#bad buddy fanworks

[mahuhumaling]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

made by the one and only deepa. thank you for tagging me! i'm not really sure how the format of this tag game works haha but i'll do my best. ):) @fiercynn

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself

heyo! i'm atria (pronounced ey-tri-ya), 21, and a college senior struggling studying creative writing in the philippines. i use she/her pronouns and i'm very much sapphic thank you.

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom?

december 14, 2021, when i decided to binge what my twitter mutuals have been hyping about on my tl for weeks.

i had been on a hiatus prior to that, having just been suffering from julie and the phantoms brainrot, that it surprised me that my old fandom mutuals were moving on collectively to another show. so many tweets analyzing and raving about the show caught my attention because i'm all about those, those are my cup of tea, especially the night of episode 5 airing. i watched a clip of the rooftop scene and i wanted to know why they were crying and why one of them walked away, so i had it on my watchlist. i was still busy with schoolwork though so i didn't get to actually start watching until two weeks later, four days after episode 7 aired (hence 12/14/21) at 10 PM with my sheets pulled up. it was me and my phone against the world.

yes i made it worse because that week was my finals—but to my defense, to my defense, i had already finished half of it and was close in finishing the other half of my exams.

joined the fandom like not even an hour later after i binged 1-7 because i came on twitter and was met with a warm welcome.

favorite ship(s)

patpran and inkpa. i have my fair share of liking rare pairs (clary and izzy from shadowhunters tv, riley and farkle from girl meets world, quinn and rachel from glee) but for shows like these, nah. haha the main pairs really do it for me.

favorite character(s)

pat - mans was so relatable. sexually fluid, thought he had a crush on his different-gendered friend but turned out to be in love with someone who is of the same gender who was right in front of him the whole time. became closer to different-gendered friend after confessing to them i'm totally not projecting haha what do you man

ink - ah, ink nolastname my beloved. introduced as a red herring but ended up having her own sapphic love story?? no other girl in a bl could ever.

junior - i thought he'd just be a one-episode side character but him serving the story in multiple ways got to me. he felt like patpran's child which is so cute, but also a representation of the freedom patpran's own kid selves could have had.

favorite episode(s)

3 - falls under the romcom formula of pat just following pran around like a dumb oblivious puppy and while we the audience are attuned to pran's perspective, once you rewatch episode 3, you realize how much pat has not been lying about how he feels for both pran and ink and that his behavior says it all.

5 - do you even need to ask. i'm pat-biased so him speedrunning his sexuality was so funny and so devastating at the same time.

10 - some people have said that i'm a masochist for this one. but in all seriousness when i first watched it (which was via iWant and not YouTube, so i had no interruptions of 4 parts and got to watch all four parts immediately and earlier than everyone else because if you didn't know back when it was airing, the premiering of the parts would have an interval of around 5-15 minutes each) it felt so long and advanced the plot the most. it had all: inkpa getting together, patpran being adorable annoying bfs, and learning about their generational trauma. yikes! i loved the angst of it all.

favorite scene(s)

*cracks knuckles* oh boy, do i have a series of textposts for you. i made commentary post thingies for them detailing the reason why! it was so fun to do.

designing bus stop 2.0

fight in the dorm's ground floor

pran singing the unfinished version of "our song"

inkpa in the darkroom

ming putting the letters in the siridechawat mailbox

one thing you would change about the show if you could

just one??? i mean haha sure...

the whole plot of wai getting mad at pran and how they resolved it. like come on man, the best friend hates when one lies to the other trope is so lame and overused. it's not just pat getting shot, it was the whole thing of the archi gang being unfairly mad without bothering to learn about why he lied. if they didn't feel like side characters then who are just there to put external conflict and less like actual friends who got hurt from the secret, they certainly acted most like it in episode 9.

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people?

i made a fanfic recommendation thread and i have a couple of bbs edits saved in all of tiktok, instagram, and twitter, but if i had to really narrow it down, that'd be tough. hmm.

gif - i search @pranpats' pat breaking silently post every few months to make myself cry whenever i need a good one. my baby boy my baby boy i love him so much. i tuck him in bed and give him nong nao. btw the sharpening of this gif made pat's tears so much clearer and i want to hurl myself off of a balcony thanks.

fic - from the tide by fruti2flutie is a popular fanfic but it deserves the hype. i was blown away by its character dynamics and style of writing that i wrote an original story inspired from its worldbuilding/power system for my fiction workshop class. the river can't go back by unsungyellowraincoat is poetic heaven.

art - last one to propose loses by cubedmango + rooftop wedding by @thatgothsamurai = my our skyy actually.

animatic - Ur SOUL Ur BodY by RENii•EXE has so many shots that made me question my entire existence, namely pran pressing pat's hand into the bedsheets (0:41). it's so good. 10/10.

