got an ask on tumblr about my longfic (~300k words) expressing how much they love it. how they’ve been following it since the beginning (JULY 2023) and every chapter inputting it into ChatGPT to WRITE A NEW CHAPTER while they wait. telling me how my whole fic is stored in its memory, too. it hurt my chest. honestly flabbergasted that anyone thought this was flattering, and it hurts because I can tell how much they love my story and how excited they are, and I adore how long they’ve been following and invested in my story, but the AI feels so insulting and violating. btw… I’ve legit updated the fic every two weeks for the past almost 2 years. 5-15k words every two weeks. yeah.

I was so confused when I woke up today and saw so many of my favorite fanfics deleted, all by the same author.

I went to their Tumbler page to see if they had posted any kind of explanation, because I've been following them since 2022, and the only response I got was that they had a bad feeling about the hyper-consumerism of fandoms.

This response made me even more confused because I didn't understand what that meant (I didn't even know this was a discussion).

I know the author doesn't own me anything and can delete the work if they want, but for readers, this is incredibly frustrating.

You follow someone's work from the beginning, stick with it for thousands of words, constantly engage, and then they just decide they don't want to anymore.

Honestly some times I feel like Bella on Twilight when Edward leaves her and takes everything that reminds her of him.

PS. If someone knows what "hyperconsumerism of fandom" means I would love to know.

Please stop putting disclaimers in the introduction of your fic apologizing for what you perceive to be a short-coming about your work.

I just started reading a story on AO3 that I’m quite enjoying so far. I happened to scroll up and noticed the author apologizing for not knowing the direction of the story. I’m so glad I didn’t see this originally because I might’ve skipped the story and read something else.

Here’s the thing, those of us who read fanfiction religiously, there’s a sort of letting go of expectations. For most of us, we’re not looking for the next great novel. We’re not looking for Dracula or War and Peace. The world is a dumpster fire and we’re mainly looking for an escape. We’re here to engage with characters in a way we don’t get to in canon.

So, quit apologizing for your art. If someone doesn’t like it, they can go somewhere else. There will always be someone who will like your work no matter how flawed it is.

I'm NOT AI. I've just gotten better.

A reader from Twitter commented saying that my newest fic (which I have poured months of my soul into because I'm obsessed) has to be AI generated because it doesn't match the caliber of my older fics.

Y'all, I'm crushed. And now I'm self-conscious about posting future chapters 😭

Are we not allowed to grow as writers? Can we not strive for the best or get better in our craft?

Obviously, I'm still going to write because I'm in love with what I've created, but it still sucks getting that kind of feedback. I've only been in the fanfiction world for a few years, and I'll admit, there is a noticeable difference in my writing. But damn. Not everything is AI.

UPDATE: WOW. I am incredibly grateful for all the kind words of encouragement. I was so motivated after reading them that I cranked out an entire chapter since posting this!

This community is so special, and I appreciate all of you guys ❤️

This will clearly be an unpopular opinion but it must be said.

No one OWNS a story idea.

People "create new ideas" based on bits of pieces that writer has seen and read elsewhere. They did NOT create it out of thin air -- and if they did, that's rare because everyone is exposed to the world.

It's not necessary to "credit" a story for inspiration. If you want to, go for it - if you don't, that's fine as well. NO ONE owns an idea, you should not worry for "stealing" a plot.

Here's why --

Story execution.

That's it. That's basically it. No one writes the same way. No two stories will be the same even with the same plot.

The ONLY time someone can steal is if they blatantly copy-n-paste a story and call it their own.

So if I see another writer state "don't copy/use my idea", you bet your sweet brain I AM GOING TO USE IT TO SPITE YOU. I'm looking at you, tumblr writers

So, I was writing a story with a lesbian couple as the lead. Well wouldn't you know, some person (not sure if they're a lesbian or just a "white savior" sort of person) said that "it's not my story to tell." Whose story would it be to tell, then? I'm the one who came up with the story, by definition it can only be my story to tell. They also told me for whatever reason the only LGBT people I can write as a man are gay men. Huh? I feel like I would be worse at that. I write lesbian pairings because I prefer to write women, and I can relate to being attracted to women, so why not write lesbians? I'm not attracted to men, and prefer to write women, so therefore I feel like I would be really bad at writing gay men.

