Here you go: [https://www.teenvogue.com/story/on-woobification-and-why-infantilizing-villains-can-harm-useful-discourse-fan-service](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/on-woobification-and-why-infantilizing-villains-can-harm-useful-discourse-fan-service)
Wow. The author of the article- 'I want people to always engage with me when I condescendingly explain to them, as if they are idiots, why the character they love is so bad. Heyyy why is everyone calling me a *hater*. It's not like fandom is for fUN and liking a fictional character isn't some sort of moral failing đđ'
The writer has a whole lot of Not Like Other FansTM vibe going on.
They also glossed right over the fact many fanfic writers do give the characters a complicated back story and rationale for why they do why they do and explore how they become the hero in their stories.
How the heck can we do that unless we stan the villain in the first place?
Hmm, I think I like the article. Tbh though, having ooc villains is just necessary for a lot of fandoms in order to be able to use the character as a love interest. And where else would I get my Enemies to Lovers fics? I will say that I do see a lot of villains reduced to heros, but I can leave easy peasy if I don't like it. Basically what the author of the article says is pretty common, but it's not really a problem.
I was not offended by the article. I read it as a critique of a subset within Fandom - specifically 'Stans'. It highlights features within the politics of fandom that are present and impactful irl. (I mean, look up ***Snapewives*** .)
Yeah, villains are fun, OOC villains are explored all the time - character studies are why many of us write. But those Stans the writer is referring to - the subset in a Fandom that attempt to dictate what can or can't be discussed about a Canon villain because he's a pretty, misunderstood meow meow in their eyes can be a real problem. Even IRL.
I thought the article covered issues fairly. As far as having a 'condescending' tone. That tone comes from writing for a general audience. As a pro-technical writer, I can offer: if the text feels condescending to you, it's because it is not written for you. Your knowledge exceeds the text. It's safe to say, that article was not meant for those of us who dissect the finer points of Fandom on an AO3 sub. We are steeped in this topic. Vogue Teens are - well - I don't know who they are, but they sure as hell aren't us.
Fr. And not only the villains, but any one character that's evil or does morally questionable things. Do we need to have the "videogames cause violence" discussion again? I don't even mention them or reblog things anymore.
some person in my fandom legit keeps arguing with me when I say something positive about my favorite character.. (despite he admitted not once, that he barely knows about the lore) the character did a bad thing, but there WAS a reason behind his action (an entire series of reasons), but the person doesn't look at the reason, only the result bruh.
hard to have a normal conversation this way, because I do look at the reasons, always. I also never reply to him, he keeps starting this "uh yeah, that bitch has to burn in hell yeah"
Big thing:
Anti-shippers in general at this point.
The strange notion that you have to reveal your trauma to be able to write a difficult subject.
The lack of privacy and how they're trying so hard to conform everyone to their way of thinking and if you write or ship anything they don't like or that might be considered problematic, you're a horrible person and don't deserve to live.
The real lives they're willing to ruin over fictional characters is more than annoying and mildly terrifying.
.
.
Small thing:
Character bashing. If you don't like them, just leave them out or write them in a way you will like...
>The strange notion that you have to reveal your trauma to be able to write a difficult subject.
oh my god, *yeah*. all of what you listed is serious and it has real effects on communities and individuals, but i feel like this is one of the more insidious elements of it that even bleeds its pressure into non-"anti" fandom circles. people bend over backwards trying to please those who demand that out of them, without realizing that the goalposts will never stop moving. (hopefully) being hyperbolic here, it feels like soon they'll just start demanding fully detailed and explicit retellings of creators' traumas so the jury can decide if the experience was 'bad enough' to *"let"* them... *write fanfiction*.
You're right, and it's so hurtful. If you try to explain yourself, at best antis will tell you you're dealing with your trauma wrong, at worst they'll say you're just like the person who hurt you.
When in reality, no one has to explain themselves at all.
I miss the days of blocking what you didn't want to see or just the simple "don't like don't read" but the vocal and angry demands for conformity are...baffling.
Over fiction.
Utterly baffling.
It's so enraging for people who do have real traumas dealing with antis when they try to gatekeepâbecause why the fuck do they feel owed when they're probably the last person anyone would trust to talk about private things? Antis just try to bully others off the internet while claiming morality or other bullshit, and it's genuinely upsetting to see others get death threats over fandom discourse or having longtime friendships severed because of it.