animation - I am not your ocean anymore by @architectxengineer is incredible. watching this broke my heart in the best possible way. the visual of how pran and pat stumble into their room in episode 11 is such a cute scene to fill the gap of.

edit - mae's safety net is a personal favorite because it was first uploaded on my birthday, i could never get tired of it as i kept watching it for months on end, and then there was that time it was archived on mae's instagram but she was kind enough to unarchive it for me (alongside her other incredible bbs edits!) huhu ily. and then another objectively well-made one is 7 things by mic that is deservedly popular on twitter, not to mention the very intentional use of colors from all of pran's markers/color pencils! HOW. COOL. IS. THAT.

text - In Fair Verona by @shortpplfedup is an analysis/commentary scenepost series that i fell in love with and tuned into as the episodes aired. it details the main romeo and juliet allegory as well as points out its differences. it's so so pretty and insightful and a delight to read. read all of it, guys. please.

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made?

visual edit - among all my photo edits, my untranslatable words one almost made it here but i gotta hand it to my bad idea storyboard. if i could only draw, i would have animated the shit out of this tbh.

video edit - all the stars kind of flopped in reception which was a bummer considering no one knows i spent an embarrassingly long time working on it (...9 hours) but now you do haha.

fanfic - the rest are drabbles anyway so i don't even think this can count as a favorite if it's only one lmao but it's my Teen Wolf AU anamnesis (28k, 4 chapters, fin). really enjoyed the season 6 binge for educational purposes :DD and writing pranink, pranpa, patink, and the jindapat siblings was one of the best parts. my true ot4.

other - i wrote something about patpran that was not prose. it's post velum (which is latin for behind the curtain, the name of the novel) and it's poetry about each episode of bad buddy + our skyy. oh and my patpran as percabeth series that i mostly only did for like,, two people.

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol)

a taylor swift song feels like cheating because every ship can be associated to a taylor swift song but still. daylight is perfect. i once believed love would be burning red? pre-relationship patpran. the rivalry is so fiery that they thought they wouldn't have the space to be soft. but it's golden. established relationship patpran. they are the healthiest teenaged boyfriends ever. their relationship endures for years and glows.

watch this edit, see what i mean.

idk anything else you want us to know?

i don't really agree with thinking bad buddy is the perfect show and that it had the perfect ending. i still understand the direction and the decision to go with those and other more questionable choices, but i like recognizing the show's flaws. tons and tons of it. from the technicalities of production to the actual writing. especially knowing the show's behind the scenes and what happened from the mock trailer's official announcement and the gp's initial (horrible) reception, to this show finally airing and its first four episodes being in the trenches when it comes to ratings (haha the bbs nugu era), to the ending of episode 5 breaking the internet to the point of being recognized in the following gmmtv 2022 presscon, then to the steep rise to the peak.

...especially knowing those made me love the show more inside out. tldr; i'm a "bad buddy is a very flawed show and i love it" type of person.

tagging bbs tumblr mutuals who might be interested in playing but no pressure though! @dravbn @lurkingteapot @seoperior @pransobrave @rhvmaresh @patpranism @zetteceniza

[fiercynn]

just imagining pat coming back from a tense family dinner and immediately snuggling up to pran for comfort, and when pran pretends to be annoyed at him for being clingy he mumbles "actually can you be nice to me right now?" and pran's entire demeanor changes in an INSTANT and he goes all soft and starts telling pat how good he is, and after a while pat starts getting flustered and says "okay you can be mean again now" and pran shakes his head and says "sorry sweetheart you asked for this, now you have to take it"

[inventedfangirling]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

ah finally after a gazillion years i've been able to get around to doing this after being tagged by the ever sweet @fiercynn , so lemme straightaway get down to it.

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc.

name and whatever you want to share about yourself

hello there, i'm a 24 year old gray-ace panromantic desi on the romance positive end of the arospec (im still undergoing the wonderful but also often difficult and long journey of discovering myself so this is subject to change :3), i prefer going by my username so i'm not sharing my name.

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom?

i watched bad buddy exactly 3 months ago on the 15th of May, 2023. i watched all the episodes all on the same day and i know the date because after finishing the show i sent a 7 minute long audio note gushing about the show to my best friend. i ADORED it that much. and that's where all of this started. i loved the show so much and the lack of people i knew irl who were interested meant i had to find other people in the fandom to freak out with. i kept posting one after another favourite bad buddy edit of mine on my twitter page, gushing about it, but i got barely any response and that's when i reminded myself that tumblr exists and i should get back on here. and that's how i made this account 2 weeks after i watched the show and voila here i am surrounded by people who are as crazy about the show as i am and i couldn't be more delighted about it :')

favorite ship(s)

patpran and inkpa ofc

favorite character(s)

i love pat with all my heart, the man he ends up becoming along the course of the show is one of my most favorite portrayals of any man ever BUT pran is my actual favorite, he is my baby, (somehow both) my elder and younger brother and my best friend and he has my whole heart. his love, his hesitance, his anxiety, his bravery, his dimples, his FOREHEAD, his striped shirts, his precious heart i would DIE for him no questions asked.

