BookTok Needs to Read the Room
by Brooke Bellamy
As a fanfic community, we donât leave negative, snotty comments in the same way we donât criticize our kidâs volunteer soccer coach. Well, I suppose some people do but at least thatâs commonly understood to be in poor taste to publicly ridicule someone contributing their time, effort and talents to the community for free.
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Why We Shouldnât Hate on Fanfic Writers
Spend no less than five minutes with me and youâll probably â whether you want to or not â be brought up to speed on the latest fandom drama happening in my discord servers or Twitter groupchats.
Iâm a fangirl, itâs exactly what it says on the can. Iâm a copywriter by day and by night an avid creator and connoisseur of fanfiction â these days mostly about TOP GUN (yes, that TOP GUN) but it tends to vary on a semi-yearly basis.
I get my kicks in weird ways and yet Iâm far from alone in that.
Beyond the movies and the characters, Iâm interested in fandom as a whole or as we like to call it fandom meta.
The unspoken rules of this wacky subculture dating back to the 1960s. Watching beloved or controversial fanfics get pulled off the web, reworked and eventually published as independent stories in their own right. The constant push and pull against a mainstream that is becoming increasingly aware of something that used to be a shame-filled, hidden hobby only for the nerdiest of the nerds.
Enter, Stage Right: BookTok
Fanfic going somewhat mainstream is thanks in no small part to TikTok, specifically BookTok â the community that reviews and discusses published romance novels. Iâm not really a member of that community but from what Iâve gathered BookTok is mostly made up of millennial women who voraciously consume books of varying degrees of quality and really, really, really care about the sex. Or, to use their own lingo, spice.
Like theyâre almost getting a little weird about it, not gonna lie.
To an outsider, though I hardly should be considered one, BookTok seems to be a somewhat spiritual successor to the âMommy Pornâ craze that swept through the country with 50 Shades of Grey â the most famous example of a fanfiction (originally about Twilight) that was repurposed into a full-fledged novel.
But I digress.
Iâm a creator on FandomTok which naturally brushes up quite a bit with my cousins over on the published, professional side of the street. Itâs a mostly peaceful co-existence, but it is TikTok so it also can be a fucking nightmare.
Case in point: I opened up the app last week and was immediately bombarded by a presumably millennial woman from BookTok ranting about how much she hated a popular Harry Potter fanfiction.
I didnât read the fic sheâs talking about but from what I can gather it takes place after the books conclude and focuses on a tumultuous love affair between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. That would be Emma Watson and Tom Felton for the non-stans.
Now, Iâm no Harry Potter fan. Quite the opposite, actually.
Some of my earliest and most deeply unpleasant childhood memories are that of older cousins chasing me around our grandparentsâ house yelling all sorts of spells and Potter-lingo at me. Iâm also pretty sure I got locked in a cabinet at one point â but thatâs a story for another day.
So it goes without saying: Iâm no fan of J.K. Rowling, her work or her vitriolic hate speech against trans people.
However I do live, breathe and love fanfiction and so that means my support has to extend to the Potterheads and their stories as well.
So back to the video, Iâll give you the TLDR:
OP is upset that sheâs spent so much time on what she feels to be a very overhyped fanfiction. She doesnât typically read fic and so sheâs confused and angry as to why the writer changed so much of the plot. She thinks itâs an unrealistic story, that its readers have poor taste and sheâs mad that the fanficâs writer killed off Harry.
She also reduces the entire 380,000 word story into being only about sex, despite it being heavily based on the gender-based oppression and violence that takes place in The Handmaidâs Tale.
OP concludes the first of a series of videos on this singular fanfic by proclaiming that a real Harry Potter fan would never tolerate something like this.
I watched just 10 seconds of the video before I had to put my phone down from seeing red.
Eventually, I watched it all the way through, left a couple of angry comments, made a few video responses of my own and eventually blocked her because I canât stand internet beef with people engaging in an argument in deliberately poor faith.
But Iâm still really annoyed about it, if itâs not obvious.
OPâs video has about 30k views at the time of my writing this. That might not seem like too much for an app that regularly sees content explode with 15 million views, so let me reframe it for you:
Imagine you and a friend dined at a massively successful Italian restaurant (Iâm talking reservations a month in advance at a minimum). You loved it so much you spent weeks thinking about the pasta and how much you wanted to go back for more. But the restaurant is popular for a reason and so you couldnât get another reservation. After a while you decided to try your hand at recreating some of the dishes at home. You even opted to have a little fun and throw in your own take on it. You spent a long time researching the ingredients, practicing your technique and ended up with a final dish that you were quite proud of. In fact, you were so proud of and excited by your creation that you invited that same friend over to try it one night. For some inexplicable reason, she was visibly angered at the invite. She told you that you were wasting your time trying to recreate the magic from the restaurant, but she showed up for dinner anyway. Empty handed, of course. Not even a cheap bottle of wine for your trouble. She took the first bite, gagged, announced she hated it and then for some reason decided to power through your entire meal. Literally licked the. plate. clean. She then stood up and left your house without a word of thanks or even a goodbye. And then the next day you got a notification from TikTok that she made ten minutes worth of videos about how shit your cooking is, and her videos reached enough people to fill up Madison Square Garden one and a half times.