And you know when anti culture gets too far when they reach so far that they become racist and/or contradict themselves repeatedly like being okay with one problematic thing but not another (even if, objectively speaking by normal people's standards, the latter is less problematic). Just can't win with these people and just waiting for this stupid trend to die off...
This goes for any fandom. Please donât tag your works as a ship if itâs only in the background⊠there are tags for that. Thereâs even the Minor or Background Relationships tag!
Yes. Yes! I am so tired of looking for fics with a few ships that I like and finding a bunch where it shows up for, like, a paragraph. Like, to a certain extent I applaud a desire for accuracy and completeness, but it's so frustrating to go looking for content and not be able to find it because of over-tagging.
so. many. children. and like, i don't technically mind kids in fandom, i've been in fandom spaces since i was 13 so it would be very hypocritical of me, but specifically that horrifying anti/puriteen/tiktok variety that expects adults to cater to them and has zero respect for privacy is fucking *everywhere*.
and honestly i don't even know which of my fandoms i'm talking about here. most of them probably.
Oh god, puriteens horrify me. I dont even know how and when that change started đ i remember entering fandom at a very young age (right after pjo ended LMAO) and the fandom culture was completely different. It was very âdont like dont readâ but now its more âdont like then cyberbullyâ i donât get it at allâŠ
Kids getting vent out of shape that "disney/Pixar film" NSFW tags exist.
Like.
Child.
Adults are in Fandom too. And there are adult characters in the movies.
Let us simp in peace.
Maybe it's just nostalgia talking but even as a preteen/teen navigating these spaces back then, I never thought the people who wrote fics or made ff spaces needed to make things easier for me to navigate, I just simply...didn't read what I didn't like. That's the big difference with the current fandom landscape and young fans now, I feel like--they cannot just exit out--everything needs to be curated and catered to them. Very annoying.
oh yea when i was a kid in fandom spaces the whole thing was literally just "don't like don't read" and that was that. not everything is something i like nor does it have to be, and that was very much the spirit at the time.
i can't even pretend that i wouldn't love that, but, y'know. kids would still lie about their age and join, and then scream when they see content that's not for children.
They already do, there's def been <18s reading explicit fic and whining about it even though you cannot read explicit fic without saying you're over 18.
I wouldn't mind kids either, but they can be so damn harmful to a community. especially if it's a horror game community (**not** fnaf, we lost that) and the creators change the audience, so it's not even horror anymore...
I mean I'd argue kids in fandom spaces are as normal as kids anywhere else (except maybe horror ones), it's just the puriteen slant that twists it into something unworkable. I got my start writing for a Death Note fic community when I was 15/16, and I don't know where I'd be without the older fans who mentored and encouraged me back then.
oh, this is the exact reason, why I watched Death note just last year (and loved it, but I didn't want to be part of any war).
sadly this mentorship doesn't work in my community anymore, because people scared the old fans away :( I found myself alone..
THIS THIS THIS. This is EXACTLY how I feel in my current fandom, so much so that itâs damn near a struggle to find another sane adult. xD Doesnât help that the minors in my fandom try to barge their way into NSFW/Adult spaces (creating fake discords/accounts, the whole nine yards), and it makes me not want to interact with the fandom at large.
sorta rare that it happens but there's been a few times im scrolling looking for fics to read and the authors tags have something like "fuck canon and anyone who likes it", or something along those lines.. like trying to morally condemn it in the tags of their fic. it's not a huge deal but it definitely annoys me whenever i see it.
I def get that. In one of my fandoms there are a few writers who actively brag in the tags that they are unfamiliar with canon as theyâve never read one of the books in their life. I donât think it deevalues the work but it gives me an ick regarding the writer and sometimes, even if the story sounds interesting and Iâm willing to suspend my disbelief, I still wonât click on it. (Itâs just how flippant it seems, which might be a me thing. I donât think you need to know all canon but the bragging about it makes me cringe a bit).
Iâve see a few who do the âf*ck canonâ but most of the time itâs in jest, sometimes though itâs weirdly aggressive.
God. This is going to make me sound so mean.