favorite episode(s)

episode 11. each segment had something for the heart, i adored every single second of it...the sheer volume of beaut quotes from this episode is mind blowing! ("being with you already feels like freedom", "i can be anywhere as long as i have you", "we have been happier a lot too", "thankyou for trying to make a silly guy like me happy..." "i wrote this song for him", "one man can't change the world, but this world can't change me too"), and the soft loving looks of adoration making me clutch my chest, but also there was the quintessential patpran banter and bad buddy humour and wisdom i LOVE this episode with all my heart.

episode 5 is perfection. it comes second for me, but that kiss will always be number 1 <3

favorite scene(s)

rooftop kiss, balcony phone call, episode 7 ending when pat comes to save the day and the play, episode 11 red shirts commitment expression scene, and the final credits and post credits scene

one thing you would change about the show if you could

i wished the gangs didnt bully eo or anybody else even in the beginning, i get it shows growth but still i wished that was shown differently. also i wish we got a conversation where they talk about the guitar. and while we're here i wish it was somehow longer, i could have watched ohmnanon be patpran for HOOOURS.

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people?

traffic was slow for the crash years by @fiercynn aka the creator of this meme. i absolutely adored every single second of the fic. despite it giving me a WORLD of pain. all the pain made it more beautiful and everything was worth it in the end. like i said before you took a great thing and made it even better <3

every piece of art that @hereforlou comes up with. you are a GEM!

all of nanons gorgeous gifsets!!

same page video edit that even p'aof tweeted about. SO good.

enchanted (aka patpran's official song) and other patpran edits by this same SO very talented editor

mudhal nee mudivum nee - another beautiful edit but desi so its even better <3

this super clever edit of patpran to message in a bottle. it's an instant serotonin booster for me.

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made?

you can hear it in the silence - bad buddy bet era fic (the only one i've written till now)

my bad buddy textposts collection

my pran and pat's growth posts

this post that took me 20 mins to write but is one of my fav things ive written about the show

my long treatise of bet era patpran that took me a week!

list of accounts (hopefully i haven't forgotten any) whose meta and analysis and brainrot i absolutely adore- @miscellar , @telomeke-bbs , @grapejuicegay , @aroceu, @dudeyuri, @dribs-and-drabbles, @dimplesandfierceeyes, @sharingfandoms, @waitmyturtles, @ranchthoughts, @lurkingteapot, @lurkingshan, @thegayneurodivergentagenda, @kenmakaashi, @absolutebl, @charthanry, @bengiyo, @mahuhumaling, @panickedbisexualwatchesbl, @jemmo, @patspran, @fiercynn, @midnightfreeway, @fierceeyesanddimples and a couple more im sure ive missed. it was {and continues to be} a pleasure reading their thoughts about the show (or any other show that we've mutually watched).

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol)

message in a bottle because of this edit

daylight cos of this edit

enchanted, because of the infinite edits we've got from it and if im not wrong pat ohm has acknowledged it too

and basically all other romantic songs in the history of romance i guess :3

alrighty then i think i'm done with this tag. this was a LOT of fun to compile <3

[citystoryscapes]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

yayyyy thank you for the tag deepa, who is the best! @fiercynn <3 I've been meaning to participate in this for agessssss

since there are both recent newcomers to bbs fandom and people like me who are new to bbs tumblr, i thought i'd create a getting-to-know-you meme for people to introduce themselves if they want! all questions are optional

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself

hey, I'm rain! that's not my actual name but it's all the internet is getting. my pronouns are she/they. I'm in my 20s and a grad student, and fandom has been a (selectively) great place for me in terms of finding supportive, brilliant friends. I like to write a fair bit; occasionally, I post it too. I also like cats, big cities, good tea, and old houses.

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom?

I'd heard about bad buddy because it was airing around the same time as another show I was watching, but I wasn't toooo interested until episode 5, part 4/i4. when I tell you that kiss UNLOCKED SOMETHING IN ME... I caught up on the first 5 episodes pretty much immediately after that while quarantining alone over Christmas, and it pretty much kept me sane. I watched the rest of the show as it aired- please spare a moment of silence for the people who had to wait out the two-week gap between episodes over New Year's.

bad buddy has always made me SO genuinely happy and hopeful, reminding me that there is hope for queer Asian people even if our families aren't always supportive.

favorite ship(s)

patpran, inkpa, and some comic relief waikorn

favorite character(s)

in terms of fanworks, it's a very close call between pran and pat, but I think pran is my favorite by a hair! I love his character arc throughout the show! I especially love his confidence and the way he grew into himself. pran might win in terms of being inspirational, but I have to say, I LOVE well-written pat meta.

in terms of who I'd like to channel in real life, it's obviously ink. she is the absolute coolest, a proud simp, and a protective girlfriend.

