@the-lakes oh my god same! when fics get to the comfort part i usually get pretty bored and switch to another angsty fic. my favourite of the hurt/no comfort category at the moment is major character death
I just realized that I don't usually look at titles when I'm looking for fanfics. I look at the summary, skim the relationship tags, and then I decide if I want to read it or not.
Yes! I feel like titles don’t usually give away much and other than my favorite wattpad story, I really don’t remember any of the names of other stories I have read.
Slowburns are a hit or miss tag for me. If it's a slowburn because the feelings take time to develop, that's my freaking jam. If it's a slowburn because they just don't know how to say "I like you" it drives me up the wall.
I think you’ve fully articulated what it is about slow burns for me because I feel the exact same! I love them but I’ve always wondered why so many of them are a miss for me even when most of my favourite works are slow burns. If I wanted to read the characters bumbling around to confess then I’d rather read a one shot, otherwise it feels like I’m wasting my time.
I also think that if it’s slow because the characters need to develop/be in the right place to get together in a healthy way then that can work too. (Though I don’t love when it feels like authors put off those revelations just so they can complicate other storylines/the plot by having it come up at an inopportune moment.)
I absolutely hate media (fanfics, movies, books, series, anything) where I could easily fix the whole plot by having the characters sit down and TALK LIKE ADULTS. If the biggest problem you can come up with is "they're bad at communicating" you're not very imaginative, I don't think I've ever seen it done right
My hot take: People take fanfic wayyy too seriously. Some people out here saying how only reading finished fanfiction is bad or how themes in fanfic can be harmful. Like…. Y’all. This is for fun for most of us, and everyone has their preferences on how they like to read and what they like to read!!
i legit had a professor in college spend AN ENTIRE LECTURE talking about the "dangers of fanfic" and we all just sat there awkwardly and one brave soul raised her hand and was like "but i think it can be good..." and tried to defend fanfiction and how fun it is and the creative outlet and the professor just scolded her and continued on saying how bad it is and i was like ma'am....it's not that serious.
Pretty much me I've read some weird ass stuff in my time and honestly it's been entertaining. Weird but fun so I never understood people who got bent outta shape about it. Let me enjoy my tentacle catabolism smut in piece 😂 (JOKE)
Here's one thing I want everyone to know: FANFICTION IS SUPPOSED TO BE INDULGENT! Write anything you want! Write multiple genres, write one genre, write as many romances as you want, write purely platonic ships, write dark angsty stuff, write toothaching fluff, it doesn't matter! What matters is if *you* like it or not
YESSS THIS My favorite pairing isn’t going to become canon for a good couple years and the second season hasn’t even begun yet but THEY HAVE SO MUCH TENSION AND CHEMISTRY I JUST CAN’T AHHHH so I’m currently writing a mega fanfic full of all the possible scenarios and plotlines that could happen, including them finally becoming canon. It’s all I want in one fic, why shouldn’t I write it?
I think this is a hot take, but short characters are not always children, or "child-coded". Short adults exist. While not exclusive to fanfiction, it is something I see too often in fanfiction, and fandom as a whole. Justice for short kings.
Agreed. If that were true in real life, then I'd have been "adult-coded" at 9 years old because I grew tall fast. That is a great deal worse than just letting short adults be seen as their actual age.
This is especially true. But ive noticed in the, Zelda fandom, because one of our protags is canonical a short man and while we all enjoy memeing it, I don't think ive ever seen anyone describe him as child-like. Hooray for that!
@@missscarlet6044 It's usually because they're referring to short women as being "child-coded", since those types of people have been infantalising women for centuries and still are. 💀
I always got the impression that when people use “it feels/reads like fanfiction” in a bad way, what they mean is “this feels like something I wouldn’t pay for/ would just enjoy for free”
When someone described a fiction as 'fanfiction-y', i think they probably just mean it's more focus on how character feels and acts to things. like from the experience i have reading a bunch of stuff, romance fictions tends to feel more 'fanfiction-y', and when it comes to fictions with over-arching plot lines(so less time for emotions and stuff), the 'fanfiction vibes' tends to appeared when the character is suffering or is poring their heart out to each other. (the only example i can think of right now is probably Lester/Apollo from PJO:TOA?)
Actually gaged when I heard "I think its okay to use words like bluette or pinkette" when a second ago I was agreeing that I can over look poor grammar and spelling.
my unpopular opinion: i love reading unfinished fics at night. imagining the ending of the stories in my head to make me sleep is basically my night routine now
I like that too, but then I don't like not having the OPTION to look at the ending, and then I feel grumpy about it because I won't be able to read the ending in the morning
I legit get sad when i finish a completed fanfic, especially one without a satisfying end, but having the option to decide what happens next is so satisfying! I legit love it so much!
i love chat fics but it's so hard to find one i think is good😭😭like if all the characters type the same or have some out landish '90s sitcom' comedy to them i can't read it. don't get me wrong i love 90s sitcom, my favorite show is boy meets world, but todd anderson would never NEVER trauma dump in a gc😭
Ohh my lord especially when they use the fact that it’s a story posted on the internet to its fullest potential>>> Like I read this one chatfic that had actual links into the fic (this author made up a whole webpage and articles to add to the story!) and even embedded mp3 files to act as voice messages. It’s just so cool to see that because it adds more to the story and is something so unique to reading stories online compared to having physical books (no shade I still love them)
@@j0j0thefan I love when they focus on characters who don't get a lot of spot light. Some of my favorite chat fics explore the relationships between main characters and side characters who only get a few minutes of screen time, or only show up in one or two episodes.
Hot take: I think a writer should be able to update whenever they want. They shouldn't need to have an update schedule. If you wanna update once a week, great. If you don't have time to update until months later, that's also fine. Fanfic is about enjoying the source material so much that YOU want to write something. Fanfiction is not a transaction.
As a writer, THANK YOU! Sometimes life gets chaotic or inspiration has decided to go out the window, and we just don’t have the time or energy to write and update!
Exactly! I don't write but I hate that the authors feel like they have to have a schedule or justify why they took a break. Author of print or fanfiction are real like people with real life problems. Add on top of that for fanfiction and these people also have jobs and possibly school. Like geez Louise folks.
@@thatgirl_tab yeah, I've honestly never understood why people put so much pressure on writers to make chapters. If you can't handle a fic in progress- don't read one.
when i was into LOTR my taste was Sansukh and like two other fics but now that i’m into Lupin III i am drinking up everything i can find. it rlly depends DHDJDJJD
Yes! One of the fandoms I'm in only has around 20 fics, and most of them are written by the same author. They are pretty good reads, but when I try to find something different it's all insane crossover fics that I find boring
Unpopular opinion: Dead Dove Do Not Eat, as controversial as it is, deserves a place in the fanfiction community. Sometimes it scratches an itch in the back of your brain like.
@@dancingdyspraxicfairy i genuinely forgot but as far as i remember, basically something that should be treated seriously, often containing some sort of violence or very sensitive topics
@@dancingdyspraxicfairyIt basically means “you have been warned” often for when a fic is disturbing or confronting, a reader shan’t complain because it was in the tags or summary and they chose to read it
in my favourite fandom, my favourite fics are all unfinished. and these are like, 100k plus fics, they are some of the best literature i have read and they will never be finished, but at least i got to experience them
Legit never sort by finished. It could be one chapter out of ten that was written seven years ago and never updated and I'd still read it if it sounds fun. Some of the (very few) bookmarks I have are amazing fics that never got an ending. I'm just glad people wrote something cool and shared it tbh, finished or not.
I think people that say fanfiction can never be as good as books just haven't read any good fanfics yet, because I can certainly say that's not the case
bro fr. Some books are so badly written and have not so great plot or storyline, where as so many fanfics and fanfic authors are literal masters of writing, and their works are amazing reads
Oh my god, I always think back to this one Naruto fanfic series... It was just a fanfiction book series, period. It had all the markings of an original high-stakes romance/thriller that would've been published EASY and made bank, but it was fanfiction. I'm pretty sure the author was an actual published author of original works, too, but they wrote their fanfics like their originals. It's been my writing aspiration ever since and it's probably been ten years by now. All my writing has been curated to keep the Breath To Breathe series alive in artistic reference and reverence. I'm definitely not the same type of writer, but my style is highly influenced by that author to this day. It was the first time I'd ever seen a fanfic written that way, so now I write all mine like that, too. Keeping the dream alive one unfinished fic at a time...
Honestly. Not only that, but there's so many bad books, and so many authors that are professionally published but don't get any editing in their works. Of course one should read a variety of things, but that "books have a certain level of quality that fanfiction will never be able to reach" is just bullshit.
We NEED more platonic stories!!! I want a story about two characters being friends, having adventures or casual days, I want to read about them hanging out, I want to read about them loving each other PLATONICALLY!!!
Hear, hear!! I really just wanna read about my two favorite characters hanging out or doing shenanigans and having a non-romantic realtionship!!! We should have more!!!!
I love platonic relationships. It's nice to have people only become friends with each other, you know. When I write a story, mostly I will go with their relationship up to you, but most of the time I see them as platonic.
Lighthearted platonic friendships are really nice but as an angst lover heartfelt genuine displays of deep strong platonic love gets me. Every. TIME!!! Platonic bonds can be just as dramatic & over the top as love stories. I want to see friends that would sail across the world, go to the moon, pour blood sweat & tears, sacrifice everything for each other.
YES i totally agree with that, especially since i'm not that big of a fan of over the top ridiculous romantic relationships. Like, i get that cliches can be fun at times and i even agree with it, but there's nothing that demoralizes me more than wanting to see a canon/fanon friendship and only finding romance of it. And even if it's not canon, there's some characters i just can't see together in a romantic way - platonically, definitely so. I think it's even sadder when it happens in a really big fandom with thousands of thousands of fics, and only a handful of them are platonic relationships.
I love when soulmate AU's are very heavy on world-building and exploring the societal implications of their specific soulmate-system. The actual ships themselves in soulmate AU's are usually secondary or even boring to me.
Hard agree! Honestly, I like soulmate AUs that leave a level of uncertainty for the soulmates in question as well and still require them to get to know each other to an extent (ie. a unique tattoo with hints about your soulmate, 'the time is right and XYZ indicates it' etc), though I still also like it if the soulmates don't fall into each other's arms and go 'well we're still strangers/this is kind of pressuring'. But that doesn't happen often enough I find and it detracts a lot. But cultures around the soulmate element? That's fun. 'First thing they say to you is on your arm'? Everyone says weird shit as a standard greeting unique to themself. Strings? People are encouraged to travel when they're old enough to follow the string and seen as weird, callous, unmotivated, or alternatively very focused and dedicated on their own goals if they don't, and so on. There's just a lot to a world with this sort of fundamental element. Plus personally as a queer person, it feels like that changes the vibe about gay relationships a lot more and I like that.
@@fluffhead6757 Yeees! It is very nice to see gay relationships have a different dynamic to them in this way. I once read a fic in which people could get timers surgically implanted into them and once both parties in a soulmate pairing had the timer installed, it would start counting down to their first meeting. The main ship was very secondary in the fic, but it went into so many questions that could come with this system, like: How does the public react when a celebrity installs their timer? Is it moral/meaningful to date people before your timer goes off? How would you cope with seeing that your timer reads "40 years"? For some people that fear could be enough to never want to get a timer installed at all; but if you don't get your timer installed, there's a chance that somewhere your soulmate has their timer installed, but it will never start counting down until you get it too. There's so many different kinds of soulmate systems that exist/you can make and I feel like so many could be explored in so much societal depth. It's exciting, yes (:
YESSS worldbuilding goes so hard. its for that same reason i like ABO- the society of it all. one of the reasons i love hp fanfic in particular is theres a genre of fic where someone just reinvents the world and it’s SO RAD
saaaame, i find the implications of the world so interesting. i read one chapter of someone being a shadow assigned to some guy to be his shadow, and i hope it will update cause thats such an intruiging concept
@@seguayeyesss, ABO world building is one of my favorites too. It really lends itself to societal commentary, with omegas and alphas taking on similar roles to women and men, but putting it a new light; as well as so many other things that make it unique, like suppressors and marking. I love when people delve into that
@@enoki_suki Yeah And the parenthood only happens when the couples have either a one night stand or they hate each other until one of them carries a kid So they stayed because the kid brought them together
@@nadillasakinah950 omg I see this one ALL the time. it's always a one night stand with a huge jerk who then completely flips and is possessive over the baby for some reason and gets together with the mom/dad (mpreg is equally guilty!)
there's something so enticing about a one shot that's 25k words than a 25k worded fic that's 10 chapters long. i don't know why but it's so much more enticing for me to read that oneshot
Agreed! I would guess it's more about the feeling of it being a one shot, it feels more satisfying to read something continuously (regardless if the 10 chapters are all updated) And personally, it helps me not get to that "one more chapter..." dilemma, can never have more chapters if it's just one lololol
I'm actually the exact opposite. 😄 I'd most likely skip or save for later any oneshot that's more than 5K, but if it's like 10k broken up into 10 or more chapters, then that seems more feasible. I can get through chapters pretty quickly if they're only about a thousand words each.
I absolutely prefer long chapters over short chapters. One of my fave fics EVER is a single chapter and over 50k words and it is just. So. Good. I love the way it flows, even tho the author uses line breaks which usually turn me off from a fic, but it's utilized really well. I overlook a fic entirely if the amount of words is less than the amount of chapters × 1,000. I really prefer at least 2k words per chapter, but I can push it down to at least 1k words per chapter. Anything less than that and I don't bother. Maybe it came from my Wattpad days where the ads between chapters had to make each chapter worth it and it's carried over to AO3, or maybe it's just preference idk.
i actually agree to an extent to the 'fanfic warps your brain' take. When writing a fanfic, you can safely assume that everyone who reads it already knows the characters in the story (personality, looks, way of talking and acting, general mindset towards life, etc).Thus, when you write a fanfic, you neednt worry about establishing the character, You can just go ahead and jump into the story. However, when you want to write an actual story on its own, you need to give details such as these (through words or actions doesnt matter, point is you need to establish them). When you dont do this, you get the bland 'everyman' character that seems to dominate some corners of Booktok: characters which have very little going on and no discerning character traits. This also leads to writers writing in a way as if you, the reader, are already the bff of the characters/know them well. So yeah, your writing may end up sounding like fanfic. A same thing can be said about reading. When you read a fanfic, you already know the characters, so you dont want to read unnecessary eposition about them (which can often feel cringey or forced within fanfiction). And when a character does something messed up in a fanfic to serve the story, you always know why they do so, cause you already KNOW the character at its core. However, when you read an actual novel (especially older ones), you dont have this information! you need to read through paragraphs that explain why a character acts as they do. And, yes, even in the most well-written novels, this can take a while. I think only reading fanfiction unlearns you the concept of learning new characters through written media. Last thing ill say b4 i shut my mouth: reading a novel (which, yknow, doesnt have tags that show whats gonna happen!) also teaches you to sit and get through discomfort. With a fanfic, you very quickly click away when something isnt 100% the style you like. When reading official novels in different genres, you learn to expand your worldview and get both a better understanding of what you do and do not like (both in the story and just in general). So, TLDR: reading only fanfic does not rot your brain, nor does it decrease your ability to write well. HOWEVER, it does have the ability to make you only write in a very specific way (assuming readers have the same knowledge as u abt the characters + way of phrasing) AND it does not open the world to you in the way professional novels do
So true but I’ll only have to disagree with the sitting through discomfort part. My family owns a huge library shelf that takes up a wall in our living room so there’s a lot of books of different genres (fiction and non-fiction) to go through, so sometimes I will pick something up if the premise is interesting but if I ended getting bored half-way through or the book starts heading towards a direction I don’t like (not the “oh this character gets x, y, z and i don’t like that” type but the “what is this author doing rn this doesn’t make sense with the context” vibe) that it breaks my immersion then I’ll close it.
Thats fair, maybe thats because im not from a wealthy family, but for me; when you buy a book, you read it. otherwise it is wasted money @@invalidninvisible7864
If you ever end up wanting to delete your fics on AO3, don't. Orphan them. 1. AO3 is an archive. Deleting stuff from it directly hurts its mission to archive all fanfiction. 2. There are most probably people that love the fic and reread it religiously. 3. See point 1. Do not make the archivists' work harder.
LEGIT‼️‼️‼️ THERE USED TO BE THIS RLLY GOOD ANGST FIC OF A RLLY UNIQUE IDEA AND CONCEPT AND THEN IT WAS DELETED??????!!!! I THINK IT WAS BC PEOPLE WEREN’T READING IT BUT OMG I READ IT LIKE THE BIBLE MAN I HAVE IT ENGRAVED IN MY HEART AND ITS GONE NOWWWWW NOOOOOO 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
@@ger1000 NO BUT MY ANGST FIC THAT WAS DELETED WAS LIKE THAT TOO 😭 BUT I THINK THEY DELETED IT BECAUSE I REMINDED THEM OF THE FICS EXISTENCE BY GIVING IT KUDOS
I hate when fandoms infantalize characters. I was in the Sandersides Fandom for a bit and I hated how people acted like Virgil was a little baby who need protection or something. That always annoyed me because it, to me, kind of removed what made him interesting, in that he was hard to love and cold to others.
OMG i hate it when people infantalize characters that aren't baby's or children I think there nothing wrong with treating Eri (A litterel child from mha) like a child over treating SUNNY and BASIL (two 16 years Olds from OMORI) like children
That's why Virgil wasn't in a lot of what I read, I couldn't take the constant infantile nature of him. Patton is much more childish than him and do you see as many cases of making him a little meow meow? No, it's all just because Virgil is edgy.
God damn, that hits. My fav character has so much potential for tragic, dramatically moving plot lines in fic. But he's always portrayed as the dumb funny one who is dumb and funny and incapable of feeling any other emotions than Dumb and Happy.
My hot take: I'm a big fan of established relationships. Like, dont get me wrong, a cute story about two characters falling in love is great, but I would love to see more stories of that ship just being in a healthy and cute relationship or bickering like and old married couple or just doing cute relationship stuff in the background of the plot.
Totally agree. I write fanfics for myself mostly because i’m too scared to post it and the one i’m currently writing shows how they got together and a lot afterwards. It’s nice because the ship in canon barely got a chance to be together before they broke up
ngl, all the people saying they want more platonic ships and the people saying they want more established relationships makes me want to try writing those things. keep complaining, its working, you're converting me 🫡
my unpopular opinion is that i think ao3 should implement the wattpad style of comments where you can leave a comments on a specific line or paragraph.
Actually, side note, there's an add-on for Ao3 that does that! I can't remember what it's called, but it puts a little comment box in the upper right-hand corner you just have to click on a small button to see, and I love that! Can't remember what it's called, but I totally agree they should have something so you're motivated to comment your thoughts in the moment, at least!
as someone who spent roughly five/six years on wattpad before moving on to AO3, i agree! i enjoy the interactions i have on AO3 but i miss being able to comment on something specific in a chapter, because sometimes i just have nothing to say generally, and having to add a specific line to my comment so people know what im referring to feels a bit clunky.
My hot take is that people should be allowed to have their own interpretations of the personality/story of a character, especially those who get very little screentime or are written very shallowly.
I see this a lot with Chara from "Undertale". The game is intentionally ambiguous about the character. However, most "Undertale" fans will go berserk if you portray Chara as evil.
The opinion of 'don't tell people you read/write fanfic' depends on the situation. I was working on a fic while calling my mum once, and I mentioned it cause we both had seen the show. She asked to see it, and I sent my WIP to her, and she was super happy. She didn't even know I loved writing and mentioned it sounding super professional. Now she reads all my fanfiction before anyone else (as long as they are PG). But even then, my funny little stories have given us conversations and things to discuss. So, as long as you don't always bring it up all the time, you could bond over it. In my opinion, it's the same as saying I like this author or I like this UA-camr.
Exactly! I'm super open about writing fanfiction because it is my biggest hobby & I have met & bonded with people through that. A few years ago, I would have been way more gunshy about sharing that but I realized that A LOT more people read fanfiction than they did back then and the attitude around it has changed a lot. When I told my super religious pioneer ass Jehoviah's WItness cousin that I wrote fanfiction she was like "I LOVE FANFICTION!!" Of course she meant Disney genfics and I meant smut but hey, we bonded.