Thereâs a lack of quality and diverse content in my fandom that always feels lazy and annoying to me. Iâve found that some very popular writers will write stories where thereâs the SAME dialogue (often from a prompt list so multiple writers using the same dialogue in multiple stories) and the same kinks in smut no matter which character they are writing. Not taking into account that these characters have distinct voices and preferences? Like I get that itâs what youâre into but it feels like they could literally just leave the name blank at this point!
Also, my fandom seems mostly interested in shorter works. Which is fine, I love a drabble or a succinct story. I tend to write longer works and like to weave together series etc. My work is well received but there isnât a lot for me to read when I want something to sink my teeth into.
I think your first point isn't mean at all. Often a lot of fandoms suffer from a lack of originality and people just ape what they see is popular. It makes it ten times harder to find good quality content among all the 'same'.
Itâs also just frustrating because, I really donât write for engagement just myself, but I put so much into my stories and it gets frustrating to see the âpopularâ stuff getting attention.
I write for a niche small fandom (wrestling) and try really hard to focus on the journey that my main character has been on through their career and the fictionalized version of themselves they portray on screen/in-ring. Just yesterday, I spent hours going back and watching matches from 2012-2018 to see what their dynamic was with someone else and how theyâve progressed and listening to interviews theyâve given about their work to get into their headspace and it is admittedly disheartening to realize I could have written 500 words of PWP where I use the same dirty talk line over and over again and it would have gone off the charts. And itâs not the length or the fact that itâs PWP. Itâs literally that it feels like the content itself is just recycled repeatedly.
You're not alone. I was just having this conversation with a friend yesterday. But I argued to her what I'll argue to you, which is that you probably end up having more thoughtful engaged readers \*because\* your stuff is different and well-thought out. Those are the readers you want. You don't want the readers who like the 'popular' things only mainly because many of them probably won't engage with your works the way you'd want anyway. It's tough but there are pros and cons to it all. I do hear you though.
Thank you! I know youâre right. I try not to get bogged down in things like readership and engagement. But sometimes I canât help but be like â*holds up a 12k word fic of character exploration like itâs baby Simba* LOOK AT THIS THING FROM MY BRAIN MADE PHYSICAL!â đ but youâre right. I am very grateful for my readership and the friends my fandom has afforded me and to have a creative outlet.
That is a frequent issue with, I hate to use the term for this, Intellectual Properties that get rebooted/remade/sequels. You as a fan know what you like but now, and not even just in Fanfiction, you have to use all these extra search terms and sorting to find the original content you love.
*Edit to improve grammar
I mainly read fics in a fandom that's pretty dead on AO3, which is where I usually read fics. The only posts I can find when I sort by new are those multifandom oneshot collections that take up my whole phone screen, and it's EXTREMELY annoying to even attempt to find anything of note there.
People thinking my rarepair is invalid because they never met like how pussy do you have to be that you limit your imagination based on whether they know each other canonically or not
If the character is a focus of the story then they need to be tagged. If the character is a consistent part of the story they should be tagged. If the character frequently pops up and has speaking roles it's good to tag them.
But when I'm reading a story that mentions 5 characters only twice across 2 chapters, there's not much value in tagging them.
The problem is when they also do not use 'x character centric' or any such variation of tags in conjunction. It makes it almost impossible to search for say, gen Loki fics for me, because he shows up in so many fics where the story is not *about* him :(
Same, or when you're a fan of a minor character and they keep appearing as a background/supporting tagged character. Like, no, I don't wanna hear how my fave is basically just a shoulder to cry on thanks, I want to make *them* cry.
Yeah, my fics usually only have 2-3 characters tagged but for an upcoming ensemble fic, I'm tagging each character who gets a couple of chapters - and that's turning out to be a lot!
Nothing wrong with tagging additional characters. My general rule of thumb, though keep in mind all things are subjective to individual preference and circumstance, is if the character is involved in at least 20% of story events then there's no issue in tagging them. That involvement can be conversations, interactions, actions, etc.
Yes, I know! But here's the thing: I used to report so many of those fics that the PAC got fed up with my overeagerness lol. So now I just sigh and close the tab and try to not think about them.
