#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.

[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,

[sotwk]

Many fanfic writers and artists are just one bad day or one discouraging experience away from throwing in the towel and leaving your fandom.

If you don't want to risk this happening to a favorite creator of yours, today might be a good day to let them know how much their work means to you. :)

[mispelled]

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

[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.

[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

[crabsnpersimmons]

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

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I started reading Dungeon Meshi last week, became instantly charmed and captivated, and blitzed through the entire manga in 4 days (and changed my profile picture about it). With that in mind, I would just like to say...

I love your dungeon meshi art so so much

CHILCHUCK!!!!!!!!

Thank you kindly! I love Dungeon Meshi a lot, so I'm happy to see so many people get into it for the first time.

CHILCHUCK!!!

[sketchingstars03]

okay guys Undertale AU Fandom PSA we gotta set something straight

UTMV is our fandom’s acronym, not UTAU

UTAU doesn’t stand for Undertale AU, it’s the name of a vocal synthesizer program akin to Vocaloid.

UTMV stands for Undertale Multiverse and will prevent fandom mix-ups

Please I don’t wanna confuse the vocal synth fandom with our nonsense (affectionate), they shouldn’t have to witness Sans Undertale flooding their tag when they just wanna see Kasane Teto 😭

[cacodaemonia]

I've had this in my drafts for months, and I just saw a post complaining about fan artists (while having the nerve to start out with, "I love fan artists so much but...") who draw characters this way or don't draw them that way, so I figured it was about time to share this.

You know that unwritten rule in fandom that says you shouldn't demand that fic writers cater to your tastes? "Don't like, don't read"? Here's a reminder that the same goes for fanart.

Sometimes, I see complaints that fan artists don't draw character A exactly how they look in canon/in a particular slice of canon/according to someone's specific headcanons. Sometimes, I see complaints that character A is being depicted, say, without enough body hair, or with the wrong body type, or as a different age than they appear in canon.

If you find yourself getting upset with fan artists over things like this, I hope you'll take a moment to:

mind your own business

consider how fucking hard art is

I think a lot of people who haven't spent time in the art trenches have absolutely no clue how difficult it can be to draw a human, period—let alone human features you haven't already practiced a million times.

This can be especially true for artists who don't have a lot of drawing experience. When I was a kid, I mostly drew women, so learning to draw more typically masculine features was a challenge, and it took me many years to even get okay at it. It takes a lot of practice to figure out how to draw a variety of facial structures, body types, hair styles, ages, etc.

For a example, I have never known an artist who doesn't think drawing children is a bitch and a half, and wrinkle placement can mean the difference between drawing something that looks like an elderly human versus a shriveled apple.

Simply drawing body hair can be very time consuming. You also have to understand hair growth patterns and direction and take into account if the person's body hair is very curly or more straight, etc. If I just want to do a really quick sketch, maybe I don't feel like spending 10-20 minutes adding body hair. Maybe some people don't like body hair so they don't want to draw it. Maybe some people have carpal tunnel syndrome or medial epicondylitis and the extremely repetitive motion of adding body hair to characters is physically painful. You don't know. And it's not your place to tell them they're wrong.

Fanart, just like fanfiction, is about drawing the things we like—NOT catering to what other people want or think we should be making.

So feel free to talk about how much you love it when fan artists draw characters in ways you like! But don't be a jerk by demanding people draw what you want, and don't put down those who don't cater to you. You can have all the personal preferences you want in fanart, but it's rude and entitled to force those preferences on others fans or act like you're a better person because of your tastes in the appearances of fictional characters.

[luc1ferian]

"I'm gonna hitchhike my guide up your galaxy, baby~!" <- thing Zaphod Beeblebrox has definitely said at least once in his life

[jean-meowreau]

I'm thinking about it real hard and tbh Neil would take Kevin's phone and block his account from Kevin's Twitter and then be the most ridiculous Kevin Fan Account. He would reply to fan theories, check them, debunk/confirm them. He would share Kevin's stats and talk so often about how much he looks up to him and his skills. the whole team just thinks Kevin knows and doesn't care.

and then one day an interviewer brings the account up and Neil can't get out fast enough, tries to deactivate it. but it ends up being something Kevin likes. The attention he enjoyed as a Raven but not the objectification. Neil telling people to fuck off and then agreeing with another that Kevin has improved. Showing details and stats and it's touching to him, even if it would be weird to anyone else. Kevin who still really craves that adoration and attention bordering on stalker/codepency and Neil who can deliver it perfectly.

Kevin bestows him with the #1 Fan title and Neil is even more insufferable after that.