Notes from Your Favorite Fanfiction Author

Stuff All Those Irreverent Readers Enjoy // more srsly @fantasticait

[fanfican]

I know you're upset.

I've seen your comments on my most recent update.

Before we get to the Hatchling Festival, we have to see everyone get ready for it!

I'm excited to announce that I will be writing a chapter from the perspective of every single character we've met on this journey (and six that we haven't!) so we can see what everyone is up to on the morning of the festival!

Yes, as some of you have picked up on, this will involve a lot of repetition--but I invite you to look for the subtle differences and nuance in each character's unique perspective.

This entire story has been building towards the reunion of Spyro and Gnorc, and I think it's worth taking a moment to really set the scene before our two heroes finally meet again.

I hope you all are as excited as I am about this decision.

[fanfican]

Romance Trends - June, 2023

In: Characters winking roguishly at their crafty strategist partners right before intentionally blowing up the complex plans WE ALL AGREED ON--because who needs plans when you're this charming? Out: Reformed abusers (feeling guilty about all of that abusing they did) being comforted by the former-victims/current-lovers they abused Still Doesn't Exist: Pottery that isn't a symbol or metaphor

[fivequartersoftheorange]

Fanfic writers when they don't want to deal with canon

[fanfican]

It can be so shocking to find out that conditions and characterizations that are widely accepted in fandom simply do not exist in canon. Sometimes I (and others who primarily write for works they've never directly read/watched/interacted with) only find out about these differences through comments and conversations with other writers!

I have written in the Buttman community for years, but only last year found out from my brother (who actually watches South Park instead of just reading South Park fanfiction) that Butters and Cartman are not actually dating canonically!

And after I read (and wrote) several Dragon Age fics that took place in bagel stores, I was incredibly disappointed to try playing the game myself only to find out that there's no baking element at all!

[fanfican]

Your Big-Naturals Privilege

If you're anything like me, you've had to take a break from tumblr because you have to scroll a solid three minutes through your dashboard to see anything other than Big Naturals posts. Gandalf Big Naturals. Dumbledore Big Naturals. Onceler Big Naturals. Plutarch Heavensbee Big Naturals. Giles Big Naturals. Crowley Big Naturals. Every-Character-from-Supernatural Big Naturals. Tony Stark Big Naturals. Sherlock Big Naturals. Chewbacca Big Naturals.

I am highly active in several fandoms that were left behind by this new trend. I can't just slap a pair of giant milky breasts onto an allosaurus--they're not even mammals. I felt a moment of hope when I thought I might be able to use one of my few human-centric fandoms to join the trend...until I remembered that the South Park creators already gave us Cartman Big Naturals.

Even as I've watched the communities I love being beaten down by your careless Big Naturals posts, I was content to weather this storm...until I saw that even my trusted beta, @bingleyjinglesmybelles, felt the need to traitorously partake in a trend that is inherently exclusionary to those of us in non-mammalian and canonically big naturals fandoms. Like careless children, you made these posts and you laughed and your followers laughed and you never stopped to wonder if what you were doing was fair to those of us in communities that couldn't join in the fun. But for children to grow up, they must eventually refuse the teat. It's time to wean tumblr.

[turtletoria]

the amount of people i see that have started making south park fanart is astounding if i ever start doing that shit you gotta take me out back and shoot me

[fanfican]

The amount of people I see that have started sharing terrible takes about South Park fanart is astounding.

How is it 2023 and there are STILL people who can't recognize that the same stories and themes echo across generations, resonating with new audiences--even as the art looks different???

I have so much respect for my peers in the Buttman community who use their creativity and passion to show how these modern characters can embody these universal human feelings and experiences. Love, honor, friendship, courage...why do some bitter people begrudge us for seeking out and creating expressions of these ancient virtues in the ways that make sense to us?

I challenge anyone to read my fic Butter Me Up (three-time winner of the annual Grease-the-Cart Award for "Best Characterization of Principal Victoria") and come away without being transformed and moved by it.

Take a minute and look--really sit back for a minute and LOOK--at this art my beta, the incomparable and ever-astounding @bingleyjinglesmybelles, created for Butter Me Up.

Maybe now you'll understand what we're trying to do here.

[fanfican]

imagine how heartbroken i was to go to ao3 and see that your only fic, with solas and lavellan, doesn’t even include involuntary lactation or smegma suckling

In my eternal quest to reach the audience I know is out there waiting for me, I'm experimenting with a new site for my fics: interstate billboards.

You can currently find some of my naughtier fics along I-95 in the Carolinas.