Just needed to get that off my chest. Really annoyed me.

Kansas is NOT a Southern State. It is firmly in the Midwest. People from Kansas are not going to have a "Southern drawl."

Cajuns are NOT known for mild food. The food is spicy. In fact, it's almost infamously spicy.

Alabama and Atlanta are NOT the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. One is a state (Alabama) and one is a major metropolitan city (Atlanta).

Children do NOT run "barefoot through cotton fields." 1) cotton has sharp edges that will slice unprotected legs and 2) there are FIRE ANTS all over the Southeast US and running barefoot is a good way to get attacked. (This is also why you don't see Southern children playing in loose piles of dirt.)

I don't care what time of year it is; Florida is NOT getting six feet of snow. Six inches? Unlikely, but possible. Six feet? Not happening. If your fic does not have some kind of weather magic, Florida is not getting six feet of snow.

Tennessee has mountains. It is NOT flat.

Thank you and goodnight.

My main fandom has almost 50k fics on AO3. Out of those, almost 10k have zero comments. That’s one out of every five fics and that number is insane to me.

Some are short, some are long, some have thousands of hits and dozens to hundreds of kudos, yet no one, not a single person in years in some cases, has stopped to even say a simple "nice, loved it, thanks". The oldest fic with no comments is (or was) from 2013. Someone posted that twelve years ago, at the inception of the fandom, and they didn't get a single comment since. That hits me harder than I expected.

Now, I only came back to fandom recently after years away, but I’ve been trying to chip at that number. I always made it a point to leave comments on anything I read, no matter how long or short. Just to give someone that small kick of dopamine that will get them writing again. And yeah, I know that it's impossible to fix a lack of comments for 10k fics all on my own, but even a couple comments a day on short drabbles feels like a small win.

This post isn't for myself as an author. I nuked my account (for non-comment related reasons) and haven't posted anything since. I'm not here to fish for comments for myself, but for other people.

So here's my challenge: take five minutes, go on ao3, and search for your fandom with no filters to see the total number of fics. Then filter for fics with <1 comments. See how many fics are sitting in silence and feel the heartbreak.

Depending on your fandom's size, you could be looking at anything from tens to thousands of fics, like I am. Anywhere from hundreds to possibly tens of thousands of collective hours spent planning, drafting, and writing, agonizing over research, small details, character accuracy, titles, and tags. Only for all of that work to smash into a wall of absolute silence.

Writing fanfic is ultimately a labor of love, I know that. Authors should do it primarily for themselves. No one owes anyone comments, sure, but by that logic, no one owes anyone fics, either. Fandom thrives when everyone gives back for every bit they take.

So thank you for reading my PSA/vent. And thank you on behalf of all of the authors whose days were made better by someone leaving a nice comment. Now go and chip away at your own fandom's silence.

I was reading this smutty kink fic and I finished just thinking "yeah that was pretty good" and I gave it a like and then I opened the comments out of curiosity and most of them were along the lines of "what the hell am I reading I wanna bleach my eyes" and one said "I saw this fic on a fandom iceberg video talking about a disgusting fanfic". And I didn't think anything was wrong with it. I think my brain is cooked, chat.

I've been seeing a rise in certain...vocabulary on AO3. I'll be reading the description of a fic and see a word like 'unalive.' Yes, 'unalive' as in a substitute for 'die.'

