one of the reasons those ‘fanfiction isn’t on the same level as REAL books’ posts are so dumb specifically is where we see this conversation play out. someone says ‘fanfiction isn’t REAL literature’, someone disagrees with them or tries to present examples of ‘real’ books being transformative to some degree, and then the op replies with ‘i don’t know how to tell you this but your 40k word omegaverse destiel coffee shop fanfiction isn’t the same as dante’s inferno’ like what a brilliant take. what a genius take. what a genius thing to say that’s very motivated by intellectual honesty. incredible
‘well you see, the absolute worst fanfiction i can possibly envision in my head is clearly much worse than the best book i can think of, therefore, Fanfiction Bad Book Good’. genius. incredible. prize winning. really intellectually honest rigorous contribution to a nuanced conversation about the increasingly growing role of transformative works from fan communities in the world of literature. ten out of ten
Tag: fandom
anyway attack on titan is nazi propaganda and i dont trust ppl who like it, and as a Jew™ and general decent person i have the fucking right to say i hate snk and fans of it on my own blog
also hetalia (i dont feel the need to link a source for that one since it is literally called axis powers hetalia and one of the main characters is a personification of nazi germany)
hi there, i hope its okay that i add onto this! i am a korean jew and i think its important to state that attack on titan also glorifies japans history of oppressing korea. the source emma provided also goes further into detail about this if anyone wants to know more
tysm for this post because snk makes me so uncomfortable, and not a lot of people realize what it is
Attack on Titan’s author believes in eugenics and thinks Korean people aren’t even human; I can’t ever understand why someone would want to support the work of a guy like this
the post linked in the first part was deleted – here’s an archived version of it
Can non Jews reblog? Because this is kinda a Big Deal
OP didn’t answer (at least not on this version of the thread), but I would say yes, gentiles absolutely should reblog. Lack of knowledge is what allows this shit to grow unchecked.
… OH my 😮
this is fucking WILD to me. imagine being so incredibly butthurt about a kids show about singing punching space rocks and friendship is magic, that you are blind to the fact that LITERAL ACTUAL REAL LIFE CRIME IS BAD. can’t relate. what the fuck. what the fuck. this is why I’m still on this hellsite nowhere else can you get such incredibly stupid takes. I admire your patience in dealing with such people, Ship.
Apparently for some people, the act of consuming or enjoying media that allegedly “glorifies” an immoral behavior is actually equal to or possibly worse than… actually doing it…
Someone in the notes of that post left a comment like “both things can be bad, it doesn’t have to be a competition” and I burst into hysterical laughter. The idea that “liking a subjectively unsatisfying children’s cartoon” is in any conceivable way competing with literal abuse and murder for the Most Immoral Award is just… I have no words. Fandom was a mistake. I’m so, so tired.
something that I feel like is missing from fandom nowadays is the idea that you dont have to have a unified, chronologically/tonally consistent interpretation of your favorite work. your fics dont have to fit within the same version of canon, even if theyre all canon-compliant on their own. your headcanons can contradict each other. be a multishipper. write metas that take two totally different interpretations of the same plot point. write a character as a villain and then write them as the hero next time. write a character as a lesbian and then write them as straight next time! engage in hypotheticals and drop them when you get bored! make up the rules as you go!! have fun with it!!!
i found my old fanfiction account the other day and it actually surprised me how many different ships i wrote fanfiction for, often with the same characters. ones that contradicted my primary ships. ones that i barely even shipped, but thought ‘hey this would be cool’. how there was an established fanon version of canon but no one felt obliged to keep that; breaking fanon was cool and fun and refreshing. i wish there was more of that these days.
i know this is a difficult concept for a lot of tumblr to grasp but villains can have Reasons for becoming villains (trauma, abuse, etc) and can still be irredeemable for the things they have done because of it lol like….simply not every villain needs to be redeemed just because you like them. you are allowed to just like villains even if they are bad people. having Trauma
™ is not an excuse, it’s just a contextualization.
my exceedingly hot take is that discourse surrounding a few well-known properties (off the top of my head, Steven Universe, She-Ra and Star Wars) as well as the fanfic instinct to turn your favorite bad guy into an uwu smol bean cinnamon roll seems to have poisoned the well on how a lot of people in fandom think about villains.
like you guys know that redemption arcs are the exception and not the rule, right? Like the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of villains are created with no intention of being redeemed. The key element in writing villains is that even if you think they’re making bad decisions, you have to understand why they’re making them, and this is the purpose that a tragic backstory usually serves. It’s supposed to give the villain a motivation that can make you go “ok, they’re clearly off the rails but I understand why they’re off the rails.”
I mean don’t get me wrong, Zuko is a great character and his arc is super compelling and amazing, and I’m not saying redemption arcs are a bad thing, but I am saying that people need to stop shouting “REDEMPTION ARC?” whenever we see a villain that was an abuse victim or has a soft spot for the hero or whatever other plot elements are supposed to make them three-dimensional and human. This is not a useful lens to view 95% of villains through and if you apply it outside that rare 5% you’re going to dig yourself into some truly stupid posts.
people are like “oh i think my immortal is real because i think it’s just too much effort to do for a troll” and ms. scribe was over there sockpuppeting like half the fandom and helping the implosion of an entire fic archive while writing fic
tbh I think landscaper/sex shop owner should be the hot new au. florist/tattoo artist au but make it 2020. we need new cliches in this chili’s
if it’s an ot3 situation the owner of the crematorium can be there too, the more the merrier
you’re right and you should say it. make it so, fandom. tag your ships.
a non-selective plan for the resurgence of fic commissions
When I say “writers don’t want your unsolicited criticism” and “leaving unsolicited criticism on fanfiction hurts writers” THIS is what I mean.
