/m/ - media

Hopefully anons like the new threadpic, it’s been a while since I made a thread.

To kick this off:
>What are your favorite types of fanfic to write or read?
I love interesting AUs that kick the characters into situations that echo their canon arcs and struggles. Canon divergence is awesome, as long as the author keeps the pacing tight and uses her word count effectively.
I love writing short story-length character study fics. The limited scope and tight focus lets me prod at them and feel like I understand them better.
>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
Having fun and honing my writing skills and stamina. I want to be a published (independent is fine) author who makes at least beer-and-pizza money one day.
>Any beloved or beloathed tropes?
I read anything as long as it’s written well, but my guilty pleasure among those is stalker/obsession tropes where the power dynamic is always shifting between perpetrator and target.
For loathing, the standard ABO gendie slop goes without saying, but I also hate seeing established relationships that are always fluffy and light. I found that a lot of authors use it as a crutch for mischaracterization and factory-made dialogue. It unmoors the pairing from any feeling of reality to me, and large swathes of fluff and smut make me wary of it overall, but at least I can detach my brain and get off to smut sometimes.
>What writing advice do you swear by?
Writing sprints! 15-20 minutes of spitting out words and sentences in every combination you think you might like nets you an easy 500-600 words.
I’d love if anyone has advice on making editing easier lol. I stress myself out a bit trying to connect everything to themes and motifs!
>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
I hit 7,000 views recently which is huge, because I only write about side characters! I also hit 600+ kudos about a month ago.

>get into an extremely dark horror canon
>go to ao3
>tons and tons of cutesy fluffy stuff
every time

>What are your favourite types of fanfic to write or read?
Reading: ensemble cast genfic that's in the canon setting and explores whoever my favourite character is and their dynamics within the rest of the group– if I can get it. Usually settle for shipfics involving my fave that have a strong focus on both events and characters outside of the ship, so it doesn't suffer from the tunnel vision romance tends to have in comparison to canon's structure.

Writing: I like to pull apart and put back together again a character while attempting to write a plausible monster of the week episode' that could fit within canon, and love bouncing characters off of each other.

>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
Mostly for fun and practice– I write original fiction as well, and imo dabbling in fanfic first/during that process helped me both improve in a general craft sense and also become more confident in playing around with other genres and concepts I otherwise might not have, which has helped me make my own stories feel more varied rather than bogged down in the conventions and preconceived notions of their genres.

>Any beloved or be-loathed tropes?
Beloved: I am a simple creature, I love the stupid 'trapped in a cave/locked in a room' trope where two characters, who either don't like each other or are outright enemies, have to put their differences aside and work together to survive/sit it out kek

Loathed: Less a trope and more lame character interpretation, but turning a character into a generic suave 'daddy dom' cliche when their canon characterisation is light years away from that. Also not a trope, but since most of the fandoms I'm in are sci-fi, bad biology drives me up the wall lmao. Oh and any AU that removes the fantastical elements of canon to replace it with basic mundane humans in our setting (eg Coffeshop AU where everything is the same as in canon, the characters just run a cafe in that world? Charming, have fun, will read. Coffeeshop AU where it's now set in current year Generica and all the aliens/robots/etc are now just humans, and there's no fun tech or magic? Boring, uninspired, try again).

>What writing advice do you swear by?
Writing is the same as art, you need to learn your fundamentals, practice through study and sketches, and always try to improve (and you will).
Also imo editing is way easier to do if I print out my writing first, do edits on the pages, and re-type the whole thing. It's technically more work, but god do I catch more stuff. Also always read your writing out loud!

>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
When I was twelve I wrote a fic that started a trend within a fandom that is still going to this day lmao (no I will not elaborate)

is it just my fandoms or do you guys also experience the most kudos'd fics often being really bad

>>521888
Lot of the most kudo'd fics in my fandoms tend to be massive smut oneshot compilations tagged with like 20+ pairings, written per request, so it's clear it's less about quality and more about audience reach. Some of the regular fics with high numbers will also be ones that became popular through social media, so will align with eg tiktok tastes.

Personally, I just browse by recently updated and make my way through a character's tag rather than sort for popularity, as some of my favourite fics go unnoticed by a lot of fans because they eg lack shipping, don't ascribe to the popular fanon, or, in some fandoms, lack an E rating. Plus, plenty of people read fic for fandoms they're not in if they're instead looking for something that gets tagged (another reason why smut fics can do big numbers, people will read them for tagged kinks rather than fan reasons, so they have a wider audience), so that can skew results too.