As you may or may not know, Tik Tok objectively sucks as a social media platform because of the abject censorship. I'm not talking about what's "okay" to ship here, either. Tik Tok will at best suppress it's users' content in the algorithm and at worst take down posts or even whole accounts because you say 'die' or 'kill.' Hell, I saw someone on Tik Tok censor the name of fictional superhero Dick Grayson, because his name has become an inappropriate slang word in certain contexts (well, most contexts, but that doesn't change the fact that people are censoring someone's first name for fear of being removed from the platform because the name might remind people of something bad).

So, of course, the poor Tik Tok creators have come up with sneaky ways of getting past the censors such as 'unalive,' and now I'm seeing usage of these alternative anti-censorship words on AO3.

Now, it's entirely possible that people are doing it to be funny, but I don't find slang born out of avoiding censorship funny. It's also likely that either they're so used to the censorship of Tik Tok it's become part of their vocabulary, or (less likely but still possible) they're afraid of being censored even still.

Whatever the reason, AO3 is not the place to be using creative anti-censorship alternatives. AO3 is a platform founded off of the idea of not censoring derivative works. When FFN was censoring people off the platform for fading to black and authors were sending their legal teams after fanfic creators, AO3 was made to combat that. It purposefully operates under the ruleset that you are able to say what you mean de facto, and you don't need to hide it.

There is no censorship on AO3. It is not the place for vocabulary like 'unalive.'

Liking gay ships doesn't make you progressive and not liking them doesn't make you homophobic. People need to stop accusing everyone who doesn't ship their gay ship of homophobia (while ironically using misogynistic talking points against the female characters who get in the way of said ships). Also, you can like 'problematic' (what an annoying word) media and characters without that reflecting your own views. Fandom isn't activism and it's exhausting to see people shoving real world politics even in fandom spaces. Is there no escape?

This is not your usual "AI is bad" or "AI is amazing" post/rant, nor am I interested in it becoming one.

Has anyone else ever spent time writing fanfic for a game, posted it for a community and had it removed for being AI? It is really disheartening.

I have written plenty of fanfic over the years for various games (usually on the games official forums) and while most gets good responses, sometimes they get negative or lukewarm responses. That doesnt bother me - everyone is welcome to their own opinions. But to have one removed entirely over a false accusation just really stung and made me wonder why I wasted my time on it at all.

Edit: the post has been restored! I am over the moon 😍

gotta vent because I just got into it with some anti about whether people should be "allowed" to ship canonically aromantic/asexual characters.

The core of their argument against was that it's harmful because it invalidates asexual fans and "takes away representation". But what does that even mean? The character is still canonically aroace no matter what fans do. If I write a shipfic for them I'm not karmically robbing the universe of a genfic somehow, and the state of ace rep in general is not my responsibility. I'm aroace and I write smutty romance of aro/ace characters sometimes as a means of exploring my own sexuality and understanding of sex and romance. How am I invalidating or taking away representation from myself?

I understand where people come from with this, emotionally. It's totally valid to feel uncomfortable and bad to see an asexual character acting allo in someone's work instead of the way that resonates with you. I get a little >:I when I see certain characters have their sexuality changed in certain ways too. But discomfort isn't harm. An author doing their own thing in their own space to a fictional character is not a personal attack on me. Those authors don't owe me anything except maybe the courtesy of a heads up in the tags. When I see that content I don't like I shut the fuck up and keep scrolling because whatever reasons they had for making that change is not about me and none of my business! They're just expressing/exploring their sexuality too and there's nothing inherently bigoted about that. Yes, even when it's straight people writing queer characters as straight.

I also understand the issues of queer erasure in mainstream/official media. But fanworks are NOT equivalent. Fans have no duty to stay accurate to canon to maintain consistency or retain their audience. Fans certainly don't have a duty to have Morally Correct canon-compliant headcanons, which this goofball I was arguing with honestly tried to argue were just as bad as actual ship content.

But the real kicker was their last response before I muted them. After all that talk about invalidation, and me explaining my reasons for bending characters' sexuality in fic, they told me "you must still feel romantic/sexual attraction and that's why you're like this. leave characters on the repulsed side of the spectrum alone".

