#independent fandom web

[dawnfelagund]

I normally actively avoid posting about anything where money is attached. I'm making an exception here for a project that addresses what I see as a significant (and growing) need in the fandom.

I (along with a team of incredible comods) run an independent archive, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. We are one of the only independent archives left, at least in the Tolkien fandom.

We wage a lot of uphill battles to keep our archive open and active, but one of the biggest is the tech side. I'm not an IT pro; I'm a middle-school humanities teacher. I began learning the tech skills to run an archive in 2006 and have been learning ever since. By now, I've devoted hundreds if not thousands of hours to learning how to build and run websites. And it's hard, mostly because it is hard to find information that is written at a level comprehensible by an exhausted middle-school teacher who has a half-hour at the end of her day to puzzle something out. Documentation generally sucks; tutorials often seem to be written at a level just above where I am. My knowledge has a lot of holes as a result, and I sometimes have to give up on something because I can't find what I need to teach me to do it.

The Fujoshi Guide to Web Development is a Kickstarter project that aims to remedy that by producing materials aimed at teaching web development concepts specifically to a fannish audience and with the goal of supporting an independent fannish web, where fans have the know-how to build their own sites, archives, and other web projects. They are very close to their goal. I made my donation today; I'm hoping we might push them over the finish line.

Currently, fans are primarily tethered to a few large sites used for fandom purposes. Some of these are benevolent and trustworthy (AO3, for example); others are not and have taken damaging steps toward fandom over the years (not mentioning any names here ...) All of them have their limitations. The primary complaints I hear about AO3, for example, have nothing to do with AO3 doing anything wrong and everything to do with people wanting AO3 to be something other than AO3. At the same time, I get it: We are at the point where AO3 is often the only choice for many creators to archive their work and the only choice for people who want to enjoy fanworks. Those people are understandably upset when AO3 can't meet their needs because they don't see themselves as having another choice.

But it didn't used to be this way. It used to be (at least in Tolkien fandom) that if you wanted something that didn't exist, you built it yourself. This is how the SWG came to be: some of us wanted an archive just for Silmfic, there wasn't one, so we built one. We weren't alone in this, and we felt empowered because so many other fans were doing the same thing: learning together and teaching and supporting each other as we went. This was when "building a website" meant learning enough HTML and CSS to hand-markup a page or adjust an eFiction theme.

But, as time passed and the internet evolved, our enthusiastically acquired knowledge of HTML wasn't enough to keep afloat sites that were breaking at a much deeper level, and those sites began to disappear. My comods and I did endeavor to gain the knowledge to save our decaying archive and, as noted above, it was not easy, and I do not blame anyone for not doing the same. It was a part-time job for me for over a year, and I'm lucky that I was able to make room for it in my life. It's unreasonable to expect that everyone will be able to do that.

The increasing consolidation and corporatization of fandom is a problem too. We've seen time and again that for-profit companies don't have our interests in mind. All of the fannish stuff we love on Tumblr and Discord and FanFiction.net could be gone tomorrow and for no better reason than someone will make a little more profit if our embarrassing fandom garbage is not there. It's happened before, many times. Even without corporate malevolence, digital data is fragile and having everything in just one place is perilous. While I'm sure AO3, for example, is diligent in preserving our work as best as possible, data losses and breaches do happen all the time.

It used to be that Tolkien fanfic writers would archive their work in three, four, more different places. If one had a data loss, that sucked, but mostly because you lost comments, not because entire swaths of fanworks were gone forever. That level of crossposting is no longer an option.

It used to be that Tolkien fanfic writers would archive their work in three, four, more different places. If one had a data loss, that sucked, but mostly because you lost comments, not because entire swaths of fanworks were gone forever. That level of crossposting is no longer an option.

[ekingston]

Hello! So sorry to bother, but have you had any updates on the Word-Stream/Speechify situation?

Just one: like I posted on Xitter and Bluesky last night, as of yesterday afternoon, the links to individual works as they were listed on WordStream are gone from both Google and Bing. Hurray, right? Surely we’re all sick of this whole debacle and there’s far more important things to worry about. If all is well that ends well, surely there’s no need to still be angry.

Well, I am. Here’s why:

When I checked on Wednesday, the links to my own work on WordStream were still listed. So rather than it taking a week after Cliff Weitzman first hid the fanwork from view, it took a little over a week from the moment he first promised privately that they would be deleted. Which, fine. Perhaps Cliff didn’t really know what he was talking about when he gave that timeframe. Or maybe he told a little white lie to create the impression that he always intended to do the right thing. It seems more likely to me, though, that Cliff still believed—even after the backlash he received—that he would get away with honoring only individual takedown requests. Or worse, that he needed just a little bit more time with the stolen material to figure out an alternative way to profit off it—preferably without us noticing, this time.

But who knows? I certainly don’t! All we can do is speculate, because publicly, Cliff Weitzman has remained completely silent on his copyright infringements. All we got was the initial justifications he and his sockpuppet accounts used in comments on the original Reddit and Tumblr posts. After those were so understandably ill-received, Cliff only ever communicated with a few individual authors who contacted him directly and repeatedly, blocking people who addressed the issue on Twitter and quietly distancing himself from WordStream by deleting a blog he’d posted to Speechify.com dated December 20th—where Cliff promoted WordStream’s platform specifically to fanfiction readers. (See my enormous timeline post for details and screenshots of said posts before they were taken down.)

And this is why I’m still angry: As long as Cliff Weitzman faces no real consequences for his actions, he won’t see a need to own up to his mistake; and as long as he’s able to delay taking responsibility, this isn’t over. This didn’t end well.

After all, wasn’t this the next-best scenario for Cliff, second only to him turning WordStream into a (for him) effortless, infinite money-making machine? He took something we provided for free and fed it to AI so he could more easily put it behind a paywall; we found out and protested; Cliff quietly erased all evidence of his crime; and we went—almost equally quietly—away.

