#i'm talking the amount of works of those fandoms on ao3 btw

[h0ped3lusion]

I'm kinda sad to be in small fandoms because of the lack of content.. especially fanfictions— I thrive on fanfictions—

[optiwashere]

Opti, you said you were in fandom for a long time right?

What would you do if a show you're really into gets another season out of nowhere that you're excited to see but the fandom you were a part of actually was the worst (okay to be honest it wasnt the worste but the amount of disparity i see between content for the white characters and the non white characters makes me superimpose) and you're afraid of it reviving again?

Also tbh the shows not that good either it just gripped me in the special interest and now I can't let go

How to fix?

Heya anon!

First of all, I'm sorry that the fandom for this show was like that. There's definitely decades of history of fandoms hyperfocusing on white characters over all else, white men specifically, if there are even any non-white characters in the first place. That's awful, and I'm sorry you gotta deal with that.

Usually, my suggestion for that is to create that content you want to see. But I get that it's immensely frustrating when you have to do that because people are ignoring entire chunks of the original work. I also get if it's not something you've got the skills for. Fuck knows I can't draw for shit, so any visual art I would want out there can't come from me.

So as a general rule of thumb I always suggest the self-preservation method of fandom if you can! If you can carve out a niche of fandom that you can vibe with, not even necessarily agree with 100% of all topics on, then fandoms like that become infinitely more enjoyable.

I had to do that with all of my previous fandoms and I still do that with BG3. I curate everything I see really heavily by blocking anyone that worsens my experience on Tumblr/AO3/insert fandom hub of choice, blacklisting tags on those sites that would make my experience worse, and exercising some willpower in not trawling the general fandom tags*

Worsening my experience can mean anything from stressing me out about the type of posts they make or simply making me roll my eyes one too many times. I promise you they won't notice nor will they care. At least nobody I've blocked has ever cared because the feelings are typically mutual lol. Anyways, I strongly recommend getting well-acquainted with the block button.

So if you really want to enjoy this new season, watch it with people you like talking to if you can. Send anons to the people with the opinions you at least enjoy reading about (not necessarily agree with BTW) to stoke their hype and create that lovely feedback loop of fandom joy.

When you're in a fandom that you either don't enjoy or find yourself disagreeing with on major topics, you kinda have to curate it for yourself. I know it sucks to feel disconnected from the fandom sometimes. I'm a weirdly social creature with fandoms, so I really get that feeling of being completely and utterly disconnected from the greater whole (i.e., vampire man)

I can only suggest the above options for keeping yourself somewhat sane while also having fun!

Hope that helps 💜

*I fail at this too often for my own good tbh

[lady-fey]

Setting Expectations for Writing Fanfic

Before embarking on any creative endeavor, it's really important to set your expectations for what the results are going to be. It's why I highly, highly encourage people to research the hellscape that is professional publishing before trying to get something published. But these expectations aren't limited to the professional world. They apply to fan spaces, too. I see a lot of people on disheartened by their experiences with fanfiction so, today, I wanted to talk about a few things that I do when writing on AO3 to make sure that I don't get discouraged while writing.

Suggestion One: Treat Kudos as Comments Saying "I liked your story" or, if you're a bit more cynical, "I read your story to the end"

The kudo button is at the bottom of the page. For you to get a kudo, someone read at least the whole first chapter. That's honestly impressive. A total stranger was engaged enough to read every word that you wrote. Be proud of that! I'll click away from a reddit comment if it's boring. A 1k story? It's gotta be engaging for me to engage.

If you're like me and you like data, take this a step further and consider tracking kudos over time. A number on the page might not mean much, but I find it fulfilling to see the numbers go up over time as more and more people read my stories. I have an excel sheet and I write down the kudo counts for all of my stories anywhere from once a week to once a month. Look at all of those pretty trend lines! (Fanfiction.net did this for favorites by default, btw, this wasn't an original idea). I also added a few notes about why the trend lines look the way they do.

