Older Than Netfic

re: https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/720101922090156032/controversial-opinion-i-hate-reader-pov-stories

I think it's been pretty safe to publicly dislike Mary Sues/Self Inserts/Whatevers for like the last 30 years. Reader X is just the latest incarnation of essentially the same category of fic, really: non-canon characters intended as vehicles for reader/writer/collaborative projection.

But I am really REALLY curious to know what fandoms are so overwhelmed with reader fic that you can't find anything else. Anon, what fandoms are you in!!!! The mystery is killing me.

Tbh I’m from South Asia, and I found it “safer” for many years to just write white characters in my original fiction. It felt like writing about non-white characters - INCLUDING MY OWN ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES - was just too much of a minefield. I was so influenced by American versions of diversity and representations as well. So between those two situations I was just paralysed in my writing for a LOOOOOONG time. It’s only now, at the age of 26, that I’m actually taking inspiration from cultures all over the world (including my own!). It sucks that those perspectives on representation impacted my writing this way, and I would’ve loved to include diverse characters and settings in my work, if only my view of the word “diversity” hadn’t been so tainted by my overexposure to specific hot takes.

Birth control anon here. To people who left anecdotes of positive experiences: thanks. I’ve had terrifying problems what I’ve tried so far and everything else online is not encouraging. I use condoms but I’m very horny and do not trust them to be reliable on a regular basis. To the person who wants to kick me down a flight of stairs: I hope whatever makes you act like this online will eventually not burden you so much. To everyone else who suspects I have an agenda: you’re overthinking it

as someone who read TIHYLTTW when it first came out and enjoyed it a lot, please, feel free to hate it but recognize that people who like it are *getting something* from the book that you aren't. we're not clueless NPCs jumping on every queer fad, sometimes people just have different tastes. like I get that the dense, adjective-rich "purple" prose is a nightmare to read for some people but some people actually like that kind of thing (1/2)

I ship f/m and f/f. In f/m, I ship and write the male character being dominant or switch only. I do not ever imagine, and cannot interact with, fantasies of a male character being a 100% sub. I have some damn good reasons for that that are no one's business. And yet people are still. Wanking. Over. FinnRey. Not happening when I'm completely not allowed to write him being dominant, and this is true with every Black male character out there. (I'd rather write him with Rose anyway, because I'd rather write EVERYONE with Rose, yes I mean everyone, but that's another thing.)

I'm tempted to send an ask asking if Doctor Pande is a real doctor or if that's a username, but I'd feel silly asking when I could just google. But the thing is, I don't actually care or want the answer. The point I want to make by sending such an ask is that I have no idea who this person is or why their opinions on Star Wars[?] fic are supposed to matter in discussions about offensive content policies for an archive.

The point is that the pushback against End-OTW-Racism has nothing to do with people's baggage with any of the people involved with the campaign (I don't even know if Doctor Pande is personally involved or if they're being used as an example of.... something).

The campaign is not going to accomplish anything, and we want to be able to discuss the reasons why it has the potential to do more harm than good and sort out ways to do actual good. A good old fashioned ship war has nothing to do with the conversations we should be having, even if the policies we want to develop would ultimately prevent such flame wars.

There was a time I organized an event for a M/M POC ship that I enjoy. People were complaining that there wasn't a lot of content for them. So I asked about interest for a week dedicated to those characters. People voted on themes for each day, a week was picked and it was advertised it in the tags. Other fans liked the posts and some reblogged. My friend would put up reminders in the tag that the week was approaching.

Then the week happened... and me and my friend were the only ones participated. It was disappointing, but I was still happy to post my fics and I did get some engagement from them. But it was a little frustrating because many of the people who complain that the ship isn't popular rarely ever interact with the content that already exists nor do they make content for it. (But they do for other ships)

Ok, I've seen someone mention it, so now I just have to ask: why is it that, when there's an m/m ship with a POC and a white character, the POC one has to be a bottom because otherwise the writer and whoever enjoyed the fic is racist?