(I'm great at avoiding making choices)

favorite episode(s)

episode 5, because what could ever compare? I also love parts of episode 3 and 11 (I'm saying this as if I don't love the entire show).

favorite scene(s)

ep 5 rooftop kiss!!!! ep 3 bus stop and mini elevator scene; ep 4 pran's injury and the three wontons dinner; ep 6 beach scene where they're paired up in the game; and their trip to the market, ep 7 confession scene; ep 9's 'anyone taller than me is fine'!!!!! ep 11 bus scene, beach scene, and song montage; ep 12's entire bait and switch reveal, and pat pran's dinner out with friends.

see what I meant about avoiding making choices?

one thing you would change about the show if you could

seconding deepa, WHY DID INKPA NOT KISS??? also this isn't a change I would definitively make to the existing show, but I'd love a b-side where we see patpran's relationship in the years between their graduations and pran's return from Singapore.

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people?

I can't believe this is a question I am legitimately choosing to answer:

Fic:

make my body say ah, ah, ah by Sabulum

heart in a cage by sunshinedobi

paradox by Everybodyknows

dynamic by riddles2

a nose boop and the rest is history by seekingmoonscapes

don't forget me when I let the water take me by gilly_bean

your love is your life by threewontons

Videos:

same page by dkyth73

just friends by fiercynn and scribe

dancer by coldties

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made?

technically I've only published one bad buddy fanwork (it's a fic called these violent delights). my favorite thing I've created for the show is an unpublished canon-divergence fic where patpran have sex and possibly get together during their ep 6 beach trip

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol)

I'm sticking to the classics; same page and just being friendly by tilly birds are my top choices. I also made playlists for pat and pran, for said unpublished fic, so here's some of the songs I picked for both:

for pat: the loneliest time by carly rae jepsen, double take by dhruv, better by khalid, the enemy by andrew belle

for pran: washing machine heart by mitski, 18 by 1D, and dancer by leon

idk anything else you want us to know?

I love all of you smart meta writers, I'm kissing your big beautiful brains

okay i'm literally going to tag all of my tumblr mutuals that i think are still in the fandom (if i missed anyone sorry!!), but also if you want to do the meme consider yourself tagged! please don’t let this flop lol 🤞🏽

[gmmtvexchange]

#gmmtvexchange Day 3: "One Step Closer" for SummerTeaPrince (Fic, Bad Buddy, Pat Napat/Pran Parakul/Tian Sopasitsakun/Phupha Viriyanon, word count: 4.2K, E) Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51480925

[greenteadumplings]

Guys!!! I just found this amazing, beautiful, I can't even form words to describe how great this is kind of bad buddy edit!!!

This song fits them perfectly!!

Check this out its just so so sooo beautiful 😭

[boomstab-papa]

i wanted to make a little "graphic design is my burden" reminder because it doesn't work on other people and it doesn't work when doing it to yourself, either

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[failbuster-emmy]

Something something Reimu Hakurei.

Okay but like. I don't know if it's that people just don't get it or don't really explore it often or what the deal is but Reimu is a complex character and I feel like I don't see that depicted often enough. Last time I can remember seeing a fanwork that really portrayed it was a little bit in Reireimu. Reimu does not love violence. Her job is supposed to BE violence, killing youkai and all. But she specifically designed a new set of rules that would prevent death from being necessary to resolve conflicts and incidents. Don't get me wrong, she isn't scared to pick a fight, but Reimu canonically wants youkai and humans to be able to coexist and live in peace, but her role as the Hakurei Maiden is, at its most simple level, to prevent that. Reimu does not like thinking about this. She does not like thinking about how this contradiction complicates her life.

Now there's a lot of places you could take this in a fanwork, as with most pieces of touhou lore, but I have a soft spot for how this can play into her relationships, platonic or romantic

Marisa: Reimu and Marisa, practically joined at the hip. Marisa does not have the same issues as Reimu in this regard, she's an outcast, she ran off from her family to live in the forest and do magic, she not about to let some stupid idea humans have get in the way of her being pals with youkai, see Alice and Nitori. Marisa would want to help Reimu get over this, try to get her to be less guilty feeling about being friendly with youkai, because honestly, Marisa isn't friends with the Hakurei Maiden, she's friends with Reimu, and she wants to see Reimu be herself and not feel bad about it.