Suggestion Two: Learn what a reasonable amount of kudos looks like for your fandom

Those graphs up there are for stories in two different fandoms. The yellow line is for a story that's in the top 3% in its fandom. Meanwhile, the dark blue line right there at the end just barely made it into the top 10% even though it has about 3x the yellow one's kudos.

How do I know this? Well, AO3 lets you sort by kudos and, if you look in the URL, then you can set the page number, too. One of the first things that I do when entering a fandom is go to the middle of the story list and see what the kudo counts look like at that 50% range. This gives me a good idea of what the average story is going to get in this fandom so that, when I start writing, I don't feel disheartened by some arbitrary expectation of what the kudos are going to look like. You can further refine this by doing things like limiting the stories to ones that feature the pairing that you're writing for or stories at the same rating as yours. (That blue-ish purple line at the bottom is an E fic and I knew when I put it out there that it was going to get about that many kudos just based on how E fics work.)

Also be sure to look and see how active the fandom is. I once made the mistake of writing for a video game years after its release and I ultimately abandoned that fic because no one was engaging with it. If I'd payed attention, then I would have realized that was going to happen before I started writing just based on the amount of stories getting updated. If there aren't at least a few new fics of updated fics every day, then realize that you're in a "dead" fandom and you're not going to see much or even any engagement. Decide if you're okay with that before you put your story out there.

Suggestion Three: Ignore the "Hits" on your fic

AO3's hit counter is somewhat useless. While those who have accounts will only ever get counted as one hit, anyone reading in anonymous mode will get counted as a unique hit based on IP. Which means that, if I'm reading on my phone, my one read can count as multiple hits if I switch networks and then the page refreshes or I go to a new chapter. I'll also get counted as multiple hits if I switch over to my tablet or my laptop. This means that the hit number is artificially inflated, especially for longer works. You have no idea what the real hit count is, so don't obsess over it. Especially if you write longer fics. To illustrate this, look at these hits to kudos for two of my fics:

Top fic is at almost 100k words and the bottom one is just below 10k.

Suggestion Four: Don't expect comments

The reason that I spend all of this time tracking kudos is that comments are just never going to be in abundance. It's the reality of writing. And while that's disheartening on some level, it's important to just accept that fact before you start writing. The fandom stars that you see getting tumblr anons and emails begging for updates are rare exceptions to the rule. Their experience is not common even for "popular" writers.

The orange fic in the graph above was lucky enough to make it to the top page of its fandom when you sort by kudos. I have an older fic that's still in the top 10 by favorites over on fanfiction.net. I am, by some metrics, a "known" author. However, my reader interactions for those fics were not substantially different than my interactions for my less popular ones. I rarely get anyone popping over to tumblr to say hi (though you are welcome to do so!) and the more popular fics don't even get that many more comments. A fact that's true even if they're in larger fandoms.

To illustrate, here's the stats for two complete fics of about equal length (10k), both written by me! The top one has 7 chapters, the bottom one has 5. They were both written and published over a few days. Notice how the comment thread count is about the same even though the top one is way more popular?

I will note that the bottom one has been out for a year while the top one is only a few weeks old, so it will have comments trickle in and raise the number over time, but it will never see a major jump unless it performs differently than everything else that I've ever written. The bottom one is also for a fandom that's been around for almost two decades now, so the readers skew older, which is probably why it's a little better for comments.

Better, but not shockingly good.

I know people say that, back in the fanfiction.net days, you got more comments, but I personally don't find it overwhelmingly different. The orange fic in my graph (my "popular" one from AO3) averaged about 13 comments a chapter while it's ffn "equivalent" was at about 39 comments a chapter. Of course, that's comparing between fandoms, which makes this awkward. I do have a way to gage the relative popularity, though: kudos.

If I look at the ffn fandom over on AO3, the top fics all have at least 3x the number of kudos as the top fics my orange fic's fandom. 13 X 3 = 39. So, yeah, not that different as best as I can tell.

