#but yeah the whole 'we need atyd for the girls!!' is just. so annoying

[rollercoasterwords]

the “we need an atyd/choices but for wlw” always gets me because why do wlw fics need to be compared to fics about men? i love love love the hand that feeds but would never read it as the wlw version of a mlm fic. It’s special in it’s own lovely way.

your little rants here are keeping me sane and i do wish all the people who post about this on tiktok would stumble over to tumblr for a moment to understand that no one is entitled to someone else’s free writing.

oh god i do not want them to stumble over here i think they would draw and quarter me lmao

no but u are very correct honestly for me it's not even about gender like it's not so much "why do wlw fics need to be compared to mlm fics" bc i feel like that's more just a product of the only viral fics rn being about men it's more just. why are you incapable of viewing anything in this fandom outside the framework of a handful of fics that have gone viral. like don't get me wrong i love choices i love atyd i love crimson rivers BUT. we already have those stories. y'know? so what people are really saying when they say "we need atyd for the girls!!" is just "we need a wlw fic to reach levels of virality previously unheard of!!!" and it's like uhhhhhhh why. literally why. are u incapable of enjoying something if it doesn't go viral?

and i feel like the response to that is "no but wlw fics just deserve more attention!!" no they don't. sorry if that's harsh but nobody deserves attention and i think placing so much emphasis on it is not a good thing. virality isn't some ultimate goal that every fic writer is trying to reach--i mean. jesus christ, do u guys see how people treat writers when their fics go viral??? it's nightmarish!!! i think there are plenty of wlw fics out there that deserve love and respect for their wonderful writing, but nobody creating fanfiction is entitled to like. a shit ton of readers. and i think most fanfiction writers understand that, and are not writing fic with the goal of amassing a huge online audience. like i know for myself and for most of my friends who write fanfic the goal is just to create a story we like for ourselves and then perhaps attract a handful of people who like that story enough to talk to us about it as like. icing on the cake.

so to say stuff like "we need atyd for the girls" to me just translates to "we need to perpetuate the model of interacting with fanfiction wherein we treat fic as if it exists in a consumer economy, where amassing the broadest possible audience is the ultimate goal and the Highest Honor to bestow, and then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where there are only a handful of viral fics at a time and we then feel as though there is no diversity amongst what is being written because we get stuck in an echo chamber where everyone on tiktok is just posting about the same handful of fics because they know that's what will get them views, and then people are only reading those fics because that's all they see on tiktok, and then people are only posting about those fics because that's what people are reading, and then--hey!! why is no one writing wlw!!!"

[rewritingcanon]

i would just like to SPECIFY and go into a bit of detail about what each thing actually means:

this may not seem so bad, but when i mean they will comment on anything, i mean anything. it doesnt have to be marauder-related. it doesn’t even need to be related to harry potter. i saw a tiktok on a gorilla eating a banana and someone deadass commented “thats cool and stan james potter 😝” and lord FORBID if you include anything with snape in it. want to make an edit of him? backlash. want to talk about how you like him because hes interestingly written? backlash. want to deconstruct his character due to how badly fanon twisted him and actually analyse him? “anyways stan james potter” may be the dominant response to that, just so you know.

“sirius would never say that about mary!” said the marauder fan, heartbroken. “canon sirius would hate himself in atyd!” i respond usually with “canon sirius is a white boy in the 70s, hes not the ‘slay feminist yass 😍’ king you think he is.” this elicits quite a plethora of negative reactions, and i understand why. misogyny is stinky, no one wants their favourite character to be acting like that. so this option doesn't mean "fans who like a characterisation of sirius black that isn't necessarily time period realistic," but rather "fans who deny canon evidence for a fanon conception and then hate on things that expand on the canon evidence provided to them." "they are wizards, which isn't realistic, but you choose the time period misogyny as a hill to die on?" the marauder fan replied to me (and im quite literally quoting on what a creator said to me, this isn't an exaggeration). meanwhile canon sirius black: *harrasses snape for dressing more femininely/more outside gender norms* yeah and you think that boy would be a feminist...

you may think to yourself: when did [insert ship] become a thing? why is this happening? who even is this person? most of the time, it's all in good fun, sometimes, however, ships are created that purely contradict the entire point of said character. snily was criticised for doing exactly this, and now look at where we are.

after reading these points, you may come to the conclusion: holy shit the problem is just marauders fans. in fact, you may take it one more and remember more shit that had occurred due to this sub fandom of the harry potter universe. ever been criticised for not characterising purely fanon (dorcas, marlene etc etc) characters properly? ever been attacked for calling out the hypocritical stanning of barty, evan, regulus and peter whilst piling all blame onto bellatrix or snape? yeah me too babes.

i know we've talked about tiktok a lot, but i raise one more thing: the inescapable hell that is dracotok. this usually consists of those young teenage girls thinking they are very hardcore for participating in death eater practices despite its mirroring of being violent oppressors on a discriminated group so they can impress none other than draco malfoy. this, or they're the badass 'girlboss' that can change him. completely and ironically misunderstanding the point of his character aside, every cringey POV/thirst trap you have EVER seen on tiktok is probably replicated and 10x worse on dracotok.

i swear i haven't heard the term "gryffindork" since 2016, but alas, there has been a comeback. i call hogwarts legacy fans 'baby' hp fans, because i seriously do believe that these people have not interacted with the fandom until now. that would be okay if they weren't regressing everyone to early 2000s discourse. are gryffindors not being invited to ravenclaw, hufflepuff and slytherin raves that deep? no. but those three houses wouldn't be having raves in the first place

we've all seen them, need i explain or go into detail? "b-but harry doesn't have any chemistry with ginny!!" so he does with DRACO of all people? "b-but lily and james are basic!" dont forget the roots from whence you came. its misogyny within the fandom disguised as allyship or whatever the hell this is. ship your ships, but leave the gals alone

this didn't get on my nerves until i suffered from years and years of randoms going into detail about why slytherin/hufflepuff was the best harry potter house and then getting genuine mad when idgaf. maybe you have experienced this tragedy too. there are grown people getting into genuine online beef with others because they made a joke about slytherin being evil or hufflepuff being useless. makes me think you are just evil and useless (just kidding, but please wake up and realise that slytherin & hufflepuff quite literally do not exist)

i sympathise for people who like snape, i do. i do not sympathise for those who attempt to justify or excuse his actions. this normally comes with a side dish of misogyny, because more often than not they will find a way to blame it on lily. other times, they will blame his trauma. i want to be clear: his trauma explains his actions, it doesn't excuse them. that is the whole point of him ruining his chances with lily (not even as a lover, but as a companion). you are doing your own injustice to his character by trying to make him innocent, please stop

it's understandable why the cursed child is so hated. it's meant to be seen, not read, in my opinion. there's a lot of things in it that i too wish didn't exist. but that doesn't make it "not canon" because it upsets you. and of ALL the things that these types of people would choose to complain about, these are the things they chose: albus potter's namesakes (we've been going on about this for years like can we stop now please), harry being a 'bad dad' (think about his own upbringing a tiny bit more and maybe your brain can make a little more sense of his actions), delphi being voldemort's child (probably the only thing that i agree with these people on), and albus' name again because they REALLY hate it (but then they will counter this by saying "james sirius" is a good name, when it's still mid asf). anyway, it doesn't matter how much you squeeze your eyes shut and writhe around about it, the cursed child is canon. soz lol