I want to make sure you know that I continue to be genuinely amazed and intensely grateful for how quickly the news about WordStream’s copyright infringement was shared—and continues to be shared—throughout fandom, on tumblr in particular. If it hadn’t been for our collective outcry here and on Reddit, WordStream would very likely still be up in its original form, and Weitzman would be reaping the benefits (those subscription prices were steep) today.

But it’s been frustrating to see that, with the exception of mentions in articles on Substack and Fansplaining (the latter of which is a particularly awesome and thorough read on fandom’s decontextualization) and a Fanlore listing, our outrage never really spilled out beyond the safely insulated, out-of-the-way spaces that are tumblr, a handful of subreddits and bluesky. And I believe that—unfortunately—we are collectively responsible for that part, as well.

Most of us seemed content to only spread the word by circulating the same two posts on tumblr. (Have we all given up completely on every other social media platform? Am I the only remaining straggler?) And soon after Cliff Weitzman hid WordStream’s fanfiction category from view, our interest in the issue took a sharp dive even there. Are we genuinely deceived into believing the issue has been fully resolved? Do we truly fail to realize that Weitzman’s refusal to admit that what he did was wrong left the door wide open for the next greed-driven tech bro to wander through? Or is the true naivety in thinking that, as a community, we can keep this kind of attack on fandom from happening again? Has our disillusionment already gotten that bad?

However the situation spins out from here, Cliff’s actions will set a precedent. If we fail to show Cliff and his ilk that attempts to profit off fandom’s unpaid labor have consequences, their tech companies will keep trying until something eventually sticks. They might be a little smarter about it next time; obscure their sources a bit better, maybe leave the titles and the authors’ names off. Or maybe they’ll go a bolder route: maybe next time they cross the line they’ll do it boldly enough for IP holders to take notice and stop tolerating fanwork entirely.

Doesn’t that make you angry, too?

There’s this whole other mess of thoughts I would love to be able to untangle about how commercial influence is contributing to the steady erosion of fandom’s foundations, but I’m tired, and other people have said it all much more eloquently than I ever could. Seriously, go read that article on Fansplaining. Or listen to the podcast version of it. Better yet, as long as you’re wearing your noise-canceling headphones, go listen to a podfic of one of your favorite fandoms’ works, and enjoy the collaborative joy and creativity of the people who Cliff Weitzman refuses to believe exist. (In one of Speechify’s other blogs, Cliff claims there are only 272 podfics on AO3. Would you like to run that ChatGPT prompt again, Cliff?). Honestly, much like Cliff Weitzman’s infuriating denial of the fact that fandom fucking has this covered, thank you very much, there’s so. Many. More. Things for us to talk about. There’s the connotations of WordStream’s dubious ‘upload’ button, for instance, or the fact that the app scraped (and in some cases, allegedly, still lists) copyright-protected original fiction as well, or WordStream’s complete lack of contact information, which is illegal for an internationally operating app. And oh! Has anyone reported more thoroughly on Cliff’s app’s options to ‘simplify’ or ‘modernize’ uploaded works, or—my own very favorite abomination—to translate them into something Cliff calls ‘Gen-Z Language’? Much like his atrocious AI book covers, it would be hilarious, if it didn’t make steam come out of my ears.

Anyway, there it is. I highly recommend you do all of that. And then, if you aren’t familiar with it already, go do some research re: fair use and your rights as the copyright owner of your works. A good number of people commenting on this controversy expressed stunned surprise or fearful hesitation about claiming any sort of ownership of their fanfiction. The more informed we are about our rights, the more willing we will be to defend them.

Please don’t stop writing or sharing your work. If you can’t bring yourself to work on your WIPs today (trust me, I get it), post about this situation instead. Tweets, skeets, whateverthefucks—about WordStream’s theft, about how this reflects on Speechify’s already shady business practices, about how Cliff’s actions and justifications have personally affected you. You’re welcome to share or copy my posts on these platforms, but since Cliff already blocked me, I very much prefer you post your own. If you do, call Cliff Weitzman by his full name and tag or include both WordStream and Speechify to ensure Weitzman will recognize he has both a personal as well as a professional stake in handling the situation with integrity. Leave your concerns in reviews on the Speechify app. (We weren’t provided with a more appropriate place to put them, after all!) Consider calling for a Speechify boycott until Cliff accepts accountability for his actions.

Do avoid making exaggerated claims, and don’t call for physical retaliation against Cliff’s person or his property. We don’t want to give him or Speechify even the weakest of grounds to claim defamation or threats of violence. Focus on the facts: they’re incriminating enough by themselves. Show Cliff that we’re determined to keep bringing up his company’s wrongdoings in public spaces until he demonstrates that he understands why taking these freely shared fanworks and monetizing them was wrong, and takes steps to ensure it won’t happen again.

One last thing—and this is really more of a general reminder—please stop suggesting I handle this situation for you. People have come to me asking for action items. The resulting flashbacks to my days as an office assistant were extremely upsetting. In all seriousness, casting me as some sort of coordinator or driving force behind this backlash actively hurts the cause. Not only does it downplay fandom’s collective efforts, it also makes our message extremely vulnerable. It would be all too easy for Cliff to silence one singular source. Wikipedia will not maintain mentions of this controversy as long as it leads only to Easter Kingston’s attempt to summarize what happened as it was happening. You only know my name because I stumbled upon WordStream’s theft and decided to get my friends involved. I am not more knowledgeable, more skilled or more angrily invested in this issue than you are (or can, or should, be). I draw pictures and I write stories and I worry about the shift I’m seeing in fandom after having been on this ride for even a few pre-livejournal rounds.

I’m not going to stop doing any of those things. But I am going to allow myself to step away for a bit, make my wife dinner, and catch up on our shows.

I trust you’ve got it from here.

[mitsene]

Glimmer Episode 5 part 4 is up!

Is he starting to crack? hrmm

I have more episodes up front on my Patreon (which I recommend subscribing to before November and/or subscribing through the website not the iOS store. I will not be raising tier prices despite patreon's recommendation.)

I also!!! Will be posting more regular updates on Ko-fi and now have a Ko-fi Goal: Publish Vol. 1 of Glimmer!

