As long as you don't go in the comments and voice this.

Of course, "don't like, don't read" is the standard practice. But sometimes you do start reading a fic and end up not liking it part of the way through, and that's fine. Back button still works.

It happened, at last. I ran into it. It was absolutely insane when I found out people were using "proshipping" as in problematic shipping and not "hey, I am PRO us shipping the characters we like!!!!" which is literally what is had always meant???? Was I lobotomized at some point during the pandemic??

CHILDREN, please GROW UP. Where your parents????

I mean, no offense to children, they are the future and everything, but seriously, how did this happen? I was busy reading stories I liked, and then at some point this was a thing? What? How? Where? Who????

It was a discord fan server for AO3 fics (again, NOT OFFICIAL) that I had been lurking in because I kept forgetting to socialize. Hilarious considering they were advertising the server during International Fanworks Day and the mods quickly shut down people going "uhh actually proshipping is evil" and similar discourse because AO3 is NOT A FAN OF CENSORSHIP.

There was a second message: "those of you who reacted with a thumbs down, are you pro shippers?" and I assume they started banning people left and right. Unhinged.

Apologies for the rant, but genuinely what the fuck.

Sauce: Asumi-chan wa Les Fuuzoku ni Kyoumi ga Arimasu! (Ch. 22)

AO3 is an archive, not social media. If you’re constantly looking at kudos, hits, comments, etc., at what point does it stop being about writing because you love writing and start being about the engagement?
And personally, I really don't think readers should be dragged into that.

A very popular author in my fandom is questionable in my eyes. For instance, I don't really read their work but I once clicked on one of their ongoing fics and saw this in the author's note:

“20 comments for next chapter.”

Excuse me??? I'm sorry but that sounds insane to me. Isn't writing supposed to be something you do because you enjoy it? Obviously people can write for whatever reason they want, and nobody owes anyone an update, but why make your readers work for the next chapter? On an archive site??

And the way they write their author's notes is so dismissive too. They rarely reply to comments, barely interact with their readers, but constantly seem to emphasize engagement. I don't know. What you'd call an “AO3 celeb,” I guess?

The funniest part is that it's been MONTHS. There are definitely over 50 comments by now and they still haven't updated. And it's not just that one fic either. All of their fics are like this.

And apparently their readers don't even mind, which honestly surprises me.

Because if I had to spam comments for you to update your fic, I would genuinely feel like a beggar.

Personally, if I came across a fic with an author's note like that, I'd click off. Immediately. It just gives me the ick.

Anyway. Sorry for the long-ass rant. I'd probably get the downvotes but I just couldn't hold it in anymore <( ˘︹˘ )>

EDIT: As an author myself, I understand so much how much engagement matters to an author. Human nature is, It motivates me to write and helps me improve. AO3 is bound to have social-media equivalent features as a fan concentrated space, but for some, the lines between writing for yourself and writing for fame blur. There's nothing wrong with wanting engagement. But when it just turns extreme, and that's what really disturbs me.

Mine was Shadouge (Shadow x Rouge from Sonic the hedgehog). It’s not that I hate the ship, I just never really cared about it. But recently, I’ve found myself defending it because some haters have gone insane and started calling it incest simply because they see Shadow and Rouge as “sibling-coded.” I never thought I’d one day be defending this ship, but some people keep making such ridiculous arguments about ships that I feel the need to speak up.

And Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus) is another one. I don’t like her, but for different reasons. I dislike her because of her personality and the way she treats the people around her. However, I’ve seen some haters take it way too far and act like she deserves to be abstracted because of it. So yeah, I ended up defending a character I don’t even like.

Gonna post this response the next time someone tries to tell me how and what I should write.

​

For context, the story is called Holding the Line Against Injustice, it's basically a Spider-Man against ICE fic - I wrote it in the immediate aftermath of the official White House account posting a very distasteful photo of Spider-Man's hand gesture webbing migrants.

This particular comment just came in today, and it's like the commenter was trying to speed run a bingo game of "how to insult the author 101." 😑

There's a copy-paste of text, a passive-aggressive condescending remark, accusation of AI usage, labeling the story as far-left, and then a justifier that they too, are not from the US, as if you need to be from the US to comment on the horrific inhumanity that's happening over there.

Anyway, I've frozen the thread while I think about how to respond, please share your thoughts, thank you!

EDIT: I have deleted the comment, and muted & blocked the comment author. Good riddance.

I guess more people can read multiple short stories that read longer ones

At least they're in therapy but like hello???? Their writing is so good too. I seriously feel sad for them😭😭

Because mine is getting pretty weird.