And that analogy, though long-winded, still isnât even perfect. In reality, the fic author didnât invite OP to read the story; OP found it on her own.
So really itâs like your friend barged into your kitchen, took a bite of your pasta and then put you on blast for having a bland sauce.
Words (And Where We Say Them) Matter
30,000 views certainly isnât viral, but itâs enough to drastically alter the fanfic writerâs creative experience. Itâs enough to ruin the magic for a devoted fan just trying to have fun and write a little story about their favorite characters smooching.
The disgust and anger OP brought to table is shocking and in blatant disregard for the fic writing communityâs golden rule:
If you donât like, donât read.
Thereâs a ton of other fandom colloquial terms â donât yuck my yums is a particular favorite of mine â but they all mean more or less the same thing.
Donât be a hater. Donât spoil the fun. Donât hurt anyone. Donât be cruel in this space intended for creativity, community and friendship.
BookTok is increasingly diving into the wonderful, wacky world of fanfic and yet many of creators refuse to learn the unique culture and norms that have existed for decades.
For instance, itâs not an uncommon phenomenon for a single nasty comment to stop a fanfic in its tracks. That may sound like a hypersensitive author, but I argue:
Non-consensual criticism has no place in fanfiction.
I say non-consensual because in fandom we do actually have protocols for critiques. A beta read is a common term for a peer review, where the writer actively seeks out feedback from another writer to improve grammar, story structure, etc. However, this is a closed, private exchange between two community members that have established trust and connection â itâs a safe space.
Fanfiction that is deemed harmful or even dangerous is also fair game, though we tend to keep our commentary mostly to things like:
âThis story contains sexual violence that was not properly tagged, please update the tags ASAP so not to trigger othersâ
When we post, of course we know that technically weâre opening ourselves up to the internet. However, Iâm not blasting my quirky little Iron Man stories to the front page of Medium. Iâm sharing it with a relatively small, somewhat isolated community filled with others who also happen to like quirky little stories about Iron Man.
For instance, itâs very common for fics to conclude with brief send-offs like:
âThis was my first time writing from Peetaâs pov, so be nice please đâ âI wrote this for my friendâs birthday â I hope her day is as happy as Edward and Bella ended up here!!!â âEnglish isnât my first language and Iâm not from the UK so apologies if any of the stuff about the train station or taxi cab seems a little off!â
In my opinion, this is not hypersensitivity; this is a request â sometimes a plea â to be kind about amateur work and to treat it as such.
Weâre Talking Your Momâs Pickleball League, Not the NFL Here
Fanfiction is not formally published writing, even though itâs âpublishedâ on a website like Tumblr or ArchiveOfOurOwn. More times than not, the fic writer is the only person that has eyes on the draft before the story goes live.
It doesnât receive thorough review from a publisher. It doesnât go through rounds and rounds of edits and comment periods like a professional writerâs work will.
Fic writers donât receive any payment, sponsorship or credit for their work. They canât because the entirety of fanfiction depends on writers cooperating with extremely delicate copyright laws â a fascinating topic Iâll probably elaborate on at some point.
There is literally nothing to be gained by writing and sharing fanfiction beyond the personal satisfaction and pride in contributing to your communityâs collective joy.
Old Men Yells At Cloud, Harry Potter Edition
As a fanfic community, we donât leave negative, snotty comments in the same way we donât criticize our kidâs volunteer soccer coach.
Well, I suppose some people do but at least thatâs commonly understood to be in poor taste to publicly ridicule someone contributing their time, effort and talents to the community for free.
I guess what Iâm saying is that BookTok has some catching up to do. Or more aptly, they need to read the fucking room.
Fanfiction is a labor of love â by fans, for fans
If you donât like a story, just scroll on by. Certainly donât double down and read 380k of a story you hated in the first three paragraphs.
And if you think itâs so easy to write a âgoodâ story, well then maybe you should give it a try before hating on the writers that are brave enough to share their work with the community.
And so finally, a speed run just a handful of OP and other BookTokerâs concerns because if I donât formally address these points I will lose my goddamn mind:
You guys were okay with the author just blatantly changing things? The mannerisms, the deaths?
Yes, thatâs the whole fucking point of a fanfiction. Maverick and Iceman donât actually kiss in the movies but they sure as hell do when Iâm in charge.
What post-apocalyptic world would this ever happen realistically?
Are we really nitpicking the practicality of a post-9/11 wizarding world?
Iâm sorry but this story sucked. Hereâs a list of my Did-Not-Finish fanfics
Did-Not-Finish (DNF) lists are a popular tool used by BookTokers intended to help their audiences save money and avoid splurging on books they probably wonât jive with.
DNF lists have no place in fanfic because there is no money to save.
If you were a true Harry Potter fan, this would not fly.
No, no. If you were a true fan, youâd embrace your community members and uplift the storytellers that are keeping the magic alive for us all.
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