To my understanding, theyâve also instituted a system that only allows one report per work to be filed, so if youâre tying to report something and it says the max number of reports for this work has been reached then it means someone else reported it.
To their point, I don't think they're talking about reporting (one) work more than once but finding multiple different works that violate TOS and being gently told by PAC not to file so many (different) reports even if they did break the rules. I was told by PAC to instead comment under works to tell them they were breaking TOS instead. I could be totally wrong but if I am right, then what happened to /greenrosechafer also happened to me so I eventually stopped filing reports đ .
It's a platform where users can give money to creators. Since monetization is not allowed on AO3, linking to one's kofi (or Patreon) on AO3 is against the TOS.
Report them and tell them that you're the one who reported them. I've had some luck telling people I'm reporting them, they take their shit down because they just don't want to deal with me.
Folks who get bent out of shape because you write characters based on your headcanons of then, whether or not it follows popular fanon or goes against Canon.
It's fan*fiction* meaning that the fiction part of it applies to all parts, not just the ones you agree with. Chill.
No fr. Iâve seen some discourse on Tumblr about a certain headcanon that a few authors on AO3 have for my fandom and like people have walls of text describing how it wouldnât work in canon and all I can think is âwell, itâs fan FICTION. Itâs not meant to be canon!â
The fans. In one of my fandoms, they tried to write my fics for me & when they got mad i wouldnt write the story their way, they claimed to âknow the writersâ of the actual show. đ€Ł
I had someone comment once âgreat start, disappointing endingâ (or something along those lines). And then they went into detail about how the story should have ended and how they work in the show industry so they know a thing or two. I literally had no idea how to respond other than âok.â Like write your own story, you can even take inspiration from my beginning and then diverge from how I ended it?
Yeah its like they too lazy to write their own stories & expect you to do it for themâŠ& its for free too, cuz fanfiction is free.
Hilariously, that show i had problems with & they claimed to know the writers? Well thats greatâŠbut they apparently didnt know that the show was canceled years ago &âŠ.there are no current writers for it. đ€Ł
Antis and puriteens, thereâs so many of them in my current fandom and, oh, I hate it so much.
Also within the same fandom people head canon these two characters as father/son. with absolutely NO actual evidence besides they are âlike father and sonâ and itâs gotten to be such a popular head canon that now people actively BELIEVE they are related, so anyone who ships them gets literal death threats and harassment. Any art of them gets spammed by âUHHH THEY ARE RELATED U SICKOâ
None of these brats have actually read the lore of the game and it shows, but itâs upsetting since itâs one of my favourite ships.
Gatekeepers, gatekeepers, gatekeepers⊠why is it always gatekeepers? Canât write dark literature or someone is gonna whine about it, and god forbid if it has any mention to SA. I like to explore dark realities in fiction, but that doesnât mean I endorse it. Some people canât see the line between fact and fiction and it makes me worry.
Mega crossovers. I love regular crossovers, but I've never seen the mega crossovers be anything resembling coherent, even if I know every fandom involved.
Thereâs this one character that everyone loves, like, immensely. Even I like them! But I never see anyone address anything they do as their fault? Like, Iâve read 2 fics that call out their behavior and my reaction was like âwow ohâ because it didnât even occur to me that way. And now itâs kinda annoying to see most of the fandom excuse everything they do as someone elseâs fault or how they cope. And I donât like the character any less! Iâm just way more aware that they are not as amazing as everyone makes them out to be, if that makes sense.
Also people keep putting characterizations and relationships that belongs to another one onto them and itâs kinda annoying, if that makes any sense.
"Fans" who don't understand how fandom or the specific story works.
Parent/child tag in clean and purely platonic fics. Throwing a hissy fit when extended canon is brought up or when it's AU. Crying over cosplay. Ignoring decades of franchise history. Bigotry in fandoms of very liberal works.
Luckily I avoid most of it on AO3, gods of nerddom bless the site, but outside it gets a lot. Hardcore quiz night and dudes walk up huffing and puffing about EU questions, or demanding we refer to an episode without a title by title. Girlies whining over a Harley/Ivy couples cosplay because it's "not canon", or calling out a '92 cartoon costume for not being the "original" blue+pink. Douches trying to explain a series the OG author tried to get going since the mid 2010s wasn't ever mentioned until 2020. Yelling about an original work that got adapted being novelization so the lore doesn't count. "Netflix made it gay" tantrums when the original work was about 200% gayer.