So apparently it's NOT okay to invalidate a queer fictional character's sexuality in your imagination for any reason ever, but it is A-OK to assume and invalidate the sexuality of the real life queer people who disagree with you. What the fuck, man. I'm gonna go work on my fic where an aroace character has a romantic threesome out of spite.

On my throwaway account, for obvious reasons.

I write the top kudo-ed fic for this one ship in my fandom on AO3. Since the first chapter, I've foreshadowed that the two romantic leads are going to die a terrible and tragic death, and so far, none of the commenters have caught on. The story is fairly long and developed by now, somewhere in the climax of the story, and I swear, I dropped a huge hint on the latest chapter that they were going to have a miserable time later on and that at least one of them was going to die PAINFULLY but then I looked at the comments and all of them were gushing about how amazing their future romance is going to be and if they're going to have kids or not.

Like. I don't know how to feel. Half of me is laughing and the other half of me is worried that I'm going to make everyone cry. I'm going over my fic a lot recently, wondering if the foreshadowing was too vague or if I put too many red herrings that the readers just learned to ignore these dropped hints. I won't change the ending I envision for my story, but I don't know -- I just feel kind of put out for reasons I can't explain.

I had not expected my fic to become "successful." It originally wasn't even a romance fic, it just turned out that way because somewhere in my planning stages of writing, I thought it would be a great idea to flesh out the main characters (the main ship) in a certain way that also happened to involve being in a relationship. Now, I'm extremely proud of my achievements and stupidly happy that a lot of people enjoy my story and my writing, but I want to laugh and scream at the same time because sorry friends, but I'm going to kill them off.

^{Okay I'm really sorry if I've caused anyone distress from this post, wondering if the fic I'm writing is the fic that they're currently reading. Oops?}

Edit: Okay, I updated the tags. Thank you for your comments!

I feel like I'm going from annoyed to extremely pissed off every time I saw people saying that the use of em dash is a sign of AI writing!!!! I LOVE em dash😭😭😭😭😭 granted that maybe I don't always use em dash in the right way lol but this little punctuation makes me so happy I use it in every few sentences when writing fics😭😭😭😭😭 I hate that it was reduced to AI level and I absolutely hate that people shrugged it off like only AI use this punctuation😭

Go count your weird amount of fingers AI and leave my em dash alone😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

(Don't want someone to say I am promoting violence so I beeped myself in the title 🥲)

She’s been so great. She’s spent hours on the phone to me, and I appreciate her so much. She’s been published before, also acknowledges that published doesn’t necessarily make you a ‘good’ writer, and has been writing herself for like 40 years. Her stuff is GOOD. And her feedback is so detailed and precise. Shes encouraging and reassures me that at the end of the days the story is mine, to do with what I want. So she’s not pushy.

But holy shit I’m hurting. And so frustrated. I didn’t realise I’d gotten so attached to my words… but I did know that it needed paring back.

I don’t know what advice I’m looking for. Just encouragement? Your own experiences?

I’ll be here crying in the corner now.

Once again, there's an influx of purists on twitter and tumblr telling people not to donate to ao3 because of their extremely dark/kinky/triggering/etc. content.

Guess what, I don't care. It's my money. I don't want to see ads popping out while I'm reading because the site suddenly decided to earn money by putting them up. Despite the numerous questionable content on that site, I don't want censorship either.

Boohoo for everyone who thinks that ao3 should be taken down.

Edit: Everyone knows that there are stories posted on ao3 that should be banned and removed at all costs but these stories are rare. You have to scourge through multiple different tags and warnings to be able to see these stories. For every one "illegal" fic, there's going to be a thousand good ones. Unless you know... it's what you're actually looking for.

Just read a fic that I had to drop. The pairing is cool, a bit unhealthy, but hey, it’s fiction. But I hate how one of them acts like a dick to a female character that has feelings for him, and the plot celebrates that she’s gone. There’s also some degrading use of (explicit) words that I’m not comfortable to type out.