I’ve told a few friends/classmates (in this case it’s specifically 2 table group classmates that I consider friends and one I’ve actually been friends with for a while) that I read fanfiction, and as far as I remember, only one of them didn’t react negatively (2 if you count how one didn’t say anything at all lmao). They made fun of me for it, not in a way that was intentionally antagonistic, but it still made me wish I never told them in the first place. They’ve stopped mentioning it, but maybe it’s because I’ve stopped reading fanfics during the 10 minutes before class or during lunch (in my defence when I told them I was reading a 40k or 80k word fic with only 4 chapters. Each chapter was LONG and I was invested and therefore I was on my phone whenever it wasn’t class time)) That friend that reacted positively though, she asked me what I was reading one time and I just gave her my phone to read the tags bcs I had no idea how to explain the plot and she punched the air ‘cause she liked the tags lmao
@@flair1681 can I ask what grade you’re in? Bc when I was in middle school I would have probably gotten the same reaction, iirc, I did get ragged on for reading ff occasionally but it wasn’t ostracizing. However, now that I’m older, essentially from graduation, ppl have become markedly more mature about it.
My (maybe) hot take is that A/B/O fics are at their best when there’s little to no smut or smut is not the main focus of the story. I love it when writers take the time to actually explore how the world would work if A/B/O was real. It’s so cool to see it used for worldbuilding instead of the same heat/rut plots I keep running into. Nothing wrong with shameless smut, I just don’t find it as interesting.
Yessss, I completely agree‼️ I think that any story is good without having smut in it, personally I'd prefer if there is no smut in the first place. But, as I was saying, A/B/O is such an interesting concept within itself and to have that idea overshadowed by smut all of the time takes away from what could possibly be a very enticing and entertaining story! 😊😤
I read this MCU ABO fic about Omega!Tony trying to live and deal with the society he lives in post-civil war to infinity war. (It had team cap bashing just incase you want to know) It was really good.
I LOVE the "Oh. _Oh?_ " thing SO MUCH when it's used effectively like when it's the turning point where the penny drops for the character regarding a major event it has me screaming and kicking my feet and giggling excitedly!!!!
YEESSS EXACTLY and it’s so fun because it’s such a talking point for people, like you can compare how fics you’ve read use it and such an instantly recognisable thing! :o
13:52 OP: "Published works are higher quality than fanfic will ever be" *looks over at 50 Shades of Grey from the corner of my eye* *looks back to op and raises eyebrow*
I recently read an aot fanfic that's way better than any book I've ever read apart from the hunger games... It's highly inspired my the hunger games, the writing is amazing, everyone is in character and the characters are fleshed out and developed. I'm still waiting on an update tho
Yeah isnt that proving OP's point? fifty shades is basically a fanfic, and thus the quality is nowhere near some other professional romances that arose from full-on creativity
Some of these are pretty interesting, I just wish Coley would comment more on what she personally feels about some of them instead of just reading them out and moving on to the next
It's fine to drop a fanfic while in the middle If you really liked the first two chapters,but don't like the next it's alright to go to a different fic
so true! my motto is always "don't like, don't read!" it's fine to only like a little of something and not the rest, as long as you aren't rude about not liking something then go ahead and switch to something else!
Yep because if I try to push through it will only work out for me in like 10% of cases, so why bother? If I push through that usually leads to me avoiding fics again
@@CapybaraGod53oh yeah I've done that before. Like I want to _read_ it and finish it but... at the same time I don't _want_ to finish it, you know? Lowkey don't want it to end even though it ended 😔
I love stories where shipping is a side part. As in the main characters are working towards a certain goal and they’re in an established relationship It isn’t the main focus but it’s there
YES!! This is the best!!!! Though i prefer them not being in a relationship yet but it’s building up, but there is another plot and their romance is just a side part
This is like exactly what I'm trying to do while writing my book. It's about the mcs whole life, their goals and achievements and friendships and yes, romance, but just bc it has romance doesnt mean it's a romance novel.
I saw a lot of people complaining about tropes they don't like. It's fine to have things you like and things you don't like, but Ao3 has a filtering system for a reason. It seems like some of these people act like they're forced to read these tropes. Just filter out what you don't like.
My issue with the tagging system is that there are multiple tags that mean the same thing. You will filter one and then find fics with that tag but with a different name (a good example is any piss related tag - theres 3) that you now had to filter out. After a while it just gets frustrating.
I think my biggest hot take is that Hurt/Comfort is THE ideal ship scenario for most ships. You get to explore things like how characters react to things, how they breakdown, you get to character study multiple people even those not in the ship- and you can even ADD other things on top of it like Angst, Fluff, or even Smut if you know how to write it into the story without it being super forced. It also isn't too sun shiny- giving some realities to even the happiest of situations like self-doubt, depression, or even sensory overload and/or a panic attack. The comfort can be flexible too. From words to touch to even objects- the comfort in a hurt/comfort can be just about ANYTHING and it leads to unique scnarios Don't get me wrong, pure angst, fluff, crackfics, and smut are all just as valid and can be fun to read, but as a writer of both rewrites, AUs, oc stories, AND fanfics- Hurt/Comfort is just the absolutely best ship related fanfictions due to its flexibility and how the limits are only stopped by thw writer themselves
I completely agree!! And not only do you figure out how each character responds to a certain scenario depending on their role, you also see how they react to _others_ in their own roles. It makes room to build on relationships of all kinds and see how well they work together-- or don't, and how they compensate if necessary. You can even explore more of the world itself, too, and how specific elements interact with injured, depressed, and/or otherwise sombre characters; is the air toxic, making open wounds as simple as a cut potentially fatal? Has one character found themselves sick or injected with something that's only cure is a rare mixture? What general remedies are there, and do your characters know of them? Do they end up making their own? And then, of course, there're the emotional beats behind it all; how terrible is the hurt, and how much comfort is required? Can the other character/s supply sufficient comfort? How does each character respond to what sort of pain, for themselves and/or for others? Is it a specific trauma/underlying factor, or just one of those days? It's a fun exercise for a number of reasons. In my opinion, it's absolutely one of (if not the) best things in writing, period. And as you said, the only limit is one's imagination :D
I like the idea of putting characters in interesting scenarios. I do it all the time, I like thinking how the characters act. My favorite plot do this is making them parents. Seeing the characters as a happy, healthy family always is fun and makes my brain work 😊
For the whole "don't read only fanfic, it doesn't help your vocab": That might be true if English is your first language. But if English is just a language you learn in school, fanfic can be very helpful. Sure you have to expand your learning materials at some point, but you can get a fairly large pool of english vocab just by reading fanfic and from experience reading fanfic is enough to get through the English classes in european schools. You're not gonna be perfect, but it being a second or third language no one expects you to be perfect.
Literally, I just love the way I learned English; Started with gacha life, didn't understand what they said but still could understand some things with the context, the pictures Next, I started watching a lot of English UA-camrs, instead of just gacha. It helped me with my audition understanding. Last step for now, fanfictions. I learned so many things with fanfictions, vocabulary, expressions, grammar... And ONLY AFTER all that, I have started learning English at school.
@@Little_phly EXACTLY Why did everyone I know (including myself) learn English *exactly* like that I still vividly remember the time I learned the word "yet" from some random cringey 2019 gacha video
Fanfiction has actually improved my vocabulary and fluency. It helped me get used to reading in English and the first two months of reading I went every 10 min to the translator. Now I barely need to go to a translator, although I do it from time to time. One of the pros for fanfiction is that it has content of stories you already know and like, so it's a much more enjoyable read from the start than a brand new story in a language not your own. Lifts your mood for not understanding much what's going on
I litterally learned english by reading fanfictions. The fact that a single author's vocabulary is often reduce means that as long as you stuck to them, you don't need to reach for the translator every five minutes and can just get used to their own vocabulary for a while. The fact that you often get short works means you don't have to understand complex stories or be focused for very long while learning to read in english. This meant that I didn't give up and was actually exited to learn a new language and be able to read a whole new side of my fandom. (also, in non-english fandom, translation of popular english fics are a big thing, and my favorite wasn't finished while the original was, a great motivation xD)
I think it can also be genuinely helpful when attempting to learn the casual parts of the language. Of course, books, TV shows or UA-cam videos will get you just as far in that regard, but fanfics can be more comprehensible for beginners as they usually are an easier read and might even be more enjoyable, which imo is the most important part when trying to stay on track with learning a language. Of course, the downside is that you will find a lot of fics that aren't spellchecked or have bad grammar, but I still think that's still better than giving up entirely because you can't find anything that interests you and you'll also learn how to look out for that with time.
i think my hot take is that fandom-acclaimed fics shouldn't be considered demanded reading. there's some HUGE fics in a fandom i'm in and it's made me incredibly intimidated to read it
@@svarakissoon1189honestly same. i've admittedly read (and liked) a lot of the big ones, but people act like atyd is the fucking bible or something, it's absurd. i made it through maybe half of it and stopped because i just didn't like it and have had people attack me on tumblr for mentioning that.
some bother me and some don't, too and to I can usually skip over, but their/there/they're changes the meaning so dramatically that it always brings me up short. the big one that i don't see much anymore (maybe because there aren't as many teaboos around in fandom since sherlock crashed and burned?) is people writing bullocks when they mean bollocks. it makes me laugh every time, but it's also an instant back button moment for me!
agree. im fine with occasional typos (authors do it for free after all) but when it’s very noticeable and repetitive mistakes like to/too, there/their it completely ruins immersion for me there is another fanfiction website that has public beta where readers can select part of the text and directly notify author about a mistake (even with an optional comment about the mistake). wish ao3 could implement something like this
Fanfiction is done FOR FUN, FOR FREE. People can choose to read whichever ones they want, but they should never genuinely upset about certain qualities or trends.
Eh, I think people are allowed to be genuinely upset. It's what you do when you're upset that matters. Sharing and talking about things you dislike can be as important as talking about things you like. There's venting, validation, and just a general social aspect to sharing your opinion with others. The problem stems from that some people think their opinions matter first and foremost at all times, amplified by the internet to an even wider audience.
@@wombat4583 good point. Constructive criticism is a huge positive for me. But I dislike when people treat fanfiction like it’s meant to be published literature.
@@bananabro1010 yeah but just don’t post it when you literally can’t even write it. Put at least a little effort into what you’re writing. And plus, it’s real hard to avoid
I love slow burns but sometimes people take it to an extreme… I read a fic where the two main characters got drunk and made a baby on the second chapter but didn’t actually start to date until after chapter 150
So true tho Read a Ghost x Soap slow burn fic that had over 44 chapters (wasn’t finished) On chapter 40 or something they finally went on a date and I don’t really remember what it was but something traumatic happened (I say traumatic but not really, like just something embarrassing happened to Soap) And they went back to avoiding each other but still texting, despite the fact they lived next door
I agree with this so much, you could have mastercraft writing with a perfect plot but unless it’s like in a fandom with 4 fanfics in it I’m not gonna read it
1st: omfg so true. Like, I love - "oh my god, your dying and its my fault! I love you!" But most of the time its just 'I'm sorry I didnt tell you sooner' like??? its so boring. 2nd: you have somhow given me the evil idea to make a hanahaki fic were the characters fall out of love. So thank you for that. I'm gonna go make some shitty notes that will never see the light of day XD
I love the potential of hanahaki fics and am slowly finding those who explore that potential. Some standouts from the SKZ fandom include a fic that explored hanahaki with an established couple and one was in a car accident and lost their memory of the relationship. In another fic it was a soulmates and hanahaki fic mashup where two people fell in love despite not being soulmates and then the one character found their soulmate but the established couple wasn’t communicating well and so the one character developed hanahaki because his lover found his soulmate and became certain they were going to lose their lover. I vaguely recall a fic where a character fell in love with their friend who was already in a relationship but saved from certain death by a stranger who decided to woo the shit out of them and they fell deeply in love. No ideas what fandom or who anybody was but boy howdy I will eat all the fics that follow that formula right up. So far though most hanahaki fics are: I love my bestie who surely can’t love me and now I’m puking up flowers. Oh no I wonder what happens next. I still read those stories just in case it’s well written because I find the concept fascinating but boy is there so much to explore that hasn’t been yet. Like, I haven’t read a fic where a character asks their best friend on a date and is turned down. Now that is going to be some very interesting plots to play with when the rejectee develops hanahaki and may or may not tell their friend they’re dying. Do they remain friends? What about the opinions of mutual friends and family? Do they fall in love or out of love? Do they live?
The opinion at the 30:00 mark about keeping your fanfic hobby a secret ... Big agree with Coley, I disagree with the OP. When I told my therapist "I started writing again, It's just silly fanfic stuff but I'm having fun" the MASSIVE encouragement I received from the therapist was like ... overwhelming. Being creative is so important to me and shame or fear of failure was holding me back, rediscovering the joy of writing means more to me than someone thinking fanfic is weird and immature. Now, my current WIP is my most popular work so far and has picked up huge momentum compared to my earlier stuff and I have loyal readers leaving excited comments when I update and my confidence has grown so much, the comments certainly help but, honestly, the thrill of the story I'm gradually unwrapping is rewarding in itself, others getting excited about it too is a huge bonus. I confided in my closest friend that I'm writing fics and while I don't link her my stuff or go into details of the plot (we have different tastes and fandoms), she wasn't at all disturbed, quite the contrary, she told me that she READS loads of fics (even OMEGAVERSE, I was shook when she told me she read A/B/O!). Rather than think I'm a freak and ditch me as a friend, we started talking about stuff we've read and tropes we like. She's always been a big reader but not a writer, I've always been a passionate writer and a reader, so both of us returning to reading and writing respectively has allowed us to bond over old interests we'd let slip after we left high school. If my friend and I ever slip back into a convo about Omegaverse and fic tropes, I might tell her a bit about my current WIP, but I doubt she'd have any interest in reading it. I feel that, where we are in our friendship, even though we are very different, it would take more than some stupid fanfic stuff to come between us and I'd even trust her to read what I've written, if it was the kind of stuff she likes (it's not though, fandoms, ships, genres, we're total opposites!). I've chatted to another friend and mentioned I write and similarly, they were happy for me because it makes me happy to write. I'm protective of my writing because I like using a screenname and keeping my fic stuff away from my non-fic content, but I don't feel ashamed to say that I write fics as a hobby! I hope OP either gets better friends, or realises that friends shouldn't be so dismissive/probably don't care that much about their hobbies because it's "cringe" or w/e.
I'm glad you found some people to talk to about your writing! I'm jelly, actually. I'm super embarrassed about it myself. I can't even write in public or with someone else in the room. I'll usually just say "I write stupid stories sometimes" and adamantly refuse the rare person who asks to peruse my catalog. Most of the time, people tell me/ask me if I'll publish something and I'm like 😬aha, maybe someday! haha......🤐 So, my hobby in IRL terms is kinda top secret. I just can't get over the squemie feeling. Could never be one of those people that brag about it or even change the names and publish it as fiction. I wish I was, I'd probably be making money off it at this point lmao
My roommate and I write fanfic (different fandoms) and it’s the literal basis of our friendship. I’ve actually never been happier than when I’ve been writing fanfic. It’s like the apple a day that keeps my therapist away, not that I have anything against him. So I agree, OP needs some more accepting friends. Although I still refuse to tell my parents that I write it, so maybe I’m a bit of a hypocrite :p
I dont tell everyone but my mom knows. My mom was the one who got me to start, she convinced me when I was complaining. Sometimes I ask her opinion on where my story is going or if I get stuck and if I don't know where to go I talk to her about it. She's helped me a lot. My brothers knows and don't help, at least not all the time. My older brother is an anime fan, I write fics for an anime he likes and he's been trying to get me to write something specific, he does help in other ways too. My younger brother can care less but my whole family knows. My mom always boast to coworkers or friends of her that I'm a self-published author. It gets embarrassing but I do enjoy it and it's something I talk to my mom about most often.
@@keythealien I keep my fics to myself, but I dont mind saying that I write fics in general, I think just saying "you write silly little stories" is just as valid. I do virtually the same and still like the privacy of only discussing the content of my fics within strictly fic circles. I think of it this way, if my friend doesnt also write fics, they're probably not that interested in knowing all the details beyond being a supportive pal, so if you dont want to overshare, your friends probably wont mind you keeping your catalog to yourself. Your friends can support your hobbies without knowing each intimate detail, just like how you know what your friends hobbies are but you dont forensically analyse every single thing they do within their hobby. Even the most invested friends have their own lives and hobbies, I think we sometimes overestimate how interested other people are. Like, if I told my friends my AO3 handle, would they bother look it up? Maybe a nosey one would to see what ships I'm shipping, but even then, would they have the attention span to read a whole fic? Maybe if they were in the same fandom, in which case, if they've gone THAT far, they're probably also into fanfics because who else would through so much effort to read something they have zero personal interest in for no reason? They have their own hobbies they find more interesting to spend time on, and if they DONT have other hobbies, then SURPRISE, your friend likes fanfiction too because who else would go that far if they werent remotely into fics?
11:35 As a fanfic writer myself who feels fine with criticism, I definitely agree. I wish there werent so many other authors who shut down anyone trying to give constructive criticism, some of the best additions to my writing have been from people giving me suggestions and ideas of what I could do to advance my story or grammar. No one is perfect, even the best of writers can always improve.
Yeah, but then inviting criticism is going to get you a lot of "criticism" (aka insults from people who don't know how to give criticism and don't have anything constructive to say) I don't know if I could take that tbh
Yeah, I miss that mentality. It honestly feels to me like we need a new fic platform that is made for people who came open to improving their craft. That way you know that whoever is there is welcoming the interaction. Some of the well known platforms started that way but have changed over time, and aren't the best places to go anymore. I've heard there are other sites but they seem to be very obscure.
Honestly I think it says a lot about 'unpopular opinion' conversations that in this video we saw multiple instances of people on both sides of a particular issues each be convinced that their side is the unpopular one
I like how many opinions in this video directly contradicted each other. it's cool to see how such a wide range of opinions about fanfiction there are!
My biggest hot take is slow burn sometimes is boring and just full of filler, just because the author wants to stretch it. Maybe is because I am impatient but most slow burn, mutual pining fanfics feel like esays trying to hit a word count if not done correctly. Also establish relationships are so much better than getting together.
THIS THIS THIS!!!! I agree 100%. I love established relationship stories and find slow burn to be tedious. It’s probably my ADHD. I have very little patience.
YES! YES! YES! YES! I couldn't agree more with you. Established Relationship is my favorite tag cause of this, I find so much more interesting reading about the development of a relationship than "are they gonna finally confess now or will be a misunderstanding AGAIN?"
Wait, this is me tho fr. I thought I liked slow burn but nah, I’m hella impatient and I don’t like when shit drags on for too long. Possible ADHD too 😛
PLS THIS IS SO TRUE! i hate it when stories are just working up to “The Kiss™️” and end there, like i wanna see more! i wanna see how the relationship affects both people and their lives!
Yes! Glad to see someone else that likes reaction fics! Every time I get into a fandom I just have to read all the react fics, they are just sooooo good!
@@LilyWhitesLK yeah like I've read good Encanto ones which are good but aren't finished and I Iwish I could find more finished ones that I've never read
YES! it always feels like such a guilty pleasure because it feels corny or whatever, but I really enjoy reaction fics. It can even be a little cathartic when the truth about a misunderstood character is revealed and the others are left feeling like shit. Bonus points if said misunderstood character is panicking because they think this will make things worse for them
I’ll up that: sometimes the sheep amount of romance fics vs non romance fics can get downright annoying because none of the other character relationships are focused on. Sometimes I just wanna read a good friend fic but all anyone does is ship people.
I, as a fan of romance, concur. I don't have a direct issue with shipping or smut, but i feel it does become a problem when it makes up all foreseeable content of said characters. I understand many may want to view characters they like in sexual situations (Even official works do this, it is why i can't enjoy many romances), but it can get annoying for those who wish to avoid it when all media of characters they also like are flooded with it. It's important to remember characters can be friends and can be close without dating or smutting eachother. And there can be romances without sexual actions. In conclusion, everyone, please calm down your horniness and rampant shipping, i would like to read some wholesome fluff or pure angst. Thank you.
In some Fandoms gen fics are so few. I enjoy them some times. Some days, I am done with shipping and smut and want to read something else. (And exactly because I am in the aro/ace spectrum 😂 I love romance a lot, but not always)
@@Jil1807 I usually read some romance (and I avoid smut AT ALL COSTS, though that's just my preference) and for some reason, I like reading MLP: FIM fics. Most of them are romance, or at least the ones I have read, but if you look hard enough, there are some hidden gems, like the one I read that has an ancient civilization.