All tips and subscriptions will be going towards this goal. I've always wanted to have a published manga but never thought I would ever be good enough so this is a big, big personal goal.

[indieanimezine]

With all the data I’ve collected thanks to the interest check, I only need to know what profit model and guest artists people want for the side fan zine. I’ll probably do a quick poll for that; stay tuned.

[plasma-packin-mama]

Is there drama with the independent wiki. Has anyone tried to resolve it thru communication and collaboration. bc having a non-fandom wiki is deeply important and we should try to nurture its existence.

[fogsrollingin]

Okay I'm going bonkers with happiness right now. I posted the first chapter of 2 completed fics onto AO3 (last week I realized I'd only posted 1 story to AO3 this year even though I've written a lot - I just languished as I got closer to the end of them), and linked back to my neocities where the full fic was posted AND PEOPLE ARE GOING THERE! And reading it! And giving me kudos and comments on my fic on my website. One person just gave me kudos, not extra kudos, and I am like so delirious with happiness they even got to my website, thought it was good enough to stay on my website and finish reading the fic, and give me a lil checkmark for kudos 🥰🥰🥰

Starting 2024 out RIGHT!!!

Anywhere here's the fics and their links if anyone else is interested in overjoying me

[hurtspideyparker]

Hi, sorry but could you recommend any of your favourite Peter Parker fics please?

For sure !!! *cracks open ao3 bookmarks*

Thirty Hours by polaroid15 - Peter doesn't take any breaks during a lengthy fight with the Avengers. The mind-melting fever that follows really should have been expected.

Hurt Peter Parker, my favourite tag <3 I love when Spider-Man is a badass and also lacks self-preservation. He's so cool fighting alongside the Avengers and we get some sweet hurt/comfort irondad!

Fitting In (Tiny Spaces) by aloneintherain - Peter's trapped beneath a collapsed building during a mission, hurt and unable to move. Luckily, his comm still works. Unluckily, the Avengers don’t realise how bad of a state Peter is in, and Peter isn’t inclined to tell them.

This fic is an icon in the fandom and for GOOD REASON. I just can not get enough of Peter Parker hiding his injuries. More heavy whump and angst!

All good things come in threes by Bergen - Peter has three secret identities: Spider-Man, the superhero who swings around the city to save people. Parker Benjamin, who gives Tony Stark unsolicited advice on his research. And NightMonkey, the Instagrammer who keeps uploading increasingly popular but embarrassing drawings of Iron Man.

And he can juggle them all just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Okay here is the fluff!!! Peter is a genius, a menace, and a sweetheart. Tony Stark runs into him (again and again) and can't help but have a soft spot for him every time. Funny and cute and an all 'round good time!

Held Together by Spiderwebs by TunaFishChris - Steve is not coping well in the twenty-first century. At all. Three months after the Chitauri invasion, he decides he's had enough.

But just as he's about to end it all, he runs into the new hero in town.

This one focuses a lot on Steve but I really like him and Peter's relationship in it, and I think this is great Peter Parker characterization. TW for discussions of depression and suicide, it gets a bit dark!

5 Times Spider-Man Saved an Avenger's Ass (and 1 Time They Saved Him) by TunaFishChris - this fic showcases how strong and capable Peter is, he's definitely a BAMF. I really like this genre where the Avengers know Spider-Man but not Peter Parker, makes Peter feel more independent and mature like in the comics.

Five Time Faculty Members Had to Call Peter's Emergency Contact + One Time He Shows Up Anyway, Five Times Tony Stark's Fabled Intern Just Showed Up + One Time He Was Invited, and Five Times Strangers Talked About Peter and Tony + One time Someone They Know Did by kingdomfaraway - I am just gonna recommend this entire series. Super fluffy, extreme irondad and spiderson. They're just adorable from an outside perspective and I love when Peter gets to just be Tony's intern and a teenager for a while :)

research and disaster by blueh - “So, uh, Mr. Stark definitely knows Roomba-Kid,” Becket says and discreetly tilts his head in the direction of the pair.

“Oh my god,” Jess says. She almost sounds gleeful. “Oh my god, he’s not just some random kid. He’s Mr. Stark’s kid.”

or: the interns at Stark Industries have some questions about Peter Parker. The answers aren’t quite what they expect.

I just love intern Peter mk? Let him be a kid genius and have fun!!! Fluffy and humorous, again with the irondad.

Captain, Oh My- Not My Captain! by uncouth_peasant - Peter swallowed hard before firing a web to swing into the fray. “Cap’s going after civilians. I’m out of time.”

Bruised and bloody men <3. Just Peter being a badass and getting beat to a pulp. Cool fighting, lots of Peter whump, and of course the Avengers being protective.

Good publicity by Bergen - Between Peter Parker barely speaking, and Spider-Man being the ultimate chatterbox, how was Tony ever supposed to figure out that they were one and the same person?

Tony Stark is secretly a softie for cute kids, especially when they're a genius and have a sense of humour to rival his own. Peter is a foster kid who ends up finding a home with Pepper and Tony, very sweet.

The Third Option by Uncertainty_Principle - When Ben is murdered Peter goes into foster care. It takes just a tiny taste of superpowers for Peter to decide he doesn’t want to put up with his horrible foster father anymore—the streets are infinitely more appealing. All he wants is to be Spider-Man anyway.

So he leaves, simple.

Simple, that is, until Iron Man needs Spider-Man’s help.

Heavy TW for this one, mind the tags. This is a popular fic and for good reason. A very mature and realistic portrayal of the foster care system and homelessness. The Peter angst is really great and I could barely put it down, that boy needs a hug so bad.

Now here's some hydra!Peter fics cuz they're my jam:

Peter is a precious chickpea by Bergen - They attack the HYDRA safe house shortly before sunrise.

The only people defending said safe house are Peter and Leo, and Leo slams his cell door open and starts spitting out orders, but then promptly gets clobbered over the head and keels sideways.

So that just leaves Peter. And he’s not even going to try to fight a whole team of Avengers. He looks up at Iron Man filling the doorway. “I surrender.”

He’s never been captured before and he’s not sure what to do. Escape, probably.

