I want fic written by fujos born before 1995"! When I block somebody I go to their author page, eyeball their other works/fandoms, and decide if I'm going to miss out on something by them in the future. The answer to that is rarely ever "yes". I wish they'd just let you block on a fic-by-fic basis.
If this seems like too much work a tried and true shortcut is just setting your word filter to over 5000 and then look at the word count/chapter ratio of chaptered stuff. IME E-rated M/M fics that are pornbrained are rarely longer than 3k/chapter.
>>2304>for some reason.For me Xander and Ryoma's hairstyles were just too fuckin ugly to get me serious about shipping them. Extremely rare Yusuke Kozaki L, as the kids would say.
No.2307
>>2306You know I've been wishing for a tag blacklist feature since there are kinks and tags I'll never want to see, but this seems like a good solution might do this for a few fandoms.
Thank for the suggestion.
No.2308
>>2307Well there is the exclusion filter but if you are asking for something you don't have to apply every time you open a new tab there is site skin for that!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/41214669/chapters/103324848 No.2309
>>2308Yeah, I usually spend 5 minutes just excluding tags for a search. This looks promising! Thanks for the link I'll see if I can get this set up after work.
No.2310
>>2306I don't have an issue with their haircuts. Ryoma without his "helmet" looks way more normal in official artworks, especially when he wears a ponytail. Xander's hair looks ok to me but it looks too outdated for modern AUs so I can't take those seriously. The only character whose hair pisses me off is Siegbert. Xander is supposed to be a loving father but no parents in their right mind would let their kids go outside like this. Now that I think about it Leo and Takumi are the younger brothers and cute bishonen instead of handsome grown men in their late 20s like Xander and Ryoma, I'm starting to wonder if the fujoshi who got into FE Fates when it was released were just teenagers back then and related more to the little brothers by default.
No.2311
>>2310>Xander is supposed to be a loving father but no parents in their right mind would let their kids go outside like this.lmao
>I'm starting to wonder if the fujoshi who got into FE Fates when it was released were just teenagers back then and related more to the little brothers by default.FWIW I was late 20s when it came out globally and was simply filtered by the older bro hair (I was a Shurafag and married him every playthrough except the token Niles/M!Corrin run). If I had to guess it's because Takumi's [mind break] [corruption] BAD END is fujo catnip whereas Waits-25-Turns and Oops Killed Elise are wet farts in an already septic narrative. Despite being so mean to Fates I think I'm gonna revisit the tag too. It's crazy to think that the third path is just inaccessible forever unless you have a physical copy or emulate.
No.2312
>>2308Is this the skin that only blocks a specific tag and not the child tags? I mean it's cool that it exists, but I really don't wanna go through every trans character tag considering the amount.
>>2310I was 12 when Fates came out and I was more into Ryoma and Xander than Leo and Takumi. I'm pretty sure it was entirely due to me marrying Ryoma first. Also I eventually developed a liking to Forrest/M!Corrin from their supports and that definitely didn't help my preferences. Although I did read Leo/Takumi fics because that was more popular.
No.2313
>>2311You're right about Takumi, but I think him being possessed by an evil creature and turning into some sort of zombie was never exploited enough by fans. As for Shura, I forgot he was also available in Birthright. I don't know why. Xander is a pretty good character but the localization fucked him up so bad that even when people have played the game and post something about him they still sometimes get it wrong. And there's so much of his backstory you can easily miss in the supports because you can't grind for his supports in Conquest. To me he'll always be that one handsome guy who seems perfect until you find out he has hardcore daddy issues, and hates his shitty life. I'm getting even more curious, I should check fics about Ryoma. If he's not portrayed as a little bit of a yandere then he's not Ryoma.
No.2314
>>2307There's the Ao3 savior script but I think that's only for desktop, it's much more convenient though. Lets you filter out wildcards so you can e.g catch all tags with trans in them
No.2315
>>2311>revisit the tag>guy posting all of his commissioned porn of M!Corrin and the maids, some good some nightmarish>Ryoma/Leo (?????????????????) fic that is 1.8 million words, live your truth girl>everything I remember reading is either remains incomplete or has been deleted>that one Shiro Paralogue bandits gangbang fic is gone (╥﹏╥)>surprisingly few modern AUs compared to 3HI've got some tabs that show promise open. Even just browsing made me kinda nostalgic for Fates. I wonder what it's like in the timeline where they didn't take a shotgun to the original idea from the GetBackers guy and then bungle the localization on top of that, like
>>2313 says.
>>2314You can put Tampermonkey on Firefox mobile and it works just fine. IDK about IOS solutions though.
No.2316
>>2315iirc the original writer for FE Fates did have his ideas completely used in the final product but there was a misunderstanding because of one of his tweet. He said most of the work was done by the writers at IS and they're the one who should be thanked by the fans but he said that because he was asked to come up with a summary or a short story as a basis for the story, told his daughter he never played Fire Emblem, she sperged hard and made him play Awakening, he liked it a lot and was inspired enough to write several hundreds of pages of story and lore. But writing ideas or a novel isn't the same as writing for a video game at all so the writers at IS still had to do a lot of work to adapt some parts in the visuals (all the references to Buddhism and the Spider's String), some in cutscenes, some in gameplay (like Xander having way higher stats in the opera in Birthright than in the chapter where he dies because he's committing suicide by cop or Garon having insane stats in general until you reach chapters where you can actually beat him to justify why everyone is scared of even thinking of assassinating him) and some in supports.
>>surprisingly few modern AUs compared to 3HDo you think it might be because of how many younger fans 3H brought? I remember giving up on fanfics in general because of 3H. Too many coffee shop AUs and trans!Felix fanfics for me. I've played Dimitri's and Edelgard's routes before getting sick of the game but if I ever get back into it and do Claude's route maybe I should check the more recent fics.
No.2317
>>2301It's gotten to the point where I'm straight up avoiding certain fandoms that write nothing but "do you like that, baby?" dialogue. Honestly, it's like the authors all watched the same porno and decided that that's what they're gonna base their sex scenes on.
>>2302It's interesting reading all the "why are you critizing kinky fics?" replies. As an /ex/fag, even I can tell that recent smut fanfics suffer from pornified dirty talk.
No.2318
>>2316>so the writers at IS still had to do a lot of workOh okay. The connective tissue between the interesting bits is still a mess though. They should have cut the child units and worked harder on the main story. I know I'm crying over spilt milk but aaaaaaa! So many cute dudes trapped forever in a goofy game.
>I remember giving up on fanfics in general because of 3H. Too many coffee shop AUs and trans!Felix fanfics for me.Extremely relatable. Watching the 3H fandom snowball into *that* was shocking to me because it was my first time really into something that was current+VERY popular in a long, long time. I'm back in the saddle now but I go insane with filters before browsing new fandoms. Kind of miss the library browsing feel to fanfic, but that's where we are now.
>might be because of how many younger fans 3H brought?Weeb/Nintendo fandoms tend to skew younger so I don't think it can be entirely blamed on age–Awakening had tons of teen fans new to the series and a glance at that tag shows similar spread of AUs to Fates (eyeball math: 6% Awakening/7% Fates/11% of 3H fanfic tagged "AU - Modern Setting"). My guess is that Modern AUs and everything under that umbrella (coffee shops, school) are easy engagement fics and the newer gen of fan might crave these metrics more. I also remember somebody around here (either in another thread or a soyjak'd comment here) said that she noticed that people don't even personally play/read/watch the source material anymore, so these days it's more likely a fanfic could just be regurgitated fanon and tropes they like rather than anything remotely considering canon.