I've seen it happen in multiple fandoms, and they all bring out shit like "imperialist culture" and other vague, rambling, explanations written by social media activists who spent too much time online, which are really not fucking answers, are they?

So, from someone who has spent most of their life in fandoms in which the main m/m ships were made by two white men (think BBC Merlin, Kingsman, etc), could someone with more expertise give me a better view of this part of fandom wank?

I took a chance on a chatfic recently and let's just say I think the author's sex education was influenced by fanfic. 21 characters split among 3 groups, all talking in the same chat. The reader gets told pretty fast who tops/bottoms/both and almost immediately after who subs/doms/switches. And *everyone* had a dynamic. Which I could understand if it was a BDSM AU. Not so much in the Real World setting that was chosen instead.

What do you make of the Reddit blackout?

Just had a truly BIZARRE AO3 experience which I feel like you might get a kick out of: I left a comment on a work with a ko-fi link, gently pointing out that ko-fi links weren't allowed, and suggesting that they remove it since many people feel pretty strongly about this and will report fics with ko-fi links on sight. The author responded with a - I kid you not - 1,713 word long rant, where they (among other things) claimed that the noncommercial rule of AO3's TOS violated the 14th Amendment

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/720049579053154304/something-that-bugs-me-is-when-people-say-in?source=share

There's definitely a sort of checkbox exclusivity that I see in a lot of fiction, especially in big corporate franchises, that can result in a character having a laundry list of identities that exist for the sake of existing.

This is obviously not what anon is doing, since their characters are inspired by real people (including anon themself!), but when the writing is janky enough it can be difficult to tell if a character's complex identity is for the sake of filling a diversity quota or if it's meant to reflect the author's own experience, or because the author finds the interplay of those identities interesting, or if it serves the story in some meaningful way.

So the real critique isn't if the full list of identities is itself common, or even possible (according to reader with limited experience), in real life. The way to approach characters like this is to look at how their identities are actually handled by the author. Is the identity handled realistically/respectfully, not can you remember meeting someone like that in person.

When you stop thinking about quotas and ticky boxes and policing whose voices count as "own voices", and start instead thinking about what a story might be trying to convey, it all makes a lot more sense and it's easier to tell "I thought it'd be cool to include a character like this person I admire" and "there's not enough representation of people like me in fiction, so I'll write it myself" from "quick! we need a Black character, a disabled character, a bi character, and a Chinese character pronto or the progressives won't buy our product! I know, lets make one character that ticks all those boxes, problem solved."

A thing I find telling, though I don't know what it's telling of: a few months back when we were wanking about Maedhros and Fingon, plenty of people felt entirely justified in assuming homophobia of anyone who prefers that as an ampersand pairing rather than a slash pairing.

But now we're talking about Star Wars ships and racism, the only people who think that not shipping Finn and Rey means you're racist are being lambasted as unreasonable harassers.

I'm so tired of people informing people in a minority what words people in that minority do/don't like. "I heard those people don't like word Romani" bro I'm Romani, I don't care if you don't like it, I'll use the word I want. "I heard les is an offensive abbreviation" ma'am that fic is written by a lesbian, she can use whatever word or abbreviation she prefers. "African American is the correct term" my [redacted] in Christ black people get to say what word they prefer and you don't get to complain, it's not your lane, get out of it.

"But I heard from someone" I DON'T CARE. Individuals decide what terms they consent to being called/not being called! That one someone may not like it but that doesn't mean every other person in their group is now banned from using the term just because Steve from down the road doesn't like it.

Fandom's attempts to be "sensitive" are completely identical to Republicans telling me trans is a gross abbreviation and their grandpa was a transsexual who only used that word and then grinning at me like they've won the argument and I need to stop identifying as trans forever.