This entire series is PERFECT. I just love how adorable Peter is, and all the relationships Peter forms with the Avengers absolutely melt my heart. Peter's characterization in this is really unique and I wish there was more. The Bucky and Peter friendship is everythingggg. I love hydra!peter and bucky fics.

Indoctrination by phoenixon - The Avengers thought they were on a typical assignment: Infiltrate the Hydra base and find the weapon. What they didn't expect was the small boy raised by Hydra that they found instead. And they definitely didn't expect him to stay at Avengers Tower or how he somehow wormed his way into their lives. As for Peter, he just wants to be good and obey what the Hydra men told him so he doesn't get in trouble.

I just really love hydra Peter changing into a sweet and intelligent boy once he's rescued and safe, and how all the Avengers take up such heart-warming parental roles around him.

out there, living in the sun by Hailfire_73 - The Avengers rescue Peter from a Hydra base ran by his father, Richard Parker, except Peter doesn't really see it as a rescue, and has trouble settling into a new life away from Hydra and his father at the Avengers compound. OR - Peter learns how to be an actual teenager, live life, and put his abusive past behind him, and Tony learns how to be a father.

Hydra Peter but he's most definitely a traumatized and moody teenager. I really enjoyed Peter's character arc and the exploration of his trauma. It felt more realistic the way his journey isn't just a straight or clear path. He's more mature in this one and it was a really compelling read, balancing the angst with some humour and fluff. Loved the ending.

Tinker, Tailor, Spider by Bergen - Tony is roped into a mission to transport a teenager to safety. But when things go south, it soon becomes more and more puzzling who the teenager is and what ‘safety’ means for him.

I really enjoy that the author doesn't water Peter being hydra down. Yes he is a highly skilled assassin and a badass who's trauma pervades his every thought and decision. Made me fall in love with the Tony, Pepper, Morgan and Peter as a family dynamic. Super domestic while still highlighting Peter's troubled past.

[kodamark]

This is my webtoon and if you haven't seen it, I just uploaded the third episode last week!!!

This is fully written and illustrated myself so I would be overjoyed if you'd give it a look! And if you're feeling super generous I have my patreon linked on Webtoon, doners get their names listed at the end of every episode!

This thing has basically become my life's work, the first draft of episode one was my submission into college, spoiler alert, I just graduated with a BFA in Film Video and New Media, so I've dedicated a lot of time to this thing, and it's done me a lot of good in my life.

If you're an independent webtoon/webcomic creator, send me a message!! I'd love to find some mutuals who are also making comics ^^

This story means a lot to me and I really hope it finds an audience who'll listen to it <3 and it would mean the world to me if you would be a part of that.

Seven idiots. One story. Told from their perspectives.

[ramblingsfromthytruly]

name: mithi - not really, just family nickname

she/they - equal pref

16

desi

lesbian

questioning demi/grayromantic

11th grader in science stream

intj-t

dni: racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, any bigots really

rules: don't be any of the above mentioned; don't be creepy; if u dm me don't just say 'hi' or 'hey', i won't respond (it's always the old men who do this??)

fun fact!: i was born exactly at 11:11 p.m.

libra sun, gemini moon, cancer rising (idrk what it all means tho)

mental: unstable, go through depressive phases, gritted-tooth optimist, generally a bit sad and numb and lonely

physical: brown skin, black hair, v dark brown eyes, 5'6/168cm, wear glasses, kinda a face reveal?

sideblogs :

studyblr: @academicgremlinhehe here to keep my procrastination in check

mental health/vent/ranting: @thyhonesteheorte here cuz i'm too scared to be especially depressing on main

ns/fw sideblog: @thy-wench-hath-gone here for idk exploring my sexuality somewhere else, not gonna be horny on main yk

feel free to check me out on :

blog - like an actual site, not this beauty chaos

ao3

that odd melancholy feeling - current ongoing marylily fic on ao3

pinterest - still in the middle of organizing so mind the chaos!

life goals :

become an academic weapon once again - summoning pre 9th grade me n making her better

multiple degrees?? yes pls to being disgustingly over-educated

work in research + part time writer

independence

travel the world

tagging system! :

#mithi's own - all original posts

#she communicates oh my! & #com com - answering asks, tag games, i switched to the 2nd tag cuz many ppl thought i was referring to them😭

#poetic lil mithi - original poetry

#artsy mithi - original art

#mithi's marauders - all posts relating to my marauders fanfiction

#wishful necromancy - posts relating to the marauders fandom hehe get it?

#hades kid yapping - posts abt da pjo fandom

#slightly less beloveds - posts about fandoms apart from the marauders

#on the record :) - lyric posting

#musings from thy truly - journal extracts, vents, stuff that should be in my journal but i was too lazy to write with my hand, shit posts, life updates, literally anything that has words and isn't poetry or fandom-related

#tis bout 'n' - about a friend i've known on n off since 1st grade

#tis bout 'a' - yapping about the girl i constantly yap with at school<3

#moody mithi - moodboards, web weaving, etc yk

#filmy mithi - posts featuring my own pics :)

#mithistudies - studyblr posts made until 10th october 2024 (later created my studyblr sideblog)

current read! : crime and punishment (fyodor dostoevsky), jane eyre (charlotte bronte)

current watch! : -

current obsessions! : telling myself 'suck it up bitch u've been lazy long enough', thinking thinking thinking every moment my entire being is not occupied with some other task

hobbies! : sketching, chess, photography, writing, recording vlogs, listening to music + analyzing lyrics, reading, watching movies & shows, piano, contortion & gymnastics

music! : gracie abrams, lorde, olivia rodrigo, chappell roan, cavetown, clairo, hozier, ethel cain, phoebe bridgers, paris paloma, mckenna grace, billie eilish, conan gray, chloe ament, mitski, tv girl, beach bunny, girl in red, adrianne lenker, lana del rey, wallows, alex g, florence + the machine, boygenius, chloe moriondo and many many more!!

lit! : solitaire, heartstopper, pjo, hoo, toa, soc, p&p, wuthering heights, jane eyre, great gatsby, sherlock holmes, agggtm, ouabh, and many many more!!