No.2319
>>2318>The connective tissue between the interesting bits is still a mess thoughTrue, but I don't mind it. I found the story better than 3H because 3H just has a lot of cutscenes where nothing happens and characters just stand there and talk, and the routes are way too similar to be fun to play one after the other. But that's subjective.
>They should have cut the child units and worked harder on the main story.I don't disagree but that feature was so popular in Awakening that they just did the same thing again. I like some of the kids a lot so I don't mind it, I treat it as a bonus but they should have been more like Mozume or whatever the village girl is called, where you unlock her without her being related to specific characters.
>I also remember somebody around here (either in another thread or a soyjak'd comment here) said that she noticed that people don't even personally play/read/watch the source material anymore, so these days it's more likely a fanfic could just be regurgitated fanon and tropes they like rather than anything remotely considering canon.You're right, I always forget that. My guess is that it's because of streamers just playing games online their own way, missing a ton of side quests, cutscenes, etc. and these kids don't watch the whole let's play series so they basically don't know wtf they're talking about. That reminds me of a tweet I saw months ago, about how zoomer fanfic writers would post their fics on AO3 at specific times for engagement and when they saw that their fics were rightfully ignored they would delete them and repost them again because they thought the fics were ignored because of some sort of algorithm hiding them or something like that. I wish I took a screenshot, even if I can't post pics I would have been able to find the original tweet and link it because it was part of a whole thread about AO3 in general.
No.2320
>>2319I remember that exact tweet, it was floating around on tumblr too. That's also where I learned people would "update" their fic to bump it. Wild stuff. So glad we have the ability to simply block authors like that now.
My only complaint in that regard is that you can't block orphaned works so they are just shitting up the tag forever. Like girl I'm glad you realized that highschool chatfic was cringe but why didn't you just delete it reeeee
No.2321
>>2320I never made a AO3 account because I just read and don't write anything (and I'm ESL so I wouldn't write anything in English anyway). Can you block these people with an account or can you do it with an addon on your web browser?
No.2323
>>2321Both, though I'd still recommend an account for reading if you like darker fics since authors can hide works to member-level only and sometimes do it for more fucked up works.
No.2324
>>2323I see, maybe I'll make an account after all. I doubt I'll use it often because I'm picky and the series and games I like aren't always very popular but who knows.
No.2330
>>2323>>2321It's also worth noting that some AI models scrape Ao3 so some authors elect to archive lock everything.
https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/25888Having an account has helpful features like mark for later, bookmarking, pinning up to 20 tags to the front page, and browsing history (you can disable it too, lol).
No.2331
>>2330browsing history is unironically one of my fave things about having an ao3 account. it saves me the time of trying to find ‘that one fic’ i stumbled upon at 3:00 AM and forgot to otherwise bookmark (which happens to me a lot, kek).
the ai thing is also why a lot of fics now only allow registered comments as well, iirc. which is yet another point towards signing up.
No.2339
>>2331I initially turned off the history because it felt kind of shameful but then I wasted a lot of time trying to dig up something I read months ago so I switched it back on afterwards. The only thing people are gonna learn about me if they see my Ao3 history is that I have great taste, I have evolved beyond shame.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ao3-primary-ship-search/This is an addon for people who are into rarepairs or cursed with a "popular" ship always just being a secondary tag. Would have killed for something like this back in 2014 with Attack on Titan.
Also here are the 2023 top 100 ship stats. I lean much more weeb than western, so this is my once-a-year glance at what's going on with western fandoms. I'm continually surprised at the numbers Minecraft RPF pulls off. Also really surprised that Draco/Harry dropped a whopping 27 (twenty-seven!) places, as well as Regulus/James becoming A Thing.
No.2340
>>2339Woah Sandman live action show is inspiring Dream x Hob!? Need to check that out, they were my comic rarepair years ago.
No.2341
>>2339I can't believe how popular Kinneporsche PetexVegas is. I watched kinneporsche and I loved it, but I never would have imagined that it would ever hit the top 100 like this. I also think it's kind of funny how many minecraft ships are. Especially the technoblade one, you know, considering how he passed away. Then again, maybe him passing away increases shipping. Who knows.
No.2342
>>2341Never heard of this until today and
>Kinn, the second son of a Mafia boss, is being hunted by enemies when he's rescued by Porsche, a student working part-time at a pub. Kinn offers Porsche a job as his personal bodyguard, leading to a dangerous love.This sounds like a mafia AU fic already, so I am not surprised it did so well. Congats on all your new reading material.
I like how the east seems to understand and deliver BL while the west continues to either fujobait or make m/m pairings not the one people actually want. I remember being mildly jealous of She-Ra fans just because they got the childhood-friends-to-rivals/enemies-to-lovers ending that every protag/rival has deserved since time immemorial.
No.2359
Relieved to finally have this done, so I'll post it here for anyone who's into/okay with cape stuff;
https://archiveofourown.org/works/49917934Non-con/heavy dub-con Ultraman/Superman (evil/good) selfcest.
No.2361
how do people go about finding “hidden gems” on ao3, so to speak? by which i mean good fics with bad stats, sparse tagging, etc. i’ve heard that a lot of people go through their fav author’s bookmarks and see what they read, but that’s always hit-or-miss for me. and in a bigger fandom, i just don’t have the time to go through every fic trying to weed out the terrible works from the amazing works.
No.2362
>>2361There's rec posts floating around Tumblr/Twitter/TV Tropes but like bookmark browsing YMMV. When I'm cracking open a new fandom and want to filter for "quality" I browse by complete works and set the word min to 5k. Doing this has potential to take out pretty good WIPs and oneshots, but it also serves as a guillotine to 99% of the low effort randomness/chatfic that plagues a lot of modern fandoms.
This tip only applies to some stuff: if there is an anime or live action/movie adaptation that flooded FOTMs into the fandom, set your dates to before that time. Manga/bookreaders are more likely to consider quality over clout.
You could also drop the fandom here and see what the community coughs up. Despite our common fujoness I feel like our tastes are all over the place, so I think it would be a funny wildcard option.
No.2363
>>2361Adding to what
>>2362 said, I would lower the wordcount minimum to maybe 1k so that not!fic like 'request boxes' and shit get filtered but shorter oneshots don't. For the adaptation divide thing, I found that going through the tag oldest-first usually helps with that. The best and least OOC stuff tends to be the first stuff. Then, filter out AU, which should catch most mundane shit. After that exclude omegaverse and any other specific tropes and ships/characters you hate. If you only want fic centered on one ship, you can use otp:true to filter for fics tagged only with that ship, which also usually overlaps with minimally-tagged fics. (It will filter everything tagged with & ships too, though, so keep that in mind)
Also, filtering by bookmarks is the best way to find quality stuff over filtering by kudos, though it wouldn't help with more overlooked fic. I recommend using Ao3 saviour because you can save your excluded tags and it'll just cut the shit out of every page for you.
No.2365
>>2362>>2363thanks for all the advice, nonnas! you’re both saints. i am more of a oneshot person, so i sort with 1k minimum by default. but i hadn’t even thought about sorting by oldest, which makes total sense and would definitely solve a lot of my issues. and i forgot about the otp:true trick too, which i assume would also help to weed out those kinktober collections that plague every single search query.
tumblr reclists have been a no-go, though; the fics are either very puritan or pornbrained self-inserts fuckfests, with litte in-between. i’ve also yet to check tvtropes since that site is very male and i don’t expect to find much m/m there.
and as for the fandom… it’s
star wars. i’ve been rewatching for the first time since childhood and it’s been fun, but the fic scene is a nightmare (esp after the sequels) and i’m not used to dealing with /wes/ fandoms anyways.