[neenarchive]

do you think people who are into reylo wanted fiona to go through with the wedding to lord farquaad

[neenarchive]

no, you know what fuck this. fuck you. we need to talk about the FEAR in max's eyes here. Like all he wanted was to be loved by someone. by ANYONE. And to be a fair and decent leader. like wow Shrek and dreamworks i expected better from you than a message about how abuse victims ultimately deserve to be eaten by a big dragon. i suppose you think that's feminist because she's a girl dragon. what about fiona's sexual empowerment? Fuck this. max deserved better. i've had it with this franchise. whatever at least we have fanfic. new chapter of my farqiona kinktober entry will be up on friday

[fanfican]

YES. Authors like you are going to suck me back into the verdant Shrek writing world--specifically the Donkussy community, ofc.

Can't wait for your new chapter. Might inspire me to dust off my abandoned WIP, These Boots Are Made for Walking on That Ass.

[fanfican]

@thequietabsolute, I'm sorry, but the Roman satirists were objectively better.

Just check the AO3 stats:

[fanfican]

To own the private parts of every male mammal living in Iceland, you see -- a goal he set for himself years ago -- Hjartarson needed a walrus, an animal that's becoming rarer every year. "Collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one," Hjartarson said as he reached into the museum's penis-shaped cash register to return some change to a customer, before picking up a phone of the same shape.

I've dropped five beta readers (before finding the incomparable and ever-affirming @bingleyjinglesmybelles) because they couldn't get past my characters' "unrealistic motivations," as if people like Sigurdur Hjartarson don't exist IRL.

Welcome to the world's largest penis collection

This Icelandic museum houses male genitalia that once belonged to animals ranging from sperm whales to humans

[fanfican]

An Important Lesson from the Authors Who Came Before Us

We all know the story of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Childhood friends, high school sweethearts, and university rivals.

They showed up at Cambridge with trunks full of typewritten stories featuring talking lions, magical rings, a demon named Screwtape, and a dragon named Smog.

Their Creative Writing professor, James Joyce, famously suffered a fit of apoplexy when he first read their writing. He was so furious over their whimsical stories that he banished them from his classroom and forced them to work as unpaid innkeepers at his pub. He told them they could only come back once they proved they'd learned enough about the "real world" to write stories about "real things, like eagles and children."

Professor Joyce was forced to admit them back into his classroom when Tolkien wrote his eagles into Middle Earth and Lewis created the Pevensie children to visit Narnia. Their contemporary, Bede Griffiths, alleges that Joyce could be heard raging and screeching about how the clever young authors had willfully misinterpreted his assignment as far away as Gertrude Stein's Edinburgh apartment!

I remember this moment in history every time my professors tell me that I need to change my writing--when they try to get me to conform to a dying format. When they tell me that my Land Before Time fanfiction isn't appropriate for a class on Immigration Stories and Travel Narratives. When they tell me that my Babe fics "can't" be considered an essay on Orwell's Animal Farm.

Won't they feel silly in a few decades, when there will be sold-out university courses focused on studying work like mine.

There's a reason James Joyce's work has never been turned into movies. There's a reason his fandom is practically nonexistent.

The only reason we know his name is because he was a footnote in the intertwined heroes' journeys of authors who weren't afraid to try something new.

[jennyholezer-deactivated2023042]

literally nothing said in this post is true and op has the audacity to pay for me to have to see it

[fanfican]

Wow. Rude. You sound exactly like my professors when they give me "feedback" on my writing, tbh.

[fanfican]

An Important Lesson from the Authors Who Came Before Us

We all know the story of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Childhood friends, high school sweethearts, and university rivals.

They showed up at Cambridge with trunks full of typewritten stories featuring talking lions, magical rings, a demon named Screwtape, and a dragon named Smog.

Their Creative Writing professor, James Joyce, famously suffered a fit of apoplexy when he first read their writing. He was so furious over their whimsical stories that he banished them from his classroom and forced them to work as unpaid innkeepers at his pub. He told them they could only come back once they proved they'd learned enough about the "real world" to write stories about "real things, like eagles and children."

Professor Joyce was forced to admit them back into his classroom when Tolkien wrote his eagles into Middle Earth and Lewis created the Pevensie children to visit Narnia. Their contemporary, Bede Griffiths, alleges that Joyce could be heard raging and screeching about how the clever young authors had willfully misinterpreted his assignment as far away as Gertrude Stein's Edinburgh apartment!

