#Even the silliest most divergent fics

[bonebabbles]

CACKLES IN GLEE AT BONE OPENING THE ASKBOX

you don't have to post this I just wanna say like I love your live readings of books, it's like bread and butter at an outback steakhouse. It's going outside, cracking open a soda and watching your neighbor try to cultivate a garden out of what has been left (which is invasive wisteria and probably kudzu) and watch them shake a rake at the sky and curse the old owners of the elaborate and dilapidated mansion of what they have left you to deal with. It's probably a haunted house, too.

I Suffer for my silly cat fanfictions and no one can tell me I don't

[askyourwritergrandma]

In defense of no defense

Today I am out of questions and avoiding writing a fanfic that’s stuck on a pivotal moment I feel underprepared to make a choice for.  It’s not writer’s block so much as it’s total writer’s avoidance of the issue at hand.  

Onto today’s topic: how to teach yourself to stop defending yourself.

One of the things that crippled me as a young writer, years and years before this cultural mindset that demands 100% inclusivity and perfection, was the feeling that if I were to upset any single person with my writing or fail to meet their standards I was beholden to apologize to them for it and offer to make amends.  Obviously, amends in this case just means ‘oh sorry I looked it up but I guess I missed somethings, I’ll do better next time!’ and not anything greater than that.  

The fear of that single review or single negative comment or unexpected feedback was always in my head, even when I was happily writing my countless silly Mpreg monkey sex fics (DBZ fandom).  

I’ve had people send me reviews because they didn’t like my writing style, my writing choices, my pairing choices, my use of commas, my grammar in general, my word choice, my setting, my dialogue, my characterization, the theme of the work, the middle, the ending, a divergence from canon, ignoring an issue, confronting an issue, misrepresenting their perspective on an issue, misrepresenting the age appropriate behavior of a character, my lack of warnings, my ratings, my use of sexual content, my use of child abuse, my descriptions and etc.

If there is a thing that someone was capable of disliking about something I have written, over the course of my entire writing career I have most likely seen it.  In fact, I have a story on AO3 right now that gathers very passionate, sometimes very negative, reactions from people.  I read them and then I let them sit because this I have learned after all these many years:

Your audience is many and you cannot please them all.  

More to the point, you shouldn’t aim to please them.  If you consider that your story is being read by a hundred people, and only one of them bothers to tell you that you didn’t perfectly represent depression (or whatever) in your fic and/or that you represented depression but you said nothing of schizophrenia, that review is useless.  

There certainly are things that you can take away from a thoughtful, constructive bit of criticism that is give to you by a trusted writing friend or peer.  These are people who are familiar with your writing style, themes, interests and intentions who genuinely want you to succeed and improve.  They are offering you the advice that they’re giving because they feel it will enhance the story as it is.  

Karen McAnonymous on the internet is not interested in your story for what it is.  They do not want to see you succeed at sharing the message and/or idea that you came up with.  (And yes, even the shortest, silliest drabble of a story is sharing something.)  They are making a fuss for their own benefit because they have a misguided feeling that every story they consume is meant to fit their exact preferences and life experiences.

(Yes, of course I’ve even had someone tell me that a thing I experienced in my own life would not happen as it happened.  You can imagine how that felt to have a stranger tell me my own life was imaginary and wrong.)

But back to the point, when Karen McAnonymous shows up in your comments to tell you that nobody with depression behaves how you’re writing or that you’re using an outdated, stereotype of something or another, they are telling you that you owe them the exact story they want to read.  When you apologize to Karen McAnonymous, you are agreeing that you specifically failed them.  

You did not fail the random internet user.  You did not fail your story.  You did not fail at writing.  

If there is a grain of truth in the comment, take that very small grain of truth and consider how it can help you in the future.  Look it up on your own, talk it out with someone you actually know and trust.  Sometimes our stories are not about social justice and we are unintentionally a little bit crass but that’s also ok.  Not all stories need to be perfect or sanitized if your goal was not to write a perfect and sanitized story.

