#fanfic discourse

[screaming-universe]

Bashing Fics in the 9-1-1 Fandom

Inspired by @beforeastorm‘s very neat look at 9-1-1 bashing fics in August and in September 2024, I took another look at the numbers yesterday (23rd January 2025) and… it’s been interesting.

Methods and materials:

For that I selected the 9-1-1 (TV) tag on ao3 while logged into my account and thereby ensuring I would see both public and locked fics; beforeastorm only considered public fics so by god I hope that some of the increases can be explained by that. Then I used the Include filter function to search for [Character Name] Bashing. Where this returned nothing I employed the Search within result function to search for “[character name] bashing”, trying out variations (last or first or nickname). To double-check I also did this search for characters with established bashing tags, using the Exclude filter to ensure that I would not count any fic twice.

Some characters have a bashing tag for themselves and a couple bashing tag. For example: if you search for Margaret Buckley Bashing, you will be offered two tag: Margaret Buckley Bashing and Margaret Buckley and Phillip Buckley Bashing. As far as I could tell, searching for the individual bashing tag also always counts the couple bashing tag, so the couple bashing tags could be disregarded. A list of the characters I looked at is under the cut.

The numbers were collected in an excel file and assigned the characters categories: main (meaning main adult character), family, love interest and other. I also took note of the gender. I did some analysis in excel before having the smart idea that I might as well use this as a training exercise for R (and I am very bad at R).

Disclaimer: this will not include all bashing fics because sadly some people are not familiar with tagging or love letting people run into a fic they will not enjoy. Also while I much prefer it when people tag bashing, some are overly careful and may use bashing tags when not really needed. Still, I much prefer that to people not tagging.

Results:

Disappointing but hardly surprising at this point: the extremely dubious honour of being the most bashed character goes to Tommy Kinard with 660 bashing fics to his name. That obviously makes him the most bashed character of the love interest category, followed by Ana Flores (241) and then Taylor Kelly (118 ^^). The most bashed characters of the family category are the Buckley parents (347 and 325) followed by the Diaz parents (238 and 176), with the mothers being given more bashing fics than the fathers. In the other category, Vincent Gerrard leads with the 66 times his bashing tag was used. Chase Mackey is in third place with 26 fics, and in second place is the Firehouse 118 Crew (45) which probably could be rather counted to the main character category.

Which brings us to that category. Chimney has been bashed in 317 fics, making him the most bashed main character. Followed by Maddie with 223 fics and Bobby with 163. Out of all the main adult characters, Buck is the only one without an established bashing tag. There are 7 fics out there that you can find if you employ a variation of queries with his name + bashing; that is if I have made no mistake. Because honestly? Finding Buck bashing fics is hard. Athena and Buck are the only main characters with less than 10 bashing fics to their name.

Fig. 1: This fucking barplot was a pain to make but here we are! Characters on the y-axis and number of fics that use respective bashing tag on the x-axis. The total number of respective fics are shown next to the bars; colour indicates the category the characters have been placed in. Top: continuous x-axis to allow for an easier overview of the proportions of the bars, bottom: x-axis with a break to allow a closer look.

Dishonourable mention: why the fuck would anybody write a fic with Christopher bashing?

Honourable mentions: Boeing and dolphin bashing. It did make the otherwise pretty depression task of data collection much better.

Gender-wise there are more bashing fics about men (54.3%) than there about women (44.3%) (of course I did not look at every character so I will have missed a few bashing fics). If nobody was writing Tommy bashing fics, that would be flipped (male: 43.0%, female: 55.3%).

Fig. 2: A lovely pie-chart showing the bashing fics per gender, with male subdivided into Tommy, and the other male characters.

Which brings us to the tragedy that is the hate this fandom has for Tommy Kinard. If you add up all the bashing tags I found (which does not equal fics, some people are happily bashing away in their fics), then his account for about 20%. Which is insane, wtf.

Discussion:

This was really depressing tbh. I showed the bar plot to my sister and she asked me what bashing is. She’s been in fandom for years; she was in the supernatural fandom and has read fics and somehow I still had to explain bashing to her. So really: yay for us, this fandom really is something.

 If you look at beforeastorm’s tally from August, you’ll see that Tommy bashing fics began popping up in April 2024 and since then he has become the most bashed character (out of those I looked at, I’m pretty sure that this holds true).