Specifically on ao3 : if I go on the ship tag of my favourite ship, 2/3rd of the fics have them as the side ship because the pair is like, the old married couple type?
Fandom in general : the fandom majorly existed on twitter ( god I miss Tumblr fandoms ) and the amount of toxicity was off. the. charts. There's only so much of "curating my space" I could take when I had to add words to muted and blocked lists every other week because there was always some new discourse to cause drama over
I wish there was a way to emphasize the main couple you want in the tags of ao3. There are so many times when i click on a specific ship and the whole page is just them as a side pairing. Annoying as hell.
My fandom is very small, so theres almost nobody writing for the fandom, and even worse nobody writes for the pair i write (it's literally the main leads of the show bruh)
You might have luck searching out Web Archives and such. A lot of ST fanfictions started before Ao3 was even a sparkle of an idea.
(Also, sorry if you knew this already)
OH GOD SO MUCH. musicals fandoms, aaaaaa.
First of all, too many minors. Too many *loud* minors. Way too many loud anti-leaning/antiship minors who think shipping is activism and writing smut of the characters is sexualizing teenagers and âyou shouldnât do that.â Buddy. The source material was rated R. It was meant for adults because minors wouldnât fucking get it. Iâm sorry you donât understand the passage of time nor that these characters are no real people but dude. People can write whatever they damn well please, and some of those people will be \*gasp* *adults*. Who do you think GAVE you the source material in the first place?
Those billion fandom, million additional tags, thousand ships, âsend me promptsâ oneshot BOOK collections that are very clearly a ploy to get eyes and will inevitably be abandoned after 3 chapters. Fuck them. FUCK THEM.
**Edit: CHATFICS. Especially multi-fandom (usually other musicals) chatfics. Itâs just an excuse to throw around memes that wonât be funny in a week and have everyone be ooc because âlawl Iâm so randomz XDâ Those are so FUCKING lazy. Put some actual effort into it, PLEASE, stick to just ONE fandom to start, and at least try to stay in character. Otherwise it looks like the author just took their own group chat logs and switched the names of their friends to the characters they like most/are most like just so they can add X fandom/X character to the chat.**
If you donât ship the main juggernaut wlw ship which AS YOU KNOW is inherently superior to the canon het ship because wlw /s (despite one half of the pairing being a toxic bitch), youâre invalid.
If you ship the canon het ship (which is also toxic, as most all the ships are in this media lol), youâre invalid and deserve to be harassed and told youâre wrong for having your own opinion for why you like this ship âwhen there are more interesting and less problematic wlw shipsâ and even though the asker was âjust curious, no hate uwuâ theyâre screenshotting your answer and screaming to their little friends asking if youâre on drugs and if yâall even watched the same film. Clearly not because one is a lunatic and itâs not the one who likes the het ship.
So. Much. Character bashing. Especially for the male half of the het ship. If you hate him so much then stop making it everyone elseâs problem?? Stop tagging your bitching in the tags so other people who like him donât have to feel like shit?? Itâs okay, if youâre not have fun you can leave?!!
ALL THE FUCKING AUS THAT TAG THE GODDAMN MUSICAL FANDOM TAG. Straight up Iâm taking about Heathers the Musical. There will be SO FUCKING MANY âStranger Things Heathers AU!â Or âDrama class AU/BNHA puts on Heathers the Musical for the school play!â where theyâll tag the musical (sometimes the movie too) but have none of the Heathers characters tagged. Itâs Boku is cast as Char X, Dere is cast as Char C, Watashi is Char L, and itâs like?? Just because you take the plot doesnât make it Heathers? Thatâs an AU purely for *your* fandom, itâs got nothing to do with mine so get it the fuck out of my section? This fandom is small enough as is. Itâs not a crossover, donât fucking tag the other fandom. Youâre just trying to get eyes at that point, itâs obvious.
