Fans on Fandom

 A collection of musings, comments, and critiques -- positive, negative, and contradictory -- by fans about fans on fan activity, fan communities, and our relationships to fandom. Posts do not necessarily represent mod's opinion and are an attempt to represent the various perspectives in fandom's conversations. Curated by Adrienne Raw, PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan

[gffa]

[detroitbydark]

I will reblog this everytime I see it until my dying day

[skdubbs]

What is this?! Why have I never seen this?! 😍😍😍😍😍😍 absolutely awesome!

[doobiwankenooku-deactivated2022]

Yessss

[the-stars-are-warring]

The TIMINGS On this thing

It’s so GOOD

[mouthymandalorian]

i don't know who needs to hear this, but i needed to hear it today, so here goes: you should write that fic. you should write what makes you happy.

it doesn't matter if the concept has been done before, you are still allowed to write your coffee shop/flower shop/college/western AU. you should write that fic that is wildly self-indulgent. you should process something dark and hideous through your fic. you should share something beautiful through your fic. those two things are not mutually exclusive, either. you don't have to be dealing with something traumatic to write something considered taboo. and yeah, even if that might be a little out of character for that old man, you're still allowed to write it.

and if someone gets so upset about it they're in your inbox being an asshole, you have my permission to delete that message and move on with your day. you also have my permission to tell them to go fuck themselves. you do not owe an explanation to anyone.

tag appropriately, and write whatever the fuck you want.

[glorious-spoon]

i know we all laugh (mostly fondly) about the paper-thin plots in porn that only exist to make the sex happen, but i was reading some old stargate fic over the weekend, and i really think we're sleeping on the paper-thin hurt/comfort plot that only exists to force the characters to FEEL THINGS.

like, is this scenario realistic? no. does it make any rational sense? no. does it provide a built-in excuse for a character to collapse, bloody and disoriented, into the arms of his beloved/friend/partner? obviously, that's the whole point of this exercise.

i love it. it's my favorite thing in the world.

[queerfables]

My absolute favourite thing is when someone does this but they commit really hard and end up writing a masterpiece. It is essential that the plot is still paper thin or wildly implausible, but the characters and the emotional beats will change your entire life.

[sunderwight]

yeah yeah aliens made one of them drink truth serum and the other got attacked by squid vampires before they got trapped together in a cave, whatever, the real point is that now they have to talk about their unrequited love and yearning for the next 4 chapters while tenderly dressing each other's wounds...

[mostlyinthemorning]

Okay fanfic writers, your mission, should you chose to accept it, is a filthy 100 word drabble, for any pairing, to be posted on Thursday, in time for American Thanksgiving.

Ready, set, write!

[olderthannetfic]

But it does.

[olderthannetfic]

It does… one at a time.  It’d be useful to be able to select more than one. G&T but not higher, M&E only, everything but E for those who just don’t like smut. (btw I just checked and there is none of the exclusion filters showing on the search page at least in my computer)

AO3 does ‘and’ filters.

You don’t filter for M&E. You filter for not the other stuff.

[izhunny]

I have never seen so many users clearly baffled by and too skittish to push buttons/toggles that are very clearly meant to be used.

If a trusted website has a button and you don’t immediately know or understand what it does, push it. Check out every drop down, every link, every configuration imaginable. Be adventurous. Fuck around and find out. If it breaks the website, they shouldn’t have had that button in the first place. Not on you. Indulge your curiosity instead of complaining it doesn’t do something it absolutely does if you poke around a little.

You’re not going to get a bad grade in filtering by using interface features from AO3, I promise.

[mercurialkitty]

Look, there are library systems that don’t have filters as good as AO3. You have to learn how to use Boolean operators (AND OR NOT) and construct a proper query to exclude in several academic databases, and AO3 just performs “NOT” for you by clicking a button.

Do you know how many grad students would love to have the kind of power you have with AO3 in filters?

[flameraven]

Ao3 filters are amazing. You can filter out ratings, you can filter out characters or pairings, you can filter out specific tags (as long as it’s an official tag)! (Type it in under “other tags to exclude”)

This is why the antis complaining about seeing content they don’t like on Ao3 is so frustrating. If something squicks you out, filter it, and you never have to see it again! Voila! Or even if it is just something you don’t like. I have High School AUs filtered out because I just don’t like them! It’s an amazing system and makes it so easy to curate your experience.

[anxiousyetepic]

I am so spoiled by the Ao3 filters. Every time I encounter a particularly terrible search system at work I sigh wistfully about them.

[thesnadger]

Hurt/Comfort is such an interesting thing. It’s basically an entire genre of fanfiction. I’d argue it satisfies a very basic, vital need–the same way that horror satisfies the basic need to be scared in a safe, controllable space. 

And yet it doesn’t really have an equivalent outside of fan culture. "Tearjerkers” can sometimes come close, they’re probably the closest thing to a mainstream hurt/comfort genre that there is. But those types of books and movies don’t usually focus on the “comfort” aspect in the same way, and don’t make use of tension and release.

I think every good hurt/comfort fic makes use of tension and release just as horror does, whether the writer is consciously aware of it or not. Though of course the tension and release in h/c comes from different sources than in horror. Instead of anticipating something frightening, you anticipate the intimacy and/or validation that comes from the “comfort” part you know is eventually coming. That’s what provides release of the tension built up during the “hurt” scenes.

I could write a goddamned essay about this it’s so fascinating. 