Once you’ve taken that grain of truth (or discovered there isn’t one because it’s not applicable to your situation), disregard the rest.

And do not respond.  

This is the most important bit.  If you say anything in defense of yourself, you are admitting that there is something to defend.  It’s not easy to let a negative comment sit there and stare at you, and the first few times you try to ignore it, it might haunt you but it gets easier.  You start to discover a confidence that only comes with no longer defending your story from every little objection from the faceless crowd.

You can then concentrate your energy on improving your writing, crafting new messages to send via fiction and learning about the things you want to learn about.  

The only thing that you need to worry about when it comes to the faceless crowd is rating and tagging your story with the appropriate items so future readers are aware of what they are about to see.  If those readers click and see it and decide they don’t care for it?  That’s on them, because you did your part.  

Don’t let Karen McAnonymous force you to carry her torches.

Good luck friends!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Why do you think the Animorphs fandom doesn't have as many AU stories as some of the other fandoms? I don't mean non-cannon stories, but those where the characters are taken from the Yeerk Invasion concept enitrely and dropped into another sandbox: coffeeshop AU, Hogwarts AU, etc. Even really common additions to the cannon world such as soulmate AUs seem to be less used with Animorphs. Any thoughts as to why?

Reason 1: The characters are 13.

Technically they grow up to ages 16 - 19 before dying horribly the series ends, but their problems and concerns are very much those of actual early adolescents.  They don’t drive (not even cheat-driving with mopeds or helicars like in other teen superhero stories), they don’t go on real dates, they don’t have jobs, and they don’t use money except for occasional emergency purchases of shoes or tacos.

Obviously that doesn’t preclude the protagonists from suffering through romantic clichés, but it means that there’s less material to work with than in a series such as Harry Potter or Supernatural where the characters do have these kinds of classic adult concerns.  It also means that (and fandalites are classy af so they tend to recognize this) there’s an inherent squick factor in hardcore romance, even in AUs where the characters have been aged to 18+.

Reason 2: There are no love triangles.

Probably the closest we get is Rachel realizing in #27 that she has romantic options other than Tobias… which leads to her realizing that Tobias has what she wants and needs in a romantic partner, whereas a civilian guy simply doesn’t.  Other than that, we have the moment in #44 where Cassie realizes that she’s flirting with Yami… which sets up the realization that Cassie might be better off with someone who has more capacity than Jake to make her happy.  No one cheats, no one fights rivals, and no one experiences much jealousy.

Characters dealing with their romantic feelings in mostly-healthy mostly-transparent ways, whether in or out of relationships, doesn’t leave much room for rom-com miscommunications and the like.  Ergo, there’s no room for characters being forced to date or to confess their feelings by circumstance.  Even Jake and Cassie’s unhealthy dynamic remains unhealthy for, like, a book and a half, before they have an amicable post-breakup goodbye in #53.  Not much room for romantic angst.  Speaking of which…

Reason 3: Do we really need MORE angst?  REALLY?

This series is about six mostly well-adjusted kids having their entire lives destroyed by the horrors of war.  If angst is your jam, there’s no need to add it by introducing backstory elements or hurt-comfort premises that we didn’t already see in canon.  You can literally just grab that time Jake watched his cousin drag his internal organs off the ceiling (#16), that time Cassie killed an innocent prisoner of war on reflex (#19), that time Tobias was tortured into insanity (#33), those times Marco committed matricide (#15, #30, Visser) and you’re off to the races.  A lot of fan fiction tropes are all about angst (Tony Stark’s dad never loved him, Stiles Stilinski wishes he was special, etc.) and where Animorphs is concerned, there’s really no need.  On a similar note…

Reason 4: Adding ridiculous humor would be redundant.