No.2366
>>2365>i’ve also yet to check tvtropes since that site is very male and i don’t expect to find much m/m thereWhile this is true, the demographic that bothers to read/write fanfiction is overwhelmingly female and therefore the recs pages aren't as male heavy as you'd initially assume. I like that fic recs there usually come with a pitch from the person who recommended them. I think above all it's best for gen fics.
>Star WarsOh man that fandom has been eternally hamstrung between dudebros and self-inserts since as long as I can remember. There used to be a bit of Han/Luke on tumblr but when the sequel trilogy started that's ALL that ever got traction. For stuff that old you might have some luck tombraiding livejournal for prequel and original trilogy recs, as well as trying to dig through fanfiction.net.
No.2367
>>2361Every fic I've ever read that I thought was really good I found via another fan's rec or a rec list from off-site. Even if a great fic is hosted on AO3 I've never found a true 'hidden gem' by looking on AO3 itself. (At best I found decent stuff.)
I also protect my own time and sanity by NEVER clicking on WIPS/unfinished fics. Ever.
I sometimes wish that AO3 would bust up into smaller media/franchise-specific websites that was only of interest to ultra fans and not the existing garbage dump we have now. (I feel like there was way less ATG back when that was the case, though I might be wrong.)
No.2368
Do you guys save fics you like as a backup to them going down? Alternatively do you put them up on archive.org and save the link as a bookmark? And if yes to either, what are your criteria for saving? I read a lot of fics but I've had a good enough memory so far to get by without bookmarking (and I don' re-read very often), I'm just wondering if it's worth it to be doubly prepared. But if I save every fic that I liked, it's mostly gonna be a looot of good-but-not-great shorts, and idk if that's worth it. Like junk food, I can consume it but it doesn't have a longterm impact. Worth the storage space and organization? Idk. Nonas who back shit up, talk to me.
No.2369
>>2368I have a folder with 596 fanfics currently, not all are probably of equal quality and I'm sure some will make me cringe now but I find it worth to save all the ones I like since I do go back to read them and occasionally find them missing.
In my experience fics hardly take up space anyway. The folder is only 85 megabytes at the moment, hardly taking up space.
No.2370
>>2365It's a bit annoying that the 'single chapter' tickbox isn't in the filters sidebar, but that should be another thing that helps with such a gigantic fandom like that. I'm not sure if there's a way to do otp:true and single chapter at the same time, though, so you might have to do an upper limit of maybe 20k words.
No.2371
>>2368I put novel-length stuff on my kindle so I incidentally have a bunch saved until I decide to clear out the library. I've read about people doing the archive + bookmark link but if that happened to any of my fics I would be skeeved out. To me it oversteps an invisible line in a way that downloading for personal archival doesn't. I think fic authors (and everybody really) should have the right to go completely scorched earth with their online presence, so stuff like data hoarders scraping for a publicly accessible archival bothers me a lot.
I daydream about downloading/proofreading/formatting all my favorites but I have yet to pull the trigger. I think it's important to keep a catalog of fanworks you enjoy around like you would regular books. Makes me want to get into bookbinding but I just don't have the room.
>>2367>I also protect my own time and sanity by NEVER clicking on WIPS/unfinished fics. Ever.I wish I had your willpower.
No.2380
>>2371>I wish I had your willpower.I got burned too many times by fics being abandoned/authors disappearing so I just stopped reading unfinished stories. I always filter for complete stories only on AO3, which makes it easier.
I also don't like the way people farm fic engagement by deliberately posting a hundred small chapters over time (as opposed to posting when a fic is finished) to stay on the top of the list, so I don't participate in that. It's not like fics that do that shit are ever any good.
No.2381
>Tfw you only wrote the only english fic for a certain subject on AO3
It does feel weird. Millions of people on this earth and no one else felt like writing fics for x subject?
No.2382
>>2381Honestly whenever I see a really cool concept that has like, 1 or 2 fics only, I always wonder to myself how many fics in Chinese or Russian exist for it, especially in Chinese as they just seem to have so much more content for every fandom (I dont speak it though(
No.2383
>>2381There's a fandom I used to be pretty heavily into when its show was airing, bought the creators' doujinshi, the OST CDs, some models. Ought to get the DVD sets some day for the bonus comics no one scanned. I followed JP artists for some of its ships for years after. Still adore those ships and the absolute heaps of art they got.
Not a single fic on AO3. Not even one. I tried nominating it for Yuletide, but there was no one who could offer to write it. I'd need to rewatch the show to write my own and I'm not good at writing so I really don't want to make the one and only fic for it in a forced manner. It's a wild situation to be in.
>>2382Supposedly JP fic authors all post on pixiv so you don't see them on AO3. I see some come up on 18+ category, but I haven't attempted MTLing any yet.
No.2385
>Balls slapping against ass
Does anyone love this line?
No.2386
>>2366>>2367>>2370belated thanks for even more advice, nonnas. i’ve been messing around with filters and sorting by oldest, and it’s lead to much better results. ruling out everything after 2015 alone
(when the sequels began) gets rid of so much nonsense, and going back even further takes out roughly 99% of the tropes i hate seeing today. it’s a life-saver, and i can’t believe i didn’t think of sorting that way before. checking tvtropes will be next, and i already have experience with sorting through through livejournal (but not for sw).
and you’re so right on the dudebro/self-insert split. and even ordinary m/m stuff has such a porny, yumejo-esque tilt that i can’t stand it. so much ooc, bad writing that’s clearly projecting on one half of the pair, etc. it almost makes me wish the fandom was more dudebro than it already is, just to ward off some of the yumes.
No.2419
>>2417Yeah I felt the same way but Tumblr being the highest is a pleasant surprise.
Wonder what people consider Fandom activities on YouTube, I feel the AMV and Edit community is too small to be the full representation here.
No.2420
>>2419Personally, I was surprised more than 1% still use Facebook. Like, is that site even still up?? Lol.
No.2421
>>2420A lot of those fans are probably part of CN fandoms. I should know. I had to make a facebook account to interact with 食物语 fans back in the day. I reckon even more than 1% use it if you include people who don't speak any english.
No.2422
>>2420I know a guy who gets all his shounen discussion from facebook groups. I think certain regions of the world are used to using it for just anything even if it's cringeworthy.
No.2423
>>2419There's fanfics on youtube.
No.2432
Has anyone else noticed the general decrease in fic quality over the years or is it just me? I know shitty fanfiction has always existed but the ratio of good to bad fic has never felt this extreme. My personal theory is that fic writers now aren't reading actual books anymore. The only literature they consume is other fanfiction. So they keep reusing the same sentences and expressions they've read over and over again and then someone else comes along and copies that fic until you end up with the fic equivalent of the habsburg jaw. The amount of times I've clicked out of a fic I was reading because it felt like I'd already read the exact same fic before is ridiculous…
No.2434
>>2432Besides people not reading actual books, I think the mass migration from Tumblr to Twitter and ABO egged this on. You rarely see people write lengthy character analysis anymore and the word limit doesn't encourage people to do so, all people do is coomerpost these days. This is just my opinion but the popularization of ABO has also stilted creativity. Of course OOC has always existed but every ABO fic is written the same way with the same dialogue, I doubt 99% of the people that write it actually care about the characters when they're just trying to shoehorn their OTP into the dom alpha and sub omega dynamic. Even at the height of seme/uke autism the ratio of good fics to bad fics wasn't as bad as it now, but maybe I have nostalgia glasses on. It's basically s/u reinvented with heats and knotting but every 1 in 3 fics is ABO garbage and inescapable. It's not only fic that's like this but literature seems to be going in a downward spiral with how YA authors promote their books with fanfic tropes.