Either way, the number is pretty low when you look at how many people are reading these stories. The orange fic has 1100+ kudos and the ffn fic has 2,200+ favs (the closest kudo equivalent). In other words, in the 10+ years that I've been writing, I've never reached a point where I didn't recognize commenters by name. It's just the nature of the beast.

So, cherish the comments that you do get, but treat them as an unexpected gift.

Suggestion Five: art if you can

If you're at all artistically inclined, illustrate moments from your fic and post them on tumblr with a link back to the fic. That often wildly increases engagement for some reason and is why a lot of seemingly popular authors are also artists. I don't have the skills for it, but I thought that I'd mention it both to help expectation set and to hopefully encourage.

Final Thoughts

This whole post has been to encourage, honestly. I know that writing can be a struggle at times, but know that you're not alone in wondering if people are reading you stuff and, if they are, do they even like it? Those feelings are normal, but I hope that this does something to mitigate those feelings. To show that we all struggle to get feedback, even when we write "popular" stuff.

It's why I started tracking kudos. The lack of comments made me sad, but I remembered those graphs from my ffn days. I remembered getting excited watching the line go up for every new favorite because it was another person who like my work. I wanted to recapture that joy.

Looking at my kudos in log form has changed the way that I see kudos. They're no longer just numbers sitting there. They're an active metric for me. They're real people who I can say with certainty read my story. Going in and doing my log is fun because, slowly but surely, the numbers go up. Those numbers tell me that more people have read my stories and I know what stories can do.

Stories brighten people's day. The fact that you could write something good enough for even one person to make it to the end is more potential positive impact than many people will have. So watch the numbers go up and remember each one is someone you affected so much that they let you know about it. Even if all they did was "click a button".

[fiercynn]

i was only kind of following this when it went down but i still remember some shit, like i notice anon doesn't mention all the people who were telling gl fans "no one is even going to watch 23.5 degrees without geminifourth in it"?

or, yk, for some evidence from the english-speaking side of the fandom at least, you can look at the top relationships in the ao3 tag for 23.5 degrees right now:

northnight fans started flooding the ao3 tag in july 2023, posting 72 northnight works before the show even started airing! (only 10 of all the northnight works tagged there are also tagged ongsasun, btw)

and no, that's not actually a typical amount of activity for a side pairing pre-show airing, even for bls. it's not even typical for the show tag itself. i looked up some of the highly anticipated & popular thai bls from the past few years to see how many works were posted on ao3 before the show started airing, just based on the novel (never mind that the tags i'm talking about are specifically for the tv versions lol, some people mistag) or the trailers. bad buddy had 7 total works in the tag before it started airing. my school president had 6. moonlight chicken, which of course also had geminifourth playing a side pairing, had 24. never let me go had 1. kinnporsche was the closest i found, with 67 works in the show tag before airing, but only a third of those are not tagged with the main pairing!

i have nothing against geminifourth – i quite enjoyed msp – but the problem is not having bl side pairings in gls. it's having them take over the show and the fandom.

(i also totally agree with op on why mawintinh is super exciting and affirming compared to other bl pairings)

the fucking hypocrisy that gl fans have tho, when geminifourth got announced to be in 23.5 everyone and their fcking mother was hating on them, tagging them to get out of the show and calling them ugly and shit like that, and now that there is gonna be a bl side pair everyone suddenly silent and like nothing happened, side eye.

