Sing–and singing–remember, your song dies and changes; and is not here to-morrow, any more than the wind blowing ten thousand years ago.
Tag: fanfic
It’s been actual years since I’ve had the energy or inspiration for writing. Grad school is kind of all consuming in terms of creative juices.
But, uh, as tumblr is burning down around us, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is the best thing I’ve seen in ages. So, yeah. Stay tuned, friends. I’m going to ride this wave as long as it lasts.
P.S. My writing will always and forever be on ao3 under blackash26
As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?
I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.“ He was the original Gary Stu). Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic. In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck. Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot–although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF–and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion. Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome. (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.) People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of? There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man! (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)
I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship–barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real–and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history. First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place. And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together). And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn. And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you. Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing. And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work–to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time. A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well).
What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.
I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more. I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not–and I know how snobbish this sounds–particularly well-written. That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”–there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. That’s why fic is awesome–it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling. But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing. There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago.
But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist. (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)
A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.
The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!
Hold up, what?
I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.
Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm.
Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it.
Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.
The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button.
Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.
Don’t ruin a stranger’s day or week or hobby because you “know better” and somehow think you need to prove it. You don’t.
A friend and I were scowling over that same post last night, and this is a much kinder response than the one that I started writing. I love and agree with 100% of what you’ve said here, but I’d like to go a step farther, because I think that fandom’s general evolution away from negative feedback is about more than just our amateur status. I always see the assumption in the pro-unsolicited-criticism camp that negative criticism is somehow the only thing that can ever help a writer improve, and I’ve always found that idea to be absolute horseshit. Hearing things that people liked about my work isn’t some kind of newfangled emotional safety feature that’s keeping my fandom babyhood intact, it’s genuinely helpful to me as a writer. Not only in the sense that it feels nice and makes me motivated to write more, but in the sense that it gives me specific information about how a reader responded to my work which I can then use to do an even more enjoyable job of engaging my fellow fans for fun the next time I write something. Friendly positive comments ARE constructive criticism!!
Also (and I’d love to get your perspective on this as an editor?) I’ve found that negative criticism tends to be very work-specific. It’s stuff like “don’t do this particular thing at this particular time,” or “I didn’t like that this specific character said this specific thing,” etc. That can be incredibly useful during the editing phase because it helps me polish a specific piece of writing. I can’t say enough good stuff about literally every editor and beta reader I’ve ever worked with, because each one of them made the stories they worked on stronger and more enjoyable, and they certainly didn’t limit themselves to unquestioning praise in their feedback.
Once I’ve posted (or published) a story, though, I am done editing it. I’m done fixing it, I’m done adjusting it, I’m probably done even thinking about it for at least a week. I mean, sure, if you spot a giant typo, fine, let me know, but someone telling me they didn’t like the pacing or that the characterization was all wrong or that my sentence structure didn’t fit the genre or whatever is absolutely useless, both to that particular work and to my writing as a whole. The thing is done. It’s built. Unless I have unwittingly perpetuated some kind of miserable bigotry or whatever, I am moving on to the next thing, which is very likely to be an entirely different thing. I’m genuinely sorry if a reader didn’t enjoy it, but for the love of the little baby jesus in the hay, why are they still wasting time on something they didn’t like when there’s an entire internet of other things out there for them to discover???
For whatever reason, positive notes about things I did right in a story are much easier for me to carry forward and apply to whatever I might work on next. Knowing that someone liked a scene or an idea or even a particular line tells me that all the various technical things I did to make that part of the story happen were successfully deployed. Knowing what I did right for readers lets me do it again, lets me build on it, lets me ponder new directions that I might go with whatever the thing was, even if I’m doing that in a completely different story or piece of writing.
So yeah, negative feedback on completed fic or published work that’s disguised as “constructive criticism” isn’t just kind of asshole-ish and antithetical to everything that fandom means to most of us, it also tends to be genuinely unhelpful in … basically every way. Especially when you compare it to how helpful a positive comment of the same duration and detail would have been, both to the writer’s relationship with their hobby and to their growth as an artist.
THIS IS SUCH A GREAT ADDITION TO MY POST! MAX KUDOS. I agree with (and love) everything you’ve said 100%.