No.2435
>>2432To be fair, I'm definitely noticing a quality drop with actual published books too (not even specific to M/M). It's not just that people don't read, it's also the quality of what they're reading. What might have passed for middling Y/A in the past is now treated like serious reading. So unless fic authors make an active effort try serious books, it's gonna show in the quality of their fics.
No.2436
>>2432This has been discussed in this thread before (a few times) but it might've been some of the stuff that got lost when the site was being worked on. It's definitely not just you noticing this.
>>2435IQ is literally dropping amongst the general population compared to previous generations where it kept rising; there is info about it if you search. There are a bunch of teachers speaking out on social media about how their students straight up can't read, or are at least several grades behind in reading level. Fanfic is worse than it used to be. Books are worse. Movies and TV are worse. People are worse. Social media and a general race to the bottom has been extremely bad for the whole human race. The plot of the film Idiocracy is now going to play out.
>>2434I don't agree that the tropes really matter that much; ATG was always kind of a thing and trashy tropes too. It's the decline of reading/writing ability in the entire population. And AO3 like all other SM sites have no quality control. You can't get instant gratification from spending time and brain power actually trying to write something good. Just reuse the same low-grade low-effort shit and post it as fast as possible for a hit of dopamine/attention.
I've also noticed that stories that are written well are often must less popular that shit that is full trash but more predictable, safe, and easily digestible. It's not worth writing anything interesting while garbage gets more kudos, comments, and praise.
There are a lot of factors contributing to the decline of fic quality, and basically no good news. The situation is unlikely to improve, and instead will get steadily worse as literacy keeps dropping and SM consumption keeps rising.
Anyway, that's all doomer depressing and lame. Is anyone reading in a fandom they're actually enjoying? Which one(s)?
No.2437
>>2432There's a bit of talk about this up the thread starting here
>>1474 if you wanna compare notes with past anons. If I had to guess why it seems like a lot of writers don't even TRY I'd say it's because tropey fics get way easier engagement. IME sorting by kudos in a big fandom will almost always give you a few pages of tropey pablum before you hit a fic that is objectively solid.
>>2436>Is anyone reading in a fandom they're actually enjoying? Which one(s)?I've been bookmark surfing MHA for the last few months and it's been fun despite the dumpster fire all shonen fandoms are. It has more born-before-'95 writers floating around than I expected which is honestly my #1 fandom metric. Would kill for a way to filter by author age.
A bunch of my holds on Libby hit me all at once so I'm actually about to take a fanfic break. If you are tired of fanfic sucking shit go pick up a library card, it helps!
No.2438
>>2437ntayrt but wrt to kudos, i think people treating ao3 like social media is absolutely one of the strongest contributing factors. kids think ao3 has “an algorithm.” i’ve seen people tag ships and tropes that don’t even happen in the fic for attention. nearly every other thread on r/fanfiction (which is only slightly, slightly more tolerable than the writing side of twitter or tumblr) is someone asking what to write in order to get more popular. their brains are so socmed poisoned that making the numbers go up is all they even care about. another factor is, imo, the fact that fic authors don’t even really read anymore, but
>>2435 already mentioned it.
and as for avoiding the pitfalls of skimming through the most-kudos’d fics, i like to use the work search to actually cap kudos at 1000 (but that’s for my very large fandom, so ymmv and remember to adjust for fandom size). once i apply my other usual search criteria, and occasionally sort by oldest, i start finding genuinely unique fics.
No.2439
>>2434>This is just my opinion but the popularization of ABO has also stilted creativity. I disagree with this. Omegaverse is currently the most popular AU which means it'll obviously attract a lot of authors, with the majority of them ranging from bad to average. The problem lies on the authors and not whatever AU is the current hottest thing.
No.2440
>>2436The cure for doomerism is to be the change we want to see. So, thanks to social media & smartphones, literacy is on the decline, today's authors don't respect the craft, and it's getting harder to find enjoyable reading material…. On a societal scale, there's nothing we can do about that! But at least we can dedicate ourselves to improving our own writing, endorsing well-crafted works, and encouraging others to do the same, right?
For me, life is all about shifting perspectives to things that are (A) more enjoyable, and (B) within my control. Obviously I'm not trying to shut down any complaining or venting, not when this discussion has taught me things I otherwise would never have known. Like I never imagined kids thought Ao3 had an algorithm, that's just insane lol. Do they really not realise that the sorting and filtration options are 100% within the user's control? Thank you
>>2438 for sharing.
Anyways, I just want to inject a little hope into the thread. I'd be sad if those of us who care about high-quality work gave up on fanfiction. Yeah, a lot of it is bad and I doubt it will get any better any time soon, but I'll feel happier just knowing I did my personal best.
No.2441
>>2440>be the change we want to seeI think the only thing that will really do anything is to recreate fandom on a small scale outside the current social media sites (which are all horrible for fandom and have basically destroyed it). And return to things like curated fic archive sites, rec lists, and being openly picky about the writing quality of fic so these fic authors are ejected from the hugbox. I can't remember the last time I saw someone even mentioned having a beta-reader for their fic.
I don't think it's possible to change anything on the sites that allow a race to lowest effort possible for the highest amount of engagement. It stands to reason if the fic writers aren't reading actual books anymore the readers probably aren't either. That's why I think sites outside of AO3/twitter/etc are necessary. This site could be a start, we could begin discussing what makes for good/bad fic and writing and how to improve in this thread. A more positive approach to the problem.
No.2442
>>2440>i never imagined kids thought ao3 had an algorithm, that's just insane lol. do they really not realise that the sorting and filtration options are 100% within the user's control?i didn’t take screencaps, but i’ve seen multiple tiktoks referencing ao3’s nonexistent algorithm, and there was a tumblr post going around a while back where some author was complaining that they wrote 70k words and only got a thousand hits, saying the algorithm must “hate them.” there have been issues with people deleting and reposting fics several times in hopes that it will “boost them” in the algorithm as well. and those are just the specific examples i recall. it’s legitimately baffling. maybe they’re reading mainly through recs and links from other sites? that’s the only way i can figure they think an ao3 algorithm exists.
i really agree with your anti-doomerism sentiment, though. seeing the sorry state of fic nowadays actually motivates me to write even more. it’s kinda like the writing equivalent of wanting to deep clean your house after watching an episode of hoarders, y’know?
No.2443
>having a beta-reader for their fic
Too much ABO must have fried my brain. My first thought reading that sentence was "What different does having a Beta read your fic make?", then I remembered what beta-reading is lmao.
I suppose I'm part of the problem.
No.2448
>>2441Yeah, this thread is as good a place as any to start! Maybe we can pretend we are admins looking at story submissions. On what bases do we accept or reject stories?
I think the foundations of good fic, after you get past proper grammar and general readability, are characterization, pacing, and efficacy. By efficacy I mean delivering on reader expectations, evoking the intended emotions. Stuff like that.
No.2452
>>2448Spinning off from this a bit, does anyone feel that fic should at least attempt aspire to something more than a piece of disposable entertainment (like having some sort of artistic value), or is that taking it too far? Even in ye olden days when fanfic was taken way more seriously (at least amongst certain subsets), I hardly saw people discussing their fics' themes or tone. Not as much as characterization and grammar and how realistic the sex scenes were. But when an author would really go for broke and was trying to write the best thing they could it really stood out. I vividly remember a fic from like 20+ years ago because of it. I'm not saying all fic should be high art or anything, but I really have read fic that was easily better than published novels. Which makes the current state of fandom/fic even more depressing for me lol.