I mean... I didn't see this unfurl so I won't comment much on it & of course no one deserves this kind of hate at all, but I'm gonna be honest... I can see where the root of it is coming. we've waited literal YEARS to get gl shows, and they're still like 1% of what bl shows are. especially since geminifourth went from unknown to huge in between the announcement of the show & its start of production, I understand milklove & gl fans who were worried they would steal their thunder when we all know pretty much ONLY male actors at gmmtv get any type of attention. the difference with the nawintinh side ship is HUGE imo tho. firstly they're not even the secondary ship, they're the third one after aylinluna so there's a lot less chance of stealing any thunder, and, as I've mentioned in my text posts on the topic, nawin being a queer plus size person getting a love storyline is literally REVOLUTIONARY. yes, the bar is low, but that's what us fat people have to beg for. you do not realize how much since nawin got his ep 3 storyline I've been thinking about him, I finally feel represented in a thai drama. so I understand people cheering this bl side ship more than the first one, and I think the situations are wildly different. however I don't think generalizing all gl fans as bullies like you did in your ask is right, I would've been happy with geminifourth as a side ship but I'm happier with juneview & euroford as side ships bc they're more pressing representation imo. the vocal minority of haters will always be the loudest, but thinking the ENTIRE 23.5 fandom bullied geminifourth & are hypocrites is a bit insane to me, as if bl fans aren't even more toxic (I would know, I've been in both fandoms lol...)

xxx

[themarginalartist]

Gotta agree with the fact of every character being OC. I doubt there is difference between chars with studios behind them and chars made by one peep. Most interesting is the creativity with most of all, I think. Could read anything as far as it is creative. But how do you set good vibes to reader to make him stay and be excited for next chapter? I can see it happening on me when reading something, but I don't seem to find the key of doings to do so while I'm really interested on how

(I am so sorry this got really, really, really long so I’m putting it under a readmore, I am not kidding, this is ridiculously long. I checked before posting and it’s 1576 words (not including this bit here), which is like my normal chapter length so read at your own risk I guess???)

I mean a character is usually created by one person, or at least the initial concept of them is, then expanded on either by that person or the writers in order to weave them into the story. 

As far as getting a reader interested… I am not really sure why a lot of people are interested in my things…

But usually the way that gets me interested in reading something, and I am basing this off my response to different novels I’ve read (I’ll get to fan fics in a sec), is a combo of the synopsis and the first chapter being the hook. Now not every synopsis makes me want to read a novel, I have read many books where the synopsis made me go “huh” which is like mild interest, and then I start the first chapter if I have time, if by the time I am done with the first 2-3 pages and I haven’t found anything interesting the book gets put back. 

There was one time at a scholastics book fair that I read like the first 3 chapters of a book, it was while I was in high school and my brother was still in elementary school, but like I was hooked the moment I read it… The title escapes me though… 

As far as fanfics go, I used to be the most avid reader of them in my friend group, admittedly at the time I was looking for a very specific fandom and such, but my preference for fanfics is a longer story or longer chapters. My friends were not that way… Which made getting recommendations and giving them hard. 

But as far as what I like to see when I am browsing for a new fic is if the fic is hosted on FF.net or Ao3 a synopsis that doesn’t give the main plot away, but gives a quick intro to the idea, so for example on Think Ink (which I should update that synopsis I think) the bad version would be “Henry’s also been turned into an Ink Demon and now he has to figure himself out. Fighting different studio members and searchers in his journey to understanding himself.” where as “Henry woke up covered in ink, a spike of fear rushing through him, his life forever changed from that moment on.” is a bit better (not the best but yeah). 

Then comes the spelling and grammar component which I can’t stress enough. If the fics first chapter is extremely bad, and I am talking to the point were the word used is wrong, the spelling is wrong on a number of words, and there isn’t a clear tense being used, then I exit out, it doesn’t matter if I really like the synopsis or something or it’s an AU I liked, if the grammar and spelling makes the fic unreadable then it’s game over. 

Next is characterization, similar to spelling and grammar, if the character you are using is portrayed wrong, it’s also a game over. However there are a few exceptions to this. For example I used to really love Hetalia, the basic gist of the anime is that all the countries have a human representative but is also heavily biased as the Japanese stereotype of those countries. Italy in Hetalia is seen as an airheaded, easily frightened, guy who is a womanizer, eats pasta for literally every meal, surrenders in a second, and takes naps whenever possible, again this is the Japanese stereotype based in WW2. So if he’s characterized as being really serious there needs to be a damned good reason for it. You can’t just change a character to fit what you want if you’re basing it on someone else’s work. 