shows! : heartstopper, atypical, lotr: rings of power, pjo, young royals, dickinson, sherlock, s&b, and many many more!!

movies! : lady bird, p&p (2005), the perks of being a wallflower, dating amber, little women (2019), lotr & hobbit trilogies, thg triology + tbosas, dead poets society, and many many more!!

last updated: 11th february 2025

[febuwhump]

febuwhump 2024 survey results

has it been six months since febuwhump? yes. yes it has. nevertheless, here's the cold hard data (analysis) of the survey from febuwhump 2024: feb five.

firstly, this year was our most popular yet! with 1417 works in the official collection across 329 fandoms, we made (and shared) 103 fics more than 2023, and 770 more than my first year running febuwhump in 2021! this isnt even including all the art and fics posted to tumblr, or wasn't shared during the event, which would put our total so much higher!

the prompt list had 4000+ notes and i received 115 responses to the survey.

there were 62 people in the hall of fame, up from 51 in 2023.

the blog hit 2,683 followers, up from 1,946 at the end of the 2023 event.

across two independant check, based on the average word count of 2,000 words per fic in the 2024 collection, and aware of the multi-chapter fics (some of which were finished after the event), it is estimated that 2.8 million words were written for febuwhump 2024. which is just. fucking insane.

now, onto the survey results!

firstly: in what way did you participate in Febuwhump this year?

with extra write-ins not pictured, fanfiction was the overwhelming winner with 92 responses (82.6%), followed by original fiction (22.6%) and artwork (11.3%). interesting to me personally is the 4 responses who wrote poetry and the not-pictured 1 response who created web-weaving! which is very cool and i would like to see it.

fandoms

according to the survey:

the most popular fandoms written for were the star wars universe and legend of zelda universe (8/115 responses)

21 responses included original fiction

the majority of responses also referenced more than one fandom, meaning less people stuck to a single fandom or topic the entire time.

according to the collection:

21 anime/manga fandoms were represented

51 books/literature fandoms were represented, 12 being specific star wars subseries

24 RPF fandoms were represented, including bands and minecraft servers

the most popular fandoms written about in the collection were:

star wars (all media types) - 253 works

star wars: the bad batch - 80 works

torchwood - 66 works

original work - 56 works

my hero academia - 54 works

why and how

next, there were a lot of really lovely responses about why participants took part in febuwhump, a few favourite and repeated responses being that it seemed fun, they'd done it before and so wanted to do it again, and they liked to write about their favourite characters suffering. also, multiple people have been doing it for three of the four years i've been running it (of five total), and several were encouraged by friends!

the majority of participants discovered febuwhump through tumblr, the admin's tumblr, ao3 fics and discord servers. a handful said there's apparently a google doc floating around that houses a whump event calendar. i would be interested in seeing that if anyone's got it.

did you participate in Febuwhump 2020, 21, 22 or 23?

the majorty of respondants were new comers to febuwhump at 66.1% "no" to 33.9% "yes". the majority of comparisons to previous years referenced a noticably bigger community, more interaction on the blog, and the admin being more "confident" (oh, you guys), however several noted that the prompts felt more repetitive or samey this year than they did previously.

are you a Febuwhump completionist or participant?

a fairly even split, 51.3% of participants didn't finish compared to the 48.7% who did. however, only 88.1% of those completionists submitted to the hall of fame.

for those who didn't complete, the most common amount of prompts completed was 2 (13.6%), 3 (11.9%) and 12 or 6 (6.8%).

the most common place to share prompt fills was tumblr (74.8%), ao3 (72.2%), or choosing not to share at all (7%). several write-in responses said that they were planning to share in the future but hadn't yet. and while 76.4% of people submitted to the ao3 collection, those who didn't claimed it to be because the fics weren't ready to be shared on time, they weren't following the rules so didn't add to the collection, an inability to find the collection on ao3 (i swear i'm working on it) or shyness/fear.

what went well/even better if:

the only actual criticsm of the event received was that the blog was posting in a "spam"-like way, to the point that the participant almost unfollowed (and another suggested a reblog tag so it could be ignored easier if people didn't want to see the works throughout the month).

several comments asked for a later deadline for submission to the collection/hall of fame, which is going under advisement, but the current position is that by doing so, it makes the event a different event. there are no stakes to actually create once a day if, at the end of it, you actually get 2 weeks of extra time.

another couple mentioned there being too many dialogue prompts and vague prompts. this will be considered during the next voting period and prompt collation - potentially, if i allowed less dialogue prompts into the final 100 vote, less would make it through to the official 28, however the voting itself is out of my hands (unless voter fraud occurs once again).

the main suggestion for improvement (8 times out of 44 suggestions) was for an additional mod to help with reblogging more. (which imo flies in the face of the "spamming" from earlier, but there is surely a middle ground). this is likely to not happen, because i like running the event alone, despite the major burnout i receive every single year without fail. but thanks for your concern lol.

on discord:

31.3% of participants were in the discord server (which, this year, ignored the first year's 100 user cap and had 172 total users).

43.6% of people who didn't join the server did so because they hadn't heard of it, while the majority didn't join because they were either shy (the minorty) or don't use/like discord (the vast majority). i don't know if tumblr still does groupchats and if that would be a viable alternative, or if there is another forum/chat location that would work better (or to have in tandem), but i am open to suggestions.

of the people who were in the channel, most (33.3%) used it "rarely", followed by "most days" (25%) and "for half the month" (22.2%)

febuwhump 2025

the majority of responses wanted next year's colour scheme to either be red or green, but shout out to everyone who wanted orange, the person who said "children's hospital" and the other person who gave me this specific hex code: #4BEC13

which is vile, but also another vote for green.

finally, here are my favourite suggestions for febuwhump 2025's colloquial name. previously, we have endured febuwhump 2: electric boogaloo, febuwhump 3: tokyo drift, fourbuwhump and feb five.

febuwhump 6 suggestions:

fe6uwhump (which, i'll be honest, is a real contender)

"I don't know"

febuwhump 666

febuwhump: revenge of the sixth

"I don't know, sorry"

"febuwhump sex and make all the prompts kinky"

"??? i have been thinking about this for 10 mins"

febuwhump 6(9)

feBEEwhump

"i am bad at this"

"could not care less"

febuwhump feb five 2: electric boogaloo

apparently, i accidently made this a mandatory question and that made some of you mad :(

and that's the wrap up survey, six months late! any questions/queries/want to see some of that cold hard data? send me an ask. i'll actually respond to it i swear! (probably!)

