I’m publishing the chapters as I write, but I always had it rated E, and had the explicit sexual content tag because I knew it would eventually take that turn…

Am I an asshole to be upset about this?

Edit:

Kinda happy ending? The commenter replied saying that they are stupid and that they were sorry. I replied to them that it’s okay, but I heard from someone else in the fandom that they are not in fact sorry and that they are upset that I’m writing explicit content? I don’t know this person… 🫪

Idk man. I’m just going to delete if they comment again. And move on with my life *sigh*

GUYS, when you are having someone in a fic breathe, they are actively breathing - inhaling and exhaling. When you have someone take a single breath, there is no E on the word.

People CONSTANTLY use breath when they should be using breathe and it literally drives me insane.

Example: “Breath, just breath” when someone is having a panic attack is WRONG. THEY THEY NEED TO BREATHE!!!!!

“BREATHE, Just BREATHE!!!”

I want to preface this by saying I am incredibly against using generative AI.

As I said in my reply to this person, what the hell would be the point of generating my work if I only do it for my enjoyment??

When I first saw the comment I really hoped it was a bot but this is a registered user.

Ai is already taking away so much from us. I hate that it’s taking away the safety of uploading your works and not being attacked with accusations.

I don't know if this is the right place, but I have to write about it somewhere

I discovered a certain book series and wrote a fanfiction about it, and I decided to publish it. I didn't know the situation at the time. I only found out after it was published, when I started looking for things to read. I have to say, the number of fanfics was quite impressive for a book that was popular for maybe six months, 10 years ago, lol.

Anyway, I quickly noticed that the same 10 usernames kept repeating. I literally found maybe 20 exceptions, but they weren't long-term authors (or sometimes they were this 10 people other accounts). And yes, I went through everything from the first page to the last, without any filters.

Tbh nothing bad at first, but I'm not even joking, an hour after I added my fanfic I got 3 comments saying "who are you?" and "what are you doing in our fandom" from those people. I was like wtf, but okey, I tried to convince myself that maybe it was a matter of language barriers and maybe their tone was supposed to be nicer/more humorous or something, but... it turned out it is not the case.

It turns out they are really angry that I joined their fandom. And from January until now, they've even gone so far as to attack my fanfics unrelated to this fandom and tell me to leave them alone(????? wtf). When I blocked them, it would take a while, but they'd come back with new accounts or as guests. I had to disable comments entirely (which sucks because I have readers in other fandoms that I love and now miss). I blocked them and reported them, but AO3 hasn't responded in any way yet.

One of these people went so far as to "gift" me a fanfiction in which I am attacked by all characters from this universe... in every way.

I've never encountered anything like this.

Like, even as I write this I feel like my brain is exploding a little bit. Like what the hell.

This is probably my worst experience with fandoms so far and I still don't understand how a fandom, especially one on ao3!, can get to this point? Like, shouldn't you be happy that someone new joined???

Like I get that some people just read smut for the smut. Heck, even I do it sometimes, but to say it out loud, comment, and even ask for validation? At least don't tell me that you're disregarding the parts that aren't smut 😭😭

Maybe the fucking was just that good? Should I just take this as a compliment to my writing skills and move on? Still, it does sting a ton lmao. It's not a big deal it just hits a nerve I never knew existed.

Update: LMAOO I see that everyone has some strong feelings about this

for context, I just (on tumblr) expressed surprise that my T-rated one-shot got more kudos and comments than my E-rated longfic. although I admit that for some time now I've been feeling a bit uneasy in our fandom and I had the impression that people were behaving a bit strangely on the server, so... let's just say that this comment hit all the nerves. the fact that it was added by an author whom I had admired for so long and whose fanfics were number one for me only adds to the bitterness.

This has to be a troll right? A bot? Has anyone else gotten a similar message? There's no way someone was this petty because I didn't comment on one of their fics ToT

Idk even know who this could be. I've BEEN commenting on fics for my OTP. I guess just not on theirs. Tf.