Aya: Reimu and Aya both are forced into boxes by their respective roles. It'd be sorta taboo on both sides for them to mingle and be genuinely close, so I think it'd make them both feel better to take that step forward and rebel against the dumb ass rules and just do what they wanna.

Suika: I don't see enough if these two being drinking buddies honestly. I can see Suika drunkenly explaining why she caused the incident in Immaterial and Missing Power, how she just everyone to come together and drink, party, and get along. Reimu drunkenly responds that she wants that too.

Yukari: This one is interesting. The whole thing with Aya and being close with a youkai applies here, but I think it's most interesting for Yukari, letting herself get attached to another human after you KNOW she was distraught after Yuyuko. Reimu reminds Yukari of what it's like to be human. I enjoy that.

Sanae: Sanae comes into Gensokyo, fresh faced, ready to exterminate some youkai! And then she gets attached to some youkai, and sure she's still a shrine maiden and she does fight youkai, but she's less weighed down by befriending them than Reimu because she's not betraying her life's purpose by doing so. Sanae might be an airheaded goober, but like Marisa, I don't think she'd want Reimu to feel so guilty about being herself.

You can find something for most of Reimu's character relationships, and I think it's neat. Let that shrine maiden be silly.

[fiercynn]

thinking about singapore-era pran just walking through the front door of pat's apartment one evening for an unexpected visit, and after pat has gotten over his shock and hug-tackled and kissed the hell out of him, he goes, "baby why didn't you tell me before?" and pran just shrugs a little and says, "you said if i missed you i should just come in"

[olderthannetfic]

So, you mentioned low standards of research in podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts or watch a lot of videos about fandom analysis, but I have seen error corrections happening in the wild for what I have listened to, so I can only imagine how annoying it is when you know your shit.

Do you have any resources that come to mind as things everyone who likes fandom should be comfortable with, or specific essays on uniquely important fandoms (such as Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek) that everyone should read? Obviously the OTW resources are up there; what else?

Aside from resources, do you think there are any skills that are especially vital for getting to the bottom of fandom trends? Interview skills are probably pretty high up there.

Any pitfalls you see a lot of young fans falling into?

(I do a lot of fandom history research. It is the thing that gives me joy in fandom; other people like shipping or AUs, I like my little mini-anthropology sandbox and watching how ideas spread. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's fun!)

--

Well... it's the usual things.

For example, a lot of fans claim to love fandom stats, but the ones that get passed around come from like three people. The people doing those stats, including me, don't usually have a statistics background, which doesn't automatically make them bad, but it really seems like people are just trusting anything with a pie chart.

We've recently seen people discover that those year-end AO3 ship stats have a seriously weird methodology. They don't show the thing their fans are actually trying to find out. People were pissed. But most of the time, they don't even bother asking what the methodology is or trying to do anything themselves.

There's far too much sitting back and waiting for some BNF to spoon feed one publicly-available information.

--

The big failings aren't usually the math itself but, of course, not knowing what question to ask, so it pertains to history research, not just stats.

You'll see a lot of stuff on shipping that looks at AO3 because AO3 shipping numbers are easy to pull... But AO3 shipping numbers don't just happen to be easy to pull: that is both an effect and a cause that is directly related to AO3's content. Someone interested in meta shouldn't be asking "What do AO3's numbers show?" as their first question. They should be asking "Why is this metadata available or not available and what does that mean on a sociological level?"

--

Thing two is the eternal I Have Apparently Never Heard of Anime problem. A fuckton of people theorizing about fandom trends seem to know fucking nothing about whole massive sectors of fandom or treat them as afterthoughts. This is okay if you're writing a history of Media Fandom. It is criminally stupid if you're trying to talk about what makes a piece of media have fic when another doesn't, what kinds of websites make fandoms take off, etc. Those kinds of broad questions need a broad understanding of what's out there.

It's not anime-specific, and I'm not asking for a high degree of knowledge.

I have routinely had people tell me that best friend ships and mystery/crime as a genre aren't popular, and that's why AO3 has this or that pattern... Meanwhile, buddy cops are the bedrock of oldschool slash fandom and make up basically all of the longest-running Western m/m fandoms that aren't Star Trek. CSI slop tends to have legions of future canon het shippers, and they make plenty of fanworks. It's just that some of this is more visible on FFN or older places, not AO3.

I'm always seeing things like someone speculating about how this and that anime fandom thing or bit of mid-00s FFN community drama led to this other thing on AO3, not realizing that AO3 came out of LJ Western fandom slash culture. To them, FFN is so central that it must be the main reference point, not the bajillion and one archives AO3 founders ran or Usenet or mailing lists or LJ.