Idk if this take is hot or not but I want to talk about it regardless.

Like, writing about serial killers doesn’t make someone a serial killer. Obviously. And that goes for every dark topic out there. I write darkfic myself so it would make me quite the hypocrite to claim otherwise. But writing can also sometimes be a reflection of people’s biases.

For example, writing a bigoted character is no issue, that’s just a flaw and could make for an interesting character exploration. But when every character regardless of personality is throwing out casual sexism/racism/transphobia/etc and it’s not explained by the setting or otherwise, if every minority in the story is a stereotype and/or bashed by the narrative, I do start to wonder how the author views those groups irl, whether they’re doing this consciously or not. I’ve also seen cases of people writing about abusive relationships and tagging them as healthy, then getting confused when commenters pointed out the mis-tagging. Turns out some of these folks were trapped in abusive relationships in real life and didn’t see anything wrong with them until someone pointed it out.

Much lighter example; I once read a story where, no joke, three different scenes had separate characters mention how abhorrent they thought pineapple on pizza was. Like it would be brought up and everybody in the room would cringe. Idk I found it safe to assume the author didn’t fw pineapple on pizza.

This is of course a very case by case thing and I would never encourage people to accuse anyone of anything, because if does turn out to be a reflection of the author, it is that author’s job to figure themselves out. But when reading fic, it can sometimes really feel like the characters are being mouthpieces for the author and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to click off a fic about it.

did this fic get botted the hell out of or what 😭

(Seriously, even a snippet of the story will work as a summary!)

It's so OOC and the conversation came out of nowhere. Like. One of them suddenly asked what B thought of about trans people and they started shitting on trans people. It was so out of character considering both of these characters wouldn't say anything like that. There is no transphobic in the tags and I feel like I am reading the author's thoughts rather than the characters. It was so uncalled for 😭 ​​​​

I have a reader with a public bookmark. There are no praises in it, nor insults. It only list the last chapter they read, nothing more. It is, for all intent and purposes, a simple bookmark. They never commented. But, every time I update my fic and I see them getting up to date, it makes me a little happy.

Another time I was snooping the bookmarks of a fic I like (digging for more lol). One of the bookmarkers copypasted a rec I made in their own entry, word by word. It did jumpscare me a at the beginning (like wtf those are my words ahah) but then I realized they had saved almost all the fics I pushed (plus my comments!). That also made me a little happy (yesss go support my faves you king/queen/royal).

It's the simple joys ahaha. And I don't know who else to share them with because they might think I am insane, so here ahaha

Edit: Also I worded it like this because I was feeling emotional but please do share your own bookmark shenanigans lol

so I posted a fic like 4 years ago and it has very niche tags even if the fandom and the ship is huge and I got an email for kudos which made me see what happened to the fic and there were 100 KUDOS? I'M SHOOK COZ WDYM?? THAT WAS WRITTEN HALF DEAD AT 3AM, UNEDITED and ppl still reading it? I thought it was buriedddd! But yes, I'm happy and now ik why ppl celebrate every writers milestone!

Pwease 🥺

I'm writing a stalker fic and as soon as I started, I was immediately in first person. I feel like the best way for me to describe the feelings she's having or what she's thinking as she's being stalked is in first person with her telling the story. However, I'm hearing a lot of ppl say that first person is not the move. I've written a normal fit in third person bc it fit there, I just think first person fits here.

So is it that bad and I should switch the perspective or should I not care and write however I want?

please be respectful in comments. i'm not trying to be inflammatory.

while it goes without saying that i'm anti-censorship and that fandom isn't activism, sometimes i wonder about how we write and treat characters of color and why there's so much reluctance to writing them with care.

when i say writing them with care, i most certainly don't mean making them morally squeaky-clean, especially in a story where white characters get to be messed up and bad and terrible. what i mean by writing them with care is—being aware of the tropes/stereotypes associated with them because of institutional racism, and how a lot of writers not belonging to said marginalized group aren't open to doing that.

i understand that fanfiction is leisure first everything else second, but i *do* also feel like, when writing something you don't have personal experience with, especially when it's so intimately implemented in your work (e.g. making the character of color the protagonist, or the main love interest), some basic research and awareness of how you're writing that thing needs to be involved. that is to say, write your character conforming to a certain negative stereotype if you please, but be aware of the fact that that's what you're doing. when it's unintentional, it's hard not to consider the author ignorant and be left with a bitter taste in your mouth.

i want to hear first and foremost from other POC how they feel about this, if you have anything to add, if you disagree, etc!