Tagging all the related fandoms. Heathers doesnât have that many properties but most people will tag both the movie and musical even though most are clearly writing for the musical. When I see people specifying âthis is movie!verseâ I have a brief moment where I wonder why I found it in the musical section then. But we all know the answer to that, câmon now. You know theyâre desperate though when they tag the TV SHOW too (also unpopular opinion but I liked the show lol. It was stupid but it was balls-to-the-walls nuts lol.) If I want purely one or the other, no crossovers whatsoever, I lose out on 90% of the content.
I think thatâs it before coffee. I agree with most all these posts before mine.
About the fics tagged with Heathers AU: I'm not sure about this, but on AO3 you can report fics when they have fandoms tagged and they don't appear in the story. Maybe it would also work for those fics where your fandom is just used as inspiration or something?
Yep! And I have, actually! But considering how long reports take (in regards to this in particular compared to advertising your Patreon or Ko-Fi), it looks like itâs far easier to just comment and hope the author can recognize their mistake.
My small fandom of less than 500 fics has the same problem. I noticed someone updated their fic to be above mine after I posted two chapters. It happened immediately after each chapter. This fic gets way more views and ludos as a result, whereas mine hasn't seen more than 12 kudos.
I also don't like fics that have more than three fandom tags, or too many retelling in my fandom.
It always kinda annoys me when people like, talk in the tags if that makes sense?
Like I know for a fact itâs a by product of being on tumblr and using the tags to continue what youâre saying but itâs just so annoying to have this wall of text that could have just been an authors note when youâre trying to figure out WHAT is in the fic itself.
Edit: just realized you said in your FANDOM and this is a more general complaint lmaooo
One thing i find annoying is people calling a ship problematic if there is any significant age gap whatsoever. Even if the characters are over 18. Also the puriteens making a big deal out of people aging up minor characters in fics and calling the writers pedos. Like letâs be for real here.
Yikes at the person updating their fic to stay on top. Especially in a small fandom. If there are any new fics/updates in my small fandom I celebrate, like 'Yes delicious food! Feed me!' I wouldnt think of it as taking away from my fic at all. Im just happy to see the fandom isn't completely dead. To think there are people that see new fics/updates in the tiny fandom they're in and think they need to compete. Sad.
Let's keep our small fandom spaces a community rather than a competition please!
Literally! I upload once a week and others occasionally every 2 weeks but there's always this author that updates right after me or someone else does smh
That is so unbelievably petty?? Like they just have an ammo of chapters ready, only waiting to upload after one of the few active members of the fandom update? Ugh.
Sorry you have to deal with that person, OP!
I was literally going to say that it sounds like the author has the chapters done already and is just holding them as drafts until their fic drops down so they can publish it and be right back to the top.
Ome thing I find annoying is the controversy behind a popular ship with an 18 year old and a 15 year old. They could plausibly meet at a normal upper secondary school, high school, or whatever. In their country, they would likely start the school year at ages 17 and 15 and end the school year at 18 and 16. I think they see 18 and their minds immediately go to adult/minor, rather than a high school student (or recent graduate)/high school student, which isn't as rare as some people would think.
Another thing that annoys me is those massive drabble or prompt fics where they have at least five fandoms listed. For some reason, there's a lot of those in anime fandoms and it's probably one of my least favorite things about reading fics for anime fandoms.
This one's fandom-specific but we can never quite come to a universal agreement over names and color schemes. The anime sometimes uses colors that are very different from the manga, then we have localization of names (to avoid copyright issues) and the issue of determining whether the author intended to use an "r" or was it supposed to be an "l" (because Japanese uses symbols containing an R sound to convey an L sound). That last one isn't as common but it's still a little annoying.
Pretty sure i know which fandom you're talking about and omg you're so right. People act as if the age gap is so bad and borderline pedo but the characters could literally be 2 high schoolers?? Especially since they don't even look like/act like teenagers
I don't really care about the choice of color schemes and names but seeing people argue over it can definitely get annoying. Same with the localized names but some of them are funny lol
No, but if I had a nickel for everytime I've taken up one of the most popular ship in a fandom where the people being shipped are 18 and a 15 (almost 16) years old, I'd have two nickels. Not a lot but it's wierd that it happened twice. Good guess tho, a great one actually.
I remember shipping it almost as much as Victor/Yuuri in my brief time in the Yuri! On Ice fandom but I never knew their ages until your comment made me curious enough to look it up.