I remember this moment in history every time my professors tell me that I need to change my writing--when they try to get me to conform to a dying format. When they tell me that my Land Before Time fanfiction isn't appropriate for a class on Immigration Stories and Travel Narratives. When they tell me that my Babe fics "can't" be considered an essay on Orwell's Animal Farm.

Won't they feel silly in a few decades, when there will be sold-out university courses focused on studying work like mine.

There's a reason James Joyce's work has never been turned into movies. There's a reason his fandom is practically nonexistent.

The only reason we know his name is because he was a footnote in the intertwined heroes' journeys of authors who weren't afraid to try something new.

[fanfican]

Most Impressive Fic Subgenre

I'm not really a part of the Harry Potter fanfiction community...and even if I were, I wouldn't write about Snape.

That said, I can't help but admire the trope Snape authors have built in which he survives the Battle of Hogwarts, discovers the internet, and becomes a wretched, terminally-online scold.

I see these drabbles pop up everywhere--reddit, facebook, YouTube--there are even whole sites just for authors to roleplay slightly different versions of a jilted and lonely Severus Snape. It's become so common that they don't have to add any disclaimer or context to remind their audience that their work is from the perspective of a bitter and internet-addicted Snape.

Gotta respect these authors' hustle and commitment to exposing more of the world to their work.

[fanfican]

An Ode to the World's Most Average Dinosaurs

They lacked the gargantuan size and spikes of the species museums often celebrate, but these species are how paleontologists learn about the

One of the reasons I love being a part of the Land Before Time fandom (and the Great Valley Discord server in particular) is because we are a community of individuals who actively choose to interact with a work that celebrates and prioritizes ornithopod representation.

You sure as HELL won't find diversity like that in the Jurassic Park fandom, and I'd challenge anyone to find me a work or fandom with an ornithopod character more complex and fleshed-out than Ducky.

I'll wait.

[fanfican]

op was the "how to get more eyes on your fic" post satire. answering no will automatically mean you were serious even if you're saying no as a joke.

I promise I've given you all the pieces of this puzzle.

[fanfican]

Longer Chapters

Great news! Since I've been going to therapy, I've started forcing a butchered version of active listening into my dialogue. All of the repetitive, circuitous conversations about feelings you love to read are about to get even longer!

[fanfican]

How to get more 👀 on your fic

If you're anything like me, you have over 40 one-chapter WIPs that have been languishing for years without the fire only loyal readers (and their comments) can fuel.

It's a vicious cycle--readers aren't interested in incomplete stories that haven't been updated for years, but I'm not interested in writing more if nobody's reading my work.

Luckily, I've figured out a quick and easy method to get readers for these incomplete fics.

To demonstrate how effective my method can be, let's take a look at Subscribe and Save Me, one of my fics that never got the attention it deserves:

Now, for some reason, this fic hasn't found an audience yet. But we can easily fix that!

Here are some of the secrets that Big Fanfiction sites don't want you to know:

A lot of readers are looking for long and completed fics.

A03, Wattpad, and FFN don't employ people to check that fics marked "complete" are actually complete.

They also don't employ anyone to check that chapters aren't just "Cera loves Ducky" copied and pasted thousands of times.

You can still add more chapters to a "completed" fic after it gets some readers and comments to help wake up your muse.

So, you can see that the best way to get new readers invested in our WIPs is simply adding fake chapters and marking our WIPs complete.

Look how much more enticing Subscribe and Save Me looks with these updates:

Don't be fooled! I didn't actually write 11 new chapters. In fact, most of my chapters just consist of this:

But despite how easy it is, this method has always gotten me hits and comments:

Wow! Two new comments already--and I'll get that comment count up to four when I reply "Nothing," and "Very happy indeed!"

Good luck out there, friends! Hopefully this strategy brings you as much success as it's brought me!

[fanfican]

Need new fic recs, please

Most of you know that I've really gone down the Post Office AU rabbit hole lately. At this point, I feel like I've read all of the greats--but of course I'm still hungry for more. Please send me your favorite Post Office AU fics! Sending this call out to all of my active fandoms--Swan Princess, Babe, Land Before Time, Harry Potter, and South Park. Open to crossovers as long as they're between my active fandoms. I'm really looking for stories with that classic trope of a mail carrier who puts his pension at risk and gets a negative performance evaluation because he read a love letter he was supposed to be delivering (maybe he felt compelled to open the envelope because of its musky scent), and he wrote back and began his own romantic correspondence with the sender. Some of my favorite stories in this genre are historical Post Office AUs--don't hesitate to send me all of your bookmarked Pony Express fics!