Now you may be wondering why these characters are being bashed. Warning: the following part is based on my opinions. I did not read the fics of all 3291 bashing tag instances that I found.

In some cases it seems pretty straight forward: Vincent Gerrard, Chase Mackey, Doug Kendall and Olivia Ortiz need no further explanation. Other “villains” such as Jeffrey Hudson and Jonah Greenway have no bashing fics that I could find though.

The Buckley and Diaz parents getting bashed is also not surprising. Can’t say that I’m wild about it since my experience with reading fics that tag bashing was usually “here’s a random evil person I made up and then gave the name of an existing character”, but I understand where people are coming from.

Now the main characters… I’m just gonna say it: it’s people who have wronged Buck – according to some of the fandom at least. Chimney’s crime: the punch (no, I’m not defending it, but some people really have run with this). Maddie’s crime: not telling Buck about Daniel and then wanting to talk to him about it when he didn’t want to. Bobby’s crime: not allowing Buck back to work. Hen’s crime: idk, being Chimney’s bestie?

As for Eddie: I guess he’s a misogynist now, if you ask some people? Idk, it’s not like I read the summaries of all the fics because there are too many and also just no.

The love interests – which yes, in this case all happen to be Buck and Eddie’s love interests, imagine my surprise – happen to be “in the way” of shipping I guess. I did look at other love interest or ex-relationships and could find nothing.

Tommy’s crime: loving Evan.

Conclusion:

If you write bashing please keep tagging it.

Appendix:

All the characters I looked at: characters with no bashing fics I could find, characters with an established bashing tag, characters with no established bashing tag but bashing fics can be found

Main adult characters:

Athena Grant, Bobby Nash, Hen Wilson, Chimney Han, Evan Buckley, Eddie Diaz, Maddie Buckley.

Recurring characters, family:

Michael Grant, David Hale, May Grant, Harry Grant, Beatrice and Samuel Carter, Emmett Washington;

Marcy Nash, Tim Nash;

Karen Wilson, Denny Wilson, Antonia Wilson, Nia and Mara;

Albert Han, Chimney’s father/Sang Han, The Lees, Jee-Yun Buckley-Han;

Margaret Buckley, Phillip Buckley, Daniel Buckley, Doug Kendall;

Christopher Diaz, Isabel Diaz, Helena Diaz, Ramon Diaz.

Recurring characters, love interests:

Tommy Kinard, Natalia Dollenmeyer, Taylor Kelly, Lucy Donato, Ali Martin, Abby Clark;

Kim, Marisol, Ana Flores, Shannon Diaz;

Eva Mathis;

Tatiana.

Recurring characters, others:

Firehouse 118 Crew Bashing;

Chase Mackey, Vincent Gerrard, Jonah Greenway, Jeffrey Hudson, Councilwoman Olivia Ortiz;

Josh Russo, Lena Bosko, Ravi Panikkar, Claudette Collins, Brad Torrance;

Boeing, Dolphin.

[webshood]

I'm a Jason Todd drug denier, if you write him doing drugs we're actually enemies. /lh

If you write kid him smoking cigarettes, that's okay because it's canon and nicotine is appetite suppressing, you can use it to make a good fic of him dealing with starvation and homelessness. However, the moment you make him (adult or kid) smoke weed, just know I'll be outside your door and you'll start coughing blood in three days

[fgmetanoia]

If they ain't FERAL and absolutely desperate for each other I don't want them

[groundzero-v]

It's a bit surreal to have to say this, but please don't rate fics in public bookmarks on ao3. If you need to, you can do that in the private bookmarks, but I'm so sick of people treating fics like this. It's always the people who never comment as well.

Don't get me wrong, I totally get leaving 10/10, 20/10 and so on, it's cute way to show you loved the story, but imagine you're an author that poured so much free time, blood and sweat into working on a fic and the only thing you get is a '3/10' '5/10'. Or even 'mediocre. 6/10'.

Have a little compassion for how nerve wrecking it's to share your work (and for free!). For how we desperatly wait for any comment or nice interaction only to receive numbers like this like a punch to the face.

If you need to treat fics like this, do it in private bookmarks, not where the author - but also everyone else - can see.

[justsumtransdude2000]

There is a very weird discourse going around about censorship in fandom right now. Ao3 censorship would not only logistically be a nightmare for the people on Ao3's team, but would also defeat the purpose entirely.