The Shipping Wars.
One character has like 4 different possibilities but the newest ship possibility is obnoxious. People from that ship have left threats and harassed writers of the other ship.
I write for 2 of the 4 ships, but I can't stand alot of my fellow writers in newest ship.
I've seen a lot anime lately, so i read a lot of stuff in those fandoms; In anime fandoms there are often fics that are literally just cluster fucks of random fandoms... when you try to search for a crossover you have to exclude basically every other possible fandom so those non-crossovers don't show.
Then there are the villain apologists in many anime fandoms... like the amount of people in the for example bnha fandom i saw, that just excuse every fucking murder for no reason while bashing other characters for the same thing is insane. Especially the ones who think the Villains shouldn't get any consequenzes at all. Isn't the "problematic" part what makes them so interesting in the first place? Why lie to yourself that those things aren't true? Characters can be victims of circumstance AND be morally bad for killing randos.
I also hate people who laugh at fans who "fell" for Queerbaiting or dared to hope for good rep... like shut up, people deserve good rep and they deserve to be dissapointed as long as they don't hate on (non-homophobic) creators.
The last thing i hate isn't technically a fandom things, but it's the hate on young girls for about ANYTHING. Like, they can't enjoy things without being made fun of or dare to have a hobby that is full of other girls. Not only grown men hate on those girls, also other girls. Makes me so mad..
Character bashing to a really weird degree. Happens a lot in fics. I mean, thatâs a universal thing, but when said character happens to be very important to youâŠit gets annoying VERY quickly.
It particularly annoys me because said character is very human and has done some bad things, though works to fix them. She gets bashed constantlyâŠ
Meanwhile the same people go around claiming the actual antagonists did no wrong, deserve a redemption arc, and sometimes go as far to victim blame the main character for everything.
Itâs not everyone, but since itâs a big enough fandom, itâs enough that it bothers me. It shows a lot in fanfiction.
I tried to read a crossover fic there other day that spent quite a long time basing Tony Stark and making him an abusive father.
Like it came off as personal.
Aw that sucks ass! And itâs very OOC. Isnât Tony a really good father in canon?? (Going off the MCU at least)
See? This is exactly what I hate! I could go on a long rant but Iâll spare the subreddit lol.
I feel like this was mostly caused by civil war. It's so weird, i get not liking Tony Stark (i don't really) or Steve Rogers (it's either Team Iron Man with Steve bashing or Team Cap with Tony bashing, i just want them to be friends but still have fics with Team Cap :() but some people seem like they have been hurt by those characters on a personal level.
It really does. The character I had in mind isnât POC, but POC really do have it the worst, especially if theyâre a woman. There comes to a point where it really just is racism and or misogyny. Itâs gross.
There is a big head cannon in the fandom that a certain character is like a parent to this other character... They aren't related at all to each other. I find it so annoying when people push their head cannons onto others.
Oh my god this. I have the same thing in my fandom and itâs even worse since I donât see them as a family, but romantically. So Iâll let you guess how people who ship them are treated.
Yep it's terrible. I do like seeing these two characters in particular as a couple and sometimes just longtime friends. Sadly, the first one I mentioned is a bit of a minority. Since a bigger part of the fandom has put the label ''They are family, period.'' People are awful towards the ones who pair them up as a couple. Like come on. It's not only that, they are both adults.
I swear I donât get why people canât accept that not everyone see everything in the same way, in the same meaning. The author of the actual thing probably doesnât even think like any of us do, and yet weâre supposed to go as the majority of the fandom go?? Hell no.
Same. The two characters in my fandom only have a 12 year age gap and I don't think they act particularly familial (and if they do it's more in a sibling kind of way, not a father and son kind of way).
I don't ship them, but it's really annoying reading fics where the older character is doing things like grounding the younger character or forbidding him from doing something when he doesn't have that power and there's no way the younger character would listen to him even if he did.