I think something most people don’t realize is that an editor’s (and beta’s) job isn’t to tear a work to shreds; it shouldn’t revolve around negativity at all. Ideally, an editor works with an author to yes, fix errors, but mostly to read, observe, analyze, and ask questions the author (who is so close to the work) might not have thought about. The editor is trying to preemptively ask the questions a confused reader might ask, so the reader never has to ask them. Those answers then help the author clarify, polish, and further build their work into something even better. Absolutely work-specific.
As always, everything dogfather-related is tagged with the dogfather and story updates are tagged with dogfather story post. If you get antsy waiting for the next update, check out my AO3 or the zines and comics on my Gumroad. I’ll have a longer update in the next couple of days, I promise!
THE BOY WHO LIVES!
Eight years ago, it was discovered that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, only known survivor of the Killing Curse, had vanished. Though the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances of his disappearance, it was widely believed that rogue Death Eaters were the likely culprits. The case has gone unsolved, drawing harsh criticism of the Aurors from numerous Ministry officials– until now.
Following a lead from an anonymous source, the Daily Prophet has learned that in fact Harry Potter has been living under an assumed name, among Muggles, and is currently a first-year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While no Hogwarts staff could be reached for comment–
The phone rings, and Harry jumps, looking up from the newspaper. Everyone else is nervy, too: Ron looks around wildly for the source of the noise, and Moony and Padfoot are trying to hide the fact that they both went for their wands.
“Hello?” Harry’s mum says. “Oh. No, dear, it’s fine, it’s not too early. Harry’s just here.”
She waves him over, and hands him the phone.
“Harry, have you seen the newspaper this morning?” Hermione asks.
He has– and yes, he’s all right– and no, of course he knows she didn’t tell anyone– and really, it could have been anyone– and hang on, what did Hermione mean about London?
“Well, we can’t go now, can we?” says Hermione.
“Of course we can,” says Harry.
He realizes, suddenly, that the kitchen has gone very quiet.
“Hermione? I’ll call you back,” says Harry.
What follows is not technically a row, because everyone involved is trying very hard not to shout.
“You can’t go wandering London with a target on your back,” Padfoot insists.
“You and Moony will be with us,” Harry says.
“Hate to say it, but Diagon Alley will be a madhouse,” says Ron.
“Then we won’t go to Diagon,” Harry says.
“We ought to wait until things calm down,” says Harry’s mum.
“But then Ron and Hermione won’t be able to come with us,” says Harry. “And that’s not fair.”
“We ought to talk to Dumbledore,” says Remus. “And Molly and Arthur.”
Harry sets his jaw in a way that is breathtakingly familiar to half the adults in the room. “We should ask Ron’s mum and dad if it’s okay. But I don’t care if a bunch of people want to make a fuss about Harry Potter. I’m not doing anything differently.”
“Quite right,” says Harry’s dad.
(Tim and Caro have rarely given their sweet-natured son much cause to really dig his heels in, but they know he’s only stubborn about the things that truly matter.)
(later, Remus says “He could have been Lily, just then,” and Sirius nods.)
So Harry calls Hermione back, and Ron owls his parents, and Sirius re-casts half the house’s wards in a fit of paranoia.
But once they winnow down the itinerary to only the places they’re least likely to meet any wizards, and Ron’s parents owl their rather bewildered approval, and Dumbledore benignly stonewalls the Aurors into submission—
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise – female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship – and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios – this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming – again, for the sake of simplicity – that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom – and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women – for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!
Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.
I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.
This doesn’t even account for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well.
But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.
Yay, mathy arguments. 🙂
This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.
In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het). (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.
All great points. Another thing I notice is that many shows are built around the idea that the team or the partner is the most important thing in the universe. Watch any buddy cop show, and half of the episodes have a character on a date that is inevitably interrupted because The Job comes first… except “The Job” actually means “My Partner”.
When it’s a male-female buddy show, all of the failed relationships are usually, canonically, because the leads belong together. (Look at early Bones: she dates that guy who is his old friend and clearly a stand-in for him. They break up because *coughcoughhandwave*. That stuff happens constantly.) Male-male buddy shows write the central relationship the exact same way except that they expect us to read it as platonic.
