Fic & Fandom

This is where I yell about writing, fanfiction, and various fandoms. Main blog: serotonin-up Ao3: SerotoninUp

[haybellewrites]

you ever read one of your old fics and think "damn past self. you went hard on that one. i'm so proud of you." while simultaneously thinking "future self got to get their shit together and actually write something, i mean come on now."

[ghosthorse-tracks]

Lesser-known steps of the writing process:

Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once

Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards

Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop

Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere

Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off

[quasi-normalcy]

The rookie mistake in fiction writing is assuming that short stories will be easier to write than novels because they're smaller. No. This is the equivalent to thinking that it's easier to make a pocket watch than grandfather clock. Short stories are complex engineering problems.

[quasi-normalcy]

You need to find a way to pack all of the things that a story needs into a tiny like box without it overheating.

[nicolodigenovas]

Come back, I have to tell you the plot of a fic I’ll never write and get you excited about it so we can all be disappointed with me later

[lueminous]

I honestly don’t know how to tell you these shocking facts but fucked up things in stories were not invented by AO3

[soyeahso]

I literally saw that someone replied to a post that talked about content in public libraries saying that that content should be regulated as well and Im just like when your statement can’t be distinguished from something a Southern Baptist pastor would say you really need to take a hard look at what kind of belief system you’ve let yourself fall into.

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

When fiction deals with difficult material (as it almost inevitably will) and it’s available for public consumption, you have the choice to ban anything controversial or teach people from a young age how to analyse and interpret literature and media. Only the second option builds valuable thinking skills and is actually possible.

[rhinozilla]

You know what I'm a slut for? When a character visibly drops a ruse. Like, the way their face changes the moment they give up a facade and reveal themselves.

This applies to revealing love, apathy, anger, evil intent. I mcfuckin love it.

[insomniac-arrest]

very small tip for new writers: write about yourself in good faith. 

Cut out the phrases “I know this sucks but …”, cut out the phrases “I don’t know how to write summaries but …”, you never have to finish with “I’m sorry” or “don’t hate me.”

you don’t have to doubt yourself on page. you don’t have to write about your work as if the reader has already decided it is bad. tell the reader what the story is about. tell the reader any details or fun facts.

but don’t assume you need to feel ashamed. don’t assume you have anything to be sorry for after putting yourself out into the world, after trying to make something beautiful, after starting and trying and beginning.

I know it is easier, safer, to judge yourself before anyone else can, to tear yourself down before anyone else can, to be your own worst critic. rejection is easiest to handle when you don’t let them do it first.

but here’s the thing: it doesn’t achieve anything. it doesn’t make your writing better, it doesn’t make people want to read your work, and doesn’t make you want to keep going. it just hurts.

so have some charity. have some respect for your art and effort. readers will often surprise you: more people than you might imagine want to see you succeed, more readers than you think will have good faith in you. but first, you have to start by having good faith in yourself.

[shinsouisprecious]

[ao3commentoftheday]

life's too short to write for an imaginary critic that you fear will hate what you wrote

[ao3commentoftheday]

to be clear, odds are good that someone will hate what you wrote, but that doesn't mean the writing is bad. That means they aren't part of your audience.

don't write for them.

[prof-grace-aspen]

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

[nope-the-weeb-deactivated202408]

I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the "how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there"

[prof-grace-aspen]

Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.

[askinfresh]

These tags were too perfect to not include

[n-moonbreeze]

Fanfic tiktok is wild... I see so many people saying shit like "I could never read anything below 60k!!", or "What story can you even tell in under 5k words?" or "A oneshot below 10k isn't even a story!" or "I always filter completed fics by 100k< only!"

And I'm like...

A) which fandoms are you reading fics for where you have this kind of offerings on the regular?

B) have you heard of short stories? If you truly think every story NEEDS to be longform to connect with people, I sincerely feel sorry for you.

C) Average novel length is between 50k to 100k. I'm sorry, but CONSISTENTLY demanding fic writers to push out fics of that length is insane. Just think about it: YOU DEMAND AUTHORS TO PUT OUT FICS THAT COMPARE TO COMMERCIAL NOVELS IN LENGTH (AND QUALITY) AS A BASELINE.

Yall are wilding.

[eeveethejedi]

[ex-riddlecats]

im starting to think you guys dont like it when stories make you feel things

[archaardvarkarchive]

hm, people don’t like being in pain? Huh! It’s almost like pain is unpleasant? Or something?

or rather, the extreme ends of pain?

whoda thunk

angst: tolerable, the character is still alive

death: the author is maximizing pain when they have the power to just. not.

idk how this isn’t pretty common sense.

[astralcities]

i don't know how to explain to you that depicting loss is one of the most common forms of art and that authors "maximize pain" for artistic and narrative reasons. every element of a story is something an author has the power to just "not". because it is made up. this is the story the author wanted to tell. are you following me

[archaardvarkarchive]

something being common does not speak to its usefulness, fittingness, whether it should be done, etc

You know what’s more common than a vast number of people realize? Child abuse.

it being common does not speak to any other aspect of it.