Archive of Our Own is a place where people can write whatever the fuck they want, and read whatever the fuck they want. Judgement free, as long as they don't tell anyone IRL. Censoring things that are uncomfortable will 1) lead to the censoring of works that are not romanticizing this thing (this is how mass censorship works, especially on the internet. Ao3's team cannot read every Rape/Non Con fic and decide personally which ones are and aren't romanticizing it) and 2) leads to things that are 'controversial' being censored. And suddenly you can't write and publish anything with kink in it at all because it can be taken as romanticizing harmful dynamics. I saw someone lump in watersports with the romanticization of stalking/rape.

AO3 has and should always be a don't like don't read space.

[wileycap]

[spoilers for atla]

I don't like (and at the same time I like it very much) how fandom makes Zuko into a Soft Widdle Ducky.

Like, yeah, he's awkward and traumatized. But he is very much a warrior prince at the same time. Look at his confrontation with Ozai: "you're going to listen, or I'm going to cut you in two with my swords".

During the series, Zuko almost never struggles with immediate action and decisions - but he's really terrible at measured, considered action and decisions.

I want to see that side of Zuko in fic. Like, a former war minister gets out of line? "Right. Let's take this outside. Do you want fire or steel." Sure, by the end of the series he's much more mature, grounded and peaceful, but so many fics I read, he just kind of folds when people get aggressive with him, when his more canonically true self would likely just go "yup, that's a threat, first you're going to get your ass beat and then I'm throwing you in jail, I don't really care how influential you are." And I want to see him deal with that.

That being said, I still enjoy all those fics where Zuko's personality is basically 🥺🔥

[slowlyshamelesscolor]

What is Neutralship?

Neutralship, often known as ship-neutral, refers to those who are "neutral" or unconcerned with shipcourse. They may be pro- or anti-leaning, or completely unaligned.

Neutralship also means your anti harassment. That implies you will not bother someone about their fandom preferences, or pass judgment on their fantasies or ships.

Neufic - those who identify as neufic may be pro- or anti-leaning, or wholly unaligned; they are neutral on fiction and do not engage in ship discourse

And for short, we are called newts.

The purple flags are peacefic. The pink is neutralship.

Peacefic Emoji combos - ☮🦢, ☮📖, 🌈☮, 🌈🦢, 🦢����,

Neutralship emoji combos - 🎀 🫧, 🎀🌙 , 🫧🎀 , 🌈🎀, 🌈 🫧, 🌈🌙

Neufic emoji combos-  💎 🦋, 🌈💎, 💍🦋

[katsmtmsdoodles]

Reblog for bigger sample size! Based on this post by @rigorwhoring

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

[lunaroserites]

Tagging the og poster since I stole the picture of Twitter/X from Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken. @blackheartbiohazards

But this. THIS.

If you don’t like something don’t read it. The discourse over tagging and warnings with fanfic is ridiculous. As long as something is tagged or made a warning you cannot bitch at someone about it. You’re responsible for your media consumption. Be responsible.

If a tag brothers you, block it, filter it ignore it. Learn how to use the filter systems on the sites you consume things on. That is the safest option for you as a consumer.

[cutebutalsostabby]

"People need to stop doing x in y fanfics"

You will take the free, adequately content-warned, non-commercial transformative works you are given, and you will LIKE them. That or use the back button.

[cinewhore]

re: fanfic as content…i think that’s why i feel so disconnected from it lol. Everything is fucking content and if you are not mass producing it/staying relevant/appealing to every single person then it’s pointless to engage in the art.

I wish a very die to the word content i hate it and i hate how much the internet has capitalized off this shit. Not everyone wants to be content creators. Some folks just want to make weird art and connect with others.

[sak-supernatural]

Ok don’t come at me for this, but incest in fiction (specifically fanfiction) can be a great jumping off point for angst. It’s the forbidden love, the taboo relationship, the dirty secret. And ao3 is for sure proof that people are drawn to angsty relationships. The site was founded on Winchester for gods sake. I am not saying that IRL incestious relationships are in any way ok or acceptable, but why is it so awful to portray in FICTION? Why is it somehow considered worse than fiction about murder? And horror novels? And gore?