Is proper grammar and characterization and a (semi-)coherent story enough for a fic to be 'great' to you guys, or is some higher artistic merit required?
No.2453
>>2443>then I remembered what beta-reading is lmaoThis is exactly what I mean, it's been so fucking long since I've even seen anyone mention beta-readers (or having their fic edited by someone) that everyone just forgot what that was.
This is what happens when you let illiterate cave dwellers run the show lol.
No.2454
>>2452I try not to be too hard on fics, because I fics are still just something people do in their spare time, and fanfics take a lot of time to write. I do fanfiction and fanart, and maybe it's just me, but I can do a b tier sketch of a character and post it on twitter, and it will get a lot of love and attention. On the other hand, a fic I slaved over for months might only get three likes. And while likes are not everything, it does discourage sharing to an extent. I still like writing, but it's also harder for me to write than it is for me to draw. For example, if I draw a character that wears a watch and a hat, but I forget to draw the watch and the hat, nobody will say anything… but forget a character does something in a fanfic, and I feel it stands out like a sore thumb. So writing is harder, to me at least.
No.2455
I first heard about beta readers during covid lockdowns. I was flipflopping between fandom spaces and ended up moving away from the usual image boards and into proper Social media. I'd never had anyone before who'd read my fics, or to talk about my fandoms with, so it was exciting to me. I got my first ever beta (someone who ran a fanfiction challenge), and I hated it.
Pros:
>I felt proud when their first reaction was "oh thank fuck you can write in full English sentences this won't be painful"
>it forced me to tackle some sentences that didn't come out how I wanted and rework them into something better understood
Cons:
>I now have this google doc where the fic is just covered in annotations and highlights for every single fucking sentence and I can't remember if the non-annotated version has the final edits or the pre-beta edits
>trying to argue back that I chose these words because there's a certain rhythm to them matching the pace at which I want this scene to read is like trying to convince someone the Easter bunny is real, especially when that person is a professional editor with an English literature degree
>nooooo that particular action was foreshadowing for the next chapter how can you tell me to remove it when it's important to note THE GUY HE'S GONNA BE SHIPPED WITH is watching from across the way!!!11!!1! (it was apparently not at all obvious what the line was suggesting)
>I felt deflated and like I had no grasp of my native language's grammar at all, how the fuck do sentences work again aaaaagh
>now aware I am a sensitive baby and might ruin things with the next beta, which would be shitty because they're giving you their time for literally nothing
So then I end up befriending some people who write fics in another fandom and we pass stuff about, and their writing is really good and it turns out their betas are their own siblings and friends. After my 'nam flashbacks to college lecturers ordeal this felt like cheating to me, but presumably they were people they could trust to give feedback.
Anyway the reason I bring this up is because I have seen plenty of fics posted in 2023 with a note thanking their beta. It's given me momentary relief, until I read the fic and find typos and spelling errors all over the place. I know even my favorite published authors from the 80s have some typos in their novels, but not as frequent or constant as these. I don't think having a beta is going to solve the quality issue - not if a 14-year-old's beta is another 14-year-old from her class. The beta someone chooses matters too.
No.2456
>>2453>This is exactly what I mean, it's been so fucking long since I've even seen anyone mention beta-readers (or having their fic edited by someone) that everyone just forgot what that was.jw, where does one even find compatible beta readers these days? especially since antis, trans shit and other nonsense is so rampant. if im going to let a stranger on the internet proofread my work, the last thing i want to hear is moral sperging. i also imagine beta quality ranges anywhere from "tween whose only exposure to the written word is minecraft rps" and "english langauge phd student who may or may not publish for a living"
No.2457
not really related to the current topic about betas but i don't understand how people can post fics with multiple glaring grammar/typo issues and go on with their day. i don't expect stuff on ao3 to be phd thesis level but when sites like chatgpt and grammarly exist there should be a bare minimum standard for writing in fics. i feel like if you're unable to get a beta you could at least put it into grammarly and it'll fix some basic stuff at least
No.2458
>>2455that sounds like a trainwreck, nonna. betas are such a mixed bag. i really think some of them treat it like they’re editing a future nyt best-seller, and that leads to a lot of pushback on prose, stylistic choices, etc that’d be totally out of bounds in published literature but no big deal in fanfic. and some betas imo basically just want to be co-authors and that’s it’s own issue.
>and their writing is really good and it turns out their betas are their own siblings and friendsunironically, this is probably one of the best beta relationships you can have. as long as said friend or sibling isn’t totally illiterate, they can at least function as a proofreader. and it being a familiar person rather than some internet stranger can really soften the blow of criticism. i also think that a dynamic like this keeps the whole beta-reading itself from feeling stilted and professional. my only issue is that making someone you know irl beta your smut would be 10x worse than an Internet stranger, but maybe i’m just a prude in that regard, kek.
No.2464
>>2454This is so true. I feel like I can conjure a more in-depth image of what I'm picturing with words, but the lack of engagement with writing makes it hard to tell how much got across. With drawing people can take the quickest rough and read so much into it, and even if you didn't intend what they see it gets positive comments and you feel gratified for that effort. Writing is slow, it's a complex commitment, and it's rife with uncertainty once it leaves your hands. I spent a couple years really drawn to the guilty pleasure of twitter threadfics, because they were quick and forgiving and got responses for ideas. Like writing your story in bullet points instead of prose, though I always found the further in I got the more written out sequences would become. Possibly a motivation thing.
>>2457Honestly same, I reread and edit my writing for longer than I actually write, so I've proofread and spellchecked several times over. I do it again after posting and always find something I want to fix up right away. It's exactly the same as with drawing or edits. I'd love to assume they're young but there are times it's demonstrably not the case.
This reminds me that there's ESL users posting in English who make consistent (yeah, I mistyped consistent as constant last night, and that's not something spellcheck will tell you but Grammarly might OTL) mistakes that give away their first language, and while I'm forgiving (it's fun sometimes) I'm also very aware you can right click in most browsers or word processors and change your spellcheck dictionary to "English (US)". There is no shame in using tools to correct your language or googling what the correct word is, every native English speaker has to at some point. ESL writing can be so refreshing in the imagery and humor they bring, because they're not steeped in English cliches, but it always helps general understanding to check words. A french friend of mine is always guessing which words are the same in English and it often doesn't work out.
>>2458Yeah now you mention it, I'm not sure how much smut I'd be comfortable sending a friend either. I wrote some once in a chat group, and they congratulated me like I got an A in English because I was so flustered trying to explain the act. I know in passing a fic author who writes some of the dirtiest shit going but she'd probably judge me as too mild. Smut betaing has its own can of worms when you factor in taste, realism VS "it sounds like it'd feel good even though, y'know", and making sense of entangled limb placements. Perhaps anonymous smut checks could be a fujochan specialty, lol.
No.2465
>>2455>>2458I once beta read a fic for a friend. It was 10k words and I was fine with the task despite her telling me she feels bad about its length. I said it's fine, it means you're passionate. Let me tell you something: most of my advice was thrown out the trash besides the spelling errors. Yes you can call me nitpicky all you want, but you really need to understand: she had 191 semicolons.