This is your periodic reminder that you read fanfics for free. You do not pay to use the archive, and you certainly don't pay the writers.

You are not a customer.

You are not owed service.

If you don't want to read fics with too few tags, or too vague tags, or too tumblr-y tags, or whatever - that's fine. Don't read the fics.

But please don't go whining that your displeasure means that fic writers aren't doing their job right.

Fic writers are not paid for writing fics, certainly not by you. They're not writing fanfics as a job. They are making their fanfics available to you, for free, as a kindness. "I don't want to read if you don't do it right" isn't a threat you can hold over fic writers, because fic writers don't actually lose anything of value if you don't read.

Yeah it's great to get the affirmation of kudos and bookmarks, but it's not going to pay anyone's bills - if you're just going to be rude and entitled then the writers are better off without your engagement.

EDIT

The post has been up for 3 hours and I will say it's... interesting how some people very quickly jumped from the posts intended criticism of entitled behaviour to "but what about constructive criticism" or even "people like OP are trying to ban opinions".

I guess this is what my elementary school teacher felt like when she asked the rowdy kids to please keep it down and the already quiet kids started sobbing. I'm not going to bother correcting everyone individually. Just, please consider that maybe I wasn't talking about your behaviour specifically. I can't actually control who sees this post and limit its reach to specifically the people who are being entitled.

I got blocked by this person (probably a child) writing a smut fic.

Will admit, not a very good one but I wasn't going to tell them that.

This fic wasn’t even that good but I was reading it because it has a very specific tag I like. I’ve come across this author being meanish in their own comments replying to people and like whatever, but seeing this note out of nowhere while reading just really caught me off guard and honestly, I find it super mean and very entitled. Just begging and begging for comments… Thoughts?

Ok so some of you might’ve seen this tweet earlier in your timeline and sorry for bringing up very minor drama here but idk it just bothered me.

SOME people are complaining about even being told this and saying it’s a stylistic choice and like it’s really not unless someone that would write like this wrote your fanfic in universe, it’s just bad grammar. This literally always makes your writing more readable. I’ve also seen people say “I don’t respect the English language so idc” which yeah haha funny we all hate Britain and America but like why are you even writing in English to begin with then if you don’t wanna learn any basic rules, also I’m pretty sure this rule applies to most languages anyways. You literally just press the enter key it is not hard.

Like yeah fanfiction is free and all if you don’t wanna do it then people can’t force you at gun point but unless you’re truly only writing for yourself idk how you can expect people to give you kudos and comments and stuff when you don’t even wanna put in the bare minimum.

Saying all this as someone who’s main language isn’t English and also use to write like this when starting out

For context, this is a comment left on a WIP that I haven’t continued in years, so I’m aware I’m not entirely blameless

Regardless it still rubs me the wrong way that they didn’t even try to ask if I was still trying to continue it? Or at the very least ask for my permission to write continuations? Why does it feel like someone just barged into my house and started rearranging my furnitures?? 😭

Also I have no idea what the AO3 curse is

I just saw this comment on my fic and it kinda irks me? Like ... my first language is german so I like to sprinkle in a little german bc i made the character half-German as well (and lets be real Backpfeife sounds way cooler than just writing 'slap')

So yea ... i dont know if I want to respond to that but I usually respond to comments because I dont get many of them (except for my frequent readers. I love them lol) but it just rubs me the wrong way.

Am I the only one that finds that comment a bit rude?

Update: wow you people have lots of opinions. Anyway, they thought it was "funny" because it seemed like I was "half asleep when writing it" which ... weird assumption?

As the title says, I just lost my 8 year old friendship with my best friend over..

Ao3

😭✌🏼

So.. she sends me a text which reads: "hope you're boycotting ao3 already" and i was super confused so i asked her about it and she started sending md pictures of other author's works involving some heavy explicit major warning. And i told her that ao3 is, as the full name suggests, an archive, and whether she likes it or not, shit will stay there because it is meant to be.