I once saw someone asking on twitter about where a prominent Ranma fic might have been posted in the mid-90s. People claiming "My professor is an authority!" came out of the woodwork in droves to blither about K/S zines and then LJ. Not only was this entirely wrong, but the right answer was blindingly obvious if you knew enough to interpret the google results. I can only assume that the person tweeting had never heard of Usenet and didn't recognize the acronym for the big anime fanfic group that literally everything like this was first posted to.

I'm talking people insisting that fandom only goes for white characters when it's very obvious that fandom goes for majority leads who are not othered. All the bawwing in the world about "People assume anime characters are white" won't get rid of The Untamed or Kpop thirsters or whatever.

I'm talking sweeping pronouncements about gender and fanfic writers where the person hasn't even heard of FIMFiction or SpaceBattles or Dark Lord Potter cheesefests.

I've been in fandom for a long time, but I wasn't in all these parts, and I wasn't around for 80s zines. You don't need deep knowledge until you pick a research topic. But it's shocking how little shallow, broad knowledge a lot of people have when they're writing their Theory Of All Of Fandom History.

--

People are stupid as shit about survivorship bias, and fandom history is no exception. They're also dumb in the opposite direction, assuming that the thing they like now has always existed in this exact form.

For example, someone got mad at Fanlore for supposedly not documenting the history of f/f zines. Others have searched and searched for the zines of their old show they got into last year and are bewildered to not find any. The reality is that Fanlore editors are attempting to document every Media Fandom zine and have combed through old adzines looking for any mention of anything. Because of the methods of distribution—because it was expensive—small fandoms often had no zines at all.

Femslash fandom doesn't seem to have gotten enough critical mass to do much until Xena. The internet has really democratized things, but even the early internet was still somewhat in that old mindset where only certain popular things have a fandom. I think Yuletide itself, which started in 2003, really helped spread the idea of rare-but-existing fandoms being a thing. FFN and perhaps some other multifandom archives like Media Miner played a huge role.

Nowadays, we think of fic as just how you respond to media, any media, even if there are only two fics for that one car commercial, but that isn't how people saw things in every era—or at least it's not how fandom infrastructure worked. A lot of the time, the big hosting spots were single-fandom archives, often with restrictive content rules. Finding somewhere to post a m/m/f OT3 fic used to be hard. Never mind early zines when photocopiers didn't even exist yet and you had to sell out your print run of 500 to make a go of it.

All good research starts with a lot of preliminary investigation to figure out what you're even trying to look for.

Actually bothering to look for fans talking about their own history or casually chatting with your interview subjects before the formal interview will put a person miles ahead of many of the cringeworthy fandom ~papers~ I've seen.

The biggest mistake people make is going "Okay, these numbers aren't perfect, but some numbers are better than no numbers".

Bullshit.

As soon as there's a pie chart of the false numbers, everyone's brain turns off and they never look at the chart subtitle, never mind the research notes.

Bad numbers are often worse than no numbers.

Look at the logic behind the methodology first. Look at the social context. Basic understanding of human nature and familiarizing oneself with the shape and hangout locations of a community will get you most of the way there before you sit down for a specific interview or try to collect any specific numbers.

--

None of this is a fandom thing. Research is research. It's just that most people think "research" means watching a tiktok that the algorithm likes and were never taught how to evaluate a source for reliability.

Evaluating sources is a skill. I had explicit lessons on it in school. Lots of people don't, and that sucks.

Honestly, watching the more thoughtful debunking content on non-fandom topics, like Miniminuteman's stuff on pseudo-archaeology or Dan Olson's... everything, is a good window into critical thinking, and that's most of what's missing from bad fandom history.

--

But more than any of that, more is more. Not the crap stats, but the narrower, more personal accounts, the interviews. The more fans who investigate their little corner that isn't the same old AO3 site-wide "Why is there so much m/m?" ship stats or the same canned "Everything comes from K/S" history, the better.

What I object to is not amateur efforts but efforts that pull from the same small pool of data or that just reblog a tiny handful of supposed authorities.

--

If people are going to read just one thing... hmm... go try to look up a history of rec.arts.anime.creative, not because I think it's the most important fandom history out there but because it's at the nexus of things a lot of current fandom history work miss.

[gmmtvexchange]

#gmmtvexchange Day 1: "shivers down your spine" for AylaRanzz84 (Fic, Bad Buddy, Pat Napat/Pran Parakul, word count: 1.1K, T) Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50978929

[bonefall]

while i do agree with the sentiment that bloodclan should be more nuanced as an entity i still believe it is wrong to portray them as the necessary "response" to clan injustice (haven't read the books in years but i am pretty sure that bloodclan started with no connection to the clans) / an opposition to the clan's flaws. some of the thing scourge did was out of selfishness and bloodclan isn't the other colour of the black and white debacle with the clans. the clans are heavily flawed yes, but it isn't realistic to completely say that their structure had no redeeming qualities altogether and that all outsider groups is fundamentally better than the clans.

all clans and groups are flawed in their own way and i believe we shouldnt brush past the things that other groups (the sisters and what they do with their toms *cough cough*) did solely to be able to degrade the clans and their culture.