Long before it becomes canon, the potential ship of Mulder/Scully or Booth/Bones or whatever lead male/female couple consumes the fandom. It’s not about the genders involved. Rizzoli/Isles was like this too.
If canon tells us that no other relationship has ever measured up to this one, why should we keep them apart? Don’t like slash of your shows, prissy writers? Then stop writing all of your leads locked in epic One True Love romance novel relationships with their same-sex coworkers. Give them warm, funny, interesting love interests, not cardboard cutouts…
And then we will ship an OT3.
I would like to add a probably problematic addendum to this. In that in certain pieces of media that are pretty much all centered around families–where everyone interesting is related to each other in some way–that makes the probability that incest ships will get somewhat popular fairly high. Simply because there aren’t any real OPTIONS for ships that aren’t in some way incestuous or otherwise weird and taboo, like huge age gaps or really noticeably unbalanced power dynamics.
I’m not CONDONING shipping those things. I am simply saying that when you decry the horrific depravity of fandom for daring to ship two people who are related, maybe consider the statistics involved, and consider HOW those ships are commonly shipped over the fact that they are at all. Like if you find that fans are going out of their way to write characters who are siblings as not related to each other in AU for fic or whatever then like?? Yeah. That’s probably a factor.
I’ve been in different fandoms for ten years so far, and in that time, I also happen to have gotten a Sociology degree. And these are the “rules” I’ve picked up on.
1) Shipping will happen. Accept it and plan for it.
2)The most popular ship will be amongst whoever character’s inner life, relationships, and screen time are delved into the most–as long as…
Addendum to 2: they’re marginally attractive. If that important main character happens to be, say, a talking dog, then most of the fandom will resist and ship other things because of the “marginally attractive” rule. Others will come up with elaborate body switch/humanization/whatever plots to handwave it away and imagine the dog looking like their favorite actor. There will be a small group who straight up ships the dog as is anyway, but waaaaaay smaller than if it was a normal attractive male human. But still–you’ve put a talking dog in center stage, so prepare for fanfic to be written about it in some way. It will just be significantly less if it breaks the “marginally attractive” rule.
3)There will always be outliers in fandom. Just because a fanfic exists of Roy Orbison in clingfilm, doesn’t mean much. That just tells us about the proclivities of that particular dude who write it. When we notice overall TRENDS and popular ships of broad swaths of people, then we can start seeing actual patterns. So there WILL be people who break these rules in disturbing ways, but those people are exceptions to the rule that don’t discount the overall trend.
Now, WHAT fandom and people as a whole considers acceptable for the “generally attractive” rule, that’s when we can notice some interesting things. The majority of fandoms where I’ve seen lots and lots and LOTS of ships around what are technically underage teenagers are from media that are a)Films with characters played by much older actors, and b)written narratives where we can imagine the characters as said much older actors. Our idea of what certain ages “look like” is warped pretty heavily from Hollywood casting much older people in the roles. Fanart of teenage characters from written works usually bear this out–they will usually be drawn older than an actual person that age tends to look.
Now, let’s apply this rule to one of the mysteries of Tumblr: The goddamn Onceler. Now WHY of all goddamn things the completely mediocre Lorax movie got so much fanart and fanfiction attention, I don’t know. I’m still picking apart what creates MORE fanfic of one media property over another(its not just popularity–lots of book series can be popular but have bupkis for fic), but I have a feeling, even if I did, the goddamn Lorax would probably still end up as a paradox. But when you look at the characters with ACTUAL SCREEN TIME in the movie, it becomes easy to apply this rule. The only people with significant lines and screen time are characters who are VERY clearly children, a strange little creature voiced by Danny Devito, and the Onceler. The only marginally attractive one is the Onceler, so the only possible option fandom could come up with is to pair him with HIMSELF from the FUTURE.
When you frame it in terms of how fandom makes decisions on who gets shipped, it makes perfect sense. Weird Onceler time shipping was bound to happen just from how the movie is written. If your only alternatives are straight-up pedophilia and imagining this strange orange creature with DeVito voice having sex, then yes, I’d choose shipping the Onceler with a future version of himself too.