THAT is a hot take? I've been writing every new ship that has come to my mind like there's no tomorrow. Do you mean to tell me most people don't do that? 😭😭😭 (lh)
Based on a song lyric (that my brain took as a command for some reason) I decided to write a fic for every main character ship in my main fandom (or at least, the group of four main characters. All of them with eachother in duos, then together as a polycule, all centered around wintery activities. My only qualification for it was “has to include one of the four mc’s” which is why a canon f/f ship with one of the mains in it was included as well. I tried to think of more f/f ships for the others as well but I was busy with school and didn’t end up doing more. Did finish all the main character shipfics tho! (For context, the lyric was “make the Yuletide gay” and the four main characters are all women)
I'm currently the only person in a very big fandom writing about an undiscovered/unpopular ship (in a sense), those fics barely get any views or interactions but it brings me joy to write about them anyway :)
@@lydiaesc7781 I've been through that too, the only good thing is that no one will complain about your interpretation of the ship, so yours get to be the most popular "version" of the ship (the only one too but shh)
i used to write it for a fandom i was in. most of us just used the personas/personalities as like...muses and made fiction out of it. but then there were always those that took things too far and it felt like they couldn't separate fiction from the actual people in real life. i still will read it sometimes but i haven't been comfortable writing it for a long time which sucks because i love writing but i haven't found a fandom yet to write in/for. i'm in music fandoms and kpop, and i miss writing fanfic but no longer feel comfortable like i used to writing about real people.
As an author, I can say that comments are important, I love reading what my readers thought of the chapters and also if they listened to the music I suggested in the notes. Make my day happier
I agree they're a good motivator, but I also think there should be a healthy balance. Once upon a time, I used to be upset when posts I made on DA would only get 3-5 likes on average and 20 likes at most. I was completely obsessed around the numbers of likes my posts would get, and it ruined the fun of drawing for me. I'd only draw stuff that got the most likes on my page, but I would never exceed those 20 likes, and most of the time, never get close to it. It ruined me. It wasn't until some youtuber mentioned that those likes aren't just numbers, they're people. The example used was 100 likes, that's 100 people, more then what could fit in a school bus. It changed the way I looked at the like ratio on my posts. If 3-5 people came up to me irl and said they liked my art, I would be ecstatic. It 20 people came up to me, I'd have a panic attack over the amount of people that was heading towards me. So while I fully agree that comments are important, and that people are allowed to be upset if they didn't get enough engagement from the fans. People should have a healthy relationship with their comment sections and not let it control and ruin you the way it controlled and ruined me.
@@zoguy6988 I really love reading the comments precisely because behind the names and profile photos of anime characters and kpop artists there is someone there. Someone there saw my work and took the time to comment, every criticism and word is precious to me and every kudo too
Comments literally spike up my dopamine so much, it's almost scary, like a sort of drug lmao I love them, but I have to watch out to not get dependent on them (again...)
Some opinions: - Chatfics are good when done well - Just because a fic is hugely aclaimmed in a fandom, doesnt mean that everyone in that fandom should read it - Some fics are better written than published books
I feel like I find more hits with crossovers than for single fandom. Especially if it's clear the author is a fan of both works and knows them, inside out.
Yeah but then theres also a lot of them that just reuse the stories that already exist but then add the crossover characters to the existing episodes and it seems like the author couldnt bother to write a new story/scenario
@@waxsuyaaa okay but those are some of my favorites when done well because it introduces a new character(s) and therefore a new perspective and new relationships and new interactions and new possibilities to a story that I already love which to me is just an extension of canon divergence and fix-it fics.
Honestly the reason I don't like crossover is because its like the same three fandoms for everything and excluding them makes it easier to find the ggod stuff
Unpopular opinion: I genuinely prefer platonic relationships over romantic ships. There's something so heartwarming about unconditional love. And it's often much more complex and well-written than typical smut or slow burns. Unfortunately, this often leads to me or other authors getting called "cowardly" for not shipping the characters together. It's as though the internet is incapable of comprehending relationships that don't involve kissing or mashing pissers.
Some [most] unfinished fics are so well-written or have such interesting concepts or have such fun characters or etc that I don't care I never got to see the end. I'm just happy I got to see it at all. So many have given me a lot of interesting ideas to think about.
I’ve been guilty of this in the past. (I hardly write fanfiction anymore because I’m far more invested in cultivating my original works instead.) I have unfinished works that are essentially “buried” across several fanfiction sites because I stopped updating them many years ago, but they do still exist in those places. The only reason why I know anyone cared enough about what I wrote is because some readers reached out to me after quite some time to politely inquire about the status of those stories. They were saddened to know that the unusual/rare plots had been dropped, yet they accepted my honesty about it with grace and understanding. I was mainly stunned just to discover that my fanfics didn’t attract the more toxic kinds of readers.
Mine is that YNs are not bad as a concept and _have_ been done well. There’s a fic on ao3 called _Sleuth Jesters_ and the YN in it was so well written I started simping for them too
I'm sure you're right but do you know how to find good fics on wattpad? their search function just turns me off and I end up scrolling for ages never to find anything : /
personally when i say wattpad is bad i mean just the app itself i used to use wattpad and had a great time until the ads came and yes some authors there are great
I have a former friend who started writing on wattpad when we hit high school. When she first started writing they were kinda tropey but still really good fics. And even though we aren't friends anymore I will still say her fics are really good.
I understand the "just make an OC" thing BUT a completely original character with the name and appearance of a character I know and love tickles my brain so good! I love it when people give new personalities to a character, it's like it's that writer's version of them and I think it's really cool
OOC is kinda iffy to me tbh. I guess I can get exagrating one aspect of a character's personality for the purposes of your story. I think that can be fine even if you end up flanderising that character to the extent that their other personality traits aren't really shown. But there are some aspects of characters that are central and critical to who they are and if that were to be changed I don't think that's good. You could copy their appearance (and/or use a similar name or parts of them directly) but if the personality is so distinct that the character does something I think they would never ever do I think you shouldn't claim that they are the same character. Real talk I've partially read a fanfic (only read three chapters, skimmed the rest) which was covering a fetish I am not at all into and consider weird (abdl) and changed a character's family situation/backstory. The former isn't my think but I also don't subscribe to kinkshaming let people do what they want with their fantasies so I am fine with that (could even see why the character would be a decent fit for it), so I wasn't bothered much by it. The latter annoyed me, but I get that a fanfic author would want some angst and drama so I could tolerate it (lacking a fulfilling childhood is part of why the character is into it in the story). The actual prose/writing is actually pretty good. What made me fully drop it and wish to not think about it as much as possible is that the author made the character say that they had never wanted it about one of the character's passions/dreams that they had worked very hard to obtain. It might seem like a small thing really but I vehemently disliked it. I could have tolerated giving it up with sufficient reason (thought it would have still annoyed me quite a bit) but to make them say that they never wanted it actually made me kinda angry at the author. I have seen characters I like a lot that are generally good people be depicted as terrible people before, even as a child abuser once. Things like that didn't make me annoyed or angry at the author (thought I have noticed myself get annoyed at some characters in such stories. But the above example actually made me mad at the author. So you know, wanting to have the aesthetics of a character but changing their personalities to suit your story is cool but I think there is still a line that shouldn't be crossed and the character's core personality should be maintained. Or IDK just explicitly put AU in your title/tags, maybe that would help me disregard stuff like that.
I think the tags should only include the important tropes/warnings/concepts of the fic, if something only occurs in one scene or chapter, it should be put in the chapter notes
ok hear me out on this one: I like reading about aged up characters BUT NOT FOR SMUT PURPOSES!!!! I mean that I like seeing different author’s interpretations of how a certain characters childhood experiences affect them later in life if you know what i mean
honestly, same. i always feel weird about aging characters up in my writing because i was always told it was wrong no matter what, but i do it pretty much solely because i think its interesting to explore what would change about their character as they get older. i feel like theres a big difference between aging up a character _solely_ to sexualize them or write smut with them, and aging up a character because youre curious about what theyd be like and want to explore them doing things older people do, and i dont think its really fair to lump that all together like its all the same.
I want lyric/song excerpts/quotes at the beginning of one shots/chapters to make a comeback… I dislike how it automatically means the work is cringy or poorly written (supposedly). The idea of a playlist for your work is so cool!
@@nookiepookiedookieWHAT hell yeah 😎 I’m more neutral about that but still, it shouldn’t be bashed on and it’s not cheesy really and it certainly shouldn’t devalue the quality of the work. it doesn’t ever turn me away from a work and I’ll be hella honest I’ve never read a bad fic/one-shot with those kind of titles
You are not morally obligated to leave a like/comment/kudos on any fic (or art or any other creative media for that matter). However, if you want to see more content from this person, you should probably click that heart. Positive feedback is a great motivator
currently reading an ongoing fic with almost 300 chapters and over 650k words and i am having the most fun i’ve ever had reading a fanfic in my life. it has so much happening but it’s not rushed at all and it just feels like i’m watching the characters’ lives, i adore it.
That’s probably close to how my fics going to go. All of the events in the movie (except for a few) are really fast paced and kinda blown past because the canon material is a movie. So I’m slowing canon down and adding more domestic-ness, and adding day-to-day events, which you don’t really get to know about in canon.
Hot take: dead dove do not eat stories are genuinely so fun to read. Ofc, some are just self-indulgent r*pe fantasies, but the ones that aren’t are generally a really interesting read.
agreed. I don’t read much smut and there’s really only so much I can handle with DD:DnE fics but finding a good hurt/comfort one that’s tagged with it and like, for example, as a graphic r*pe scene in the first chapter, and then all the rest of it is recovery from said r*pe, that’s the kinda shit I really like to read! Edit: but btw, in that specific example, I skipped the first chapter cuz I didn’t wanna read that kind of thing
@@kimifw58from what I understand, it just means something taboo, uncomfortable, or graphic is going to happen in the fic and serves as a kind of general content warning for pretty much anything bad. Normally, it means some kind of sexual assault content.
@@kimifw58 ooo okay, if i’m remembering correctly, it was originally intended to be a shorthand for “what i tagged is going to have a very central presence in the fic, so don’t say i didn’t warn you.” it’s meant to indicate that what the fic contains and explores in depth has been clearly labelled, and that the reader should take those labels seriously. but because this type of warning is typically only used on fic exploring darker material (like r*pe), it’s also more or less become a shorthand for “there are going to be dark and uncomfortable elements explored in detail in this fic.”
@@songbird6414 Basically, but it's usually not used on its own. It's used in conjunction with tags, or content disclaimers, to indicate "This has what I said it has, which might be things you don't like. If you click onto it when you've been made aware it has these things, don't go complaining to me, because, what did you expect?" This was common when gay fic used to get hate comments. Now it's more used for dark fic and upsetting content, to indicate the fic is going to be particularly upsetting or the tagged topics are going to be a big deal, not just mentioned in passing, so if someone doesn't like those... and they click it anyway... They have no right to complain, because what did they expect. I have occasionally seen "Dead Dove Don't Eat"/"Don't Like Don't Read" used in conjunction with "User Chose Not to Flag" to indicate a dark fic likely HAS applicable flags, and might have untagged topics and that the reader shouldn't read if they're not down to be surprised with whatever. But I haven't seen that as much as people using it along with tags.
another hot take: overused tropes and phrases are a banger, but not for the reasons mentioned in the video. they are itself a banger. it gives the writers a space to either fall back on comfortable and widely appreciated ground, or to experiment a little once in a while and divert expectations completely. i presonally love reading the same expression over and over again in vastly different settings
I do agree that WattPad has more openings to joining or creating a community. Being able to comment on individual parts and seeing it quite easily, taking part in writing and cover contests, doing commissions, commenting and on message boards definitely allowed me to form a great community there. We even made a club and had tons of fun. Unfortunately and fortunately, that community has largely moved on to the next chapter of their life. Because my community was mostly fading away and l wasn’t interested in diving into a new one with the new people, I decided to try my hand at Ao3 and it has been A LOT harder to connect to people. Just the fact that you could vote on every chapter of the fanfic made me take more interest in people because I could see that they were binge reading my story, and then people could comment more easily on things and spark more of a conversation! Trust me, I LOVE Ao3 and I agree to a lot of the things people say about WattPad, but in my personal experience it was a lot easier to interact with others on WattPad than Ao3
thats been my experience too. a lot of wattpad is like making fun of a bad movie with your friends whereas AO3 is like going to a bookclub for the first time with 2 or 3 people in it. ive had some lovely interactions on AO3, but they are 100% more scarce than they are on wattpad. most of them are just me going "this is a really great fic!!!!" and the author going "tysm!!
About keeping fanworks a secret -- I was once seated next to a woman I didn't know at a birthday dinner for a mutual friend, and within 30 minutes and one glass of wine, she had her phone out and was showing me her original smutty furry slash fanart. And despite not being into that sort of thing myself, I found her REALLY interesting! Maybe that's because I tend to hang out in bohemian/artistic/queer/ND circles... But anyway dinner parties can be DULL as HELL -- tell me about the stuff you're passionate about! Let's be friends!
I would love to have dinner parties like this, the ones I’m forced to go to (extracurriculars) are as boring as watching a baseball game where no players have a bakery
I agree! Sometimes relationships in fanfics don't have to all be romantic to be interesting. I personally perfer reading platonic relationships over romantic ones as well.
Something about strong platonic relationships has always been far more alluring to me than romantic ones. Maybe it's because I'm not interested in them personally either, but I adore seeing characters who get through things together and always have each other's backs without question, while also holding each other accountable and to a set standard. It's the best thing ever when people can be intimate with each other without needing it to be anything "more" than that. I find it pretty sad how undervalued close friendships and relationships are, but if nothing else, that gives me all the more reason to keep writing my own :> (Also, love the N profile picture!!)
Have you been in the dream smp fandom ? I know the fandom has alot of bad rep for being toxic but the fanfics are high quality and the fandom is filled with gen fics if your intrested as a person who doesn't like romance in fanfic dream smp fanfics are an unlimited food source for me
my hottake: hannahaki is only miscommunication. it feels tedious and it always sucks to me, but its always in it. have you guys encountered any hannahaki fics without miscommunication? (WITH mutual pining)
Wish I would find one in which it isn't: "Unrequired love" until Person A goes, "oh actually I loved you the whole time." Everything is fixed! I want one in which the ill person doesn't just sit on their ass and is so sorry for themselves, but instead they take initiative: "I have nothing to lose anymore anyway, why not ask my crush out? See where it goes. Make them fall in love with me!" There's still plenty of angst to explore, if the writer so chooses, but the main body is just two people actually getting to know each other in a romantic sense. Bonus points if they don't even end up with each other, but instead move on with better suited partners and as best friends.
@@teddybrillen8033 THIS!! Another thing i need to add on, is when authors tag “unrequited love” but also “but not actually unrequited love”, not only is it annoying, it makes it so hard to exclude angsty endings when i want them to get together, without including “getting together” because most fics forget to even tag it!!
Ok but the hate on soulmate au is so accurate! Especially if a person is like “oh we have the same soulmate tattoo but maybe they don’t like me so I won’t tell them I know we are soulmates and instead just cry about it!” Like wtf. The whole point of it is that they WILL like you no matter what Also I hate that it’s giving “the univers is destining you to to be with that person forever” it makes the whole dating (someone who isn’t your SO) aspect pointless and I can’t imagine how anyone can love anyone knowing they’re not soulmates and knowing that eventually they will break up for someone else
“Don’t write about your friends and family that would be weird” when the family and friends of real people you write about could very well see the fic is insane to me
I basically only read RPF if I have no idea who the characters are, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think it has more to do with the degree of separation between the irl person and the character. I see RPF as stories featuring characters based on the public personas of real people, whereas writing about someone you know would be writing a character based on a real person. Like, story about a fictitious version of a real person vs. story about a real person, if that makes sense?
People don't need to ship characters as much as people think they do. The family dynamic can be amazing especially when its done well, and if the author does want to include a ship they can without taking away from the family theme. This might be because I mostly read found family, but still it doesn't have to only be about a ship, sometimes you need a good family relationship. But I still love ship fics.
I think it's because people ship for fun and the writer can do what they want with there writing (as a person who mostly reads found family too) alot of people who complain about being alot of ship fics should write there own fics (not you I've just seen alot of people lately sending really mean messages to ship fic writers and it's getting on my nerve) because a random fan fic writer just likes the particular ship that's it they aren't taking found family representations they are just making more *random ship* representations there will be more found family fics if all the people complaining about not being enough of them wrote something that's how it's done you can't make someone change there writing presence (again sorry if I came off as mean I'm not talking about you but there has been alot of people having an attitude with fanfic writers lately its mostly the new gen one of my favorite fanfic writer got doxxed on Twitter for shipping two adult characters because them being best friends makes them siblings and that's basically incest, I wish I was joking about the mental gymastics here) anyway if you want found found family fics I recommend the dream smp fandom especially SBI (the characters not the real people of course) alot of high quality long fics and oneshots and almost every founfamily trope you want
Potentially unpopular opinion but I love the "reacts" trope where characters react to their own series. It's when a plot device happens that forces the characters to watch their own show/movie and react to specific moments accordingly. A lot of people apparently dislike this writing cuz they consider it lazy which I can sort of understand. But I've always enjoyed reading them especially when the author adds a sideplot that develops new or existing relationships!
I love these, especially when it can get a bit angsty or hurt/comfort-ish bc characters witness other characters' more secretive backstories or sufferings
@@wildtamer4461 I feel like they were way more popular during the LJ years (as someone who was not around then but is in older fandoms that were). If you are in any fandoms that had kink memes or similar presences on Live Journal it might be a good idea to look there and see if you can find more.
There’s a mha one but ones female izuku and one that’s the same but a bit different with male izuku and female shoto There’s a reason for the female character “grape warning” it’s not talked much tho You don’t know what I would do for the canon characters to react to canon and not fanon
19:57 I have to agree with this. I'm in the Avatar (The Last Airbender) fandom, and "modern world" fics are fairly popular. Now, transplanting our beloved heroes and villains to a world with contemporary Earth technology _is_ a _fascinating_ idea to me... but it's rare, from what I've seen, for an author to actually... _do_ anything with that. There's no world war; the characters almost _never_ retain whatever royal authority or other political or social influence they have in canon, so there's no diplomacy or intrigue; often, the "modern world" they're transplanted to isn't even their-world-but-modern, it's just straight-up _Earth;_ they almost never need to _travel_ as a group to meet each other or do anything... They're inevitably just going to college, working for a coffee store chain, or futzing around with some job or another that may or may not be relevant to the plot for more than two or three chapters, and they're all already at least acquainted with each other. But what _really_ gets me is that "modern world" AUs are almost inevitably simultaneously "No Bending" AUs... which nullifies one of the primary distinguishing features of their original universe, and in the vanishingly rare case where bending is still possible, the _Avatar_ is almost never a thing, and _absolutely_ never one of the main cast. So they're not fighting the canon war but with timelines and events changed due to the effects of modern transportation and communication, they're not struggling to change the world in a _different_ way, "the world" may in fact now just be the Greater San Fransisco area, _the spirits_ and their world definitely won't be appearing, and we won't even be getting any silly or interesting moments from the intersection of the widespread ability to control one of the Four Classical Elements and a deeper knowledge of the laws of physics. At that point, I just can't see how you're _not_ just writing an otherwise wholly original piece of romantic or cozy fiction and plugging the canon characters into your cast list as a shorthand to basically cheap out on establishing character traits and starting relationships.
Honestly, I prefer found family, platonic, mentor/student Parent/child (IN A PLATONIC WAY) and friend group fanfics way more than anything with romance. don't get me wrong romance is amazing, but it can be way too much for me personally.
I like those fics where there are enough characters to do everything. Some bits of the fic are romance, and others are parent/child, best friend, your pet cat shows up, whatever. Characters should be people who have multiple kinds of relationships in their lives.
