#this is fandom please keep it in fandom

[space-blue]

Really disliking this TBH.

Going to be real clear here: fanfic isn't a business. It doesn't pay my groceries EVER. Also if I were like Harry Styles, I would wipe my tears over low engagement with wads of dollar bills. Boohoo.

Fanfic is written for readers, not consumers. We're writing stories, not content. We are fans, not self-marketting gurus.

Reader interaction is the CURRENCY I wish to be paid with.

If I'm not going to get my due because everyone wants to read my shit but nobody wants to talk to me about it, then FINE, I will also drop my account and go write into the silence, except then I'll send the result to a publishing house and cry into my empty fists when they reject me, but that way if I get lucky Y'all actually will pay real life money to read my stuff and I'll buy groceries from writing at last.

Fandom is supposed to be an ecosystem. If you're seeing it crumbling, it's probably because a part of it is caving. And let me tell you, writers come in with stuff already done. Same as artist. The work has already been put in. Then they get disappointed, feel ignored or used, then they leave. Once they post a story they've done their role, and spent hours or days or weeks, fuck some spend months working on their project.

Interacting with it silently is just readers failing to be good *fans*. Sue me or block me for thinking this, IDC. We're in this together and by the time you finish a fic, the author has done their part and now it's your turn to bloody do yours!!

I'm following this super cute fic atm and it has 3 chapters, 29 kudos, and I AM THE ONLY PERSON WHO EVER COMMENTED ON IT..!!! Ashamed for the 28 other people! Poor author was so obviously relieved by my comment it made me upset!

People go around saying 'writers don't owe us fic and readers don't owe them comments' and I disagree. I think you do. If you're gonna read that fic and love it you actually owe a kudo and a comment. It's your role in the ecosystem. It's the oil that keeps the wheels turning.

When people say "I read fic to decompress and I'm too tired to comment" it makes me want to scream. I come home tired from work and I spend my decompression hours writing fic for you and you're too tired to type "Thank you for writing this" in the box at the end? Wish I could block you from interacting with my stuff so you couldn't ever give me another silent hit.

I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week.  At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read.  I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos. 

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom.  I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it.  On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button.  Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked.  Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos.  Before that - 10%, and then 16%.  I’m not even going to get into the comments.  Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot.  I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc.  And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted.  Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them?  Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button.  It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert. 

TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[fonulyn]

since I've seen it talked about in several places recently:

if you are going to do a whump- or kink- or ANY-tober or other similar challenges please please please don't post them as one fic with 31 chapters unless it actually is one coherent fic. if they're 31 completely separate fics or ficlets then please just make a collection for them or just post them as separate fics. it doesn't matter if they're only 100 words or if you think they're too small or insignificant to post alone, they're not.

and why this?

because if you post all 31 of them in one fic the tagging is absolutely useless. if I look for things to read on ao3 I'm gonna look at the tags, and if the tags include something that's a dealbreaker for me, i won't even click on the fic. I might not even SEE the fic because I've filtered out the nope-tag! so I'm gonna lose out on reading 30 perfectly nice fics because of one fic that my nope-tag applied to.

ao3 is about archiving. it's about clear tagging and being informative. there is nothing informative about it if the tags in the fic apply to random chapters while others have nothing to do with it. it makes so much more sense to have each work as an individual fic with its own individual tags and warnings, so readers can make informed choices.

of course, you do you. I can't police what other people decide to do. but personally, I find it incredibly frustrating to weed through 31 chapters to find the ones I actually want to read. so I don't. I automatically scroll past all works posted like that. and I know some others do, too.

there is absolutely no shame in posting short things on ao3. there is no minimum word count. no one is going to look at you funny if you post a small ficlet on its own, I promise. it's just going to make some readers very happy when they can actually find the things they want to read.

so, please. at least consider the upsides of posting each work as their own fic.

signed, one very frustrated fandom grandma.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Mike isn’t wrong, but he’s not right either..

Based off @/Tanijrou post on twitter

[romijuli]

It’s not that I don’t LIKE the Fandom Popular Pairings, it’s that I find the assumption that everyone ships them and the general all-consuming nature of said pairings to be kinda exhausting,

[tarmac-rat]

"I can't believe CDPR made one of the romance options a COP" River is a cop for literally two thirds of a mission that is dedicated to uncovering the depths of police corruption in Night City, gets immediately booted from the force BECAUSE he tried to stand up to said police corruption, spends the rest of the game pursuing detective work outside the law, and in the base game mentions he's going to start work as a private eye so he doesn't have to return to the force in order to keep protecting people.

The only instance where the "River is a Cop" joke is funny is using it in the context of Johnny being pissy about it, which should probably tell you how low hanging that particular fruit probably is.

[whimsicalish]

<3

[mispelled]

They probably had wayyy more sleepovers than they let on. And then didn't tell the others

[aliteralchicken]

my biggest comic fandom pet peeve is when people say it happened in the comics without reading the comics because 99% of the time it did not in fact happen

[robiinurheart33]

“We’ll rule the world together!”

[pestercide]

Some puppet AU/headcanon designs!! (They're all non-binary btw :3)

[crabsnpersimmons]

"Slow down, Sunshine. You're not falling behind and you are loved for more than what you do for others."

[pnfc]

today i was revisiting the pnf choose your own adventure book where the author they roped in to write it has an only middling understanding of pnf, thinks candace is blonde etc, but still got this much correct

[lesbianjackies]

so like the thesis of yj is not #girlboss #shedidnothingwrong #goodforher actually. i fear the point is that women and girls can be fucked up and do awful shit and experience trauma and get their hands dirty too. i fear that “misty quigley and shauna shipman did nothing wrong” it is not the feminist take you think it is

[memen18-m5r3]

hello surviving centricide fandom...I bring you some wacky food

(i'm also animating a small portion of Centricide 3.5 but since I can't tell how much more time it's gonna take I'll show you some sneak peeks! :3)

((since I'm a certified yapper, I added some additional info + translations to all the images descriptions! not sure if it qualifies as ID so feel free to add upon it if necessary))