[humunanunga]

So @utmvarchive is gonna take a holiday break to lend myself more time to finish the Handplates summary and rebuild the queue.

Before I get started on the next AU (in this case, Chronotale) is typically when I catch up on anything found/posted on previous AUs since last archival, and I try to do that in the same order they were first archived in. I'd love to be able to have put them all up in the exact order of creation, but maybe if it's not too late to find all their dates, I could post a timeline at some point.

That said, thanks to recent community efforts to recover it from obscurity, the main AU I'm gonna be catching up next interlude will be Birdtale.

Which brings me to the rest of this post: the elephant in the room.

I'm still waiting to read a translation of the Evernote doc, so I don't know yet if it's supposed to be canon, but I was sent ~30 Birdtale posts, so I'm aware that the creators' art includes frans. It's not the first time I've had this conflict, and looking at the other AUs on my list, it won't be the last, so I'll address this now.

Frans is not a ship I'm comfortable with, and it's not the only ship I'd normally avoid that's shown in some of these AUs... but I also think selective omission would be irresponsible as an archival service. If utmvarchive's intended purpose is to conserve these works before they become lost media, and references to them become missing context, the blog can't always fulfill that role and still represent my own feelings.

For better and for worse, these AUs were influential in the development of utmv as its own fandom. Whatever revisions may follow, I made utmvarchive to keep a record of AUs' original versions and keep track of details that have since been forgotten or retconned. There's probably better ways I could do this, but I'm admittedly an amateur basically doing volunteer work as a hobby. Ideally, everything would be exported to an independent website in case Tumblr closes down, but I'm not an experienced web-builder and can't afford to hire anyone.

Point is, to continue, I've been having to weigh personal boundaries against archival integrity. So far, whenever I caught something in time like portrayals of frans (ex: Echotale), I'd tag posts accordingly and precede the whole AU in the queue with a bolded content warning post in case viewers also want to filter the AU before it comes up. This would be the first instance I can recall, though, in which the alternate Frisk isn't clearly older, which is why I've been especially reluctant this time.

So when I'm back from this break: If I do decide to archive every recovered Birdtale post this interlude, utmvarchive will put up a cw post beforehand, but I hope you'll understand that it does not reflect what ships I myself am comfortable with in my own spaces.

If you unfollow me and mine over this, I'll understand too. It's an awkward and difficult position I've put myself in.

[runawaydr3amerao3]

Latest updates from OP:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

[fujostore]

The Official BobaVerse Holiday Fundraiser

It’s that time of the year again! That is, the time for the official BobaVerse Holiday Fundraiser, with discounts all across our projects!

Whether it's a ship ownership certificate, a yaoi cheese paddle, or cool stickers, we have the perfect gift for your friends… or yourself!

Project 1: RobinBoob, the Ship Ownership Marketplace

For the first time, we have a just-implemented RobinBoob discount code! Use code FOLGERS_SEASON for 15% off, and get an additional 5% off exclusively during Cyber Week.

Project 2: FujoBoard

Remember the old Yaoi Paddles? This is them now!

Serve your fujin friends some festive treats in style with our engraved cheese paddles! This holiday, we have 5 new styles up for grabs: blorbo, smut, fujoshi, fudanshi and fujin!

Again, code FOLGERS_SEASON 🛒

Project 3: BobaBoard

If you prefer more bite-sized merch that supports indie developers and artists, head to store.bobaboard.com for stickers, charms and more! Want these AND FujoBoards in one single order? I hear the FujoBoard footer might have a hidden xmas egg for you!

Want an EVEN BIGGER discount? Time for a read more.

For an EXTRA 10% OFF, and to see more projects like these (as well as more underrepresented folks in coding and open source), $upport our project lead @essential-randomness directly to help her continue her work in 2024!

Find her support me page here!

...and now that you made it all the way here, follow us on our other socials too!

BlueSky

Twitter

Fediverse

[verifying-gimmick-posts]

Can you verify @iwanttokillsupermario and see if they're hatred is real? As their blogs creation was at least from what I can tell AFTER (the very genuine) @iwanttohavesexwithsupermario which seems a bit suspicious however I'm not fully convinced that it isn't real

I am incredibly autistic - I have, through various careers and college certificate classes, experience in web archival research, independent investigation, business economics, and advertising / marketing, however I also have an exceptionally poor grasp on psychology, emotions, and the human condition. For this reason, I'm much better at demonstrating when false or misleading information is or isn't being shared and, if it is, why.

That being said, 15 minutes on each blog gives me the impression that @iwanttohavesexwithsupermario is much too personal and honest about the real-world effects of wanting to have sex with Super Mario, whereas @iwanttokillsupermario seems to moreso have a general, perhaps even healthy disdain towards bland, safe, mascot-type characters which is either intentionally or subconsciously being exasperated due to the inherent humor of managing a gimmick blog, especially in a space where multiple adjacent blogs interact with you.

To be more specific: I doubt anyone making an absurd sexual statement just for the inherent humor of it, with zero genuine attraction, would continue to post about it when a large amount of their followers become r/AITA commenters reacting to a small argument over a glass of fancy wine being spilled with petitions for divorce. Obviously whatever attraction is being felt is being exasperated, heavily even, for comedic purposes.