It always surprises me that people have such specific preferences for what tense a fic is written in or even the POV. I had to look up why people hated first person POV so much because stuff like that just doesn’t occur to me while reading 😂
I think it has to do with how easy it is to be inconsistent. Any tense is fine, but it should stay. The main exception is if it switches to a flashback.
personally i think different characters demand different person perspectives. for me, first person always reads as the character narating their life directly to the audience, which is a thing some characters would do and some wouldn't. gritty noir characters tend to flow better in first person if they're the MC, because monologing is one of the markers of noir characters, and it can also be a good way to get into the internal monologue of characters who just don't speak much (there's a reason this is popular in comics, because otherwise we'd have no idea wtf batman was ever thinking, hes not chatty), while there are other characters who would absolutely never narrate their lives that way, or who talk so much that a first person narrative ends up feeling repetative because they think a thing and then also say the thing, so it can feel forced. as for tense, as long as it's consistently i really don't get why people care, except that it can be very difficult make past tense-first person work. it can be done, i'm a strong believe that almost anything can work in fiction if the right person is writing it, i just think it's a lot harder to get right than first person present tense.
Honestly I think Sapphykins put it well. But to propose another outlook on this, often times first persons come across as self-inserty. There’s definitely a target audience for self-inserts but not everyone likes that. Personally I’ve tried reading First Person a lot of times, be it because the descriptions were too good not to try, I didn’t realize until I clicked in, or was simply curious. The biggest part about whether or not I could stick around to read was if it read like the character narrating their lives to me rather then experiencing it first hand as them. Sometimes, it could be a story that fits neither molds to me, and just seems like an odd choice tense wise. Alas, that’s been my personal experience with first person and I’m not entirely sure how many others feel the same way.
@@DilettanteThat yeah I suppose in the end all the matters is if it’s executed well. To me that’s never been enough of a reason to avoid an entire style, but I can see why someone would just out of frustration and personal taste.
Ooooh some of these made my blood boil. Fanfiction is supposed to be a fun part of being in a fandom and IT'S FREE. Stop treating it like it's not exactly that!
They act like the writers are getting payed if the grammar is bad STOP READING??? like oml writers are not obligated to take English classes for a fanfiction
@@ArtyBarty-y7kI feel like there's a floor here. If a person wants others to comment positively on their fanfic, they should at least know the difference between to, too, and two at a rate of 60 percent of the time. Like, if writers don't care about all that then they are free to do so to their hearts content! However, it would be unrealistic to say that writers don't care about their fanfic being read. They can't skimp out on basic grammar and then wonder why there are crickets when they post.
My hot take? I love slow burns that don't actually develop into anything super romantic. Sometimes I just want 50+ chapters of 2 characters getting blushy and flustered, and the climax is when they finally hold hands for the first time.
@@ilse5220 THE WAY I WAS GONNA SAY THAT!! But, to the op, if you like mmc with questionable morals, heartbreakingly soft prose, badass female characters who are a girl's girl, trauma, and slooooow burn, soc is the series for you!!
33:44 This is literally one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to writing (maybe just because of how overdone it is in my fandom) it’s so annoying when a fanfic is simply a transcript of what happened in canon like I’m reading fanfic bc I KNOW what happened in canon and want MORE than what the show us.
I’m always so afraid of doing this with the long multi chapter fic I’m working on rn. It’s meant to be like a companion piece to the official media that helps expand on some of the characters and their pov’s of the canon plot (plus a few tweaks to fix annoyances with canon) but I’m always afraid it’ll sound like I’m just repeating the main plot over and over oof
Wait this is an unpopular opinion??? I basically only read self inserts :| I *do* read non self inserts occasionally, but I wouldn't say that non self inserts are objectively better or worse than self inserts :/
Most "legit" authors just put bits of themself spread out through many of their characters, anyway. It's a genuine piece of advice from many of them, too, in the whole "write what you know" thing
I don't mind self-inserts but I personally just kinda cringe but I just move on and find something I like. Depending on how it's written, self-inserts may not be so bad :)
Gotta be completely honest, I find writing self-insert fics a lot easier than regular ships. It's like how so many people say writing fanfiction was freeing for them, making two action figures do the kissy is a lot less awkward when one of them is a piece of unused tissue with the letters "Y/N" on them.
Mine is that I LOVE reading crossovers where I only know one of the pieces of media. It’s more immersive for me because I’m learning along with my favorite characters and it feels like I’m there with them instead of being an omnipotent god. I also LOVE oc stories and sometimes actively seek them out. It always makes me feel good when people care about my ocs, and I wanna spread the love!
I feel you on this. I recently found a Fate/Grand Order x Kingdom Hearts crossover fic having extensive knowledge on the Nasuverse, and only tidbits of info on Kingdom Hearts. So learning more about the world of KH through the lens of a media I'm very well acquainted with is a joyride of an experience.
The half-in half-out Fanfic Hokey Cokey is not something I do particularly often, but it gives such a "One foot in the familiar, the other in the forest" sort of feeling that I can really vibe with from time to time :D
@@mysticmoonlight9695 It’s funny that you used that as an example because there’s this one kh x final fantasy fic that I’ve been reading. I love kh and know it inside and out, but I have only vague snippets of ff knowledge
In terms to comments, this is one of the factors that make me like Wattpad since you can comment on specific sections. It works with me since I tend to react and make jokes on certain parts. On Ao3, it's harder to do that at the very end of the chapter so I end up being a silent reader (especially on multi-chapter fics).
I used to love this feature until it ended up being just a pile of spam 💀 people repeating the same thing I wrote with emojis, people commenting overused memes, and more stuff completely disregarded of the actual fic... I'm sad about it but I don't regret leaving Wattpad
i LOVE highschool fics. especially when they include the most CHAOTIC (in the sense of constantly testing the law) characters in it (i read a genshin fanfic and albedo blew up the school)
LOL, I don't play Genshin Impact, but that sounds like a fun fic! And I agree! It's fun to read how the specific characters would interact/which clique they'd be a part of, and chaos only makes it better, lol
Idk if this is an unpopular opinion or a hot take, but I think fanfics are a really good way to expand you mind, in a sense, and it's good writing practice. I've been writing fanfic for YEARS, and I have only gotten better as a writer. It also helps for me to read something I'm actually interested in, because the only actual books I can read are non-fiction, because I can't emerse myself in fiction books, so I find fanfics an enjoyable way to incorporate some fiction into my life.
I love fanfics because they are not afraid to delve into the bizarre or taboo. They aren’t going to make money so you really can write whatever you want. As a person I’ve gotten more comfortable and understanding of topics that don’t apply to myself such as bdsm. I’ve even figured out my gender identity thanks to fanfics! The services provided for free blow my mind whenever I stop to think about it. Thank you for having written for free for years!
if you don't mind me asking, I'm interested if you have an idea why published fiction doesn't work for you, but the source material for your fandoms does, and fanfc does? I know we're all different and everyone's brain wants and gets different things from fiction, I've just never come across that specific combination of likes/dislikes before!
@@Sapphykins I'm an interest based person, so, I enjoy talking about my interests, reading about them, watching them, etc. That being said, I can read non-fiction books, because I have an interest in learning things. With fiction, I used it as an escape when I was little, and now that I'm an adult, it just makes my head hurt, as it is a lot harder for me to picture the characters and the story. But when I read fanfic, my head doesn't hurt, because I already have an interest in the characters and know what they look like and it helps me to form a vauge idea of what the story plot and setting is, making reading fiction a lot easier. I hope that made sense.
not sure if this is a hot take but some of the BEST fics i have EVER READ. Had next to no tags and zero summary. I clicked on them out of curiosity and have been incredibly blown away with some of them.
fuck yea the best fics are written with minimal description, minimal tags, complete lowercase/uppercase simplistic title, and are the only thing written by the author or are from anonymous/orphan account You open the thing and you find the second coming of christ like wth :0
Not a hot take but a random thing I want to say: The greatest fandoms to write for are the ones that hardly have cannon to base things on (Not very detailed characters, shorter series, etc). Nothing tops those ones, especially if they’re ones that got super popular and then lost a lot of people quickly (like The Henry Stickmin Collection for example)
Mine is actually sort of the opposite- when the og content is so large and long with so many nitpicks, it makes the fic better because everyone has a mutual understanding that it’s okay to get something wrong, but if you *want* to know, there’s always an answer out there
This is so true, a great example of this is the Marauders fandom, yes it's technically harry potter but the characters from this era have so little attention in the canon that they've essentially become they're own fandom. And honestly the fandom/fics for the marauders are far better than the actually canon series
(17:07 Hi Voltron fandom) I do like Wattpad's commenting on individual paragraphs, had a lot of fun interactions with actual funny jokes or for flaming really bad outfit mood boards. I mainly stopped using Wattpad and switched to AO3 for the better tagging system, wattpad for a long time had *a lot* of really angsty and depressing fics that were hard to filter out. That and Wattpad became really monetized and ad-focused.
Same here. Like, as much as I enjoy reading through “trashy” fics sometimes for a laugh, it’s so annoying if I wanna read something decent, only to have to sift through a ton of stuff I don’t want first. The ads and monetization are also super annoying too - being hit with ads in the middle of a fic is not only annoying, but can really spoil the mood of certain moments, especially if meant to be serious.
@@stormylobbyI download the app if I want to read a story in full, so if you open the fic while your on Wi-Fi, it’ll be in your ‘saved fics’, so to speak. Then, you can turn off the Wi-Fi and read it with no ads.
As a writer of original content: i look forward to people writing the most batshit crazy, ooc smut fics about my characters. So many creators are weirded out by smutty fanfic, but i love the idea of seeing what people are shipping, what people imagine dynamics to be, etc. Even if they get it completely wrong, ill just be cackling when i eventually write the scene that corrects them, or they get it wrong in a way that's interesting
My take: I wish less people would stop caring about being judged for their tastes and interests when writing, as it has hindered my own writing ideas in the past before I decided "screw it" and wrote what I wanted to Fanfic is for the author first and foremost, you don't have to share it with the world (I know for a fact that a lot of mine is just sitting in a google doc for my own enjoyment) Write what you wanna write Wanna write a fic where someone offs themselves? Go for it Wanna write some toothrotting fluff? Have fun! Wanna write a longfic with 300k words? Hells yeah Just do what makes you happy, ignore what everyone else says And if you share it, you'll find many people who are interested in the same topic Just have fun and write for YOU
I was just thinking off making a fanfiction where a character offs themselves or get close to it but felt I shouldn't because it would be too "edgy". Thank you for saying this! 😭😭
6:17 It depends. If you go into fanfiction wanting to learn how to write better, and you're realistic about it, then no. You *absolutely* will avoid the brainrot. And I can safely say I have, given that's what I've done, and I'll have been at it for 8 years this fall. (Granted, I've also been writing for a long while, but fanfiction was really when I started to focus on it.) You get immediate feedback. What's done is done. And, it's nice to have a log of what you've written to look back on. Like a little time-capsule. There are also other things you learn from fanfiction that you can't in original works, like writing characters/environments that wouldn't have come to you organically on your own. And if you are serious about getting good, you learn how to accurately write said characters. And so on and so forth. The fanfic rot comes from people just writing cuz they want to write, and then people being ignorant to what fanfiction is at the end of the day, without considering what the author is doing. Which is just having a good time. So you end up with impressionable young people who don't realize the context.
Okay, as someone who writes a LOT of fanfic and reads a minuscule amount, I feel like just writing the amount that I do has made me a real book snob or something (sobs), because now every time I open a book I immediately recognize grammar mistakes and crappy descriptors and my brain just goes on and on "I could write better than this. I paid money for this?? Why???? God this feels like I'm rereading that one really good fic with horrible spelling and grammar except this time it's boring and has no plot." *proceeds to put book down and return to fanfic* like, okay, is it just me?? I feel like with the way people crap on fanfic my expectations for actual books just heighten exponentially and then like, they're the quality of your average decently written fanfic. why are we holding published books on a pedestal when I've read and honestly probably written fanfic that is better quality than a large chunk of "real" books. and we all do it for free, too??
Ughgh Im the opposite. I swear I have ideas and I really want to write, but my drive is so low just because of how awful I am at it. And I can’t seem to just write a short fic because I feel like I *have* to add context
One of the last 'real books' I read before completely falling off the wagon was a book that was so unbelievably clearly a Nico Di Angelo x Reader fanfiction that somehow got past a publisher. It haunts me to this day.
No! But good to know Gideon the Ninth can fit that description. The one I read was called "I'll Follow You Into The Dark" (literally a song lyric as a title hoooow did it get published)@@sageleaf8962
6:02 I can confirm this. Honestly, I've always been worried my non-fanfiction works sound fanfiction-ey, because when compared to other books I've read in school and uni, the structure and grammar in fics is very different and varies a lot from author to author. Whereas published books tend to have a certain formula to them- especially if all the editing is done by a specific publishing company. Still, I find myself reading and enjoying fanfic a lot more often than books, so I'm an avid junk food enjoyer even when I get my brain full-course meals once in a while.
My hot take is when a character is crying in a very emotional part and the comments on that chapter is people saying "oh god stop crying" and "this character is annoying because they won't stop crying" I'm looking at you wattpad comments
I’ll cry even more if someone said that to me lmao. I cry a lot, like a lot, No matter the reason, sometimes I just cry for no apparent reason, which often leads me to have many people in my life antagonizing me for crying, which I remind you I can’t control, like I have zero control when I cry, or with who lol
@@LilyWhitesLKive BEEN there! during my first mental breakdown, someone called me a crybaby. its probably one of the most damaging things ever done to me-i cant cry in front of people now :’)
@@wrightcember You’re definitely not alone there. I got bullied for crying once in school, and despite it having been years ago, I’ve never recovered from it. To this day, I always try to hide my tears and cry silently or isolate myself if I just gotta have a messy cry over something :’3
What are your unpopular fanfiction opinions??
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There should be a history on Ao3 so we don’t lose fics. I know people don’t like search history if you’re reading smut but it’s be really helpful
if there's spicy content i cannot bring myself to read it
One-shot or die. I love something that is short and sweet.
I can only read modern au/no power fics no matter the Fandom
@the-lakes oh my god same! when fics get to the comfort part i usually get pretty bored and switch to another angsty fic. my favourite of the hurt/no comfort category at the moment is major character death
I just realized that I don't usually look at titles when I'm looking for fanfics. I look at the summary, skim the relationship tags, and then I decide if I want to read it or not.
same! i end up not being able to remember the titles of fics i've bookmarked and read multiple times ahaa
Same, I really don't understand complaining about fic names lol
I do look at titles but yeah the summary and tags are much more important to a fanfic.
Yes! I feel like titles don’t usually give away much and other than my favorite wattpad story, I really don’t remember any of the names of other stories I have read.
Yeah I don’t remember any of the stories I read unless it was super good and I memorized the name or it was funny lol
Slowburns are a hit or miss tag for me. If it's a slowburn because the feelings take time to develop, that's my freaking jam. If it's a slowburn because they just don't know how to say "I like you" it drives me up the wall.
I think you’ve fully articulated what it is about slow burns for me because I feel the exact same! I love them but I’ve always wondered why so many of them are a miss for me even when most of my favourite works are slow burns. If I wanted to read the characters bumbling around to confess then I’d rather read a one shot, otherwise it feels like I’m wasting my time.
@@nineteenseventyfive6709 Exactly. I also love idiots who don't realize they're in love with each other
OKAY YES! You put it into words!
I also think that if it’s slow because the characters need to develop/be in the right place to get together in a healthy way then that can work too. (Though I don’t love when it feels like authors put off those revelations just so they can complicate other storylines/the plot by having it come up at an inopportune moment.)
I absolutely hate media (fanfics, movies, books, series, anything) where I could easily fix the whole plot by having the characters sit down and TALK LIKE ADULTS. If the biggest problem you can come up with is "they're bad at communicating" you're not very imaginative, I don't think I've ever seen it done right
My hot take: People take fanfic wayyy too seriously. Some people out here saying how only reading finished fanfiction is bad or how themes in fanfic can be harmful. Like…. Y’all. This is for fun for most of us, and everyone has their preferences on how they like to read and what they like to read!!
i legit had a professor in college spend AN ENTIRE LECTURE talking about the "dangers of fanfic" and we all just sat there awkwardly and one brave soul raised her hand and was like "but i think it can be good..." and tried to defend fanfiction and how fun it is and the creative outlet and the professor just scolded her and continued on saying how bad it is and i was like ma'am....it's not that serious.
Pretty much me I've read some weird ass stuff in my time and honestly it's been entertaining. Weird but fun so I never understood people who got bent outta shape about it. Let me enjoy my tentacle catabolism smut in piece 😂 (JOKE)
Aight so what’s the deal with two comments saying the same things here
@@serenegenerally haven’t got a clue, bots sometimes copy other people’s comments so maybe that?
@NotVille_ ?
Here's one thing I want everyone to know: FANFICTION IS SUPPOSED TO BE INDULGENT!
Write anything you want! Write multiple genres, write one genre, write as many romances as you want, write purely platonic ships, write dark angsty stuff, write toothaching fluff, it doesn't matter! What matters is if *you* like it or not
I AGREE WITH THIS ON A SPIRITUAL LEVEL
ALSO DO NOT SCALD PEOPLE FOR WRITING STUFF YOU DISLIKE.
@@brightboi4291 THIS 👆 THIS AS WELL
I am writing something very self-indulgent, but I needed to read this. Thank you (^^)
HELL YEAH BRO! (gender neutral, affectionate)
YESSS THIS
My favorite pairing isn’t going to become canon for a good couple years and the second season hasn’t even begun yet but THEY HAVE SO MUCH TENSION AND CHEMISTRY I JUST CAN’T AHHHH so I’m currently writing a mega fanfic full of all the possible scenarios and plotlines that could happen, including them finally becoming canon. It’s all I want in one fic, why shouldn’t I write it?
I think this is a hot take, but short characters are not always children, or "child-coded". Short adults exist.
While not exclusive to fanfiction, it is something I see too often in fanfiction, and fandom as a whole.
Justice for short kings.
YES. I'm an adult and hella short. And yet some people will say I'm "child-coded" like dude that's just a height-
Agreed. If that were true in real life, then I'd have been "adult-coded" at 9 years old because I grew tall fast. That is a great deal worse than just letting short adults be seen as their actual age.
Yesss. Let me write my Bilbo x Sauron fic in piece
I'm 4'11 and 29yo irl. We exist!
This is especially true. But ive noticed in the, Zelda fandom, because one of our protags is canonical a short man and while we all enjoy memeing it, I don't think ive ever seen anyone describe him as child-like. Hooray for that!
@@missscarlet6044 It's usually because they're referring to short women as being "child-coded", since those types of people have been infantalising women for centuries and still are. 💀
Honestly, I don't think it's a bad thing if an original story sounds "fanfiction-y". It's fun! Even in an original story with original characters
agree! fanfiction has a unique quality that makes it fun, and i usually really enjoy original stories that give off that vibe
My favorite books are ones that give off fanfictiony vibes! I don’t know what makes it so complelling, but it makes the book a lot more enjoyable
I always got the impression that when people use “it feels/reads like fanfiction” in a bad way, what they mean is “this feels like something I wouldn’t pay for/ would just enjoy for free”
It depends if it is a good story or not. A story is a story.
When someone described a fiction as 'fanfiction-y', i think they probably just mean it's more focus on how character feels and acts to things. like from the experience i have reading a bunch of stuff, romance fictions tends to feel more 'fanfiction-y', and when it comes to fictions with over-arching plot lines(so less time for emotions and stuff), the 'fanfiction vibes' tends to appeared when the character is suffering or is poring their heart out to each other. (the only example i can think of right now is probably Lester/Apollo from PJO:TOA?)
Watching this video is basically going from: "I can agree with that" to "I'm going to throw you off a cliff" within a moments notice and I love it.
I'm one of those "Do whatever you want. Cringe culture is dead" type of ppl but the 'Idc about cannon sexuality" made my blood boil
Actually gaged when I heard "I think its okay to use words like bluette or pinkette" when a second ago I was agreeing that I can over look poor grammar and spelling.
Literally happened with me in the title.
same
@@MyShipsHaveCannons I know I can just look it up... but what does that mean?
my unpopular opinion: i love reading unfinished fics at night. imagining the ending of the stories in my head to make me sleep is basically my night routine now
Me too!
I like that too, but then I don't like not having the OPTION to look at the ending, and then I feel grumpy about it because I won't be able to read the ending in the morning
SAME
I legit get sad when i finish a completed fanfic, especially one without a satisfying end, but having the option to decide what happens next is so satisfying! I legit love it so much!
certified psychopath behaviour.... i filter by completed fics only, my emotions aren't patient enough to wait
I love chat fics, they can be so funny. I don't read them if the characters are too out of character though.
hard agree! I also like seeing interpretations of how different characters type (perfect grammar, lots of abbreviations, etc.)
i love chat fics but it's so hard to find one i think is good😭😭like if all the characters type the same or have some out landish '90s sitcom' comedy to them i can't read it. don't get me wrong i love 90s sitcom, my favorite show is boy meets world, but todd anderson would never NEVER trauma dump in a gc😭
I like chat fics even if there is some OOC. I think chat fics are best when they explore characters that don't get a lot of spot light.