One hundred ninety-one uses of the fucking semicolon. I trimmed it to a lesser amount and kept some to be nice. I know I'm not supposed to beta as if I'm an editor for a NYT best seller, but holy shit it was distracting as fuck. And yes she is ESL so I assumed "Maybe people from that country do that?" I checked various fics from very popular fandoms in her language and found hardly any semicolon use. It was just HER. And I didn't tell her "You need to use LESS semicolons" because I thought the editing was enough and I didn't want to be mean. But I fucking regret it.
Bloody hell, reading that was eye rape for more reasons than you can imagine. She didn't warn me (but that's my fault for being stealth gender crit), but it was a fucking troon fic where the bottom is the fucking TIF. I'll never beta for anyone ever again and I'll never see that person the same way ever again.
No.2466
>>2465>you really need to understand: she had 191 semicolons.i’m legitimately laughing at this, nonna. holy shit. i enjoy a good semicolon every now and then, but that’s astonishing. wrt the nyt comment, imo punctuation is a whole different ballpark and your horror is completely justified.
>it was a fucking troon fici’m “”terf”” stealth too and this is another reason i don’t think i could beta. there’s just no way i could give proper concrit for a trans fic other than “don’t.”
No.2467
>>2465>a fucking troon ficChrist. Off topic but when is this shit going to end. I keep thinking I will wake up one day and people will have stopped being completely insane.
Wait, if you got blindsided did you not realize your friend was a TIF? (Online friend?) Or are there actually non-TIFs who write that kind of fic?
No.2469
>>2467You know, it's a good thing trans tumblrites fetishize being misgendered in fiction, because I find it pretty hot to read or write about them not being respected in their insanity. Like a trans woman stealth m/m fic where their partner doesn't see them as a woman but clearly as a guy in a skirt, but trans uke is in la la land.
No.2471
>>2469>trans tumblrites fetishize being misgenderedwtf do they really get off to it?
im only half-surprised tbh
>I find it pretty hot to read or write about them not being respected in their insanitynow that you mention it, i can see the appeal of one such tranny being dominated and being told in his ear that he is just prancing lala fruit boy that likes to wear skirts to entice real men and how he is about to get what he wants
n-not that i have already come up with a whole story in my head around that scene! haha nonna thats crazy! id never…
No.2472
>>2469that’s actually a hot idea, tbh. i hadn’t thought about the misgendering thing from that pov before, but i’m kinda into this concept.
>>2471misgendering is absolutely a kink, mostly among self-hating ftms. there’s a huge subreddit for it and everything. and because it’s ftms, rapey men flock to it as well. those factors combined meant that i’d never really given it thought as gay fanfic fodder before. but now… i think you need to write out your story, nonna.
No.2473
>>2471>>2472Oh guys y'all are sleeping, definitely get in on this. It's especially good if you're a terf or terf-lite. Like it's so satisfying. And the trans folk will praise it, which is like double the fun.
Transphobic seme who doesn't believe his partner and talking down to him yesss. Pre-everything (no surgery or hormones, just a knee sock wearing lunatic), of course, as we are women of taste.
No.2474
uwu
well ok nonas, ill write it
just dont expect me to even try to make it sound serious or even remotely sexy
ill prolly make it funny instead
more like a shitpost than anything
No.2475
>>2473alright, now i’m fully sold. do you have any recs?
>>2474godspeed, nonna.
No.2476
>>2466>just no way i could give proper concrit for a trans fic other than “don’t.”I'm with you, there's no way I would ever willingly read or write any of that shit. The only people who would actually like it are troons themselves.
No.2546
>>2545I have this same exact problem. Ao3 is really good at wrangling newer, smaller tags, but never the older and huge ones that never got wrangled when they were just small and insignificant. And then they combined some like kid fic as well as grooming.
No.2547
>>2545I've always assumed it to be for aged down content. I would use the tag parenting for adoption.
No.2549
>>2545nowadays it seems to go both ways, but i swear i remember it meaning “fic where the main couple has a kid” when i initially got into fandom. could be a case of ymmv though. and it seems like the other meaning can also refer to a) fics about when the characters were kids, b) fics where the characters are magically turned into kids, and c) fics where the characters psychologically revert into kids. it’s a mess.
No.2550
>>2545ime i only ever see kidfic refer to stories revolved around the main pairing raising a child. when people write aged down content it's usually tagged as age regression
No.2551
>>2550I associate the term age regression with a magical curse or some other contrivance to make a previously older character into a kid. Something like the series Detective Conan. Kidfic to me is just an AU where both characters met as children and have a childhood crush.
I don't understand why fics with adoption would be tagged as adoption, parenting, raising kids, ect. It just feels like there are a lot more specific terms that could be used. Granted neither are tags I peruse much.
No.2552
>>2549>but i swear i remember it meaning “fic where the main couple has a kid” when i initially got into fandomI also remember it meaning this and saw the term a lot in western fandoms more than weeb stuff. I don't think stuff like magically aged down or "it's about when x and y were children" even have an official term outside of stuff like kid!Character, which seems like an oversight.
All this talk about certain terms reminds me that we are at least blessed with people having to tag x/y instead of using fandom-specific ship names like Palletshipping or Pompous Pep. Opaque terms and portmanteaus instead of x/y drives me absolutely bonkers.
>>2550>age regressionThat's also a muddy tag because some people use it interchangeably with "ageplay" lol.
No.2582
Started getting really into catfishing fics. It's such an oddly specific scenario, but I've found quite a few Fandom have them.
No.2583
>>2582What kind of setup do those usually have, like pretending to be a girl + the accidentally gay trope or something? Fics with modern dating premises (ex. online dating apps) are my guilty pleasure but it's hard to come across any that aren't chatfics or have cringey typing styles.
No.2584
>>2583The ones I've enjoyed so far have started as pranks with character A starting a fake profile as a joke at character B's expense. Cue slowly developing romantic feelings as B doesn't want to give up the lie.
No.2585
>>2583Nta. I've read a one recently set in the Victorian times. A male author gets a fan letter from a mysterious woman, they become penpals and then closer friends, the woman cannot reveal anything about herself due to difficult circumstances, but they start a kind of romance over letters, even while the woman says she can't ever reveal herself. They send each other rings over the post and he calls her his wife, even. Eventually the author comes up with a scheme to see her irl and finds out the mysterious woman is actually another man, and, worse yet, his irl enemy.
No.2586
>>2585This sounds great! What fandom? I kinda want to seek it out.
No.2587
>>2586David Copperfield l m a o. I'm just fucking reading anything out here, you know how it is.
No.2588
>>2587nta but reading charles dickens yaoi is so based.
No.2589
>Balls slapping against skin
>Uke's feeling the glop of semen flowing down from his ass to his tights and on the floor
No.2590
>>2589I remember your post from above, do you normally just read PWP or is the detailed sex scene something you prefer as a pay off for a longfic?
No.2591
>>2590A bit of build up before the hard fuck is necessary
No.2658
It's that time of year! There is an Ao3 demographic survey link in there if you would like to participate:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/52723351Last year I was puzzled about HP's James/Regulus ship and now I see that there's "Barty Crouch Jr./Evan Rosier" with over 2500 new entries? Somebody in the know come provide some context. I am amazed at the HP fandom's ability to uplift Literally Who ships into numbers that eclipse most of the ships I'm into. And by amazed I mean eternally malding. Come write novel-length award-winning-tier fic for MY favorite mid media instead!!!
No.2659
>>2658Awww yay, stat time! New ones this year are interesting, surprised Creek wasn't already on there. Bungou is doing great! I need to watch it at somepoint so I'll have plentiful fanworks to read.