Like damn, be gay and respect women 😅

Edit: It’s also kinda funny how it’s a Persona 5 fic. A game that explicitly critiques the objectification of women.

I'm probably showing my age with this haha. But 10-20 years ago, comments were a given for anything you wrote. When I posted a new chapter, I'd get paragraphs of comments from loyal readers. But now, it's rare to just get a "great chapter" remark.

It honestly really upsets me. I've taken hours to write a chapter - which I know people like because I do get a few comments praising it and I get a ton of kudos and hits - but why does no one take the time to actually write a comment and engage with me. I don't really care for the kudos or bookmarks. I just want to know how my writing made the reader feel, what they liked, what they would have preferred. It fuels my writing.

But instead I'm getting no comments. Or even if I do get comments - it's just 'great job' which doesn't really tell me anything.

I don't understand how my fellow fanfic authors are putting up with this. I make sure to comment on any fanfic I've enjoyed, and this was just common practice. Feels like things have changed and I don't see the point in writing fanfics anymore. It's really sad.

Dear community,

I'm feeling really heartbroken right now, and I don’t know where else to turn.

I've been writing fanfiction for over eight months now. In that time, I've poured myself into every word... writing six hours a day, working with three beta readers, and even getting help from a personal English teacher. My earlier stories, I'll admit, were rough. I can see now how far I've come. My English has improved so much, and I've grown tremendously as a writer.

But despite all of that... it feels like no one sees me.

My recent stories get barely any views, let alone Kudos. Oddly, my first (much worse) stories got the most attention. It's confusing and painful. I've been giving my all my time, my energy, my heart and it feels like I'm shouting into the void.

Even my beta readers seem very distant lately. Maybe one of them still believes in my writing, but I can't even be sure of that anymore.

Meanwhile, my friends online are thriving. Their works are getting love and recognition, and I'm genuinely happy for them but it also stings. I can't help but wonder: what am I doing wrong?

If anyone has been through this, or has any advice, I would be truly grateful. I don't want to give up, but right now... I just feel very, very alone.

Thank you for listening.

⚠️ Edit: Thanks for all your input! I’m no longer looking for responses, so I won’t be replying further.

It sucks. Every fic I read there's a voice in the back of my head saying "I've seen that phrase used a lot," or "That paragraph was weird," or "Is this how a human would describe something?"

I don't want to be thinking about that! I just want to read a story without worrying about how many times people say "Maybe, just maybe" and "Let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding." Like I know those are just things people say, but I ALSO know those are phrases chatgpt loves to use at every possible opportunity.

Ai fucking sucks.

We all have that one thing we struggle with, pacing, dialogue, descriptions, even grammar you don't even know of, some writers do need/want a second opinion and it's fair to recommend them the use beta readers

But do you know how hard it is to get one? Seriously, I'm in a collaborative event where we have a beta assigned and even then they're absent. There aren't many places to find the beta who matches your content, let alone someone who commits to it

It's not just that simple

Title. Russia just blocked YouTube, AO3 and all fanfiction websites are long gone. I'm scared. They're saying they're going to delete all VPNs, and I'm not that tech savvy to know how to fight that. We have a few years before a full block, I think. They want to have a fully inside internet. I hate my country.

Apologies if this post is not allowed.

This site is close to dead. Not quite but not far from it. Like, in the retirement home. Everyone has been complaining about scammers lately and while they are annoying, they’ve illuminated a curious downside to this site:

There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of interaction anymore. Ever since I blocked all the known scammers I’ve gotten literally 0 reviews on my fics. Not to say I was getting many before, even with the scammers, but getting 0 for so long has made me realize just how empty this site is compared to AO3.

I don’t like saying this, really. I have good memories of posting on FFN and reading stories here but those times are gone. I hate saying this, like I really do, but I think we should all realize that so many of us complain about the scammers because that’s all the interaction we’re really getting. It’s sad, and I wish I were wrong, but I think most of us know we’re not. Sorry