Ohh my lord especially when they use the fact that it’s a story posted on the internet to its fullest potential>>>
Like I read this one chatfic that had actual links into the fic (this author made up a whole webpage and articles to add to the story!) and even embedded mp3 files to act as voice messages. It’s just so cool to see that because it adds more to the story and is something so unique to reading stories online compared to having physical books (no shade I still love them)
@@j0j0thefan I love when they focus on characters who don't get a lot of spot light. Some of my favorite chat fics explore the relationships between main characters and side characters who only get a few minutes of screen time, or only show up in one or two episodes.
Hot take: I think a writer should be able to update whenever they want. They shouldn't need to have an update schedule. If you wanna update once a week, great. If you don't have time to update until months later, that's also fine. Fanfic is about enjoying the source material so much that YOU want to write something.
Fanfiction is not a transaction.
As a writer, THANK YOU! Sometimes life gets chaotic or inspiration has decided to go out the window, and we just don’t have the time or energy to write and update!
Exactly! I don't write but I hate that the authors feel like they have to have a schedule or justify why they took a break. Author of print or fanfiction are real like people with real life problems. Add on top of that for fanfiction and these people also have jobs and possibly school. Like geez Louise folks.
@@thatgirl_tab yeah, I've honestly never understood why people put so much pressure on writers to make chapters. If you can't handle a fic in progress- don't read one.
@@thatgirl_tab Thank you for having common sense, as a writer, it is very much appreciated 😅
I once took 5 years to update...
Honestly, any preference in fanfic I had dies the second I get into a small fandom. I will take anything that isn't completely off-putting for me.
Same here, when the fandom is too small, you're feeding yourself with crumbs😢
when i was into LOTR my taste was Sansukh and like two other fics but now that i’m into Lupin III i am drinking up everything i can find. it rlly depends DHDJDJJD
SAMEE, I LOVE A SHIP THAT HAS LIKE 20 FICS!! I've read all of them like 5 times
Yes! One of the fandoms I'm in only has around 20 fics, and most of them are written by the same author. They are pretty good reads, but when I try to find something different it's all insane crossover fics that I find boring
As someone who frequents the pvz tag I can confirm we take literally anything that isn't a crack crossover
Unpopular opinion: Dead Dove Do Not Eat, as controversial as it is, deserves a place in the fanfiction community. Sometimes it scratches an itch in the back of your brain like.
yesssss sometimes I just need that filth, its like a horror movie that’s so good but is still horror
What does that even mean like i hear it everywhere
@@dancingdyspraxicfairy i genuinely forgot but as far as i remember, basically something that should be treated seriously, often containing some sort of violence or very sensitive topics
@@dancingdyspraxicfairyIt basically means “you have been warned” often for when a fic is disturbing or confronting, a reader shan’t complain because it was in the tags or summary and they chose to read it
@dancingdyspraxicfairy Dead Dove Do Not Eat is a warning for when a work has topics such as incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, etc as the main ship
It's somehow so reassuring to hear not everyone hates unfinished fics...
in my favourite fandom, my favourite fics are all unfinished. and these are like, 100k plus fics, they are some of the best literature i have read and they will never be finished, but at least i got to experience them
Ik😭
Legit never sort by finished. It could be one chapter out of ten that was written seven years ago and never updated and I'd still read it if it sounds fun. Some of the (very few) bookmarks I have are amazing fics that never got an ending. I'm just glad people wrote something cool and shared it tbh, finished or not.
My fav fics are ALWAYS the unfinished ones 🥲💔
@@luiza2597Same the Author of the Fanfic I like updated in 4 years a few days ago
I think people that say fanfiction can never be as good as books just haven't read any good fanfics yet, because I can certainly say that's not the case
bro fr. Some books are so badly written and have not so great plot or storyline, where as so many fanfics and fanfic authors are literal masters of writing, and their works are amazing reads
Oh my god, I always think back to this one Naruto fanfic series... It was just a fanfiction book series, period. It had all the markings of an original high-stakes romance/thriller that would've been published EASY and made bank, but it was fanfiction. I'm pretty sure the author was an actual published author of original works, too, but they wrote their fanfics like their originals. It's been my writing aspiration ever since and it's probably been ten years by now. All my writing has been curated to keep the Breath To Breathe series alive in artistic reference and reverence. I'm definitely not the same type of writer, but my style is highly influenced by that author to this day. It was the first time I'd ever seen a fanfic written that way, so now I write all mine like that, too. Keeping the dream alive one unfinished fic at a time...
Exactly. I’ve seen some fanfics which were literally better than the canon or better written than the books (HP lol)
For realll.
Honestly. Not only that, but there's so many bad books, and so many authors that are professionally published but don't get any editing in their works. Of course one should read a variety of things, but that "books have a certain level of quality that fanfiction will never be able to reach" is just bullshit.
We NEED more platonic stories!!! I want a story about two characters being friends, having adventures or casual days, I want to read about them hanging out, I want to read about them loving each other PLATONICALLY!!!
Hear, hear!! I really just wanna read about my two favorite characters hanging out or doing shenanigans and having a non-romantic realtionship!!! We should have more!!!!
I love platonic relationships. It's nice to have people only become friends with each other, you know.
When I write a story, mostly I will go with their relationship up to you, but most of the time I see them as platonic.
And that's why I love "found family" so much! There's always a big focus on friendship and I'm all here for it!!
Lighthearted platonic friendships are really nice but as an angst lover heartfelt genuine displays of deep strong platonic love gets me. Every. TIME!!!
Platonic bonds can be just as dramatic & over the top as love stories. I want to see friends that would sail across the world, go to the moon, pour blood sweat & tears, sacrifice everything for each other.
YES i totally agree with that, especially since i'm not that big of a fan of over the top ridiculous romantic relationships.
Like, i get that cliches can be fun at times and i even agree with it, but there's nothing that demoralizes me more than wanting to see a canon/fanon friendship and only finding romance of it. And even if it's not canon, there's some characters i just can't see together in a romantic way - platonically, definitely so.
I think it's even sadder when it happens in a really big fandom with thousands of thousands of fics, and only a handful of them are platonic relationships.
I love when soulmate AU's are very heavy on world-building and exploring the societal implications of their specific soulmate-system. The actual ships themselves in soulmate AU's are usually secondary or even boring to me.
Hard agree! Honestly, I like soulmate AUs that leave a level of uncertainty for the soulmates in question as well and still require them to get to know each other to an extent (ie. a unique tattoo with hints about your soulmate, 'the time is right and XYZ indicates it' etc), though I still also like it if the soulmates don't fall into each other's arms and go 'well we're still strangers/this is kind of pressuring'. But that doesn't happen often enough I find and it detracts a lot.
But cultures around the soulmate element? That's fun. 'First thing they say to you is on your arm'? Everyone says weird shit as a standard greeting unique to themself. Strings? People are encouraged to travel when they're old enough to follow the string and seen as weird, callous, unmotivated, or alternatively very focused and dedicated on their own goals if they don't, and so on. There's just a lot to a world with this sort of fundamental element. Plus personally as a queer person, it feels like that changes the vibe about gay relationships a lot more and I like that.
@@fluffhead6757 Yeees! It is very nice to see gay relationships have a different dynamic to them in this way. I once read a fic in which people could get timers surgically implanted into them and once both parties in a soulmate pairing had the timer installed, it would start counting down to their first meeting. The main ship was very secondary in the fic, but it went into so many questions that could come with this system, like: How does the public react when a celebrity installs their timer? Is it moral/meaningful to date people before your timer goes off? How would you cope with seeing that your timer reads "40 years"? For some people that fear could be enough to never want to get a timer installed at all; but if you don't get your timer installed, there's a chance that somewhere your soulmate has their timer installed, but it will never start counting down until you get it too.
There's so many different kinds of soulmate systems that exist/you can make and I feel like so many could be explored in so much societal depth. It's exciting, yes (:
YESSS worldbuilding goes so hard. its for that same reason i like ABO- the society of it all. one of the reasons i love hp fanfic in particular is theres a genre of fic where someone just reinvents the world and it’s SO RAD
saaaame, i find the implications of the world so interesting. i read one chapter of someone being a shadow assigned to some guy to be his shadow, and i hope it will update cause thats such an intruiging concept
@@seguayeyesss, ABO world building is one of my favorites too. It really lends itself to societal commentary, with omegas and alphas taking on similar roles to women and men, but putting it a new light; as well as so many other things that make it unique, like suppressors and marking. I love when people delve into that
If you don't like the fanfic, don't read it. Don't leave a mean comment, or tear down the author, just leave.
fr 🙏
FOR REAL
I agree but I will harass for incest
That should be common sense tho, alas, it’s not. 😔
How are you supposed to know you don't like the fanfic without reading it?
My unpopular fanfic opinion:
Parenthood tag is a hit or miss
hard agree
If it's 2000 words or one shoot drabble it's usually good but longer than that? No uh, rare
@@enoki_suki Yeah
And the parenthood only happens when the couples have either a one night stand or they hate each other until one of them carries a kid
So they stayed because the kid brought them together
@@nadillasakinah950 omg I see this one ALL the time. it's always a one night stand with a huge jerk who then completely flips and is possessive over the baby for some reason and gets together with the mom/dad (mpreg is equally guilty!)
That is SO REAL like if that tag is in there I look at the summary so fast to see if I even want this or WHAT😭
there's something so enticing about a one shot that's 25k words than a 25k worded fic that's 10 chapters long. i don't know why but it's so much more enticing for me to read that oneshot
I've always found the opposite, the more chapters the better (at least at more than 2k a chapter)
Agreed! I would guess it's more about the feeling of it being a one shot, it feels more satisfying to read something continuously (regardless if the 10 chapters are all updated)
And personally, it helps me not get to that "one more chapter..." dilemma, can never have more chapters if it's just one lololol
I'm actually the exact opposite. 😄 I'd most likely skip or save for later any oneshot that's more than 5K, but if it's like 10k broken up into 10 or more chapters, then that seems more feasible. I can get through chapters pretty quickly if they're only about a thousand words each.
i LOve really long chapters, so the whole story being one chapter is my jam!
I absolutely prefer long chapters over short chapters. One of my fave fics EVER is a single chapter and over 50k words and it is just. So. Good. I love the way it flows, even tho the author uses line breaks which usually turn me off from a fic, but it's utilized really well. I overlook a fic entirely if the amount of words is less than the amount of chapters × 1,000. I really prefer at least 2k words per chapter, but I can push it down to at least 1k words per chapter. Anything less than that and I don't bother. Maybe it came from my Wattpad days where the ads between chapters had to make each chapter worth it and it's carried over to AO3, or maybe it's just preference idk.
i actually agree to an extent to the 'fanfic warps your brain' take.
When writing a fanfic, you can safely assume that everyone who reads it already knows the characters in the story (personality, looks, way of talking and acting, general mindset towards life, etc).Thus, when you write a fanfic, you neednt worry about establishing the character, You can just go ahead and jump into the story. However, when you want to write an actual story on its own, you need to give details such as these (through words or actions doesnt matter, point is you need to establish them).
When you dont do this, you get the bland 'everyman' character that seems to dominate some corners of Booktok: characters which have very little going on and no discerning character traits. This also leads to writers writing in a way as if you, the reader, are already the bff of the characters/know them well. So yeah, your writing may end up sounding like fanfic.
A same thing can be said about reading. When you read a fanfic, you already know the characters, so you dont want to read unnecessary eposition about them (which can often feel cringey or forced within fanfiction). And when a character does something messed up in a fanfic to serve the story, you always know why they do so, cause you already KNOW the character at its core.
However, when you read an actual novel (especially older ones), you dont have this information! you need to read through paragraphs that explain why a character acts as they do. And, yes, even in the most well-written novels, this can take a while. I think only reading fanfiction unlearns you the concept of learning new characters through written media.
Last thing ill say b4 i shut my mouth: reading a novel (which, yknow, doesnt have tags that show whats gonna happen!) also teaches you to sit and get through discomfort. With a fanfic, you very quickly click away when something isnt 100% the style you like. When reading official novels in different genres, you learn to expand your worldview and get both a better understanding of what you do and do not like (both in the story and just in general).
So, TLDR: reading only fanfic does not rot your brain, nor does it decrease your ability to write well. HOWEVER, it does have the ability to make you only write in a very specific way (assuming readers have the same knowledge as u abt the characters + way of phrasing) AND it does not open the world to you in the way professional novels do
People who write fanfiction of professional novels: am I a joke to you
I can close a book i dont like just as quickly as a fanfic
@@BookWyrmOnAStringexactly. this argument is a bit weak.
So true but I’ll only have to disagree with the sitting through discomfort part. My family owns a huge library shelf that takes up a wall in our living room so there’s a lot of books of different genres (fiction and non-fiction) to go through, so sometimes I will pick something up if the premise is interesting but if I ended getting bored half-way through or the book starts heading towards a direction I don’t like (not the “oh this character gets x, y, z and i don’t like that” type but the “what is this author doing rn this doesn’t make sense with the context” vibe) that it breaks my immersion then I’ll close it.
Thats fair, maybe thats because im not from a wealthy family, but for me; when you buy a book, you read it. otherwise it is wasted money @@invalidninvisible7864
If you ever end up wanting to delete your fics on AO3, don't. Orphan them.
1. AO3 is an archive. Deleting stuff from it directly hurts its mission to archive all fanfiction.
2. There are most probably people that love the fic and reread it religiously.
3. See point 1. Do not make the archivists' work harder.
i once found a really good angst fanfic in ao3 and then the author deleted it 😔💔
@@what-hq1gl it happens all the time 😭
LEGIT‼️‼️‼️ THERE USED TO BE THIS RLLY GOOD ANGST FIC OF A RLLY UNIQUE IDEA AND CONCEPT AND THEN IT WAS DELETED??????!!!! I THINK IT WAS BC PEOPLE WEREN’T READING IT BUT OMG I READ IT LIKE THE BIBLE MAN I HAVE IT ENGRAVED IN MY HEART AND ITS GONE NOWWWWW NOOOOOO 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
@@ger1000 NO BUT MY ANGST FIC THAT WAS DELETED WAS LIKE THAT TOO 😭 BUT I THINK THEY DELETED IT BECAUSE I REMINDED THEM OF THE FICS EXISTENCE BY GIVING IT KUDOS
Really valid points
I hate when fandoms infantalize characters. I was in the Sandersides Fandom for a bit and I hated how people acted like Virgil was a little baby who need protection or something. That always annoyed me because it, to me, kind of removed what made him interesting, in that he was hard to love and cold to others.
Agreed 👏
OMG i hate it when people infantalize characters that aren't baby's or children I think there nothing wrong with treating Eri (A litterel child from mha) like a child over treating SUNNY and BASIL (two 16 years Olds from OMORI) like children
fair but can still like blueberry underswap sans cutesy version
That's why Virgil wasn't in a lot of what I read, I couldn't take the constant infantile nature of him. Patton is much more childish than him and do you see as many cases of making him a little meow meow? No, it's all just because Virgil is edgy.
God damn, that hits. My fav character has so much potential for tragic, dramatically moving plot lines in fic. But he's always portrayed as the dumb funny one who is dumb and funny and incapable of feeling any other emotions than Dumb and Happy.
My hot take: I'm a big fan of established relationships. Like, dont get me wrong, a cute story about two characters falling in love is great, but I would love to see more stories of that ship just being in a healthy and cute relationship or bickering like and old married couple or just doing cute relationship stuff in the background of the plot.
Same one of the first things I look for
Smt I can't be bothered with the lobe story just show me their dynamic damn it
yeah same established relationship is in my top tags
Again no lol.
Totally agree. I write fanfics for myself mostly because i’m too scared to post it and the one i’m currently writing shows how they got together and a lot afterwards. It’s nice because the ship in canon barely got a chance to be together before they broke up
ngl, all the people saying they want more platonic ships and the people saying they want more established relationships makes me want to try writing those things. keep complaining, its working, you're converting me 🫡
my unpopular opinion is that i think ao3 should implement the wattpad style of comments where you can leave a comments on a specific line or paragraph.
Actually, side note, there's an add-on for Ao3 that does that! I can't remember what it's called, but it puts a little comment box in the upper right-hand corner you just have to click on a small button to see, and I love that! Can't remember what it's called, but I totally agree they should have something so you're motivated to comment your thoughts in the moment, at least!
@@Absolei oh thats really cool to know, thank you!
Agreed completely!
as someone who spent roughly five/six years on wattpad before moving on to AO3, i agree! i enjoy the interactions i have on AO3 but i miss being able to comment on something specific in a chapter, because sometimes i just have nothing to say generally, and having to add a specific line to my comment so people know what im referring to feels a bit clunky.
Oh, I am DESPERATE for that.
Interacting with people in specific paragraphs when reading fanfiction is one of my favourite features on Wattpad
My hot take is that people should be allowed to have their own interpretations of the personality/story of a character, especially those who get very little screentime or are written very shallowly.
This!!!!! If you don’t like their interpretation, just move on or hell Write Your Own!
Yes Yes Yes
I see this a lot with Chara from "Undertale". The game is intentionally ambiguous about the character. However, most "Undertale" fans will go berserk if you portray Chara as evil.
Not if they just bash tf out of a character though.
I mostly agree, but in most of the cases of this I’ve seen, they completely mischaracterize them on an insane level.
The opinion of 'don't tell people you read/write fanfic' depends on the situation. I was working on a fic while calling my mum once, and I mentioned it cause we both had seen the show. She asked to see it, and I sent my WIP to her, and she was super happy. She didn't even know I loved writing and mentioned it sounding super professional. Now she reads all my fanfiction before anyone else (as long as they are PG). But even then, my funny little stories have given us conversations and things to discuss. So, as long as you don't always bring it up all the time, you could bond over it. In my opinion, it's the same as saying I like this author or I like this UA-camr.
Ooow, so cute.
Your mom sounds amazing 🤍
Exactly! I'm super open about writing fanfiction because it is my biggest hobby & I have met & bonded with people through that. A few years ago, I would have been way more gunshy about sharing that but I realized that A LOT more people read fanfiction than they did back then and the attitude around it has changed a lot. When I told my super religious pioneer ass Jehoviah's WItness cousin that I wrote fanfiction she was like "I LOVE FANFICTION!!" Of course she meant Disney genfics and I meant smut but hey, we bonded.
I’ve told a few friends/classmates (in this case it’s specifically 2 table group classmates that I consider friends and one I’ve actually been friends with for a while) that I read fanfiction, and as far as I remember, only one of them didn’t react negatively (2 if you count how one didn’t say anything at all lmao). They made fun of me for it, not in a way that was intentionally antagonistic, but it still made me wish I never told them in the first place. They’ve stopped mentioning it, but maybe it’s because I’ve stopped reading fanfics during the 10 minutes before class or during lunch (in my defence when I told them I was reading a 40k or 80k word fic with only 4 chapters. Each chapter was LONG and I was invested and therefore I was on my phone whenever it wasn’t class time))
That friend that reacted positively though, she asked me what I was reading one time and I just gave her my phone to read the tags bcs I had no idea how to explain the plot and she punched the air ‘cause she liked the tags lmao
@@flair1681 can I ask what grade you’re in? Bc when I was in middle school I would have probably gotten the same reaction, iirc, I did get ragged on for reading ff occasionally but it wasn’t ostracizing. However, now that I’m older, essentially from graduation, ppl have become markedly more mature about it.
My (maybe) hot take is that A/B/O fics are at their best when there’s little to no smut or smut is not the main focus of the story. I love it when writers take the time to actually explore how the world would work if A/B/O was real. It’s so cool to see it used for worldbuilding instead of the same heat/rut plots I keep running into. Nothing wrong with shameless smut, I just don’t find it as interesting.
Yessss, I completely agree‼️ I think that any story is good without having smut in it, personally I'd prefer if there is no smut in the first place. But, as I was saying, A/B/O is such an interesting concept within itself and to have that idea overshadowed by smut all of the time takes away from what could possibly be a very enticing and entertaining story! 😊😤
I read this MCU ABO fic about Omega!Tony trying to live and deal with the society he lives in post-civil war to infinity war. (It had team cap bashing just incase you want to know) It was really good.