Let apply it to another fandom: Supernatural. Now, any fan of that show can tell you that for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time, everyone but the two main characters–who are brothers–dies around them. ESPECIALLY if you’re presented as a love interest in any way. The two attractive brothers have absolutely no one to depend on but each other, only about once a season visiting a long-time associate holed up in a bunker, who provides pretty much only resources and infodumps(spoiler alert! They also inevitably die, it just takes longer). Think of the rules: the Supernatural writers basically wrote their fandom into either writing incest, or sitting on their hands and shipping nothing at all. I will certainly not deny that incest is a kink some people have, but statistically there are no doubt lots of shippers in Supernatural who never thought of doing such a thing–and for which the kink has no particular thrill–who have nevertheless been roped into doing so just because the need to write SOMETHING to comfort those beleaguered characters.
After Supernatural had an episode or two lampooning fan culture and generally letting the audience know they were aware of their fandom, they finally wised up that they’d put their fans in this weird position and gave the brothers the consistent angel associate, Castiel. But this was seasons and seasons late in the game, so for some, that damage has already been done, so to speak.
You’ve made a show where most of the characters are robots, like Transformers? Well, prepare for written robot sex. You’ve written a show about humanized animals and their adventures? Congratulations, you’ve made furries. You can apply this to basically anything.
I think this also ties in with fandom’s accepted problem with racial minority characters as well. If the show just shoves a character in there for diversity’s sake and the writers seem unwilling/afraid to actually use a character, then the fandom won’t either. The characters fandom will write the most about will statistically be white males, because those are statistically the most common heroes and characters with the most development and screen time. Now, does the usual unconscious bias of fans also hurt matters? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. But fans also aren’t writing in a vacuum. They’re building off the original work, and some of the flaws of the original are going to come through.
It’s amazing to see how this post has grown and the amazing additions to it.
Now THIS is fandom discourse worth reading
But also, it’s worth pointing out that fandom does itself create cultures and trends which feed into one another.
I honestly think that’s actually where the Lorax fandom on tumblr came from. Around about the time it came out was when fan creators were getting really good at meshing together computer animated films in the form of GIFs and fan videos, combining movies like Rapunzel, Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, and Rise of the Guardians into stuff like the Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons mash-ups. Fandom were expressly looking for content from pretty, high-budget animated films. Edits and mash-ups subsequently lead to ideas, which creates fic and fanart, and this new content becomes a source of fuel and interaction for further fandom escapades. However, if you don’t have the technical skills to make the necessary video and image edits, you’re probably just going to end up jumping into whatever fandom has content you’ve seen/accessed, and doing stuff like roleplay blogs, fics, headcanons, etc for that one. Hence, Onceler blowing up Tumblr.
Teen Wolf became a fandom sensation in part because it gave teens who had been interacting with the Supernatural fandom an outlet that was geared more towards their interests, and gave Supernatural fans fresh content with a familiar formula. A lot of what happened in Teen Wolf fandom was built off of trends that had been established in Supernatural fandom. And SuperWhoLock, like Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons and other fandom mash-ups, was a result of lots of crossover between fans that made it easy for people to just move around between those fandoms, and, with a wide audience and lots of content being created, to also contribute something with a certain degree of guaranteed success and attention.
But this networking creates trends that are problems, too. Namely, the established nature of slash fandom and the way in which it manifests means that a lot of people just expressly go looking for two white dudes in any major franchise, and then start shipping them together. Slash is a fandom genre unto itself now, and people know how it works and what to expect from it, so they perpetuate it and look to mainstream content to provide specific tools for it – regardless of what got them into it in the first place. Even when there are other viable and prominent alternatives in media, even when things get more diverse, the ‘slash fans’ now look for specific elements to reshape in particular ways for an audience who knows how to look for it. Rather than seeing two characters in the series and feeling inspired to ship them, they instead look for the basic elements that appeal to them (and it’s not just slash that does this, either, among M/F pairings, villain x heroine is commonly subjected to this).
This can also happen inadvertently when a series is building off of an existing fandom, like when the Star Trek Reboot came out, and new fans had a plethora of existing Kirk/Spock fanfiction to sink their teeth into. Or when Iron Man came out and, even though a Captain America movie hadn’t even been hinted at, the Steve/Tony ship saw a dramatic upswing in interest, and previously tiny archives of fanfiction started to blow up.