Buddy, you're setting up a strawman. I promise you that if you look into the reduxes I've made of BloodClan, Guardians, The Sisters, and the Tribe, you will see that I don't make any of them a "flawless" alternative to Clan life.

Nor do I say that the Clans have no redeeming qualities. In fact, you can browse the "Clan Culture" tag to see the various expansions I've made to show how these traditions, values, and technological advances make Clan life so alluring.

The overarching theme of BB is that the nature of culture is change. For better AND for worse.

With respect, I think there's something insidious in the wording of "the things the other groups did." We're talking about fan responses to a work that consistently demonizes and degrades foreigners to make the Clans look like the "best way to live," justifying xenophobia. These are not real groups, they are writing choices.

In the franchise with some pretty extreme examples of misogyny, the authors said "What if bizarro world where women rule and have no men... woag..." and only includes a single Clan-alligned member of this culture, with a BAD opinion of them, who can't even do his diplomatic job because he HATES them so much.

In the same franchise that shows Fireheart getting bullied, facing prejudice, and fighting a murderous tyrant who publically executes a mixed-race character, their endgame villain is an outsider, like him, but this one IS a godless heathen who HATES love and friendship and banned families.

In the VERY same franchise which made its first non-malicious group barely able to get through an arc without needing to be saved by Clan cats, totally unable to defend themselves, framed as "whiny" for not wanting their clearly 'inferior' culture to be forcefully changed.

And I'm re-stating all this because, again, no offense to you in particular Anon, but I've been seeing a few people with a sentiment like yours lately. Complaints into a vacuum that don't make targeted critique of anyone's fanworks, gesturing at this broad "woobification" which is apparently out there somewhere over the rainbow, saying things like "well Scourge is selfish" or "well Moonlight abandoned her 13 year old" as if we haven't BEEN knew.

As if we're not all directly responding to these choices. As if I haven't written ESSAYS on this topic.

Since this was about BloodClan in particular though, and you admit you haven't read the books in years, please go back and actually read Rise of Scourge before trying to make critique of the ways fanon rewrites its origin. It's EXPLICITLY a response to the Clans, in the text, that the Erins wrote, it is canon that fanon is working with.

And you want people to take that out and approach it a different way... why? Because it's so incredulous to you that a nation forms in response to a threatening neighbor? That a common enemy through invasions is a way that people might choose to unite, and encourage their new culture to value brutality? Because you don't like the idea of Clan Culture's XENOPHOBIC BATTLE CULTURE affecting surrounding communities??

Could YOU, maybe, be doing this "woobification" thing I keep hearing about? Can I play this stupid game too? What's our stupid prize? Can it be a lollipop? Do we get stickers

TL;DR, ok.

[holdmygum]

im really trying not to wade into it because if you follow me you know i usually don't participate actively in fandom discussions and i just yap in the tags and i do that out of self preservation but i have one thing to say:

ive seen so many people say they were blindsided by the breakup because everything was going so well and so it was bad writing, but apparently no one was listening to what tommy was saying because HE WAS BLINDSIDED TOO. tommy the character does not know about interviews given or what his actor wanted or any of that because he is NOT REAL. if you ignore ALL THAT and just pay attention to what he actually said during the speech and before he left, he didn't know he was going to do that. and you can say his reasoning wasn't valid if you want i don't care, i understood exactly where he was coming from as well as understood that he's probably self sabotaging a little bit, but he didn't show up at buck's with the intention of breaking up with him.

you're blindsided? so were tommy and buck. that's sort of the point. you can argue all day whether the relationship was doomed from the start or not (i think so but I get where the other side is coming from) but coming to an abrupt end isn't bad writing because you don't like it. stuff like this happens in real life all the time.

and maybe everyone is lying in their interviews and tommy will come back someday. maybe they haven't made that decision yet. maybe buddie canon. maybe so many things. the way it happened leaves it OPEN. open for the show and open for fanworks. so. idk man break out that google doc but please leave your media illiteracy at the door.

[fiercynn]

i'm laughing because i think my perception on this has been skewed by being in bad buddy fandom, where one of the best-loved fics (the fine line between hormones and home by the amazing @dimplesandfierceeyes, truly excellent) has a chapter that's over 35k words. kayla puts us all to shame lmao

but yeah all this is to say i just wrote an 8k chapter and was like "hmm does it need to be longer?" so i think it's very context-specific and individual. if you think your chapter needs to be long then let it be long!

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask. I am in a bit of a trouble as I wrote a 8k word chapter. I am wondering if this is just too long. Cutting it in half wouldn't be satisfactory, but doable. Would it be better to cut it or leave it that long? I might be able to cut some things from the story and come down to 7k. I need advice.