This is so real though I have read several A/B/O fic that had no smut and were amazing in those fic heat was treated more like a period and I love it
@@akirachaossutaomg please tell me you still know the name
Heads up, but please include slashes for the acronym!! Writing it out without it is a slur used here in Australia towards our First Nations people :(
I LOVE the "Oh. _Oh?_ " thing SO MUCH when it's used effectively like when it's the turning point where the penny drops for the character regarding a major event it has me screaming and kicking my feet and giggling excitedly!!!!
YEESSS EXACTLY and it’s so fun because it’s such a talking point for people, like you can compare how fics you’ve read use it and such an instantly recognisable thing! :o
13:52 OP: "Published works are higher quality than fanfic will ever be"
*looks over at 50 Shades of Grey from the corner of my eye*
*looks back to op and raises eyebrow*
LMAOOO. For real.
I have read fanfics that are longer than any other book I’ve ever even seen (looking at you, Golden Quiche) (really good undertale fanfic though)
Colleen hoover books: “Let me introduce myself.”
I recently read an aot fanfic that's way better than any book I've ever read apart from the hunger games... It's highly inspired my the hunger games, the writing is amazing, everyone is in character and the characters are fleshed out and developed. I'm still waiting on an update tho
Yeah isnt that proving OP's point? fifty shades is basically a fanfic, and thus the quality is nowhere near some other professional romances that arose from full-on creativity
Some of these are pretty interesting, I just wish Coley would comment more on what she personally feels about some of them instead of just reading them out and moving on to the next
Totally agree with you!
I agree! Her own opinions are just as interesting lol but I think maybe she moves on for the sake of time
i agree! 💕
And let people bash her in comments section or social media which will be inevitable.
I was definitely hoping for more opinion
It's fine to drop a fanfic while in the middle
If you really liked the first two chapters,but don't like the next it's alright to go to a different fic
so true! my motto is always "don't like, don't read!" it's fine to only like a little of something and not the rest, as long as you aren't rude about not liking something then go ahead and switch to something else!
I usually force myself through 2 more just incase the author was having a bad day
Yep because if I try to push through it will only work out for me in like 10% of cases, so why bother? If I push through that usually leads to me avoiding fics again
I read around 680k words of a fic and never read the final 3k words. It’s just sitting there in one of my millions of tabs, hanging out 😅
@@CapybaraGod53oh yeah I've done that before. Like I want to _read_ it and finish it but... at the same time I don't _want_ to finish it, you know?
Lowkey don't want it to end even though it ended 😔
I read like 97% fanfic and my vocabulary and reading levels have drastically improved, so has my writing and grammar.
I love stories where shipping is a side part. As in the main characters are working towards a certain goal and they’re in an established relationship
It isn’t the main focus but it’s there
YES!! This is the best!!!! Though i prefer them not being in a relationship yet but it’s building up, but there is another plot and their romance is just a side part
This is like exactly what I'm trying to do while writing my book. It's about the mcs whole life, their goals and achievements and friendships and yes, romance, but just bc it has romance doesnt mean it's a romance novel.
I saw a lot of people complaining about tropes they don't like. It's fine to have things you like and things you don't like, but Ao3 has a filtering system for a reason. It seems like some of these people act like they're forced to read these tropes. Just filter out what you don't like.
My issue with the tagging system is that there are multiple tags that mean the same thing. You will filter one and then find fics with that tag but with a different name (a good example is any piss related tag - theres 3) that you now had to filter out. After a while it just gets frustrating.
@@fizzydrinkunoyou could either use the - in the search word filter, or get a skin to permanently block those tags
@@fizzydrinkunoomg That! I now have a whole list of tags, most variants of each other, I have to go and manually type in to the exclude tag box.
i think the frustration is that it is almost impossible to exclude all tags you dislike
The filter tag is a godsend but definitely needs work
I think my biggest hot take is that Hurt/Comfort is THE ideal ship scenario for most ships. You get to explore things like how characters react to things, how they breakdown, you get to character study multiple people even those not in the ship- and you can even ADD other things on top of it like Angst, Fluff, or even Smut if you know how to write it into the story without it being super forced. It also isn't too sun shiny- giving some realities to even the happiest of situations like self-doubt, depression, or even sensory overload and/or a panic attack. The comfort can be flexible too. From words to touch to even objects- the comfort in a hurt/comfort can be just about ANYTHING and it leads to unique scnarios
Don't get me wrong, pure angst, fluff, crackfics, and smut are all just as valid and can be fun to read, but as a writer of both rewrites, AUs, oc stories, AND fanfics- Hurt/Comfort is just the absolutely best ship related fanfictions due to its flexibility and how the limits are only stopped by thw writer themselves
Dude, I never considered that before, but you have convinced me. I feel like hurt/comfort shows a little on how real relationships work and thrive.
I completely agree!! And not only do you figure out how each character responds to a certain scenario depending on their role, you also see how they react to _others_ in their own roles. It makes room to build on relationships of all kinds and see how well they work together-- or don't, and how they compensate if necessary. You can even explore more of the world itself, too, and how specific elements interact with injured, depressed, and/or otherwise sombre characters; is the air toxic, making open wounds as simple as a cut potentially fatal? Has one character found themselves sick or injected with something that's only cure is a rare mixture? What general remedies are there, and do your characters know of them? Do they end up making their own? And then, of course, there're the emotional beats behind it all; how terrible is the hurt, and how much comfort is required? Can the other character/s supply sufficient comfort? How does each character respond to what sort of pain, for themselves and/or for others? Is it a specific trauma/underlying factor, or just one of those days? It's a fun exercise for a number of reasons.
In my opinion, it's absolutely one of (if not the) best things in writing, period. And as you said, the only limit is one's imagination :D
thats such a good point. explains why hurt/comfort is one of my fave tropes lol
I like the idea of putting characters in interesting scenarios. I do it all the time, I like thinking how the characters act. My favorite plot do this is making them parents. Seeing the characters as a happy, healthy family always is fun and makes my brain work 😊
Honestly hurt/comfort and angst is all I read because I Love LOVEEE explormemt of people's emotions and breaking down their way of thinking
For the whole "don't read only fanfic, it doesn't help your vocab": That might be true if English is your first language. But if English is just a language you learn in school, fanfic can be very helpful. Sure you have to expand your learning materials at some point, but you can get a fairly large pool of english vocab just by reading fanfic and from experience reading fanfic is enough to get through the English classes in european schools. You're not gonna be perfect, but it being a second or third language no one expects you to be perfect.
Literally, I just love the way I learned English;
Started with gacha life, didn't understand what they said but still could understand some things with the context, the pictures
Next, I started watching a lot of English UA-camrs, instead of just gacha. It helped me with my audition understanding.
Last step for now, fanfictions. I learned so many things with fanfictions, vocabulary, expressions, grammar...
And ONLY AFTER all that, I have started learning English at school.
@@Little_phly EXACTLY
Why did everyone I know (including myself) learn English *exactly* like that
I still vividly remember the time I learned the word "yet" from some random cringey 2019 gacha video
Fanfiction has actually improved my vocabulary and fluency. It helped me get used to reading in English and the first two months of reading I went every 10 min to the translator. Now I barely need to go to a translator, although I do it from time to time. One of the pros for fanfiction is that it has content of stories you already know and like, so it's a much more enjoyable read from the start than a brand new story in a language not your own. Lifts your mood for not understanding much what's going on
I litterally learned english by reading fanfictions.
The fact that a single author's vocabulary is often reduce means that as long as you stuck to them, you don't need to reach for the translator every five minutes and can just get used to their own vocabulary for a while.
The fact that you often get short works means you don't have to understand complex stories or be focused for very long while learning to read in english. This meant that I didn't give up and was actually exited to learn a new language and be able to read a whole new side of my fandom.
(also, in non-english fandom, translation of popular english fics are a big thing, and my favorite wasn't finished while the original was, a great motivation xD)
I think it can also be genuinely helpful when attempting to learn the casual parts of the language. Of course, books, TV shows or UA-cam videos will get you just as far in that regard, but fanfics can be more comprehensible for beginners as they usually are an easier read and might even be more enjoyable, which imo is the most important part when trying to stay on track with learning a language. Of course, the downside is that you will find a lot of fics that aren't spellchecked or have bad grammar, but I still think that's still better than giving up entirely because you can't find anything that interests you and you'll also learn how to look out for that with time.
i think my hot take is that fandom-acclaimed fics shouldn't be considered demanded reading. there's some HUGE fics in a fandom i'm in and it's made me incredibly intimidated to read it
One of the top fics in my fandom is literally heavy smut written by a minor and no one should be pressured to read that 💀
@@alyssa8167 what the heck is this fandom?
me when i had first gotten into marauders (i still havent read a lot of the big ones)
@@svarakissoon1189 same
@@svarakissoon1189honestly same. i've admittedly read (and liked) a lot of the big ones, but people act like atyd is the fucking bible or something, it's absurd. i made it through maybe half of it and stopped because i just didn't like it and have had people attack me on tumblr for mentioning that.
21:41 people using the wrong homophones is such an immediate turnoff for me. if I see another “I love you *to* ” in my fluff I will riot
honestly same, if its one or two i can ignore, but i just cant read a fic with to instead of too or the wrong their/there/they're :/
some bother me and some don't, too and to I can usually skip over, but their/there/they're changes the meaning so dramatically that it always brings me up short.
the big one that i don't see much anymore (maybe because there aren't as many teaboos around in fandom since sherlock crashed and burned?) is people writing bullocks when they mean bollocks. it makes me laugh every time, but it's also an instant back button moment for me!
I read it homophobes and I was really confused for a second
agree. im fine with occasional typos (authors do it for free after all) but when it’s very noticeable and repetitive mistakes like to/too, there/their it completely ruins immersion for me
there is another fanfiction website that has public beta where readers can select part of the text and directly notify author about a mistake (even with an optional comment about the mistake). wish ao3 could implement something like this
i care so much about grammar so any grammar mistakes in fanfiction make me immensely angry. what do you mean "your so cute"?? what about my so cute??
Fanfiction is done FOR FUN, FOR FREE. People can choose to read whichever ones they want, but they should never genuinely upset about certain qualities or trends.
Eh, I think people are allowed to be genuinely upset. It's what you do when you're upset that matters. Sharing and talking about things you dislike can be as important as talking about things you like. There's venting, validation, and just a general social aspect to sharing your opinion with others. The problem stems from that some people think their opinions matter first and foremost at all times, amplified by the internet to an even wider audience.
@@wombat4583 good point. Constructive criticism is a huge positive for me. But I dislike when people treat fanfiction like it’s meant to be published literature.
If you don’t know BASIC GRAMMAR then you shouldn’t post your writing. I get mad about that
@@milla5454 maybe just don’t read their writing. People should have fun and eventually they’ll learn ! It’s a necessary step towards progress
@@bananabro1010 yeah but just don’t post it when you literally can’t even write it. Put at least a little effort into what you’re writing. And plus, it’s real hard to avoid
I love slow burns but sometimes people take it to an extreme… I read a fic where the two main characters got drunk and made a baby on the second chapter but didn’t actually start to date until after chapter 150
whyyy did you read this 💀
@@varena04maybe the though it would speed up/the chapters were small
So true tho
Read a Ghost x Soap slow burn fic that had over 44 chapters (wasn’t finished)
On chapter 40 or something they finally went on a date and I don’t really remember what it was but something traumatic happened (I say traumatic but not really, like just something embarrassing happened to Soap)
And they went back to avoiding each other but still texting, despite the fact they lived next door
If your fanfic has a giant wall of tags, I won’t read it, because 9 times out of 10 it’s an unfocused mess of oneshots with no cohesion
I agree with this so much, you could have mastercraft writing with a perfect plot but unless it’s like in a fandom with 4 fanfics in it I’m not gonna read it
SAME. Sometimes I skip out on them just because I'm so salty that they made me scroll for ten seconds to get past the fifteen-page-essay of tags
9 krillion tags, 3/? chapters, unfinished, hasn't been updated in months, and is a oneshot/hc book. the bane of my existance.
hottake: a lot of hanahaki resolutions feel forced
1st: omfg so true. Like, I love - "oh my god, your dying and its my fault! I love you!" But most of the time its just 'I'm sorry I didnt tell you sooner' like??? its so boring.
2nd: you have somhow given me the evil idea to make a hanahaki fic were the characters fall out of love. So thank you for that. I'm gonna go make some shitty notes that will never see the light of day XD
I love the potential of hanahaki fics and am slowly finding those who explore that potential.
Some standouts from the SKZ fandom include a fic that explored hanahaki with an established couple and one was in a car accident and lost their memory of the relationship. In another fic it was a soulmates and hanahaki fic mashup where two people fell in love despite not being soulmates and then the one character found their soulmate but the established couple wasn’t communicating well and so the one character developed hanahaki because his lover found his soulmate and became certain they were going to lose their lover.
I vaguely recall a fic where a character fell in love with their friend who was already in a relationship but saved from certain death by a stranger who decided to woo the shit out of them and they fell deeply in love. No ideas what fandom or who anybody was but boy howdy I will eat all the fics that follow that formula right up.
So far though most hanahaki fics are: I love my bestie who surely can’t love me and now I’m puking up flowers. Oh no I wonder what happens next.
I still read those stories just in case it’s well written because I find the concept fascinating but boy is there so much to explore that hasn’t been yet.
Like, I haven’t read a fic where a character asks their best friend on a date and is turned down. Now that is going to be some very interesting plots to play with when the rejectee develops hanahaki and may or may not tell their friend they’re dying. Do they remain friends? What about the opinions of mutual friends and family? Do they fall in love or out of love? Do they live?
Yep... The only good one I've read was, of all things, a pokemon fic. The others often feel shoehorned in.
Not just hanahaki, amnesia and memory alteration too
@mirandawallace400 the latest hanahaki I read was that specific skz one😂
The opinion at the 30:00 mark about keeping your fanfic hobby a secret ... Big agree with Coley, I disagree with the OP.
When I told my therapist "I started writing again, It's just silly fanfic stuff but I'm having fun" the MASSIVE encouragement I received from the therapist was like ... overwhelming. Being creative is so important to me and shame or fear of failure was holding me back, rediscovering the joy of writing means more to me than someone thinking fanfic is weird and immature. Now, my current WIP is my most popular work so far and has picked up huge momentum compared to my earlier stuff and I have loyal readers leaving excited comments when I update and my confidence has grown so much, the comments certainly help but, honestly, the thrill of the story I'm gradually unwrapping is rewarding in itself, others getting excited about it too is a huge bonus.
I confided in my closest friend that I'm writing fics and while I don't link her my stuff or go into details of the plot (we have different tastes and fandoms), she wasn't at all disturbed, quite the contrary, she told me that she READS loads of fics (even OMEGAVERSE, I was shook when she told me she read A/B/O!). Rather than think I'm a freak and ditch me as a friend, we started talking about stuff we've read and tropes we like. She's always been a big reader but not a writer, I've always been a passionate writer and a reader, so both of us returning to reading and writing respectively has allowed us to bond over old interests we'd let slip after we left high school. If my friend and I ever slip back into a convo about Omegaverse and fic tropes, I might tell her a bit about my current WIP, but I doubt she'd have any interest in reading it. I feel that, where we are in our friendship, even though we are very different, it would take more than some stupid fanfic stuff to come between us and I'd even trust her to read what I've written, if it was the kind of stuff she likes (it's not though, fandoms, ships, genres, we're total opposites!). I've chatted to another friend and mentioned I write and similarly, they were happy for me because it makes me happy to write. I'm protective of my writing because I like using a screenname and keeping my fic stuff away from my non-fic content, but I don't feel ashamed to say that I write fics as a hobby! I hope OP either gets better friends, or realises that friends shouldn't be so dismissive/probably don't care that much about their hobbies because it's "cringe" or w/e.
Exactly. I'm glad you're happy and have great friends. Kudos to your therapist.
I'm glad you found some people to talk to about your writing! I'm jelly, actually. I'm super embarrassed about it myself. I can't even write in public or with someone else in the room. I'll usually just say "I write stupid stories sometimes" and adamantly refuse the rare person who asks to peruse my catalog. Most of the time, people tell me/ask me if I'll publish something and I'm like 😬aha, maybe someday! haha......🤐 So, my hobby in IRL terms is kinda top secret. I just can't get over the squemie feeling. Could never be one of those people that brag about it or even change the names and publish it as fiction. I wish I was, I'd probably be making money off it at this point lmao
My roommate and I write fanfic (different fandoms) and it’s the literal basis of our friendship. I’ve actually never been happier than when I’ve been writing fanfic. It’s like the apple a day that keeps my therapist away, not that I have anything against him. So I agree, OP needs some more accepting friends. Although I still refuse to tell my parents that I write it, so maybe I’m a bit of a hypocrite :p
I dont tell everyone but my mom knows.
My mom was the one who got me to start, she convinced me when I was complaining. Sometimes I ask her opinion on where my story is going or if I get stuck and if I don't know where to go I talk to her about it. She's helped me a lot.
My brothers knows and don't help, at least not all the time. My older brother is an anime fan, I write fics for an anime he likes and he's been trying to get me to write something specific, he does help in other ways too.
My younger brother can care less but my whole family knows. My mom always boast to coworkers or friends of her that I'm a self-published author. It gets embarrassing but I do enjoy it and it's something I talk to my mom about most often.
@@keythealien I keep my fics to myself, but I dont mind saying that I write fics in general, I think just saying "you write silly little stories" is just as valid. I do virtually the same and still like the privacy of only discussing the content of my fics within strictly fic circles.
I think of it this way, if my friend doesnt also write fics, they're probably not that interested in knowing all the details beyond being a supportive pal, so if you dont want to overshare, your friends probably wont mind you keeping your catalog to yourself. Your friends can support your hobbies without knowing each intimate detail, just like how you know what your friends hobbies are but you dont forensically analyse every single thing they do within their hobby. Even the most invested friends have their own lives and hobbies, I think we sometimes overestimate how interested other people are. Like, if I told my friends my AO3 handle, would they bother look it up? Maybe a nosey one would to see what ships I'm shipping, but even then, would they have the attention span to read a whole fic? Maybe if they were in the same fandom, in which case, if they've gone THAT far, they're probably also into fanfics because who else would through so much effort to read something they have zero personal interest in for no reason? They have their own hobbies they find more interesting to spend time on, and if they DONT have other hobbies, then SURPRISE, your friend likes fanfiction too because who else would go that far if they werent remotely into fics?
11:35 As a fanfic writer myself who feels fine with criticism, I definitely agree. I wish there werent so many other authors who shut down anyone trying to give constructive criticism, some of the best additions to my writing have been from people giving me suggestions and ideas of what I could do to advance my story or grammar. No one is perfect, even the best of writers can always improve.
Yeah, but then inviting criticism is going to get you a lot of "criticism" (aka insults from people who don't know how to give criticism and don't have anything constructive to say)
I don't know if I could take that tbh
Yeah, I miss that mentality. It honestly feels to me like we need a new fic platform that is made for people who came open to improving their craft. That way you know that whoever is there is welcoming the interaction. Some of the well known platforms started that way but have changed over time, and aren't the best places to go anymore. I've heard there are other sites but they seem to be very obscure.
Honestly I think it says a lot about 'unpopular opinion' conversations that in this video we saw multiple instances of people on both sides of a particular issues each be convinced that their side is the unpopular one
I like how many opinions in this video directly contradicted each other. it's cool to see how such a wide range of opinions about fanfiction there are!
Yeah I noticed that too! Very cool to see
My biggest hot take is slow burn sometimes is boring and just full of filler, just because the author wants to stretch it. Maybe is because I am impatient but most slow burn, mutual pining fanfics feel like esays trying to hit a word count if not done correctly.
Also establish relationships are so much better than getting together.
THIS THIS THIS!!!! I agree 100%. I love established relationship stories and find slow burn to be tedious. It’s probably my ADHD. I have very little patience.
YES! YES! YES! YES!
I couldn't agree more with you. Established Relationship is my favorite tag cause of this, I find so much more interesting reading about the development of a relationship than "are they gonna finally confess now or will be a misunderstanding AGAIN?"
Wait, this is me tho fr. I thought I liked slow burn but nah, I’m hella impatient and I don’t like when shit drags on for too long. Possible ADHD too 😛
Honestly I thought I was alone but I'm obsessed with the established Relationship!!!!!