Fandoms have had issues with racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc just the same as mainstream fiction, but in different ways and with unique trends that have carried through and impacted one another. Fandom is not purely reacting to the source material – it’s also reacting to the rest of fandom, and to the fandoms around it. Usually that’s the missing factor in people’s data. Why would Iron Man/Captain America become a huge ship for a movie that didn’t even have Captain America in it? Even a minor appearance in the actual film should have put someone else over the top, and even if we go ‘fandom was too sexist for Pepper and too racist for Rhodey’, there was still Happy. But that discounts the influence of fans from the comics influencing the rush of movie fans, and also the existing fandom content for the Steve/Tony ship.
So fandom has its own media trends that mean that a lot of people now look to mainstream offerings just for specific content that they can bring back to fandom in ways they find entertaining. Shippable hot dudes. Villain x heroine or hero x rival or ‘best friend’ dynamics that fit easily with ship formats. Unfortunately, this can actually cause catastrophe when the mainstream media finally breaks form and does something diverse, because even people who want to manipulate those elements don’t necessarily know how to work with something that isn’t staring at a baseline of ‘zero’ in terms of representation. And trying to apply fandom concepts that all operate under the presumption of a mostly white, straight, cisgender cast can backfire SPECTACULARLY when you’re not actually working with that.
I think growing up on a steady diet of fanfiction made me hate traditional book genres. Like, I don’t care what the overall “theme” is. Gimme the tags. Is there character death? Sibling rivalry? Snarky best friend? That’ll do way more to get me into a book than slotting it into one of a dozen strictly defined boxes that tells me almost nothing.
Last time I was in a bookstore I was rifling through the paperbacks going “where the hell is the Content rating? is this ‘mature’ or are we in for actual funtimes here? And where are the Content Warnings? whatcha got here book? You gonna get weird on me?” So really, Ao3 has me spoiled.
This gave me a brilliant idea for book displays at the library. #angst #enemies to lovers #plot twist
You are a good librarian!
I only have flat shelves to work with but…. I did it.
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. YOU ARE A GOD AMONGST MORTALS.
The very best writing tip you will ever hear is this:
Analyze stories.
Don’t just listen to what other storytellers say you should do, figure out what you like about the stories you enjoy and learn to replicate that.
Want to learn about pacing? Examine stories you think flow fantastically. Want to learn about description? Study your favorite author’s descriptions. Want to learn about characterization? Critique your favorite characters. Want to learn about foreshadowing? Explore how it’s done in stories where the plot twist blew your mind.
Storytellers giving advice to other storytellers is fantastic and useful, but you will never know something as thoroughly as you know the things you figure out for yourself.
And by analyzing the stories you love instead of listening blindly to advice, you’ll never be swayed by the bias of other writers and you’ll never take in advice that’s suited for a story you wouldn’t enjoy writing.
So put on some thinking caps and go analyze those stories.
1.) The dwarves spar as they journey, in the mornings or evenings, or sometimes when they break for the midday meal. Sometimes they divide into teams, sometimes it’s a massive free-for-all, and not even the brothers and family units among them will help one another. Sometimes one dwarf stands on a rock and the goal is to knock him down and take his place and defend it alone, other times they simply pile into each other and all may use the terrain however they please. Sometimes they all attack Thorin at once, and he holds them off with sword and axe, or sword and the oaken branch that gave him his name, or the sword alone, or barefisted, wrestling and biting and kicking. Sometimes they have one-on-one spars, or two-on-one or small groups against other small groups. No one seems to hold back at all. The company goes around with bruises, groaning as they ride the next day with wrenched muscles, ruefully let each other help staunch a bleeding wound.
“Someone’s going to get killed,” Bilbo had said with certainty after a week of watching this, but Gandalf only smiled.
He gained some perspective when, during an unarmed melee, Balin neatly sidestepped a punch from Dori that smashed the tree behind him to splinters. Because he’s seen dwarves take blows from Dori before, and they always leave bruises that last for days– but never more than that.