All it takes is a brief look at human history to see that we (as a species) were not naturally opposed or disgusted by incest. Humans had to learn that incest was bad by having fucked up children with their siblings. The Royal Family gets real fucked up when you go far enough back and dig into it, obsessions with keeping the bloodline pure and that shit. No it’s not good or ok IRL, but there is no need to call out or crucify writers who choose to explore the topic in FICTION!!!

[fgmetanoia]

why is it that there are ships for which every fanfic absolutely fucking nails the characterisation and other ships for which it doesn't matter how many fics you read, there isn't an author who can get the characterisation right

[daughterofscotland]

I think bashing fics can be put into two categories:

"Canonical character had some bad moments and author took those and blew them up like a pool floatie"

“Canonical character sucks and author made them worse”

As long as they are tagged correctly, bash away, there'll always be someone who needs that particular itch scratched.

[perseidlion]

Potentially controversial opinion but the way to reduce the number of fics being deleted and to increase the number of fics that you want to read is to:

Support WIPs if you like the concept, even if it's just with a bookmark (bonus points for reading along and commenting on every chapter, even if it's just with emojis)

Comment and tell the writer you love it and WHY, or just express thanks for them writing it

Share the fic with others and encourage them to comment

Appreciate fic writers instead of taking them for granted

Recognize that fic writing is gift culture and not content creation and that writers get zero compensation for writing other than interaction with readers

Request the kinds of fic/dynamics you'd like to see rather than demanding anything. (IE: You write so and so together so well! Have you ever thought of exploring X? Or: This backstory is so interesting. Would you ever flesh it out more? Or: I'd love to see your take on X.)

NOT

Guilting writers for deleting a fic and saying it's a crime or that you feel "cheated" if someone takes down their work

Making a writer feel guilty because some hypothetical somebody somewhere who never told them so might have liked that work

Criticiizing fic to the author's face or in public (either constructively or not) when feedback wasn't explicitly asked for. (Discussing the merits of a fic in private is fine)

Only shouting about fic in private and never telling the author you love their work

Only reading completed fics and never commenting/otherwise supporting. There are plenty of valid reasons to only read completed fics, but realize that if you don't support fics as they're being written, you will get less of the kinds of fic you like and fewer fics will be completed

Generally acting entitled to fic

Whining that you hate when fic writers do X or that there isn't enough of X dynamic or otherwise trying to dictate what authors should and shouldn't write

Just be positive, folks! Fanfic is a community. I will churn out thousands of words a week if people tell me they're enjoying it. If I get no interaction, that fic is a lot more likely to never be completed or even deleted.

You don't have to unconditionally support all fic writers. It's totally fine to just to kind of like a fic and not comment (though if you read it all the way through, I think at least a kudos is warranted.) But if you DO love it, please please please tell us so, even with just a heart emoji.

The silent enjoyment of fic with no expression of that to the author is what slowly kills fandom - as does positioning us as content creators who get something simply by posting, or by criticizing what and how much we write.

This is especially important if the fic is a rarepair, or a weird concept, or otherwise offbeat. If it's your kind of thing and you don't see very much of it, shout about it! I've definitely deleted or abandoned fics that were a little weird because I felt embarrassed by the fact that no one else was matching my freak.

[osamucide]

if this bothers anyone they can kindly feel free to leave or ignore it or whatever but can we stop flooding the x reader tags with half-baked thinkpieces on why people should or shouldn’t do whatever with their writing. every other post is “you shouldn’t romanticize [x]” “you’re problematic if you do [x]” “stop writing about [x]” “[x] is gross and if you write about it kill yourself” how about if you don’t like certain content you heed the content warnings, block the tags, don’t interact with it, so on and so forth. of course part of our responsibility as writers, especially ones dealing with sensitive topics, is to label and tag our works appropriately but let’s be real—i hardly see any writers (at least within the bsd fandom) who don’t make it abundantly clear what they do/do not write about, interact with, or tolerate. wait until you find out how much fucked up shit happens in real life and how much some person on the internet coping with their trauma by writing self insert fanfiction about a cartoon character doesn’t fucking correlate to the perpetuation of that fucked up shit at all. it doesn’t even have to be that serious. people are going to write and read the content they want and they’re allowed to and you spilling your complaints all over the x reader tags “to boost attention” isn’t gonna change that. if you don’t like something ignore, unfollow, block, mind your own business. it’s actually super easy