PLS THIS IS SO TRUE! i hate it when stories are just working up to “The Kiss™️” and end there, like i wanna see more! i wanna see how the relationship affects both people and their lives!
also my unpopular opinion is that i like reading fics where the characters react to their own content and i wish there was more of it.
I like watching the crack version in animatic form and reading like silly little fics
Yes! Glad to see someone else that likes reaction fics! Every time I get into a fandom I just have to read all the react fics, they are just sooooo good!
WAIT IVE NEVER HEARD OF THISSS! I NEED TO READ THAT
@@LilyWhitesLK yeah like I've read good Encanto ones which are good but aren't finished and I Iwish I could find more finished ones that I've never read
YES! it always feels like such a guilty pleasure because it feels corny or whatever, but I really enjoy reaction fics. It can even be a little cathartic when the truth about a misunderstood character is revealed and the others are left feeling like shit. Bonus points if said misunderstood character is panicking because they think this will make things worse for them
Unpopular opinion: Done right, non romance fics can be just as good, and sometimes better than romance fics
I’ll up that: sometimes the sheep amount of romance fics vs non romance fics can get downright annoying because none of the other character relationships are focused on. Sometimes I just wanna read a good friend fic but all anyone does is ship people.
I, as a fan of romance, concur. I don't have a direct issue with shipping or smut, but i feel it does become a problem when it makes up all foreseeable content of said characters. I understand many may want to view characters they like in sexual situations (Even official works do this, it is why i can't enjoy many romances), but it can get annoying for those who wish to avoid it when all media of characters they also like are flooded with it. It's important to remember characters can be friends and can be close without dating or smutting eachother. And there can be romances without sexual actions. In conclusion, everyone, please calm down your horniness and rampant shipping, i would like to read some wholesome fluff or pure angst. Thank you.
In some Fandoms gen fics are so few. I enjoy them some times. Some days, I am done with shipping and smut and want to read something else. (And exactly because I am in the aro/ace spectrum 😂 I love romance a lot, but not always)
@@Jil1807 I usually read some romance (and I avoid smut AT ALL COSTS, though that's just my preference) and for some reason, I like reading MLP: FIM fics. Most of them are romance, or at least the ones I have read, but if you look hard enough, there are some hidden gems, like the one I read that has an ancient civilization.
I have an even more unpopular opinion, fics that ONLY focus on romance are boring/there are too many
My hot take: BE the one to create a new ship. I currently have a running spreadsheet of every ship found in my fandom on AO3 and I always want more
THAT is a hot take? I've been writing every new ship that has come to my mind like there's no tomorrow. Do you mean to tell me most people don't do that? 😭😭😭 (lh)
Based on a song lyric (that my brain took as a command for some reason) I decided to write a fic for every main character ship in my main fandom (or at least, the group of four main characters. All of them with eachother in duos, then together as a polycule, all centered around wintery activities. My only qualification for it was “has to include one of the four mc’s” which is why a canon f/f ship with one of the mains in it was included as well. I tried to think of more f/f ships for the others as well but I was busy with school and didn’t end up doing more. Did finish all the main character shipfics tho!
(For context, the lyric was “make the Yuletide gay” and the four main characters are all women)
I'm currently the only person in a very big fandom writing about an undiscovered/unpopular ship (in a sense), those fics barely get any views or interactions but it brings me joy to write about them anyway :)
Lmao, good to know I'm not the only obsessed with ships to the point I made a whole freaking spreadsheet.
@@lydiaesc7781 I've been through that too, the only good thing is that no one will complain about your interpretation of the ship, so yours get to be the most popular "version" of the ship (the only one too but shh)
I never understood real person fanfiction and I don't think I ever will.
Same or like characters that are personas of real people it feels weird asf 😭
Sameee It's just weird knowing that's a real person
i used to write it for a fandom i was in. most of us just used the personas/personalities as like...muses and made fiction out of it. but then there were always those that took things too far and it felt like they couldn't separate fiction from the actual people in real life. i still will read it sometimes but i haven't been comfortable writing it for a long time which sucks because i love writing but i haven't found a fandom yet to write in/for. i'm in music fandoms and kpop, and i miss writing fanfic but no longer feel comfortable like i used to writing about real people.
I remember vividly 2 year ago I saw a tag for 'Dream' and out of a whim, I clicked on it.
Let's just say I have not been to that ao3 fandom since...
The amount of smut for real people is insane too
As an author, I can say that comments are important, I love reading what my readers thought of the chapters and also if they listened to the music I suggested in the notes. Make my day happier
I agree completely!! It’s such a good motivator. I’ll still write my fic even if no one is reading, but it’s not as fun and won’t be nearly as quick
I agree they're a good motivator, but I also think there should be a healthy balance. Once upon a time, I used to be upset when posts I made on DA would only get 3-5 likes on average and 20 likes at most. I was completely obsessed around the numbers of likes my posts would get, and it ruined the fun of drawing for me. I'd only draw stuff that got the most likes on my page, but I would never exceed those 20 likes, and most of the time, never get close to it. It ruined me. It wasn't until some youtuber mentioned that those likes aren't just numbers, they're people. The example used was 100 likes, that's 100 people, more then what could fit in a school bus. It changed the way I looked at the like ratio on my posts. If 3-5 people came up to me irl and said they liked my art, I would be ecstatic. It 20 people came up to me, I'd have a panic attack over the amount of people that was heading towards me.
So while I fully agree that comments are important, and that people are allowed to be upset if they didn't get enough engagement from the fans. People should have a healthy relationship with their comment sections and not let it control and ruin you the way it controlled and ruined me.
@@zoguy6988 I really love reading the comments precisely because behind the names and profile photos of anime characters and kpop artists there is someone there.
Someone there saw my work and took the time to comment, every criticism and word is precious to me and every kudo too
Comments are really important. Comments on BOOKMARKS are divine.
Comments literally spike up my dopamine so much, it's almost scary, like a sort of drug lmao
I love them, but I have to watch out to not get dependent on them (again...)
Some opinions:
- Chatfics are good when done well
- Just because a fic is hugely aclaimmed in a fandom, doesnt mean that everyone in that fandom should read it
- Some fics are better written than published books
I love crossover fic so, so much. It's really a big hit or miss, but if it hits, it hits unbelievably hard
I feel like I find more hits with crossovers than for single fandom. Especially if it's clear the author is a fan of both works and knows them, inside out.
Yeah but then theres also a lot of them that just reuse the stories that already exist but then add the crossover characters to the existing episodes and it seems like the author couldnt bother to write a new story/scenario
@@waxsuyaaa okay but those are some of my favorites when done well because it introduces a new character(s) and therefore a new perspective and new relationships and new interactions and new possibilities to a story that I already love which to me is just an extension of canon divergence and fix-it fics.
Honestly the reason I don't like crossover is because its like the same three fandoms for everything and excluding them makes it easier to find the ggod stuff
Unpopular opinion: I genuinely prefer platonic relationships over romantic ships. There's something so heartwarming about unconditional love. And it's often much more complex and well-written than typical smut or slow burns.
Unfortunately, this often leads to me or other authors getting called "cowardly" for not shipping the characters together. It's as though the internet is incapable of comprehending relationships that don't involve kissing or mashing pissers.
im sorry "mashing pissers" got me cryin
OMG THANK YOU I TOTALLY AGREE
Oh shut up..
@No.ferretwithastick800 No.
@@MiyakoPisces4.0 Make me.
Some [most] unfinished fics are so well-written or have such interesting concepts or have such fun characters or etc that I don't care I never got to see the end. I'm just happy I got to see it at all. So many have given me a lot of interesting ideas to think about.
I’ve been guilty of this in the past. (I hardly write fanfiction anymore because I’m far more invested in cultivating my original works instead.) I have unfinished works that are essentially “buried” across several fanfiction sites because I stopped updating them many years ago, but they do still exist in those places.
The only reason why I know anyone cared enough about what I wrote is because some readers reached out to me after quite some time to politely inquire about the status of those stories. They were saddened to know that the unusual/rare plots had been dropped, yet they accepted my honesty about it with grace and understanding. I was mainly stunned just to discover that my fanfics didn’t attract the more toxic kinds of readers.
Mine is that YNs are not bad as a concept and _have_ been done well. There’s a fic on ao3 called _Sleuth Jesters_ and the YN in it was so well written I started simping for them too
The one for the daycare attendant fandom right? That one is so good
@@Crystal-lz6bm YES THAT ONE! VIGILANTE YN MY BELOVED
It's not a YN fic, but an OC fic and it's called Good Vibes/Bad Juju. It's so good, I swear.
I need you guys to remind me!
Shiiiiit I gotta read that
Unpopular opinion: it doesn’t matter what site it’s on, if a fanfic is on wattpad that doesn’t make it instantly bad.
this! one of my favorite fanfics that i still think about is on wattpad
I'm sure you're right but do you know how to find good fics on wattpad? their search function just turns me off and I end up scrolling for ages never to find anything : /
Agreed while there is a lot of crap, wattpad has some great stories
personally when i say wattpad is bad i mean just the app itself i used to use wattpad and had a great time until the ads came and yes some authors there are great
I have a former friend who started writing on wattpad when we hit high school. When she first started writing they were kinda tropey but still really good fics. And even though we aren't friends anymore I will still say her fics are really good.
I understand the "just make an OC" thing BUT a completely original character with the name and appearance of a character I know and love tickles my brain so good! I love it when people give new personalities to a character, it's like it's that writer's version of them and I think it's really cool
OOC is kinda iffy to me tbh. I guess I can get exagrating one aspect of a character's personality for the purposes of your story. I think that can be fine even if you end up flanderising that character to the extent that their other personality traits aren't really shown. But there are some aspects of characters that are central and critical to who they are and if that were to be changed I don't think that's good.
You could copy their appearance (and/or use a similar name or parts of them directly) but if the personality is so distinct that the character does something I think they would never ever do I think you shouldn't claim that they are the same character.
Real talk I've partially read a fanfic (only read three chapters, skimmed the rest) which was covering a fetish I am not at all into and consider weird (abdl) and changed a character's family situation/backstory. The former isn't my think but I also don't subscribe to kinkshaming let people do what they want with their fantasies so I am fine with that (could even see why the character would be a decent fit for it), so I wasn't bothered much by it. The latter annoyed me, but I get that a fanfic author would want some angst and drama so I could tolerate it (lacking a fulfilling childhood is part of why the character is into it in the story). The actual prose/writing is actually pretty good. What made me fully drop it and wish to not think about it as much as possible is that the author made the character say that they had never wanted it about one of the character's passions/dreams that they had worked very hard to obtain. It might seem like a small thing really but I vehemently disliked it. I could have tolerated giving it up with sufficient reason (thought it would have still annoyed me quite a bit) but to make them say that they never wanted it actually made me kinda angry at the author.
I have seen characters I like a lot that are generally good people be depicted as terrible people before, even as a child abuser once. Things like that didn't make me annoyed or angry at the author (thought I have noticed myself get annoyed at some characters in such stories. But the above example actually made me mad at the author.
So you know, wanting to have the aesthetics of a character but changing their personalities to suit your story is cool but I think there is still a line that shouldn't be crossed and the character's core personality should be maintained. Or IDK just explicitly put AU in your title/tags, maybe that would help me disregard stuff like that.
I think the tags should only include the important tropes/warnings/concepts of the fic, if something only occurs in one scene or chapter, it should be put in the chapter notes
ok hear me out on this one:
I like reading about aged up characters BUT NOT FOR SMUT PURPOSES!!!! I mean that I like seeing different author’s interpretations of how a certain characters childhood experiences affect them later in life if you know what i mean
this is me with post-good ending omori au fics
No, I think it's cool. It's neat to think about what a charatcer would be like in it's future.
honestly, same. i always feel weird about aging characters up in my writing because i was always told it was wrong no matter what, but i do it pretty much solely because i think its interesting to explore what would change about their character as they get older. i feel like theres a big difference between aging up a character _solely_ to sexualize them or write smut with them, and aging up a character because youre curious about what theyd be like and want to explore them doing things older people do, and i dont think its really fair to lump that all together like its all the same.
I want lyric/song excerpts/quotes at the beginning of one shots/chapters to make a comeback… I dislike how it automatically means the work is cringy or poorly written (supposedly). The idea of a playlist for your work is so cool!
I can't even be mad about these because I've read non-fanfics that did this and even really old books.
Agreed! I am always surprised when I read one of those and then finish it, realizing that it is way better than the long fic I spent my time on
what about song titles being used as fic titles 😼🔥
@@nookiepookiedookieWHAT hell yeah 😎 I’m more neutral about that but still, it shouldn’t be bashed on and it’s not cheesy really and it certainly shouldn’t devalue the quality of the work. it doesn’t ever turn me away from a work and I’ll be hella honest I’ve never read a bad fic/one-shot with those kind of titles
You are not morally obligated to leave a like/comment/kudos on any fic (or art or any other creative media for that matter). However, if you want to see more content from this person, you should probably click that heart. Positive feedback is a great motivator
currently reading an ongoing fic with almost 300 chapters and over 650k words and i am having the most fun i’ve ever had reading a fanfic in my life. it has so much happening but it’s not rushed at all and it just feels like i’m watching the characters’ lives, i adore it.
That’s probably close to how my fics going to go. All of the events in the movie (except for a few) are really fast paced and kinda blown past because the canon material is a movie. So I’m slowing canon down and adding more domestic-ness, and adding day-to-day events, which you don’t really get to know about in canon.
Hot take: dead dove do not eat stories are genuinely so fun to read. Ofc, some are just self-indulgent r*pe fantasies, but the ones that aren’t are generally a really interesting read.
agreed. I don’t read much smut and there’s really only so much I can handle with DD:DnE fics but finding a good hurt/comfort one that’s tagged with it and like, for example, as a graphic r*pe scene in the first chapter, and then all the rest of it is recovery from said r*pe, that’s the kinda shit I really like to read!
Edit: but btw, in that specific example, I skipped the first chapter cuz I didn’t wanna read that kind of thing
What does that tag mean exactly?
@@kimifw58from what I understand, it just means something taboo, uncomfortable, or graphic is going to happen in the fic and serves as a kind of general content warning for pretty much anything bad. Normally, it means some kind of sexual assault content.
@@kimifw58 ooo okay, if i’m remembering correctly, it was originally intended to be a shorthand for “what i tagged is going to have a very central presence in the fic, so don’t say i didn’t warn you.” it’s meant to indicate that what the fic contains and explores in depth has been clearly labelled, and that the reader should take those labels seriously. but because this type of warning is typically only used on fic exploring darker material (like r*pe), it’s also more or less become a shorthand for “there are going to be dark and uncomfortable elements explored in detail in this fic.”
@@songbird6414 Basically, but it's usually not used on its own. It's used in conjunction with tags, or content disclaimers, to indicate "This has what I said it has, which might be things you don't like. If you click onto it when you've been made aware it has these things, don't go complaining to me, because, what did you expect?" This was common when gay fic used to get hate comments. Now it's more used for dark fic and upsetting content, to indicate the fic is going to be particularly upsetting or the tagged topics are going to be a big deal, not just mentioned in passing, so if someone doesn't like those... and they click it anyway... They have no right to complain, because what did they expect.
I have occasionally seen "Dead Dove Don't Eat"/"Don't Like Don't Read" used in conjunction with "User Chose Not to Flag" to indicate a dark fic likely HAS applicable flags, and might have untagged topics and that the reader shouldn't read if they're not down to be surprised with whatever. But I haven't seen that as much as people using it along with tags.
another hot take: overused tropes and phrases are a banger, but not for the reasons mentioned in the video. they are itself a banger. it gives the writers a space to either fall back on comfortable and widely appreciated ground, or to experiment a little once in a while and divert expectations completely. i presonally love reading the same expression over and over again in vastly different settings
I think a lot of fiction that gets labelled as 'reads like fanfic' are merely more character focused than plot focus
I do agree that WattPad has more openings to joining or creating a community. Being able to comment on individual parts and seeing it quite easily, taking part in writing and cover contests, doing commissions, commenting and on message boards definitely allowed me to form a great community there. We even made a club and had tons of fun. Unfortunately and fortunately, that community has largely moved on to the next chapter of their life. Because my community was mostly fading away and l wasn’t interested in diving into a new one with the new people, I decided to try my hand at Ao3 and it has been A LOT harder to connect to people. Just the fact that you could vote on every chapter of the fanfic made me take more interest in people because I could see that they were binge reading my story, and then people could comment more easily on things and spark more of a conversation!
Trust me, I LOVE Ao3 and I agree to a lot of the things people say about WattPad, but in my personal experience it was a lot easier to interact with others on WattPad than Ao3
thats been my experience too. a lot of wattpad is like making fun of a bad movie with your friends whereas AO3 is like going to a bookclub for the first time with 2 or 3 people in it. ive had some lovely interactions on AO3, but they are 100% more scarce than they are on wattpad. most of them are just me going "this is a really great fic!!!!" and the author going "tysm!!
About keeping fanworks a secret -- I was once seated next to a woman I didn't know at a birthday dinner for a mutual friend, and within 30 minutes and one glass of wine, she had her phone out and was showing me her original smutty furry slash fanart. And despite not being into that sort of thing myself, I found her REALLY interesting! Maybe that's because I tend to hang out in bohemian/artistic/queer/ND circles... But anyway dinner parties can be DULL as HELL -- tell me about the stuff you're passionate about! Let's be friends!
I would love to have dinner parties like this, the ones I’m forced to go to (extracurriculars) are as boring as watching a baseball game where no players have a bakery
I adore Genfics and they're something I write all the time! So unfortunate that's unpopular but that won't stop me from writing what I love :>
I agree! Sometimes relationships in fanfics don't have to all be romantic to be interesting. I personally perfer reading platonic relationships over romantic ones as well.
Something about strong platonic relationships has always been far more alluring to me than romantic ones. Maybe it's because I'm not interested in them personally either, but I adore seeing characters who get through things together and always have each other's backs without question, while also holding each other accountable and to a set standard. It's the best thing ever when people can be intimate with each other without needing it to be anything "more" than that. I find it pretty sad how undervalued close friendships and relationships are, but if nothing else, that gives me all the more reason to keep writing my own :>
(Also, love the N profile picture!!)
Have you been in the dream smp fandom ? I know the fandom has alot of bad rep for being toxic but the fanfics are high quality and the fandom is filled with gen fics if your intrested as a person who doesn't like romance in fanfic dream smp fanfics are an unlimited food source for me
@@AsmaAhmad-eh8rj Ooooo true, especially the SBI fics :D
guys im confused what's a genfic??
my hottake: hannahaki is only miscommunication. it feels tedious and it always sucks to me, but its always in it. have you guys encountered any hannahaki fics without miscommunication? (WITH mutual pining)
istg hanahaki is either so much miscommunication or just complete soul-crushing unrequited angst
@@TheAlishaPictureShow ikr!! I mean, i love the trope and all, but i wish it just was a little less predictable
finally some fellow hanahaki haters (most hanahaki fics ive encountered were just kinda predictable angst im sure theres good fics out there)
Wish I would find one in which it isn't: "Unrequired love" until Person A goes, "oh actually I loved you the whole time." Everything is fixed!
I want one in which the ill person doesn't just sit on their ass and is so sorry for themselves, but instead they take initiative: "I have nothing to lose anymore anyway, why not ask my crush out? See where it goes. Make them fall in love with me!" There's still plenty of angst to explore, if the writer so chooses, but the main body is just two people actually getting to know each other in a romantic sense. Bonus points if they don't even end up with each other, but instead move on with better suited partners and as best friends.
@@teddybrillen8033 THIS!! Another thing i need to add on, is when authors tag “unrequited love” but also “but not actually unrequited love”, not only is it annoying, it makes it so hard to exclude angsty endings when i want them to get together, without including “getting together” because most fics forget to even tag it!!
Ok but the hate on soulmate au is so accurate! Especially if a person is like “oh we have the same soulmate tattoo but maybe they don’t like me so I won’t tell them I know we are soulmates and instead just cry about it!” Like wtf. The whole point of it is that they WILL like you no matter what
Also I hate that it’s giving “the univers is destining you to to be with that person forever” it makes the whole dating (someone who isn’t your SO) aspect pointless and I can’t imagine how anyone can love anyone knowing they’re not soulmates and knowing that eventually they will break up for someone else
“Don’t write about your friends and family that would be weird” when the family and friends of real people you write about could very well see the fic is insane to me
I mean, it's also fine if the people in question are okay with it. I know there are tons of people who do that.