This is a series where running gags include (but are not limited to): the hawk kid getting his talons stuck to cetaceans when he tries to acquire them, “These Messages” (e.g. commercials) and CinnaBon being the only artistic creations of humanity worth saving, the main villain of the series being a Cat Person, all the Animorphs debating whether it’s cannibalism to eat fried chicken in seagull morph, the resident alien being unsure whether vinegar and motor oil count as beverages, and the kids getting out of obligations with excuses that range from “I have to go buy a nicotine patch before I become a teen smoker” to “my cousin — and not the one you’re thinking — just got into a fistfight with a six-year-old over Raisinets.”  Coffee shop humor, de-aging humor, and other whacky fan fic premises simply can’t top what we already have.  Not only that, but a lot of the whackier fun AUs — animal transformation AU, gender mashup AU, evil twin AU — have already been done in canon.

Reason 5: The cast is already pretty tight.

By this I mean that the cast is tight in that there are few wasted or tangential characters, and that the cast is tight in that there are few intragroup conflicts.  It’s not really possible to “break” the dynamic in ways that would feel organic (e.g. Civil War AU) without losing a ton of what makes the series itself.  There are also relatively few minor characters that one can add to the original six’s dynamic in meaningful ways (although yours truly is guilty of trying), because they’re so isolated and codependent.  Writing AUs in which the characters just meet for the first time during the fic is... possible, but IMHO would feel deeply weird.

It’s also a fairly fundamental aspect of what makes Animorphs unique that there are no mentors anywhere in the series.  The kids get occasional information from Erek or the YPM, but they have NO ONE they can turn to if they want to ask for advice.  ALL of their attempts to seek mentors end in said adults revealing themselves to be incompetent (Elfangor, Gonrod, Ithileran), morally bankrupt (Alloran, Arbat), unwilling to help because they have their own agendas (the Ellimist, Toby, Aldrea), or simply less experienced in relevant areas than the kids themselves are (Eva, Jara, Mr. Tidwell, Sam Doubleday).  It is possible to add adult characters to the team through crossovers or other AUs — but to do so is to fundamentally alter the structure of the series.

Reason 6: The plot is already pretty tight.

Animorphs isn’t a perfect piece of coherent plotting, but it also doesn’t have any huge glaring plot holes.  There’s nothing that the whole fandom agrees needs to be “fixed”: some people want Cassie to be wrong more often, some people would like direct queerness, some people dislike the tragic ending, some people think the late-middle sags, some people want more Tobias-narrated books, some people (*cough* me) want the series to be 55 books long so that Rachel gets to narrate one last story… None of these represents a majority opinion, the way that the “what have you done to our Jaime Lannister!?!?!?” outcry is currently dominating the Game of Thrones fandom to the tune of 800,000+ signatures on the world’s silliest Change.Org petition.

The events of the series follow pretty logically from one another, which means that there aren’t tons of divergences on a single theme, and also that it’s pretty easy to invent divergence points from canon itself.  There are occasional modern AUs and college-age AUs, but a lot of the time they have to differ dramatically from the source work to pull off the effect.

Here’s where I acknowledge my bias: I dislike the majority of super-popular AU ideas.  Some strike me as harmless romantic clichés (hatebanging AU, accidental dating AU) or wealthy-American-kid clichés (college AU, wedding AU).  Some strike me as sacrificing character for plot (fake married AU, sword-and-sorcery AU) or not having much plot at all (wedding planner AU, elaborate-miscommunication AU).  Some are downright problematic in their magical codification of power dynamics (omegaverse, sex pollen) or deeply concerning consent issues by definition (soul mates, coffee shop AU).  Most of them are perfectly good story ideas, but most of them are not to my taste.

All of these AU ideas can be done well and have been done well, because every cliché becomes a cliché by being genuinely brilliant until overused.  I mostly avoid these stories anyway because too many of them are plagued by setting rather than motivation forcing the characters to go from Point A to Point B or even forcing the characters to become romantically involved.  So there is a distinct possibility that there are Animorphs stories out there that use these ultra-popular AUs, and I just haven’t encountered them.