[pinesinthewoods-deactivated2023]

This is a great definition/analysis of it! I’ve been interested in this too. It’s always been my favorite fanfiction genre. It’s to the point where reading just angst is not enough, there is something left unfulfilled if the character does not have the ‘tension and release’ and just remains under whatever stressor at the end. I think part of the reason I like it so much, is often in mainstream media characters DO NOT have that ‘healing moment’, shall we say. Too often, there may be a sad/traumatic/stressful event and the character is shown to just pick themselves up from it and move on like nothing happened. Which is not realistic as we all know, so I think the hurt/comfort genre in fanfiction is a kind of a response to that. The “filling in the blanks” of when a character needs a moment of healing or validation to continue onward, because that in a sense is more relatable then the “super hero” character who can move through it like nothing damaged them. 

[fannishcodex]

this is a very good definition of it and why I probably like it so much

[hippity-hoppity-brigade]

imo h/c is also built on the trust between two or more people. that when one of them falls there WILL be someone to validate their pain, soothe their wounds (physical or emotional), and not only pick them back up but remain with them even when they’re back on they’re feet. it’s not hurt/recovery; it’s not the super-human, masochist bullshit mentioned above. 

h/c builds a world in which we (as readers and in part as the parts of characters we identify with) are given permission to fall apart. h/c is the freedom to show pain because you know that there are people who will notice you being hurt – and will do their best to not only comfort you, but will also validate your reasons for being hurt, take your side completely, and help you get to the place you need to be to recover. 

[kimuracarter]

OMG THAT LAST ADDITION

[sarkywoman]

I consider it the default genre of fanfiction tbh. Plot-driven action fics exist but they tend to be written by newer-to-contributing fans who are still developing their writing and don’t care to grapple with emotional aspects yet for whatever reason. Angst happens, but when it doesn’t have the comfort element authors will point it out like, ‘watch out for angst’ or joking about their propensity to write sad things without a comfort element. Similarly with fluff, when people choose to write only happy things they tend to talk about it, either in the terms of using fanfiction as a safe-ish space generally, or that they’ve written a happy fic when they normally don’t, that sort of thing.

So, so much fanfiction is H/C. No label required. If something isn’t labelled ‘angst’ it can be startling to find no happy-ish resolution, even if the summary gave no indication it would have a happy ending. It’s almost as if the default structure of a fic, without a label marking it as an exception, is ‘something shit happens to the character, someone makes it better for them’. I’ve been in fandom for about twenty years and it’s always been that way. 

In the world we currently inhabit, it’s no wonder that’s still such an appealing idea. 

[cobaltaugustao3]

My constant struggle when writing PWP

[coiled-dragon]

Im just feeling a certain way rn

[piosplayhouse]

Went outside my fandom bubble and saw people being cancelled for shipping two characters who tried to kill each other once damn is this the limit nowadays

[ineffectualdemon]

Trying to kill each other is a reason to START shipping characters

[thesuperheroesnetwork]

Sometimes it works out

[tuxedodan]

being on fandom discord servers is crazy bc someone you've been talking to a while will reveal they were the one that wrote your absolute all time favorite fic it's like meeting god in a walmart at 7am

[tuxedodan]

either that or they'll reveal that they were the one who started a popular hc/ship that you hate and it's like meeting satan himself in the chili's bathroom

[floral-poisons]

kind of wanna reinforce this here. because i’ve seen ai writing become so popular on tik tok.

ai writing is not okay.

it’s literally theft. just like how ai art steals, ai writing steals. it’s using authors’ very real work to generate whatever you type in. and this also needs to be said as well.

writing is a form of art. fanfiction is a form of literature.

seeing this all over my fyp is REALLY discouraging. fanfic itself is already a labor of love and we love it when you interact. but please do not use ai writing for your fanfic needs when this writing literally steals from fanfic authors.

genuinely don’t know if this post will go around because my interactions outside of hcs are shit, but i hope it does.

[bigbangthesis]

““Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn’t fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn’t frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it.””

— Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 2006.

[ekingston]

sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it

[gffa]

Some of you have got to stop having parasocial relationships with other fans in your fandom.  Some of you think that, because you’ve read someone’s posts, because you’ve spent time thinking about that one post they made, that you know them, that you think about them a lot–and I don’t mean just in having a fandom crush, this is even more applicable to someone you’re hatereading–that you can understand them or analyze them or say what they’re Really Like. What people give you on this site are only mere fragments of themselves at most, you don’t know them. And if they’re not interacting with you, if they blocked you six months ago and haven’t responded to anything you’ve said, you have got to stop obsessing about them to the point that you’re making almost daily posts about them.  It’s really bad boundaries, it’s really bad parasocial (not-)relationships, and it’s not healthy. Rubbernecking a wanker is one thing, but when you let it get under your skin so that you’re constantly thinking about someone you don’t like, even when they’re not right in front of you, if they make you so angry you start viciously insulting them, when they’re just talking about stupid silly shit in their fandom, you genuinely, truly need to disconnect yourself from this one-sided not-relationship you have with them.  It’s not healthy.

[chimaerakitten]

One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.

Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”

Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.

[ocean-again]

person who knows how logistical things works has picked up the cannon, hefted it thoughtfully, and put a single chalk mark precisely on the problem.

[transformativeworks]

OTW Finance: 2023 Budget

OTW’s Finance Committee has released our 2023 budget.  They detail where donations go and what our expected income is this year.  Find out more about what it takes to run the organization at https://otw.news/af6503

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[themirokai]

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.