>>521890
the top fic in one of my fandoms is this godawful male character/reader self-insert that's like 900 words lol

>>521888
The masses of fic writers and readers have bad taste. I imagine that they’re why studio executives keeps dumbing down and shitting up their movies

>>521890
The type of people who upload shit like that do it on purpose so they can be the most kudos'd, its so annoying. I just block out the tags of every ship I'm not looking for while searching

Gonna preface this with saying that I'm not an avid fanfic reader necessarily, I do read some occasionally then I regret it every single time lmao.
>What are your favorite types of fanfic to write or read?
Shipping. Usually M/M. I like it when it's close to canon and works very well it almost feels canon. I also have some self-insert stuff. And in either case I use loose ends in canon, things that never got addressed fully but were implied and build upon them to make something coherent and cohesive and faithful and shows love to the source material and characters. Although there are times were I end up retconning stuff because I disliked how it happened canonically but this is rare and it's usually about characters' deaths or how they canonically ended up. I don't like when fanfic writers get too arrogant and think they can do better than the original writer(s) so they change like 80% of the plot and character writing it doesn't feek like them anymore.
>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
Self-fulfillment really. I enjoy coming up with stories and scenarios, thinking up things that fit the canon so well and feel like natural progression of it. It's so satisfying when I manage to make something cool based on existing canon facts or events. I feel like a genius. It's very fun and evocative for the imagination. I'm a daydreamer so this is the perfect thing to do on the side with all these daydreams.
>Any beloved or beloathed tropes?
Idk tbh. I avoid lots of fanfics because of the tropes they try too hard to apply on characters, settings, and stories that aren't compatible with. I admit I'm a sucker for the conry getting drunk and fucking or kissing or confessing trope though. But it's more of a guilty pleasure because I recognize it's bad writing to force things to happen. "And they were roommates!" tier shit basically. I HATE the neverending AU shit and the crossover bullshit. I just want to read about my favorite ship going on a date during canon events, is that too much to ask for? But I guess if they change everything about the characters and setting then they can do whatever OOC shit they want and they don't need to pay attention to the characterization or storyline. It all leaves something to desire.
>What writing advice do you swear by?
Ngl my prose isn't good enough for me to give advice on that. But story making wise, try to write it into bullet points and think if it actually makes sense or are you making things happen for the sake of happening. Always get a 2nd opinion if you can. It doesn't hurt to revisit the canon material several times for inspo or to make sure you've got everything down right, maybe you'll discover a new thing you haven't thought of that we'll inspire new plot points or fix plotholes in your story.
>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
None, I write them, stop halfway, delete everything and never publish them. I'm retarded like that. But when I was a kid, I wrote husbando x self insert fanfic and posted it on Instagram, as one does, and actually got some fans? One even DM'ed when I stopped posting it to ask about what happened next lol. I also tried posting on Wettpad and rewrote it and changed stuff and some people liked it but I also abandoned that. There's a pattern…
>>521888
Even in small obscure fandoms I'm in, the fanfics are majority trash OOC, AU, crossover autism shit not worth reading at all. The worst part is it's all new despite the shows being old, so the quality is even lower because modern fans suck balls.
>>522032
Painful but true.

I relate so much to the rarepair nonnas. In fact, I am so dedicated to my own rare ships that my inner linguist is adamant on putting translation on my to-do list. My fanfics are all oneshots anyway. Plus, it's good practice #I must spread the word after all, kek.#
What do you nonnas think of translating your fanfics? Do you also do that?

>>522126
i don't translate but want to share the rarepair struggle, however, i feel like all my rarepair/small fandom fics are the ones i'm most proud of. i put more effort into them than my other fics. some popular pairing slop i wrote in maybe a couple of hours has 3k kudos. i'm about to orphan it. my small fandom fics are so much better despite having ~100. plus the comments are better.

>>522126
That’s admirable dedication anon. Are there foreign fans who’ll eat it when you’re done translating, or are you breaking new ground to set up things for later fans?
Personally I’m banking on any desperate rarepair fans to use translation apps bc while I translate a few lines here and there, I have nowhere near the stamina to translate entire pages of prose. My hat is off to you, nona.
>>522205
I also feel like rarepair fans leave better comments! I feel like having popular fandom slop is beneficial though, in the sense that it drives more eyes to your other works and can convince them to ship it too. Are you orphaning it more for a ‘personal artistic quality’ reason?

>>522238
hmm i guess, i also hate the fandom/ship lol. i don't think its popularity really drew in more attention though because it was a kind of basic fandom and what i usually write are darkfics. actually my rarepair stuff is on another account anyway.