This isn’t even all of them, this is just from a FEW posts on the subject. Read through these, and then look me in the eyes and say you’re ~helping writers~ by leaving that criticizing comment on someone’s fic when they didn’t ask you to.
You’re hurting or, at best, annoying us. You’re hurting fandom.
You’re not helping us.
Here is what good criticism looks like:
1) Start with something you loved!
You can even stop here, because positive feedback is still constructive criticism.
2) Ask questions that you wish the Author had asked themself
Was there anything that you wish had been explained or developed more? What direction do you wish the Author had taken? Let the author know if there were any places you got confused.
3) Ask the author if they had any specific concerns, then address them.
Maybe the Author stressed over a certain paragraph being too boring. Either offer suggestions, or put their fears to rest.
4) End with something else you liked!
If you are reviewing a hard copy of someone’s work, put lil hearts by the phrases that made you smile!
-Don’t correct spelling or grammar unless you are not able to understand a sentence/paragraph/the whole story because of it. Grammar and spelling will improve naturally as a reader/writer matures, and that is not your job. You are not the grammar police. Anyone who self-proclaims themselves as one needs to grow uo.
-Don’t say anything about who the author is as a person. Feedback should just be a product of the interaction between reader+work.
My life as a writer began when an English teacher decided to take my sappy teenage work seriously. Writing is a journey of constant improvement. The best feedback you can give is: “I’m proud of you.”
Stop this. Stop it.
You’re obviously jumping into an argument with no idea of the history of it , but this is the exact behavior I’m talking about that’s damaging.
Fandom isn’t a writing class. We are not in English 101 with you. You’re not our teacher, and we’re not students that you need to correct by giving us unsolicited criticism. You’re not even my beta reader. You’re Joe Schmoe on the internet and we don’t want your unsolicited criticism on how to improve.
Listen, I know you mean well, but please take a moment and look at what you just did. You looked at a hundred comments from a hundred people saying “please stop doing this behavior, it’s hurting us” and said “okay, but here’s how to do this behavior anyway.”
No! The point is stop doing it. YOU are the one hurting us.
“My life as a writer began when an English teacher decided to take my sappy teenage work seriously. Writing is a journey of constant improvement.“
I mean, listen.
I started writing fanfiction at eleven–and you can imagine how terrible that was–which my dad found and read.
Despite the fact that it was terrible, thinly veiled Mary Sue self-insert, my dad took it seriously. He told me that it was amazing and imaginative and he never would’ve thought to do the thing I did in that one story, etc, etc.
It was terrible writing, but he only ever encouraged me to write more. He only ever gave me compliments.
You’re right, writing is a journey of constant improvement, but nowhere is it written that that journey must be made on a road where random passersby throw rotten fruit at you under the guise of helping you.
I am the writer I am today not because my dad criticized my work or because of snotty, holier-than-thou comments on the internet. I’m the writer I am today because I’ve been practicing for over fifteen years.
Year after year, fic after fic, fandom after fandom, I have gotten consistently better at crafting stories and it’s not because of so-called “constructive criticisms” on fanfiction that I’m already done writing.
It’s because I got encouragement when I needed it and silence when I needed that.
I’m not saying that everyone’s story is mine or that people even grow the way I do and I’m not saying that criticism is never warranted.
I’m saying that constructive criticism is a beta’s job and that it useless after the fact, which is when the author gets your comment–after the story is posted, after it is done being written–and that are there enough writers out there that DO learn and grow just by practicing that perhaps you should be mindful of what you comment on a fic.
That is literally the entire argument.
How many screenshots of messages and tags have to be posted before people get that they’re hurting writers instead of helping them?
“You’re ruining my fun thing by turning it into homework” is my favorite screenshot from this post.
@ao3commentoftheday I recall a huge discussion on your blog about this sort of thing, and thought might be a addition to offer the masses on the subject of unsolicited criticism and why fandom etiquette is not to give it.
i have seen some people criticizing the new things ao3 wants to implement and all of them seem to misunderstand the new proposed functions so much
for those who aren’t aware, the otw recently issued a statement on upcoming changes they want to make on ao3 in response to certain racist issues in fandom. i’ve seen people said they are “giving in to fandom police” or in some way want to put limit on the content that is allowed on the site, and that is not true at all. it’s not even close to what they are doing
all the measures they want to implement are due to instances of fans being victims of racial harassment and racist fans worsening people’s fan experience. all the measures proposed by ao3 will either help people protect themselves from harassment (freezing comments threads, turning off comments on your fics, muting/blocking users, updating the tos to allow the abuse team to deal with forms of harassment that were not previously covered) or improve their fandom experience by better filtering out content (changes to the search function in collections, possibly implementing new archive warnings, and again muting/blocking users). that’s it. at no point are they saying they will restrict the content you’re allowed to post. all of these are perfectly reasonable measures that can help improve the experience of literally everyone involved
overall, the concerns about fans of color being harassed/attacked are very real, and the otw is trying to give users better ways to protect themselves. it’s ridiculous to say ao3 is trying to censor people. when we say fans should curate their own fandom experience that also includes fans having ways to do it, and that includes giving them tools to block harassers, trolls, and other people who deliberately try to start shit
part of the critique of ao3/otw was how their structures and processes for denying censorship were failing to allow users (especially bipoc) to protect themselves from harassment (especially of the racist kind). to conflate critique and analysis of racism (personal and institutional) with anti-ism is such a bad faith argument.
archive of our own. if you want a space where authors can write whatever they like without censorship, then we must tear down the structures and barriers that prevent bipoc from safely and comfortably participating in fandom.
ifesbob 