Next comes plot. Plot is key for any fanfic, I mean yeah every once in a while it’s fun to read a one off or throw away fic of cute activities like baking and stuff, but there’s no action or craziness (unless it’s a fic disguising itself as such which is also fun). The goal of the first chapter is set up. In a novel the first chapter is about introducing the main character(s), the world, and what the problem is. And fanfic is no different, however it has the luxury of us already knowing the character (in a way at least, take Spiderman, there’s the basic concept but there’s also a number of versions of him from different cartoon series and comic series). We might also have the luxury of knowing the world already as well, so that can be sorted out really fast, the rules and nature of the world are defined so we don’t need to explain anything. So then comes the problem, what is the character facing, is there something going on right now or is it coming, do(es) the character(s) have the power to stop it now or are they going to have to travel. The goal of the rest of the story after the first chapter is to show how the character(s) grow and change as a result of the difficulties they face in order to take care of the problem. 

And finally cutoffs. First what I mean by cutoffs is where an author chooses to create a time skip, scene change, or end of chapter point and I’ll talk about each of those in brief. 

For a time skip, the only reason that should happen in a fic is if the task at hand would be meaningless for the reader to know about like them going through all the steps of baking a cake (unless it’s to show the characters relationship with each other then don’t skip) or if there is a large gap of time where nothing important happens and I am talking about years of time, which is what happens in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there is a 7 year period where Link is “gone” from the world and so when he comes back to it many changes have taken place and so it’s a call to action for him. 

A scene change is similar to a time skip in some cases such as character x and y are driving and now scene change to x and y being at a motel for the night, but in other cases it’s a shift in who’s talking like we were getting told x’s point of view for a long time and now y is saying x is stupid or something. 

And finally the end chapter cutoff, which is honestly a hard one, there has to be a reason for the end of a chapter, a lot of times cliffhangers are the main way to go about it, but also resolution of a current problem is important to consider. For example chapter 4 of Think Ink was a cliff hanger I purposefully put in, one because it was evil and made people want the next chapter, and two because I wasn’t ready to continue on with the story at that point, I can’t tell you the amount of “omg what the heck why did you cut off there” I got from people. Now compare that to chapter 10 of Think Ink, the end of that chapter is Henry and Bendy finally coming to an understanding of each other, what has been going on with each of them separately, and the beginning of repairing the bond. It ties up loose ends that Henry and Bendy had been facing for a long time. 

Good vibes come from the care and dedication to the fic that you have. And every reader is different, they pick up on different things, they read something in different ways. I mean hell I have been asked if I wrote lines on purpose when the reality of the matter was I was just like hey this sounds good and it was by accident. But I think what a lot of people don’t think about is how not all stories have happy beginning, middle, and endings. Sometimes there is loss, there is anger, there is dumb decisions that a character made, there are mistakes and problems and too often I see fics that are just “oh everything is happy and good and light”, and that’s not interesting for a multi-chapter fic, maybe a chapter but not the whole thing. 

So in reality there isn’t a short answer. It just depends on how well you can connect with your readers. And it takes time, there have been plenty of fics that I begin reading after 4-5 chapters are already out or the fic has been completed, so don’t worry if people aren’t reading yet, just keep going and stuff. And not everything I said has to be a part of the fic, time skip and scene jump all over the place, make mistakes and get wild with writing. And the biggest thing, and best way to get better, is to make note of what you like the most, what caused you to like a writer’s style, why did this work, what hints did the author drop in order to lead you to this plot point. And it sounds like school work… but that’s because this is what you have to do for basically every English/Language Arts essay ever. analyze the text…

Congratulations on making it to the end of this monster wall of text btw. 🎉🎉🎉