#hot take but you can't expect the tags to be curated to your personal taste 🤷‍♀️

[tevanbuckley]

love digging up the source of the latest discourse and going, is this it? because i'm ngl some of this shit really doesn't seem worth the hassle.

people are being annoying about a fictional character you say? on the being annoying about fictional characters website? fork found in kitchen tbh.

[rollercoasterwords]

your comments on cw warning are so true, and i’ve been thinking about the expectation for warnings in fan fictions after reading young mungo (an amazing published book containing really triggering material that, because it’s a published book, does not have any warnings).

I think on the harry potter fandom there’s this thing that happening where people feel entitled to having access to all fics, even if they contain triggering material. This expectation is then placed onto authors in the form of requesting detailed cw allowing readers to curate fics to avoid the most difficult to read scenes.

Or even if tags are completely correct, because people have latched onto specific characterizations of characters, some people get upset when the difficult tags apply to the characters in a way that doesn’t match their head canons (ie. remus cheating/ regulus having a negative perspective on sirius leaving/ any unhealthy relationship dynamics between wolfstar).

It’s interesting to see how this has shifted, even just by looking at the past year. Like the switch between how the CCNTUAW tag used to be used to people now assuming that it means the same as the no archive warnings apply tag is very shocking to me. Like it used to be that authors could just say “i’ve chosen not to warn, mind the tags” and that would be it. Now it seems, even if authors say that, some readers will still expect content warnings.

yup!! i agree w....everything u said i think lol.

i definitely agree that there seems to be this....weird way that a large portion of the fandom treats "accessibility" when it comes to fics. as in, some people seem to have this idea that fic writers should be trying to make their fics "accessible" (read: palatable) to the broadest possible audience. i see this in comments and questions from people who say things like "don't you think more people would read the fic if you wrote x?" "don't you think more people would enjoy it if u wrote the character x way?" "are you worried that fewer people will be interested in a fic about x?" all of which indicate that the person is assuming the primary goal/purpose of fic is to appeal to as many people as possible.

and to be fair, it's not like it's just readers thinking this way (bc there's no clear divide between readers + writers in fic spaces, etc etc.)! i've seen posts along the lines of "i really want to write x, but i'm worried people won't like it, and i want to make my fics accessible!" and it's just.....well.

i think even framing fanfiction in terms of "accessibility" is a little misleading. because people hear "accessible" and immediately associate it with disability advocacy and think oh, more accessibility = good; less accessibility = bad. but fanfiction is not a service that anyone is providing, nor is it a product, nor is it like....something that anyone needs access to. in fact, nobody is entitled to access to fanfiction in the first place. and by nature, not every fanfiction will be accessible to every person, because it isn't made for you. and if a fanfiction doesn't fit your specific tastes and isn't enjoyable for you to read, that isn't harming u, and it isn't taking anything away that ur entitled to!

but i think ur right that with the way fanfiction has sort of been turned into tiktok content, what happens is that a couple fics get really popular at a time, and a bunch of people want to read those fics so that they can participate in the hype and make their own tiktoks that get thousands of views about these popular fics. and then if they don't like the fic for whatever reason or can't read it, they feel as though they are being denied access to some sort of club that everyone else gets to be part of. and then they either decide that the way the fic is written is "problematic," because it was too dark/violent/sad and therefore inaccessible, OR they start posting "hot takes" going "everyone else loves this fic but i actually think it sucks!!" because those are the only ways they can now participate in this weird social-media fanfiction economy where people are posting about fic first and foremost because they want views on their own tiktok channel, and not necessarily because they actually want to appreciate the writers. fun!