Desiring to maximize pain isn’t automatically ‘whatever’ just because the desire exists.

In fact, to be Buddhist about it for a minute, desires themselves hold people back.

And yes, glad you agree that in the creative process the author always has the power to ‘just not’ and it’s not a compulsion, they are not compelled or beholden to an idea just bc it occurs to them.

[khamomile-kitty]

^ This guy reads pictures books only

[tarysande]

When your character tells you a thing and you, the author, are like, “No, you’re shitting me,” and the character’s all, “I absolutely am not,” and you realize that every single seed needed to grow that thing WAS ALREADY PLANTED IN THE STORY.

[tarysande]

I think this is my most popular post of all time.

The funniest part? I STILL HAVEN’T WRITTEN THE REVEAL THE CHARACTER SO HELPFULLY PROVIDED.

[swiftispunk-deactivated20241031]

*THIS WAS SENT TO A FRIEND. NOT ME*

the friend who received this is too nice to say something about it but i have reached a point now where i have seen them receive so many messages like this that i just can't keep my mouth shut anymore

this is straight up evil behaviour. whatever lighthearted tone this anon thought they were sending this with, i don't care. it's gross in every sense.

i'm speaking directly to whoever sent this now and frankly, if you follow me, non, unfollow me right fucking now because i don't want this energy anywhere near my blog. it hurts enough that you've targeted my friends with it.

listen up because apparently it bears repeating for the millionth fucking time -

FANFICTION AUTHORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. they have lives and jobs and school and things they struggle with. maybe they've even spoken publicly about their struggles in the hopes their readers would understand them a bit better because at the end of the day this is a community and they have every right to use this space however they fucking want to.

"don't start a fic you can't finish" - literally shut up. shut up! we are not paid to do this, i will start and not finish whatever the fuck i want.

and holy shit, anon. as if this message wasn't disgusting enough, please let me state plainly something you "desperately" need to hear: no robot can give you what a human writer can. and the fact that you even threatened to just go to AI at this point shows how little you care about storytellers and all they provide for you.

again, i don't care if every word of this message was sent in jest or meant to be read playfully. it's not fucking cute. this shit hurts writers and ya'll need to realize that.

if you take time out of your life to send messages like this, you're a bad person. period. this is not how fanfic works, it's not how the world works. if you can wait two-three years for a movie or a new season of your favourite tv show, you can wait a few months for a fanfic to update. or you can wait forever. we literally owe you nothing.

i'm done sugarcoating it, ya'll. disrespectfully, grow up. grow up! enough is enough.

anyway

[keldabe-kriff]

Hey anon if you've got that big a bug up your ass about works taking too long to get finished here's a handy goddamn tool for you:

You're welcome you ungrateful fuck.

[aniseandspearmint]

Part of fanfiction is going on the JOURNEY with the author. And yeah, sometimes that means ending up in a dead end. But the journey was still FUN, wasn't it?

I really do NOT get people who bitch and moan about unfinished works.

[ekjohnston]

I have had Heart Eyes Emoji open in a tab on my laptop since 2019. It hasn't been updated since 2020. It's probably never going to be updated again. IT ENDS ON A CLIFFHANGER.

This is how I know I am alive.

[pyracantha14]

I've been the one not finishing and i am SO LUCKY that people have given me grace and not piled on. I can only imagine how awful that feels. It's bad enough that I AM BERATING MYSELF. I don't need anyone else doing it.

[tarysande]

I have some pretty longstanding unfinished WIPs. I intend to finish them. Heck, I updated one after, like, five years. But messages like this one aren't the messages that inspire me. And there's actually a psychological reason for that.

Employing negativity, including shame, as a punishment--even when couched in passive-aggressive "nice" tones--does not promote positive behaviors. It promotes social withdrawal and poor self-esteem.

Not a great way to encourage anyone. Not a great way to encourage an artist to return to their art.

So, if you send a message that's basically shaming an author for not following the schedule you want them to follow, you're not helping. You're ensuring that the author curls up even tighter in their ball of "why can't I just DO THIS" misery, sprinkled liberally with "I'm just disappointing people and my next chapter will probably disappoint them too and why even bother? No one cares. They're getting AI to finish my story now."

If you're hoping an author will one day return to the story you so desperately want to see finished, try sending them a gushing account of the things you love--minus the manipulation tactics. I guarantee it works better than shame.

[dionysiaproductions]

[lou-wilham]

So writers joke a lot about "drinking the tears of our readers", but I want to be so honest with you when I tell you that making you cry isn't our real goal. Making you feel is.

Kicking your feet? Giggling? Can't stop smiling? And yes, crying? Feeling anything, everything. That's our goal. That means we did The Job.

[sowearecleariamhere]

has this been done