Hey Nonnie -

I am merely a tumblr mod, so this advice is coming from an avid fic reader and not the OTW hivemind (if there is one, I have not yet been invited to that groupchat)

Do what brings you joy. Writing fic is supposed to be fun. It is a labor of love that you send out into the void because your passion cannot be contained.

There is not a specific wordcount that makes a chapter Correct. I (personally) have never in my days noticed how long a chapter was, since I always click on Entire Work.

I probably would have sent a private reply, but instead we shall ask the tumblr community -

~ Mod Remi

[jimintomystery]

I've been digging all the cute fanworks about Zelda and Link sharing their house (with only one bed!) in Hateno Village. Good work, everybody.

On the other hand, I can't square that headcanon with the cutscene where Zelda gushes about Link. The whole point is that Rauru and Sonia can tell she's got it bad for that guy, even though she can't just say so. If she can't bring herself to admit her true feelings with her closest friends in the ancient past, it's unlikely she's been able to tell Link himself. Which would make it super-awkward to act like they're just buddies sharing a bed like it's no big deal. Zelda's too angsty and self-conscious to keep up that charade for very long.

I'm still trying to square the circle of how Link bought a house, but now it's Zelda's house, but they apparently aren't living together, but they obviously should be, but also Link bought another house in Akkala. I'll update when I come up with something...

[marveltrumpshate]

January 2024 MTH fills

The best way to see all the fills that have been shared with us is our monthly roundups tag or our #MTH-fills channel on our Discord, but you can also view them through the following methods:

Our Tumblr tags: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Our AO3 collections: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 (only has works posted to AO3)

Completed works tag list

To find specific content, use our completed works tag lists above which includes instructions on how to search for a particular character, gen or romantic relationship, universe, and fanwork type. 

SOLO CHARACTERS

Goose

@secondalto - Cross-stitch piece of Goose for @rivetheadgirl

GEN/PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS

Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff

Lalaith Quetzalli/@lalaithquetzallicaresi - Mood board for rufferto9 for their fic, "An Archer's Tale"

SHIPS

Arthur Harrow/Khonshu

@tiptapricot - "Consummation of Consumption" (MCU Arthur Harrow/Khonshu fic about unhealthy, codependent sex featuring religious fanaticism and devotion) for @lintillathearchaeologist

Bruce Banner/Tony Stark

heyjupiter/@twentyghosts - "Under the Tuscan Mistletoe" (Bruce/Tony 1990s non-powered AU fic where Bruce and Tony have a holiday fling) for @kalika999

Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton

@claraxbarton - "Running Start" (Bucky/Clint non-powered soulmates identity porn AU fic) for Col1999 (MTH 2022) - "where we go" (616/MCU fusion Bucky/Clint asexual relationship fic) for @foxprints (MTH 2022)

Lalaith Quetzalli/@lalaithquetzallicaresi - Fic cover for @rufferto9 for their fic, "An Archer's Tale," a Clint/Bucky werelion AU - Mood board for rufferto9 for their fic, "An Archer's Tale," a Clint/Bucky werelion AU

Bucky Barnes/Darcy Lewis

@anonymousmink - Art of Bucky cuddling Darcy from behind in bed for @bekala

Bucky Barnes/Howard Stark

@ruquas - A wartime epistolary fic in the form of handwritten letters between Bucky and Howard for @fuckyeahhowardstark

Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers

blackthorn_possum/@possumwoodpie - Podfic of "Surprise of the Night," a 1930s Bucky/Steve fic where Bucky and Steve go to watch a blue movie by and for lou2

Clint Barton/Phil Coulson

@cakeisnotpie - "All the Difference" (Clint/Coulson AU fic where Phil is a homeless vet who crosses paths with Clint, who takes contracts to go after bad guys) for @oper1895 and stillcentre

Jake Lockley/Marc Spector

@tiptapricot - "Warm Pipes" (MCU Jake/Marc shower fic where Jake helps Marc find their body again) for @rufferto9

Loki/Mobius

Lalaith Quetzalli/@lalaithquetzallicaresi - Loki/Mobius edit of them smiling fondly at each other with the phrase "Wherever you are, that's home" for @t0nystark1er

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Juulna/@juuls - Podfic of "felt with your two hands," a post-Endgame Steve/Tony fic where Tony helps Steve shave by and for @ishipallthings - Podfic of "lonely rivers flow to the sea (Topographies Remix)," a post-AoU Steve/Tony mutual pining fuck buddies fic by and for @ishipallthings

@longhornletters - Beta service for "Behind the Mask," a Steve/Tony Noir/Civil Warrior identity porn fic by and for @gottalovev (posted December 2023)