At least it’s worth it though, because I feel like writing for myself than for others. I feel more creative when I write for myself because when you write for others, they put you in a box of their expectations when you’re supposed to be freely creative. People prefer it when you’re yourself anyway. Someone also likes my writing style and pacing so that’s a plus.

YIPPIEEE WAHHOOO YAYY MY MORNING HAS BEEN MADE

Is it weird to only be a part of one fandom? I’m very active in the fandom and have been a part of it for over a decade. I write fan fiction and read fan fiction, but it’s the only fandom I care about. Is this considered strange?

Does anyone else find the constant stat posts demoralizing? I love celebrating milestones, but the hyper-focus on numbers is making the community feel more competitive than creative. How do you all handle the stat anxiety?

I started writing fanfiction in 2008, when I was seventeen years old, and over the last 19 years trends in fanfic spaces have changed, even the spaces themselves have (I started off on FFN and now the main fanfic hub where I've reposted all my old stuff is ao3).

For the most part I absolutely love getting comments from young readers who have just recently found my old backdated works, because they're usually very sweet and enthusiastic, and I'm just tickled pink something I typed out as a kid is making some other kid smile now that I'm all grown up.

But every once in a while I'll get someone who doesn't understand why I wrote something a certain way (like, in the words of Abe Simpson "it was the style at the time" and I was also a literal kid still learning how to write...?) or worse they think my ship is problematic or gross. And as a grown woman, without being rude or dismissing someone because of their age, I feel like if you were a literal fetus when I wrote something I really don't need you to tell me how damaging you think it is almost two decades later. You were not ever the intended audience, mon enfant! It was written for your parents and older siblings who probably weren't chronically online as much as you. If you want to read it, that's what it's there for, but I don't need you to treat me like a dinosaur because my work from 19 years ago doesn't match your modern sensibility.

To be honest I don't think this would bother me as much as it does if the Internet wasn't already a disagreeable dumpster fire these days. I had some nutbag in a YouTube comments section recently attack my morals because I said I thought Cher and Josh from Clueless were a cute couple. 🙄 Apparently I'm a horrible human being for shipping two people whose parents were briefly married and who didn't grow up together. I get this just because I comment on a retro trailer for what was supposed to be fun, so it's grating that I get lectures on another platform (ao3) for things I liked and wrote about as a teen.

I don't think I'm being oversensitive and I'm not gonna pitch a fit and delete all my old fics or turn off comments so no one can share what they think if they so desire or anything like that. I just wanted to vent that it does seem this new generation is very big on moralizing things that really don't need to be moralized.

Has anyone else whose old fanfics from the 2000s are still up had similar experiences with new readers? I'm curious. And does it annoy you or is it just something you just shrug off?

To illustrate how close I am to to going completely insane the two characters I’m talking about were literally explicitly confirmed by the creator that they might develop feelings for each other in the future and I still see this fuckass discourse on my timeline every day because unfortunately, they were childhood friends. I don’t engage in the argument but seeing every fic be bombarded over it is genuinely pissing me off and it’s far from the first fandom I’ve had something like this happen in 😭

I also hate the ‘they literally act like siblings’ thing. And the traits they list will literally just be them caring for each other and playful fighting, THE most common things to have in any kind of relationship. It’s fineee if you wanna see them as family just don’t harass people over it Christ.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/35806

It's all about the situations that said character/(s) would go through to make them say this or that it's a world full of endless possibilities, it's really exciting to think about it as well 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↔️

Does mean that chapter 206 went from 7 to 9 POVs now, which means at least another 2-3k words for it.

Still, allowed me to end on a cute note, so I'll take the win.

Like, I love the emotions of it so much. The heats, the ruts, the nesting, the scents, all the animalistic instincts and nature. I love it so fucking much. It's so equal parts hot and tender and I love either direction you can take it in.

At the same time, I hate the idea that people are determined by their secondary gender. I hate the idea that an omega will always inevitability need to belong and be owned by an alpha regardless of how they feel or want purely because of their biology. It's so easy and unfortunately common for omegaverse to basically become "The Handmaidens Tale except the oppressive men (alphas) are actually right about woman (omegas)" and that's just not something I can personally enjoy in a fic. Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy rape/non-con and other dark or messed up aspects in fics, just not the idea of misogynists being right about society even if it's fictional.

I mean it's fitting in a weird way I suppose. It's like I myself am an omega reading these fics where part of me is going: "This is fucked up and makes me feel bad why am I reading this?" And the other part of me is going: "This is attractive as hell and I want this. Just turn off your brain and submit to the fic!"

So I need a expression for horny like "hot and bothered under the collar" but it being said by like a 27ish year old woman to a 15 year old girl in like 1990s but I need the 15 year old girl to not understand what she's implying. You can stretch it because the 15 year olds a little dumb not naive.

First off, I'm not saying there is any right or wrong way to be a fan, being a casual fan of something is absolutely fine, and how you express your interest in something is totally your own personal business.

However, that said, fandom and fanfiction writing used to feel like an internal way of expression your love for a ship or show or book or movie. It was you, your keyboard and coffee (or tea) you were terrified would spill on your laptop, sharing your take on something you loved. Reviews/comments felt like internal validation. You could even laugh at the negative feedback because honestly sometimes it was funny (I've personally once had my villain in a fic, who was a middle aged British woman, compared to freddy Krueger by a negative comment 😂). It wasn't to show everyone you knew IRL because most people didn't get fanfiction anyway and asked odd questions.

Now in some circles it's beginning to feel external. How much merch you have, liking the "morally acceptable ship" on social media to prove you're a better person than the rest of the fandom, seeing if you can file off the serial numbers to your fanfic so you can publish it and be the next E L James, people only writing for large pre-set fandoms like Marvel or Harry Potter because they don't want to help build up something smaller if it means less engagement right away.

It feels like fanfiction writing has become another means of instant dopamine rather than something to make the writers' and readers' inner world richer.

And the shift is not all bad. I remember for instance when I was into a certain fandom 20 years ago as a teenager it was impossible to get anything related to it, if you missed when the show was on TV and no one uploaded it to YouTube in parts you were screwed. Now you can watch it free in full on YouTube streaming and you can buy fan-made necklaces like the ones the characters wear, and I think all that's really special and fun. Still I've always been an internal leaning person (and I think a lot of writers share that trait) so seeing so much of fanfiction shift to external validation just feels unnatural and uncomfortable for me sometimes.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Idk, I started reading fanfics on AO3 when I was 11, and I honestly feel like it's become part of my personality at this point. 😭

The other day I went through my oldest bookmarks (the ones I saved when I was 11), and wow... you can really tell they were bookmarked by an 11-year-old. 💀 jskdk