Likewise, I doubt anyone who holds a genuine, unhealthy hatred towards a fictional character could manage a 100% serious blog solely dedicated to said hatred on the fandom epicenter of the internet without becoming a terrorist.

iwanttohavesexwithsupermario Gimmick Post Verification Status: LIKELY ACCURATE

iwanttokillsupermario Gimmick Post Verification Status: LIKELY ACCURATE

[ripplestitchskein]

I decided to kill two birds with one stone (strangely appropriate considering) and make my fanfic into a comic! I think I’ll be doing both, a traditional fanfic on Ao3 and a comic version to go along with it since I have a lot written more traditionally already.

I’m trying to take any opportunity I have to practice art for my own original web toon and while I’ve been doing some characters from my regular DND game in addition to the character designs for Thrash and Yuri I can’t let go of this idea of doing a Stolitz one. I’m going to share my OG comic work and my DND stuff here too ofc but I’m super excited about playing around in this universe in a way I haven’t in my previous fandoms. I have never made fanart before that first piece, which while it wasn’t received as I hoped I super enjoyed making it and learning from it so I see this as another opportunity to do more of that.

One of the things I’ve loved most about joining this fandom, in addition to meeting some lovely and super smart people, is seeing the journey of an independent artist. I watched a video on a relatively small channel of an art teacher at the school she went to of baby VivziePop showing her sketchbook in college like 10 years ago and it was so lovely to see Angel and Alastor featured there and see how long she has spent working on these characters. As an older person who firmly believes you can do new things at any age (see roller derby, see art journey, etc) seeing a creator really find such a huge level of success in their 30’s is just super validating? You can get caught up in the “I should I have done this when I was younger, what’s the point now” mindset and that just ain’t it fam.

I struggle a lot with wanting things to be exact and drawing humans is so hard so it’s been really freeing to play around with someone else’s character designs, translate their style into my own, and practice drawing from reference in a more simplistic and forgiving medium like a cartoon show. It’s teaching me to simplify my own work, it doesn’t have to be this elaborate semi-realistic thing. I think I’m mostly learning the art of simplifying more than anything else with this.

I also want to play around with animation a bit in future too but that’s a project for another day. But here’s some non-rendered initial panels I did last night based on the Full Moon gif and I’m excited to share the first couple pages in the coming weeks.

[brookebellamy]

BookTok Needs to Read the Room

by Brooke Bellamy

As a fanfic community, we don’t leave negative, snotty comments in the same way we don’t criticize our kid’s volunteer soccer coach. Well, I suppose some people do but at least that’s commonly understood to be in poor taste to publicly ridicule someone contributing their time, effort and talents to the community for free.

Full blog below the cut but I'd super duper appreciate it if you consider checking it out for free on medium 🙏

Why We Shouldn’t Hate on Fanfic Writers

Spend no less than five minutes with me and you’ll probably — whether you want to or not — be brought up to speed on the latest fandom drama happening in my discord servers or Twitter groupchats.

I’m a fangirl, it’s exactly what it says on the can. I’m a copywriter by day and by night an avid creator and connoisseur of fanfiction — these days mostly about TOP GUN (yes, that TOP GUN) but it tends to vary on a semi-yearly basis.

I get my kicks in weird ways and yet I’m far from alone in that.

Beyond the movies and the characters, I’m interested in fandom as a whole or as we like to call it fandom meta.

The unspoken rules of this wacky subculture dating back to the 1960s. Watching beloved or controversial fanfics get pulled off the web, reworked and eventually published as independent stories in their own right. The constant push and pull against a mainstream that is becoming increasingly aware of something that used to be a shame-filled, hidden hobby only for the nerdiest of the nerds.

Enter, Stage Right: BookTok

Fanfic going somewhat mainstream is thanks in no small part to TikTok, specifically BookTok — the community that reviews and discusses published romance novels. I’m not really a member of that community but from what I’ve gathered BookTok is mostly made up of millennial women who voraciously consume books of varying degrees of quality and really, really, really care about the sex. Or, to use their own lingo, spice.

Like they’re almost getting a little weird about it, not gonna lie.

To an outsider, though I hardly should be considered one, BookTok seems to be a somewhat spiritual successor to the “Mommy Porn” craze that swept through the country with 50 Shades of Grey — the most famous example of a fanfiction (originally about Twilight) that was repurposed into a full-fledged novel.

But I digress.

I’m a creator on FandomTok which naturally brushes up quite a bit with my cousins over on the published, professional side of the street. It’s a mostly peaceful co-existence, but it is TikTok so it also can be a fucking nightmare.

Case in point: I opened up the app last week and was immediately bombarded by a presumably millennial woman from BookTok ranting about how much she hated a popular Harry Potter fanfiction.

I didn’t read the fic she’s talking about but from what I can gather it takes place after the books conclude and focuses on a tumultuous love affair between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. That would be Emma Watson and Tom Felton for the non-stans.

Now, I’m no Harry Potter fan. Quite the opposite, actually.

Some of my earliest and most deeply unpleasant childhood memories are that of older cousins chasing me around our grandparents’ house yelling all sorts of spells and Potter-lingo at me. I’m also pretty sure I got locked in a cabinet at one point — but that’s a story for another day.

So it goes without saying: I’m no fan of J.K. Rowling, her work or her vitriolic hate speech against trans people.

However I do live, breathe and love fanfiction and so that means my support has to extend to the Potterheads and their stories as well.

So back to the video, I’ll give you the TLDR:

OP is upset that she’s spent so much time on what she feels to be a very overhyped fanfiction. She doesn’t typically read fic and so she’s confused and angry as to why the writer changed so much of the plot. She thinks it’s an unrealistic story, that its readers have poor taste and she’s mad that the fanfic’s writer killed off Harry.

She also reduces the entire 380,000 word story into being only about sex, despite it being heavily based on the gender-based oppression and violence that takes place in The Handmaid’s Tale.

OP concludes the first of a series of videos on this singular fanfic by proclaiming that a real Harry Potter fan would never tolerate something like this.

I watched just 10 seconds of the video before I had to put my phone down from seeing red.

Eventually, I watched it all the way through, left a couple of angry comments, made a few video responses of my own and eventually blocked her because I can’t stand internet beef with people engaging in an argument in deliberately poor faith.

But I’m still really annoyed about it, if it’s not obvious.