I can see poor Destial keeps falling, and it looks like RPS aren't as popular this year? Wonder if the core Minecraft fangirls grew up and moved on to something else?
No.2661
>>2658>Drarry at no. 14 and dropping 4 ranksI'm depressed.
No.2663
>>2658It's always so funny to me to see Minecrafters on this list. I laugh, but I also acknowledge had I been born a decade younger I may have also been a Minecraft man shipper.
No.2664
>>2658I like seeing Blue lock in there because I believe homosports is a beloved fujo tradition.
No.2665
>>2661It's OK nonna, you have a massive backlog with Darry.
No.2666
>>2665>massive backlog with Darry.I haven't been into Harry Potter since 2007 but I will always be grateful to Drarry tag for being the ol' reliable I can browse when I want to read a good fanfic but don't want to put any effort into searching. I'm so jealous of the HP fandom and the people who are still really into it.
No.2672
>>2667Speaking of the massive HP fanfic pool, I also think its funny just how much crossover ship content they make I run intoit all the time. Was looking for some Hellboy works last night and there are two separate stories shipping Harry with different characters.
I feel like no matter what series I'm looking for someone has written a 20k+ story somehow managing to ship the characters with Harry.
No.2675
>>2658Good for Wolfstar. Harry is literally the most bland, boring fucking character in the franchise, I'm so tired of him getting into all these interesting ships and scenarios. My blessings to literally any HP ship that does not have Harry in it.
No.2676
>>2658Is Our Flag Means Death any good? Been hearing it's name a lot, but I don't know what it's about besides being a pirate show.
>>2675MC curse, rip. I don't know if I good as far as to say he's the MOST boring, but he does pale in comparison to most of his friends and teachers.
No.2677
>>2676>Is Our Flag Means Death any good?Apparently season 2 is very bad and it has recently been cancelled. To me it seems like one of those things you'd watch just to have contextual access to all of the good fanfic, lol.
No.2689
They keep making my favorite little meow meow bottom when I WANT HIM ON TOP!!! He's a TOP!!!
No.2696
>>2689Who is your meow meow, anon?
No.2697
>>2689I accidentally made my preferred bottom into a top in one scenario. A hand/blowjob turned into some fingering and it was IC for the top to goad/cheer him on to finish the job. He can top as a treat after redeeming 100 punches on his rewards card (his ass). Maybe you need to write something to open everybody's third eye!
…I know it's not that easy though. I've been into B/A when A/B was the most popular configuration and it was suffering. Worst of all it was in the 00s when being the kawaii uke basically made them a crying hole in most fanfic.
No.2707
>>2697Kek anon which manga is that? I'm losing it at the horses
No.2708
>>2707Ghostbuster Osamu. It's only a few volumes if you wanna read it all, it's extremely relatable:
https://mangabuddy.com/ghostbuster-osamu No.2900
There’s always that one fic writer for your semipopular pairing that puts out about 5 fics a week, all OOC and mediocre at best, usually bad. I’m in a few small groupchats with this person and I feel bad ignoring when she sends a link to yet another 1k word slog of characters talking in a white room. Everyone else always seem to love these authors’ work. Probably because they’re usually the only people writing for that pairing and most people actually have garbage taste, and have never known or appreciated well written work (not even fanfiction, but any other type of literature). ّ
>anime fandoms get worse fics
Discussed upthread, but it’s true. Most people who consume anime also don’t consume anything else, and most popular anime is poorly written.
No.2902
Yes. For example, this is what most the shit being pumped out for one of my OTPs looks like.
>dacryphiliaWhy is a grown man crying during normal sex? Why is *Goku* crying during sex?
>cringy OOC daddy dom porno dialogue >typing out moans exactly how they’d appear in hentai >riding his face like its a fucking motorcycle?
>hair hard enough to make his scalp smart with liquid spine curved concave>looking at the blaring ceiling lamp through the blur of his tears like the sun beneath a lakeKek also at the attempt for artsy, elevated prose as if the author is doing anything besides transcribing some video off Pornhub at this point. Otherwise, these lines would be interesting in fic that wasn’t this degenerate, OOC smut. They’d actually work really well for erotica written with some more care. This is fanfiction for some shonen anime so I shouldn’t expect too much, but this has been present in almost every other fandom I’ve read for too — live-action shows, films, comics. Though the first two definitely get higher quality fic, most girls writing fanfiction online these days also happen to consume porn at similar rates men do unfortunately.
>>2434I definitely don’t see as many character analyses or studies anymore. For IPs that don’t flesh their characters out further than where they fit in the power-system, or if they’re from a gameplay-focused game, these are sorely missed and needed for me. Back when fandoms were generally smaller, they’d have enough of an impact for other authors to incorporate those bits of in-character fanbuilding and start interesting discussions, but fandoms are so huge and discussion is so spread out now, we don’t get that much anymore.
No.2904
>>2902That typed out porno dialogue is such a boner killer. I try not to get too bent out of shape when I start a fic that I can tell right off the bat will not deliver, because the author gave us her time and effort, but like both you and
>>2900 say it IS really annoying to know there is great fanfic out there but your OTP doesn't regularly get any of it.
>Back when fandoms were generally smaller, they’d have enough of an impact for other authors to incorporate those bits of in-character fanbuilding and start interesting discussions, but fandoms are so huge and discussion is so spread out now, we don’t get that much anymore.I feel like the slow death of our last, true "fandom" site (tumblr) catalyzed the dip in fic quality. People used to be able to incidentally marinate in character/story/writing analyses and launder that insight into their prose. You could produce higher quality fanfic just by lurking! Now there's nowhere fandom writers can passively become better so you're just left hoping they want to actively get better (which is absolutely not a requirement of them in hobby spaces).
No.2905
>>2902>>2904>Come babyInstant close fic
No.2906
>>2902The absolute state of fanfiction. It's all just the same porn fic with different names substituted in each time.
No.2907
>>2906I like porn but I miss when there was a story behind it. Feels like an era gone by
No.2908
>>2906I personally exclude rating:e fics when browsing and only loop around to them when I've finally exhausted all other interesting stories. Though unfortunately some people are so porn-brained I've read rather explicit sex-scenes in T-rated stories before.
No.2912
>>2902Smut is a skill that needs to be developed and trained like any other writing skill. There's a lot of authors, both published and fanfic, who sorely need to work on their smut.
No.2913
>>2902I haven't done DB fic since I was in middle school but up until the end of those tags I really, genuinely expected Vegeta to be the one in the dress. Holy shit. Wouldn't it be more fun for Goku to not understand what's so wrong about Vegeta looking good in satin lingerie? Mr Blankly Smiling not comprehending any social significance of what he's made happen or the power it exerts over the former prince of his people.
>>2912I barely write, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried to write a smut sequence in rough drafts, but for some reason people praise it and tell me they want to see me do a finished pornfic. They get far more excited about it than my sfw writing. I have a feeling the reason for that is simply because I
haven't read much pornfic, so my attempts at describing reactions and sensations are based only on my own experience and not matching standardized descriptions. Whenever I see complaints like
>>2906 I wonder how rewarding it is to write in recycled terms compared to being extremely basic and going through the beginner's practice of considering each sense, motive, and body part. Either way, to me it says something that people find themselves tempted by an absolute newbie's work compared to the tried and tested skills of intermediates. People are craving some novelty even if it's poorly written.
No.2919
>>2918what about PWPs? established relationships are good when you're not in the mood for slow burn or first time, but rather a couple that's already comfortable doing it
No.2920
>>2919Personally don't read a lot of PWP since I'm easily bored by porn and am more interested in a plot, but when I do want to read some I prefer sex-pollen or fuck-or-die. Established relationships are too far removed from canon for my tastes and sex pollen and such gives the fucking while also adding in the "oh shit he's my xyz" so it's even more drama filled.