I basically only read RPF if I have no idea who the characters are, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think it has more to do with the degree of separation between the irl person and the character. I see RPF as stories featuring characters based on the public personas of real people, whereas writing about someone you know would be writing a character based on a real person. Like, story about a fictitious version of a real person vs. story about a real person, if that makes sense?
People don't need to ship characters as much as people think they do. The family dynamic can be amazing especially when its done well, and if the author does want to include a ship they can without taking away from the family theme.
This might be because I mostly read found family, but still it doesn't have to only be about a ship, sometimes you need a good family relationship.
But I still love ship fics.
Love ship fics but I eat found family EVERY TIME 💀
Probably because shipper brain rot and it happen a lot that you see it everywhere
I think it's because people ship for fun and the writer can do what they want with there writing (as a person who mostly reads found family too) alot of people who complain about being alot of ship fics should write there own fics (not you I've just seen alot of people lately sending really mean messages to ship fic writers and it's getting on my nerve) because a random fan fic writer just likes the particular ship that's it they aren't taking found family representations they are just making more *random ship* representations there will be more found family fics if all the people complaining about not being enough of them wrote something that's how it's done you can't make someone change there writing presence (again sorry if I came off as mean I'm not talking about you but there has been alot of people having an attitude with fanfic writers lately its mostly the new gen one of my favorite fanfic writer got doxxed on Twitter for shipping two adult characters because them being best friends makes them siblings and that's basically incest, I wish I was joking about the mental gymastics here) anyway if you want found found family fics I recommend the dream smp fandom especially SBI (the characters not the real people of course) alot of high quality long fics and oneshots and almost every founfamily trope you want
YES OH MY GOD YES
YES FINALLYYYY I AGREE SO MUCH
Potentially unpopular opinion but I love the "reacts" trope where characters react to their own series. It's when a plot device happens that forces the characters to watch their own show/movie and react to specific moments accordingly. A lot of people apparently dislike this writing cuz they consider it lazy which I can sort of understand. But I've always enjoyed reading them especially when the author adds a sideplot that develops new or existing relationships!
I love these, especially when it can get a bit angsty or hurt/comfort-ish bc characters witness other characters' more secretive backstories or sufferings
I love these types of fics, its just so hard to find them
@@wildtamer4461 I feel like they were way more popular during the LJ years (as someone who was not around then but is in older fandoms that were). If you are in any fandoms that had kink memes or similar presences on Live Journal it might be a good idea to look there and see if you can find more.
They have to be written well but when they are it’s so good
There’s a mha one but ones female izuku and one that’s the same but a bit different with male izuku and female shoto
There’s a reason for the female character “grape warning” it’s not talked much tho
You don’t know what I would do for the canon characters to react to canon and not fanon
19:57 I have to agree with this. I'm in the Avatar (The Last Airbender) fandom, and "modern world" fics are fairly popular. Now, transplanting our beloved heroes and villains to a world with contemporary Earth technology _is_ a _fascinating_ idea to me... but it's rare, from what I've seen, for an author to actually... _do_ anything with that. There's no world war; the characters almost _never_ retain whatever royal authority or other political or social influence they have in canon, so there's no diplomacy or intrigue; often, the "modern world" they're transplanted to isn't even their-world-but-modern, it's just straight-up _Earth;_ they almost never need to _travel_ as a group to meet each other or do anything... They're inevitably just going to college, working for a coffee store chain, or futzing around with some job or another that may or may not be relevant to the plot for more than two or three chapters, and they're all already at least acquainted with each other.
But what _really_ gets me is that "modern world" AUs are almost inevitably simultaneously "No Bending" AUs... which nullifies one of the primary distinguishing features of their original universe, and in the vanishingly rare case where bending is still possible, the _Avatar_ is almost never a thing, and _absolutely_ never one of the main cast.
So they're not fighting the canon war but with timelines and events changed due to the effects of modern transportation and communication, they're not struggling to change the world in a _different_ way, "the world" may in fact now just be the Greater San Fransisco area, _the spirits_ and their world definitely won't be appearing, and we won't even be getting any silly or interesting moments from the intersection of the widespread ability to control one of the Four Classical Elements and a deeper knowledge of the laws of physics.
At that point, I just can't see how you're _not_ just writing an otherwise wholly original piece of romantic or cozy fiction and plugging the canon characters into your cast list as a shorthand to basically cheap out on establishing character traits and starting relationships.
Honestly, I prefer found family, platonic, mentor/student Parent/child (IN A PLATONIC WAY) and friend group fanfics way more than anything with romance. don't get me wrong romance is amazing, but it can be way too much for me personally.
THIS RIGHT HERE
I SO AGGREE!!
y e s
YES 💯%
I like those fics where there are enough characters to do everything. Some bits of the fic are romance, and others are parent/child, best friend, your pet cat shows up, whatever. Characters should be people who have multiple kinds of relationships in their lives.
Grab your pens and don cosplay.. we’re going to war!
It always surprises me that people have such specific preferences for what tense a fic is written in or even the POV. I had to look up why people hated first person POV so much because stuff like that just doesn’t occur to me while reading 😂
I think it has to do with how easy it is to be inconsistent. Any tense is fine, but it should stay. The main exception is if it switches to a flashback.
@@wind64a39 I see, that’s fair.
personally i think different characters demand different person perspectives. for me, first person always reads as the character narating their life directly to the audience, which is a thing some characters would do and some wouldn't. gritty noir characters tend to flow better in first person if they're the MC, because monologing is one of the markers of noir characters, and it can also be a good way to get into the internal monologue of characters who just don't speak much (there's a reason this is popular in comics, because otherwise we'd have no idea wtf batman was ever thinking, hes not chatty), while there are other characters who would absolutely never narrate their lives that way, or who talk so much that a first person narrative ends up feeling repetative because they think a thing and then also say the thing, so it can feel forced.
as for tense, as long as it's consistently i really don't get why people care, except that it can be very difficult make past tense-first person work. it can be done, i'm a strong believe that almost anything can work in fiction if the right person is writing it, i just think it's a lot harder to get right than first person present tense.
Honestly I think Sapphykins put it well. But to propose another outlook on this, often times first persons come across as self-inserty. There’s definitely a target audience for self-inserts but not everyone likes that.
Personally I’ve tried reading First Person a lot of times, be it because the descriptions were too good not to try, I didn’t realize until I clicked in, or was simply curious. The biggest part about whether or not I could stick around to read was if it read like the character narrating their lives to me rather then experiencing it first hand as them.
Sometimes, it could be a story that fits neither molds to me, and just seems like an odd choice tense wise.
Alas, that’s been my personal experience with first person and I’m not entirely sure how many others feel the same way.
@@DilettanteThat yeah I suppose in the end all the matters is if it’s executed well. To me that’s never been enough of a reason to avoid an entire style, but I can see why someone would just out of frustration and personal taste.
When I read y/n fanfics,I would read it as “yen.”
Ooooh some of these made my blood boil. Fanfiction is supposed to be a fun part of being in a fandom and IT'S FREE. Stop treating it like it's not exactly that!
This!!!
They act like the writers are getting payed if the grammar is bad STOP READING??? like oml writers are not obligated to take English classes for a fanfiction
Yeah, exactly, and looking at the comment section is not helping.
@@ArtyBarty-y7kI feel like there's a floor here. If a person wants others to comment positively on their fanfic, they should at least know the difference between to, too, and two at a rate of 60 percent of the time. Like, if writers don't care about all that then they are free to do so to their hearts content! However, it would be unrealistic to say that writers don't care about their fanfic being read. They can't skimp out on basic grammar and then wonder why there are crickets when they post.
My hot take? I love slow burns that don't actually develop into anything super romantic. Sometimes I just want 50+ chapters of 2 characters getting blushy and flustered, and the climax is when they finally hold hands for the first time.
EXACTLY
go read six of crows
this is so real
Literally. As soon as the cute little blushing idiots finally establish a relationship I tend to lose interest. It’s the build up that matters!
@@ilse5220 THE WAY I WAS GONNA SAY THAT!! But, to the op, if you like mmc with questionable morals, heartbreakingly soft prose, badass female characters who are a girl's girl, trauma, and slooooow burn, soc is the series for you!!
my opinion is that who tops and bottoms should always be tagged. i like really specific dynamics and don't like feeling surprised.
THIS! Sometimes I find the character I didn't want to be the bottom prepping themselves and I have to leave the fic all sad
33:44 This is literally one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to writing (maybe just because of how overdone it is in my fandom) it’s so annoying when a fanfic is simply a transcript of what happened in canon like I’m reading fanfic bc I KNOW what happened in canon and want MORE than what the show us.
I’m always so afraid of doing this with the long multi chapter fic I’m working on rn. It’s meant to be like a companion piece to the official media that helps expand on some of the characters and their pov’s of the canon plot (plus a few tweaks to fix annoyances with canon) but I’m always afraid it’ll sound like I’m just repeating the main plot over and over oof
I'm gonna get lit up like a Christmas tree for this, but as a fic reader and writer...
There's nothing wrong with self inserts.
Wait this is an unpopular opinion??? I basically only read self inserts :|
I *do* read non self inserts occasionally, but I wouldn't say that non self inserts are objectively better or worse than self inserts :/
FACTS FACTS IM MOSTLY READING SELF INSERTS (my otps being exceptions) let me be with my blorbos and meow meows
Most "legit" authors just put bits of themself spread out through many of their characters, anyway. It's a genuine piece of advice from many of them, too, in the whole "write what you know" thing
I don't mind self-inserts but I personally just kinda cringe but I just move on and find something I like. Depending on how it's written, self-inserts may not be so bad :)
Gotta be completely honest, I find writing self-insert fics a lot easier than regular ships. It's like how so many people say writing fanfiction was freeing for them, making two action figures do the kissy is a lot less awkward when one of them is a piece of unused tissue with the letters "Y/N" on them.
Mine is that I LOVE reading crossovers where I only know one of the pieces of media. It’s more immersive for me because I’m learning along with my favorite characters and it feels like I’m there with them instead of being an omnipotent god. I also LOVE oc stories and sometimes actively seek them out. It always makes me feel good when people care about my ocs, and I wanna spread the love!
I feel you on this. I recently found a Fate/Grand Order x Kingdom Hearts crossover fic having extensive knowledge on the Nasuverse, and only tidbits of info on Kingdom Hearts. So learning more about the world of KH through the lens of a media I'm very well acquainted with is a joyride of an experience.
I found so many fandoms I love through crossovers! And I love the half-outside POV :)
The half-in half-out Fanfic Hokey Cokey is not something I do particularly often, but it gives such a "One foot in the familiar, the other in the forest" sort of feeling that I can really vibe with from time to time :D
@@mysticmoonlight9695 It’s funny that you used that as an example because there’s this one kh x final fantasy fic that I’ve been reading. I love kh and know it inside and out, but I have only vague snippets of ff knowledge
In terms to comments, this is one of the factors that make me like Wattpad since you can comment on specific sections. It works with me since I tend to react and make jokes on certain parts. On Ao3, it's harder to do that at the very end of the chapter so I end up being a silent reader (especially on multi-chapter fics).
ugh YESSS i love the wattpad comment section!! it makes me feel so involved with the story 😁
Same
I used to love this feature until it ended up being just a pile of spam 💀 people repeating the same thing I wrote with emojis, people commenting overused memes, and more stuff completely disregarded of the actual fic... I'm sad about it but I don't regret leaving Wattpad
i LOVE highschool fics. especially when they include the most CHAOTIC (in the sense of constantly testing the law) characters in it
(i read a genshin fanfic and albedo blew up the school)
LOL, I don't play Genshin Impact, but that sounds like a fun fic! And I agree! It's fun to read how the specific characters would interact/which clique they'd be a part of, and chaos only makes it better, lol
Idk if this is an unpopular opinion or a hot take, but I think fanfics are a really good way to expand you mind, in a sense, and it's good writing practice. I've been writing fanfic for YEARS, and I have only gotten better as a writer. It also helps for me to read something I'm actually interested in, because the only actual books I can read are non-fiction, because I can't emerse myself in fiction books, so I find fanfics an enjoyable way to incorporate some fiction into my life.
I love fanfics because they are not afraid to delve into the bizarre or taboo. They aren’t going to make money so you really can write whatever you want. As a person I’ve gotten more comfortable and understanding of topics that don’t apply to myself such as bdsm. I’ve even figured out my gender identity thanks to fanfics! The services provided for free blow my mind whenever I stop to think about it. Thank you for having written for free for years!
if you don't mind me asking, I'm interested if you have an idea why published fiction doesn't work for you, but the source material for your fandoms does, and fanfc does? I know we're all different and everyone's brain wants and gets different things from fiction, I've just never come across that specific combination of likes/dislikes before!
@@Sapphykins I'm an interest based person, so, I enjoy talking about my interests, reading about them, watching them, etc. That being said, I can read non-fiction books, because I have an interest in learning things. With fiction, I used it as an escape when I was little, and now that I'm an adult, it just makes my head hurt, as it is a lot harder for me to picture the characters and the story. But when I read fanfic, my head doesn't hurt, because I already have an interest in the characters and know what they look like and it helps me to form a vauge idea of what the story plot and setting is, making reading fiction a lot easier. I hope that made sense.
not sure if this is a hot take but some of the BEST fics i have EVER READ. Had next to no tags and zero summary. I clicked on them out of curiosity and have been incredibly blown away with some of them.
fuck yea the best fics are written with minimal description, minimal tags, complete lowercase/uppercase simplistic title, and are the only thing written by the author or are from anonymous/orphan account
You open the thing and you find the second coming of christ like wth :0
TRUE. Too many tags and relationship tags are usually a sign of bad writing for me😭
TRUEEE or they have just like one vague line as their summary and u read it and its like the best fic
Not a hot take but a random thing I want to say: The greatest fandoms to write for are the ones that hardly have cannon to base things on (Not very detailed characters, shorter series, etc). Nothing tops those ones, especially if they’re ones that got super popular and then lost a lot of people quickly (like The Henry Stickmin Collection for example)
exactly!! ppl can't get bashed on bc their work is "too far away from canon" when there barley is canon
Mine is actually sort of the opposite- when the og content is so large and long with so many nitpicks, it makes the fic better because everyone has a mutual understanding that it’s okay to get something wrong, but if you *want* to know, there’s always an answer out there
This is so true, a great example of this is the Marauders fandom, yes it's technically harry potter but the characters from this era have so little attention in the canon that they've essentially become they're own fandom. And honestly the fandom/fics for the marauders are far better than the actually canon series
technically would Among Us also fit this category
@@mystik_owl I think so yeah bc there aren't really any characters so the only thing established is the setting/location
(17:07 Hi Voltron fandom) I do like Wattpad's commenting on individual paragraphs, had a lot of fun interactions with actual funny jokes or for flaming really bad outfit mood boards. I mainly stopped using Wattpad and switched to AO3 for the better tagging system, wattpad for a long time had *a lot* of really angsty and depressing fics that were hard to filter out. That and Wattpad became really monetized and ad-focused.
Same here. Like, as much as I enjoy reading through “trashy” fics sometimes for a laugh, it’s so annoying if I wanna read something decent, only to have to sift through a ton of stuff I don’t want first. The ads and monetization are also super annoying too - being hit with ads in the middle of a fic is not only annoying, but can really spoil the mood of certain moments, especially if meant to be serious.
@@stormylobbyI download the app if I want to read a story in full, so if you open the fic while your on Wi-Fi, it’ll be in your ‘saved fics’, so to speak. Then, you can turn off the Wi-Fi and read it with no ads.
remember: enjoy fanfiction the way you want, as long as you’re not hurting or tearing anyone down!!
As a writer of original content: i look forward to people writing the most batshit crazy, ooc smut fics about my characters. So many creators are weirded out by smutty fanfic, but i love the idea of seeing what people are shipping, what people imagine dynamics to be, etc. Even if they get it completely wrong, ill just be cackling when i eventually write the scene that corrects them, or they get it wrong in a way that's interesting
My take: I wish less people would stop caring about being judged for their tastes and interests when writing, as it has hindered my own writing ideas in the past before I decided "screw it" and wrote what I wanted to
Fanfic is for the author first and foremost, you don't have to share it with the world (I know for a fact that a lot of mine is just sitting in a google doc for my own enjoyment)
Write what you wanna write
Wanna write a fic where someone offs themselves? Go for it
Wanna write some toothrotting fluff? Have fun!
Wanna write a longfic with 300k words? Hells yeah
Just do what makes you happy, ignore what everyone else says
And if you share it, you'll find many people who are interested in the same topic
Just have fun and write for YOU
I was just thinking off making a fanfiction where a character offs themselves or get close to it but felt I shouldn't because it would be too "edgy". Thank you for saying this! 😭😭
@@ProbablyTheSmartest of course :)
6:17 It depends. If you go into fanfiction wanting to learn how to write better, and you're realistic about it, then no. You *absolutely* will avoid the brainrot. And I can safely say I have, given that's what I've done, and I'll have been at it for 8 years this fall. (Granted, I've also been writing for a long while, but fanfiction was really when I started to focus on it.)
You get immediate feedback. What's done is done. And, it's nice to have a log of what you've written to look back on. Like a little time-capsule. There are also other things you learn from fanfiction that you can't in original works, like writing characters/environments that wouldn't have come to you organically on your own. And if you are serious about getting good, you learn how to accurately write said characters. And so on and so forth.
The fanfic rot comes from people just writing cuz they want to write, and then people being ignorant to what fanfiction is at the end of the day, without considering what the author is doing. Which is just having a good time. So you end up with impressionable young people who don't realize the context.
Okay, as someone who writes a LOT of fanfic and reads a minuscule amount, I feel like just writing the amount that I do has made me a real book snob or something (sobs), because now every time I open a book I immediately recognize grammar mistakes and crappy descriptors and my brain just goes on and on "I could write better than this. I paid money for this?? Why???? God this feels like I'm rereading that one really good fic with horrible spelling and grammar except this time it's boring and has no plot." *proceeds to put book down and return to fanfic*
like, okay, is it just me?? I feel like with the way people crap on fanfic my expectations for actual books just heighten exponentially and then like, they're the quality of your average decently written fanfic. why are we holding published books on a pedestal when I've read and honestly probably written fanfic that is better quality than a large chunk of "real" books. and we all do it for free, too??
Ughgh Im the opposite. I swear I have ideas and I really want to write, but my drive is so low just because of how awful I am at it. And I can’t seem to just write a short fic because I feel like I *have* to add context
One of the last 'real books' I read before completely falling off the wagon was a book that was so unbelievably clearly a Nico Di Angelo x Reader fanfiction that somehow got past a publisher. It haunts me to this day.
@@tatltails3923 Gideon the Ninth
No! But good to know Gideon the Ninth can fit that description. The one I read was called "I'll Follow You Into The Dark" (literally a song lyric as a title hoooow did it get published)@@sageleaf8962
6:02 I can confirm this. Honestly, I've always been worried my non-fanfiction works sound fanfiction-ey, because when compared to other books I've read in school and uni, the structure and grammar in fics is very different and varies a lot from author to author. Whereas published books tend to have a certain formula to them- especially if all the editing is done by a specific publishing company. Still, I find myself reading and enjoying fanfic a lot more often than books, so I'm an avid junk food enjoyer even when I get my brain full-course meals once in a while.
but also, Twilight and literally any Colleen Hoover book ever exists.
My hot take is when a character is crying in a very emotional part and the comments on that chapter is people saying "oh god stop crying" and "this character is annoying because they won't stop crying"
I'm looking at you wattpad comments
LITERALLY😭
I’ll cry even more if someone said that to me lmao. I cry a lot, like a lot, No matter the reason, sometimes I just cry for no apparent reason, which often leads me to have many people in my life antagonizing me for crying, which I remind you I can’t control, like I have zero control when I cry, or with who lol
or when a character stutters and everyone starts making fun of it. doesn't matter how many stutters, it will ALWAYS be there
@@LilyWhitesLKive BEEN there! during my first mental breakdown, someone called me a crybaby. its probably one of the most damaging things ever done to me-i cant cry in front of people now :’)
@@wrightcember You’re definitely not alone there. I got bullied for crying once in school, and despite it having been years ago, I’ve never recovered from it. To this day, I always try to hide my tears and cry silently or isolate myself if I just gotta have a messy cry over something :’3