OP’s video has about 30k views at the time of my writing this. That might not seem like too much for an app that regularly sees content explode with 15 million views, so let me reframe it for you:

Imagine you and a friend dined at a massively successful Italian restaurant (I’m talking reservations a month in advance at a minimum). You loved it so much you spent weeks thinking about the pasta and how much you wanted to go back for more. But the restaurant is popular for a reason and so you couldn’t get another reservation. After a while you decided to try your hand at recreating some of the dishes at home. You even opted to have a little fun and throw in your own take on it. You spent a long time researching the ingredients, practicing your technique and ended up with a final dish that you were quite proud of. In fact, you were so proud of and excited by your creation that you invited that same friend over to try it one night. For some inexplicable reason, she was visibly angered at the invite. She told you that you were wasting your time trying to recreate the magic from the restaurant, but she showed up for dinner anyway. Empty handed, of course. Not even a cheap bottle of wine for your trouble. She took the first bite, gagged, announced she hated it and then for some reason decided to power through your entire meal. Literally licked the. plate. clean. She then stood up and left your house without a word of thanks or even a goodbye. And then the next day you got a notification from TikTok that she made ten minutes worth of videos about how shit your cooking is, and her videos reached enough people to fill up Madison Square Garden one and a half times.

And that analogy, though long-winded, still isn’t even perfect. In reality, the fic author didn’t invite OP to read the story; OP found it on her own.

So really it’s like your friend barged into your kitchen, took a bite of your pasta and then put you on blast for having a bland sauce.

Words (And Where We Say Them) Matter

30,000 views certainly isn’t viral, but it’s enough to drastically alter the fanfic writer’s creative experience. It’s enough to ruin the magic for a devoted fan just trying to have fun and write a little story about their favorite characters smooching.

The disgust and anger OP brought to table is shocking and in blatant disregard for the fic writing community’s golden rule:

If you don’t like, don’t read.

There’s a ton of other fandom colloquial terms — don’t yuck my yums is a particular favorite of mine — but they all mean more or less the same thing.

Don’t be a hater. Don’t spoil the fun. Don’t hurt anyone. Don’t be cruel in this space intended for creativity, community and friendship.

BookTok is increasingly diving into the wonderful, wacky world of fanfic and yet many of creators refuse to learn the unique culture and norms that have existed for decades.

For instance, it’s not an uncommon phenomenon for a single nasty comment to stop a fanfic in its tracks. That may sound like a hypersensitive author, but I argue:

Non-consensual criticism has no place in fanfiction.

I say non-consensual because in fandom we do actually have protocols for critiques. A beta read is a common term for a peer review, where the writer actively seeks out feedback from another writer to improve grammar, story structure, etc. However, this is a closed, private exchange between two community members that have established trust and connection — it’s a safe space.

Fanfiction that is deemed harmful or even dangerous is also fair game, though we tend to keep our commentary mostly to things like:

“This story contains sexual violence that was not properly tagged, please update the tags ASAP so not to trigger others”

When we post, of course we know that technically we’re opening ourselves up to the internet. However, I’m not blasting my quirky little Iron Man stories to the front page of Medium. I’m sharing it with a relatively small, somewhat isolated community filled with others who also happen to like quirky little stories about Iron Man.

For instance, it’s very common for fics to conclude with brief send-offs like:

“This was my first time writing from Peeta’s pov, so be nice please 🙏” “I wrote this for my friend’s birthday — I hope her day is as happy as Edward and Bella ended up here!!!” “English isn’t my first language and I’m not from the UK so apologies if any of the stuff about the train station or taxi cab seems a little off!”

In my opinion, this is not hypersensitivity; this is a request — sometimes a plea — to be kind about amateur work and to treat it as such.

We’re Talking Your Mom’s Pickleball League, Not the NFL Here

Fanfiction is not formally published writing, even though it’s “published” on a website like Tumblr or ArchiveOfOurOwn. More times than not, the fic writer is the only person that has eyes on the draft before the story goes live.

It doesn’t receive thorough review from a publisher. It doesn’t go through rounds and rounds of edits and comment periods like a professional writer’s work will.

Fic writers don’t receive any payment, sponsorship or credit for their work. They can’t because the entirety of fanfiction depends on writers cooperating with extremely delicate copyright laws — a fascinating topic I’ll probably elaborate on at some point.

There is literally nothing to be gained by writing and sharing fanfiction beyond the personal satisfaction and pride in contributing to your community’s collective joy.

Old Men Yells At Cloud, Harry Potter Edition

As a fanfic community, we don’t leave negative, snotty comments in the same way we don’t criticize our kid’s volunteer soccer coach.

Well, I suppose some people do but at least that’s commonly understood to be in poor taste to publicly ridicule someone contributing their time, effort and talents to the community for free.

I guess what I’m saying is that BookTok has some catching up to do. Or more aptly, they need to read the fucking room.

Fanfiction is a labor of love — by fans, for fans

If you don’t like a story, just scroll on by. Certainly don’t double down and read 380k of a story you hated in the first three paragraphs.

And if you think it’s so easy to write a “good” story, well then maybe you should give it a try before hating on the writers that are brave enough to share their work with the community.

And so finally, a speed run just a handful of OP and other BookToker’s concerns because if I don’t formally address these points I will lose my goddamn mind:

You guys were okay with the author just blatantly changing things? The mannerisms, the deaths?

Yes, that’s the whole fucking point of a fanfiction. Maverick and Iceman don’t actually kiss in the movies but they sure as hell do when I’m in charge.

What post-apocalyptic world would this ever happen realistically?

Are we really nitpicking the practicality of a post-9/11 wizarding world?

I’m sorry but this story sucked. Here’s a list of my Did-Not-Finish fanfics

Did-Not-Finish (DNF) lists are a popular tool used by BookTokers intended to help their audiences save money and avoid splurging on books they probably won’t jive with.

DNF lists have no place in fanfic because there is no money to save.

If you were a true Harry Potter fan, this would not fly.

No, no. If you were a true fan, you’d embrace your community members and uplift the storytellers that are keeping the magic alive for us all.

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