No.2921
>>2920Same. Established relationship is a really hard sell for me, I only really like it when it's, like, time travel or AU shenanigans where the "actual" pair is still not together.
No.2923
>>2918I like established relationship sometimes, it just depends on what I'm in the mood for or the ship. With some ships who have a certain amount of history you can often imagine their relationship having started a long time ago, and seeing how naturally close and familiar with each other two characters are has its own charm.
I actually wish there was more established relationship for this one twincest ship I'm into recently because I often find it a hard sell or a bit squick when people do the 'believes he's one-sided pining and decides to confess anyway despite knowing the odds of your bro wanting to fuck you are astronomically low and your relationship will go into the trash' routine. For that particular ship I can usually only see either them having been weird from childhood or something spontaneous like sex pollen, fuck or die etc giving them an excuse as adults.
No.2926
>>2921>x from the future tries to convince y they are totally a couple but it feels like a really overelaborate prank and x isn't answering his phone>x meanwhile is being spoiled by y in the future who is very sympathetic about the whole time travel mess and the shock of seeing his home become a shared spaceI see this trope in short JP comics but not in fics, I think it's a good excuse to do the best of both.
>>2923Now I want a scenario where everyone assumed the twins were already established because they've been weird with each other for so long, but they themselves were oblivious and didn't realize how deep they got. Then they have to talk about it and both of them are adamant they are Perfectly Normal Twins but wordlessly escalate their sexual tension and near-public hijinks. I don't have any current twin pairs it'd work with though.
No.2927
>>2926>x from the future tries to convince y they are totally a coupleForgot how good this trope is, I wish I could find some to read now…
>Now I want a scenario where everyone assumed the twins were already established because they've been weird with each other for so long, but they themselves were oblivious and didn't realize how deep they got. Then they have to talk about it and both of them are adamant they are Perfectly Normal Twins but wordlessly escalate their sexual tension and near-public hijinks. I don't have any current twin pairs it'd work with though.This would actually work so well for my ship and I'd start drafting it asap if I wasn't already currently drafting other fic of them goddamnit. Also not my ship but it sounds like it'd fit the twins from Ouran.
No.2930
>>2927The Ouran twins did come to mind as I was typing it, but it's been years since I did anything Ouran. Go ahead and use it when you have time! I always have a billion ideas and never do anything with them.
No.2931
>>2930I also want to add to the "thought of the Ouran twins" count.
>>2927>>2926>ficsThere's a few floating around in MHA, the most popular of which I think is "Bonnie & Klein". It's also a pretty common plot point in Star Trek AOS fic (TOS Spock/Kirk were together and this troubles either one or both of AOS Spock/Kirk). Any series with a canon that can in theory lend itself to AU/time bullshit will usually produce them.
No.2932
I've been reading at least 4 hours of kiribaku content a day these past two months and it's quite amazing I'm still finding gems to read
No.2933
>>2932*Slides in* What kinda gems? Got any recs? (☆｀• ω •´)
No.2940
Any good father/son or son/father recs?
No.2942
>randomly become obsessed with a niche vidya ship
>check ao3
>6 fanfics
>fair enough
Meanwhile
>minecraft youtuber ships 10k fics
I'm feeling irrationally insulted
No.2944
>>2942Reminds me that someone mentioned in the anti discourse thread the other year turned out to write a ton of minecraft youtuber ship fics with major character death and abuse tags. I had some vague awareness that those things existed because of twitter trending, but seeing that person had like four pages of pseudo-RPF about random dudes grieving each other in minecraft was wild.
It's the kind of thing that makes me think "maybe I should just write whatever bullshit and get it out there."
No.2945
>>2940I rewatched Conquorer of Shambala recently, and remembered how lecherous and scummy that version of Van Hohenheim was. Surprisingly, there was a decent Ed/Hohenheim fic from the last couple years:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/30348873It's really niche though (and noncon, and has amputee elements…) so unless you're familiar with this particular canon I doubt it'll appeal.
Still, it was nice to think about. The details about Hohenheim's smell was really appealing to me, and Ed's vulnerability writ his replacement prosthetics in Shambala was always a huge part of why I loved it so much despite being objectively jank as hell. Thinking of him getting taking advantage of and having to rely on the father he hated and rejected is amazing.
No.2946
>>2944>maybe I should just write whatever bullshit and get it out there."Unironically yes, you should. But not because these other fics are weirder or something, but just because, well, why not? If you have an idea, there's a space for it, and an audience too. Go for it.
No.3189
There's a multi-part juggernaut of a Black butler Sebaciel fic series I finished recently on AO3 called the flowers of evil by Amanitus and on one hand I don't entirely like Sebastian's characterisation here but at the same time in every other aspect I find the whole thing extremely well done. Feels like the author does a great job with, among other things, building tension and fleshing out the details of the characters' daily lives like the scene on how many pounds the household spends on replacing broken plates and steak knives. The author self-memes about how many literary references there are in the series but I find that it works well in context. Honestly this is the type of thing that some fandoms would give an arm and a leg for and even if I don't agree with the characterisation I think the fandom is blessed to have it. If we're talking about some sebaciel I read recently that does have characterisation I like, martialartist816's works have really appealed to me. Thy fearful symmetry was the first one I read and it pretty much nailed how I envision the Sebaciel dynamic myself.
No.3196
>>3189Oh anon, you have no idea what it was like to read Flowers of Evil while it was ongoing! Black Butler fans were starving back then so each update felt like a new chapter of the bible was being published! It's been a while since I read it, so I don't quite remember Sebastian's characterization, but I do remember how slowly and realistically the author had the both of them fall for eachother. That canon push and pull between Sebaciel was definitely there. I've yet to find a recently published fanfic as well-written as FoE, I'll say this much.
I'd like to rec some stuff as well if you don't mind.
>objectlesson's "Stain the Water Clear"http://archiveofourown.org/works/3667677A multi-chapter longfic about how sebaciel's relationship has gradually transformed from the beginning of the contract to present day. The writing is very visceral and has gross details but that's what I personally like about it.
>honeythief's "Shapeshifter"http://archiveofourown.org/works/23597002This one is also a multi-chapter beast that I recommend if you liked FoE. Though it's written in first person (Sebastian's POV) and takes place in a modern universe, and I know both of these things are huge turn offs for most people, but do not be fooled! The characterization is incredibly on point and the story is very captivating, and I'll be real, I cried at the ending. Also I've seen fans on twitter arguing whether this or FoE should be considered the fandom must-read fic kek.
>teasmudge's "Nelipot"http://archiveofourown.org/works/25657426Not smut from what I remember. Just a sexually charged philosophical debate between Sebastian and Ciel. I remember really liking the banter in this one.
>"I adore him so"http://archiveofourown.org/works/10117352This one is in first person again but it's very short and sweet. One of my personal favourites. I wish I knew who the author was though.
Okay, I'm done flexing my kuro fanfic collection kek.
No.3197
>>3196I thought Amanitus' Sebastian was a bit too rapey compared to how I see him, though at the same time I get that it was meant to emphasise his demonic nature. Admittedly it didn't bother me THAT much considering I actually finished the whole thing. Thanks for the recs, I'll check them out next time I'm in a reading mood. I usually skip human Sebastian fics because Sebastian being a demon is a fundamental reason as to why I like the ship but I'll give it a try for you anyway.