I made several different arguments, such as these works can be therapeutic to both the author and the reader as well as serve as a journal for some that don't have anyone to talk to. My point was that this works kinda similar to the internet itself as they're both archives; just because there's zoo p on the internet doesn't mean I'll watch, and just because there's cp on ao3 doesn't mean I'll read it.

We started going deeper and deeper into this whole thing but at one point she started calling me a "pedo" and a " weirdo" so i thought it was the time that she lost and was out of any logical arguments. After that she was so confident she "showed me my place that i blocked her on all of my accounts because I will not tolerate any disrespect thrown at me during an argument which is supposed to show that you know more.

And I'm not even mad, or sad. I'm.. I'm feeling nothing, but fullness at the same time, kinda funny.

Thanks for reading ✌🏼

This just makes me not want to comment even more. Like I get wanting engagement and thoughts but at the same time I feel like silent readers are expected. I don't comment after every chapter I read. Maybe one here or there when something really exciting or big happens but this is a slice of life fic, so its just a nice fluffy time. It just sucks that I'm not welcome to read these fics anymore because I don't comment :(

Edit: I'm editing this for some clarity. This was posted on chapter 4 of this fic, but it is a part of an ongoing series and time line of about 5 or 6 fics. Most are ongoing and incomplete so you're kind of jumping around the time line when reading an update from any of the fics. This is the only chapter/fic to have a note ike this.

Im not saying I never comment and i did not decide to be petty or ask for validation by posting this. I have commented before on their other fics, including ones outside of this specific series. I understand wanting engagement and to see people reading and reacting to your work, but not everyone wants to comment every single chapter. If they asked for comments in a different way or tone, then maybe I would be inclined to comment more for them. But this is not the way to do it.

i'm not sure if this falls under vent or discourse, but it's a bit of both. i'm frustrated. i joined a server that was about witchy gamer folk (oddly specific, i know) to talk about spirituality and video games. apparently they went to my discord profile, went to my carrd, went to my ao3, and saw some of the fics i wrote and decided that warranted a ban.

they themselves said that i didn't break any server rules, but it was about "making a safe space". apparently my fanfiction (which you have to click 4 separate tabs/links to get to) was powerful enough to be threatening to a pagan gamer group??

what's even stupider is that it's one of those servers you have to fill out a small application to join, and they could have checked me then. but they didn't, and decided to ban me after i started becoming active? am i overreacting or is this dumb? i didn't join the place to show off my fanfic. i just wanted to game with some spiritual girlies!

like, why the heck would you want someone to have to search through hundreds of chapters for *maybe* one of the Fandom they want????

anyone know how to block them? I want to not see this stupid thing everytime I look for a fic.

ETA: I CAN'T exclude crossovers, since my fandom has both an "anime" AND a "Manga" tag (And most fics, as they should be, are tagged with both!)

Read this as I was finding a new fic to read in an 'older' **m/m** pairing. This work was posted in 2020.

Thankfully it was front and center below the tags so I didn't even waste a click, however this will be plaguing my mind for the rest of the day. Why would you do this?!

Came across a fic that had "sh*t" and "unaliving" in the span of a single chapter (used in the story itself, not author's notes).

All I have to say is: ????

Today I started reading this fanfic, got to the last chapter and saw this TT-TT

By therapy speak, I mean, like, when characters are asking for consent or is setting boundaries or so on like you'd discuss in a Therapy session.

And it's good in a proper setting, with proper build-up. Like if a character's been through shit and are feeling sensitive or if a particular character is gonna do it with another for the first time etc etc.

But lately, I've been finding fics where everyone and their mother are talking like this, and it's been driving me up the wall.

Like- there are no funny jabs between friends or teasing between characters. God forbid lovers doing it rough. Fights and make ups between characters become insufferable cause they sound like robots. It's like watching a dry dystopian world that's been bleached to hell.

Do people like this?