Where's the threading from? Look familiar?

>>522266
A children's book, Click Clack Moo

>What are your favorite types of fanfic to write or read?
I love to read What If/AU fics based in canon, For Want Of A Nail type stuff, but I can never pull it off. I write a lot of smut but that's because my current biggest fandom is NSFW. In the past, I experimented quite a bit with different genres and formats, and I have an alternative account specifically for that.
>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
To just post and to have fun. Also to fuel my sickly mucus-eyed ego, straining desperately towards the sun
>Any beloved or beloathed tropes?
Beloved: time travel/set right what once went wrong/Groundhog Day loops, comedy/meta narrative, angst and lots of it, villain redemption stories
Beloathed: gendie shit, coffee shop AUs/setting swaps/in name only fics, text/chat fics, 99% of crossovers, fic written by moids
>What writing advice do you swear by?
Brevity is… wit.
>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
I've received fanart twice. Once when I was like 14 and once a few years ago. I treasure both pieces dearly. Nothing hypes me up more than seeing artists, regardless of skill, spend their time and effort on drawing something from my fics.

>What are your favorite types of fanfic to write or read?
one-shot smut for both. sorry. every once in awhile i read a non-smut multi-chapter fic but i don't realy have the attention span
>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
mostly it's to help get my obsession with a fandom or ship out. i roleplay a little still, and if i can't write the pairing i'm currently austitic over then i'll write fic.
>Any beloved or beloathed tropes?
idk if this counts but cutesy fluffy stuff in my dark horror fandoms. hate it. also hate trans fics. it's always ftm projection shit
>What writing advice do you swear by?
i think a lot of people struggle with "how" to write. for me, i take heavy inspiration from some of my favorite authors, which is something i mentioned last thread. if you don't think you have a "writing style", try writing in the way that an author you like (or a book alone) does. see if that inspires you. i mean, it's just fanfic, so who cares if you're "copying" the style of a published author.
>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
um, i have a ton of cumulative kudos/bookmarks/whatever spread between like 3 accounts so that doesn't matter much to me, but i recently got some comments about how my portrayal of the characters i wrote about was perfect and fit the canon so well and how my fics were some of the commenter's favorites on the site. that makes me feel great

>What are your favorite types of fanfic to write or read?
Either gen fic or plot focused with secondary M/F, about my favorite character in dicey situations.

>What’s your goal in writing fanfic, if you have any?
Get the brainworms out of my head.

>Any beloved or beloathed tropes?
Beloved: Physical male whump. Soft femdom. Enemies to lovers/with benefits done well. Slow burn. Canon compliant, but post-canon divergence can be amazing in the right hands.
Beloathed: Crossover. Woobified male angst. Trauma wank, therapy speak. Anything with children.

>What writing advice do you swear by?
Never let your bias decide which character wins an argument.

>Brag about your fanfic-related achievements here!
I have a small reach, but a handful of readers say my fic is their fandom favorite.

Anyone know how long it takes for the registration queue to get though requests. There’s like 50000 in line

I know ideas are cheap and plentiful but I hate having so many when my ideas are more interesting than the average fan’s and would be executed better while staying in character. Sometimes I wish I could be one of those prolific writers like blackkat and make a decent amount from patreons, but I know that’s just wishful thinking and I’d resent that invisible pressure and internet stranger audience when it’s just a hobby. Being a professionally published writer is honestly not a very respected job in the first place, but being a part-time fanfic writer for income? Income that comes from terminally onlines who reasonably feel more entitled to influence what I write about? I’d want to anhero.
My ego is deserved, but it sucks when it affects how much I can interact genuinely with other fanworks. I’m a snob and I love being pretentious, but I like liking people and chatting with each other on our creative works. It sucks when I read dialogue and I can feel the Hallmarkian ttt-tard concept that the author recently consumed. Not all ideas are good ideas! At the same time, I feel bad for sneering at their poly-abo-coomshit when they’ve shown me nothing but kind words for my works. In the end the only solution is to retreat to my hermit writing cave and re-emerge for five minutes at a time when this misanthropy resets.

>>522599
i'm kind of an elitist too. i actually deleted a fic i wrote recently (only like 4k words so whatever) because i felt like it was too good for my fandom lmao.

>>522599
>I wish I could be one of those prolific writers like blackkat
Please nonna love yourself, that bitch is temu-tier.

>>522764
what makes you think so? If you want to tell us in anonymized detail, of course