RE: /720042658363555840 Anon, I don't wanna be condescending, but you do realize that abortions are a literal medical procedure? You should actually try every possible avenue to avoid having to go through a medical procedure, because there's NEVER a guarantee you'll be fine by the end of it. I really hate it when people view procedures like the "1st & best option" because it shows a lack of understanding. This isn't a "pro-birth control" thing, this is "anti-taking medical procedures lightly"

Just a question, how many of you actually know the background of fanfic authors? Because in my 15 years of fandom experience online, I've legit only seen like a handful of authors who's race/ethnicity I knew, and 95% of the reason was because it was relevant to the fic they wrote. Ie: Chinese author using their A/N to explain certain terms they used. Or a fic set in Sweden and Finland, and the author mentioning it's because they were from Finland, the characters were from the UK&Germany.

I have always prided myself on being able to spot red flags, but a few months ago I started watching this YouTuber and I did not notice anything at all. The xenophobia and sexism and grossness hidden in his content didn’t bother me because he seemed very satirical about it (and, is in fact satirical about other things). I really liked watching his videos because he’s a travel vlogger, and I don’t have the means or confidence to go to the places he does, alone. Well, I recently saw some allegations that he’s a sex tourist, and at first I thought they were baseless because it was just a random Reddit comment, but I did my own research and found that he’s even worse. He was active in the pick-up artist community and bragged about assaulting young girls living in underdeveloped countries, and currently loudly proclaims his support for Andrew Tate and “anti-wokeness.” What me and other viewers see as being friendly towards locals is literally just a strategy for him to play rich foreigner and manipulate girls into having sex with him.

I’m glad I found out when I did because he’s now gone fully public with a lot of his fucked up beliefs and is looking visibly coked up in his recent vids. It was surprising to me that I cared so much, I was just passively watching his videos in the background but when I saw the accusations I immediately started defending him in my head. And although I’ve been wallowing and feeling betrayed since I learned all this, one good thing did come out of it— I have a new passion for language learning so that I can someday travel to my dream destinations by myself, and it’s fueled mostly by spite (which is very, very powerful).

The longer the writers' strike goes on, the more I wonder if any showrunners/executives/other non-writers will ever get the bright idea to steal from fanworks. I know that it's the kind of thing that can get someone sued if they're caught, but it's also very easy for someone to just... take a plot and say they made it up independently! They don't even read that stuff! The fact that it hits every plot point and only has a few changes in phrasing is complete coincidence!

It's not something I worry about, more like a feeling of inevitability, since these sorts of people will apparently do anything but treat the writers' unions fairly.

I keep wanting to write Star Trek: TNG fanfic. Of course, my silly little brain made me mainly ship rarepairs whom barely anyone seems to want to read (Data/Borg Queen and Data/Reginald Barclay and their mirror versions) and has been hard to find fanfic to read for because there are so few around (or at least I've only found few).

I'm so scared of even attempting to write Star Trek fic because I always aim to write as plausibly-canon-relatedly as possible because I love reading in-character stuff too, and "write what you want to read" etc. yada yada... I have only watched TNG in my language which is not English, but do want to write in English, but of course I barely know any Trek-ish terms in English and currently don't have the time to re-bingewatch all of TNG to find out the terminology in English.

Also been thinking about writing RPF of the actors in their acting, but at the same time, I'm unwilling to really think about doing that because it feels too closely related to reality (as in it being based on my interpretations of the body language of the characters they were portraying at that time, if that makes sense), although their chemistry and little looks made me ship the characters more in the first place... (says someone who used to write brother incest RPF of two guys years ago without batting an eye because I'm well aware that fiction isn't reality and that the real people aren't even remotely related or similar to the people in the piece of fiction lmao)

Eh, guess I'm just overthinking.

Have you or your readers ever been wary or scared of walking into and writing fics for a well-established "old-ish" fandom?

While I haven't seen The Idol, watching hoards of anguished teens emphatically insist Jennie Kim was 'tricked' into appearing in the series has given me a good laugh. So even if the show is boring, at least some good came out of it?