Fili wasn’t sparring that day– he was still recovering from the near-drowning– and thus was sharpening his swords next to Bilbo and keeping one eye on the proceedings, yelling out the occasional encouragement or taunt.
“What’re you gawping at there, Mister Baggins?”
“Ori’s never managed to raise a single bruise on any of you,” he said slowly. “What would happen if he struck me?”
“Don’t worry, Gandalf warned us all not to. You Shirelings are a soft little folk, hm? ‘–but they’ll surprise you, Master Dwarf,’ you know how he is.”
“Soft is what you call not having a harder skull than a tree, is it?”
“Couldn’t’ve been a very hard wood,” Fili snorted. “Half-dead, too. Dori’s pulling his punches. He has to, he’s stronger than Dwalin even.” He glanced over at Bilbo, who was still wide-eyed. “You said you’d read a good deal about elves. That you’d studied them. How would you describe ’em?”
“Describe elves? Well… fair, tall. Wise, immortal beings, the Firstborn of the Peoples of Middle-Earth–”
“Well, whether any of that’s true,” interrupted Fili with a bit of a grimace, “we were made by Mahal, not Illuvatar. And Mahal considered it rather more important than being tall, aye, or fair in the eyes of some, that dwarves be tough.”
Of all the things to be proud of, Bilbo thought. But then he supposed they had to be proud of something, if they knew they were not made to be fair or wise or tall or immortal– or given a land like the Shire, with the gifts and the knowledge to till it.
2.) Occasionally they stay at inns, in villages of Men that are apparently friendlier than others. Bilbo has no idea what kind of unseen sign marks them apart, but the dwarves recognize something about them as they pass and Gloin takes out his ledger and abacus and talks to Thorin and Balin and Dwalin in low tones before Thorin announces whether they will enter. Bifur and Bofur bring whatever toys they will have made since the last one, and sometimes a nicely inked scroll by Balin or Ori. Dori might contribute a knitted scarf or hat or mittens or foot-mittens (at which name Fili and Kili fall about laughing and even Gandalf’s mustache wobbles suspiciously). Thorin ties back his hair and disappears into the local forge for the evening. Nori just… disappears.
They share rooms, because there are fifteen of them, and no matter who he rooms with Bilbo has never seen a single dwarf sleep in a bed. The beds are right there, comfortable and inviting, and yet every single member of the company he has seen sleep— which is everyone except Gandalf— strips the sheets and blankets off their bed and carry them into a corner of the room to pile on the floor like a nest.
“Why do you do that?”
“Bad enough we’re on the second floor,” Gloin grumbled. "Sleep raised up off it? No thank you, laddie. We’re far enough away from stone as it is.”
3.) The metal pins go right through their ears! Holes! In their ears! That they punched with needles and let scar around bits of metal that were still in there! And he thought they looked far too regular for birthmarks but they’re self-inflicted, stabbed repeatedly with needles (again!) and stained with dyes that surely cannot be anything other than poisonous, to mark so permanently; what exactly is so wrong with the bodies they were born with?
4.) Bilbo is perfectly familiar with the practice of breaking apart chicken bones to get at the marrow inside. Healthy stuff, that, though you must be careful not to swallow bone splinters. At home, if they had no guests in front of whom good manners must be practiced, his mother would bite down on them rather than bothering to get out the claw crackers. His father would laugh and call her a barbarian.
But the dwarves crack open the bones of sheep with their teeth, crunch down on the leg bones of deer after the meat has been stripped from it. There’s “Mahal made us to be tough” and then there’s having the jaw strength of a pack of wolves, and apparently the table manners to match. It nearly puts him off his dinner.
5.) In full darkness, the dwarves’ eyes widen and gleam like cats’. In that first instant when they come into light again, if Bilbo looks quick enough, their eyes are black nearly edge-to-edge. He strongly dislikes the way it makes him feel like a prey animal among predators.
1.) SERIOUSLY HOW DOES HE WALK EVERYWHERE WITH BARE FEET. SHARP ROCKS. TWIGS. THORNS. SNOW. WHAT IN THE NAME OF MAHAL. GANDALF EXPLAIN YOUR BURGLAR.
blackash26 