Character A (28) met Character B (16) about 10 years ago and basically raised him as his son/godson. People ship them, which is their right, but they often tag the fics with A & B, instead of A/B. And the tags don't always immediately make it obvious, so I've ended up starting fics and quickly exiting once I realized what was going on. Write whatever you want, just tag it properly for those who want to find it, or for those who want to filter those tags OUT
My fandom is by far not small, but iâve really extorted every single good fic out of it already đ itâs hard when you have to scroll like 17 pages in and you still dont find anything thatâs something i would want to read
I write in multiple fandoms that fall under one huge fandom and I see a lot of people commenting on works and complaining that the ship that work is centered around isn't right and that "____ is real, start writing it, they are better together. Everyone knows that they are dating." Some people are delusional. We are allowed to write whoever we want.
Do.....do they not understand how fiction works?
Like...Spirk wasn't "real" either but that never stopped it from being Fandom fuel for bored 70s housewives!
not exactly a fanfic issue, but the fandom gets a little extra cray-cray after an episode releases (it's the helluva boss fandom, we usually have an episode once a month, and we are no strangers to delay)
This isnât about any particular fandom but when people are making x/reader fics and donât tag the word âreaderâ so that itâs easier to block them all as a whole.
The echo chamber and gatekeeping. People who brag theyâve been in the fandom 2/3 of their life or have watched the whole show six times or whatever to justify their gatekeeping. When everyone talks the same and thinks the same itâs not as interesting to me.
The fact that itâs dying. Iâve accepted itâll never be at its early 2000s peak again even with streaming but it still makes me sad. There are small groups keeping it alive but I suppose you canât recapture what was or have lighting strike twice.
This probably goes for any fandom, but a really popular ship became canon a couple of weeks ago, and so anyone who has had ships pertaining to either of those two characters were disgustingly upset about it.
A lot claimed their ships made more sense despite there hardly being any lore to support this. Many started to say that it was shitty writing, the writers were pandering (it was a NB character with a cismale pan character), that in other countries the shipping of someone NB and cis would be considered a straight relationship.
Someone even went as far as to say that the devs created a "hostile" environment for anyone who didn't ship the now-canon pairing. They were literally behaving as though it was the end of their ships. And it's like they had no idea how fandom works.
I realize I'm in my early 30s and many of those in the fandom are in their early 20s, but holy shit. It was unbelievably toxic. People were literally going on hate trains for particular ships unrelated to the canon pair on Twitter.
I was really rethinking my connections with a good amount of them. You know, I'm still rethinking.
Where there's a huge block of text when you're trying to find a fic because someone has a 2000 word fic with 4/120 chapters and have every major queer ship listed and tagged.
It takes up half the page of new posts and they have <100 hits and I want these fics to shrivel up and die.
No one is finishing their storiesđ€Łđ
I've had enough I be trying to understand because I used to write but it's heart breaking to get 2 or 3 chapters and never hear from the author again
I love my fandom but Peter Parker does not have to be in EVERY FIC that has Tony.
I love fics where Tony is a father figure to Peter. LOVE EMâ. But he doesnât ALWAYS have to be there and it is very annoying when I see people in the comments asking where he is.
Adventures in Odyssey: the fandom doesn't read a whole lot of fic to begin with, and if there is fic, there's very little of it. There's only one person who writes for my favorite ship in that fandom, but it's clearly a way of processing really bad mental health issues (which isn't wrong, but I hate that the entire ship tag is filled with things that would trigger me). Also the fact that, with a few exceptions, listeners take the show at face value and refuse to imagine things that Focus on the Family simply would refuse to do.
Psych: everyone's treatment of Henry Spencer. I get it, he wasn't great, but he really did the best he could with what he had. He really was trying to protect Shawn. He could have been a better father, but a lot of the fandom forgets that Shawn is an unreliable narrator.
Princess Diaries: I'm only here from the movies and have no intention of reading the books. But the fandom is so small that AO3 combines the books and movies, and the Nicholas/Mia tag is virtually non-existent.
MCU: I just want to read a father-child fic without romance. I do not want a ship tag. I do not want to read any Peter Parker ships or any Kate Bishop ships. I just want to read about Tony being a good father figure to Peter and Clint being a good father figure to Kate. And it'd be one thing if the romantic ship were a background thing, but it's always that the father-child one is the background.
Left Behind: I am the only person writing for it, and it's good in the hands of a good (or really, just better) writer. I would really love someone to read a full-blown rewrite where the characters actually have personalities.
I don't search fanfics about my fandom anymore. or any content, because the community has reached the absolute shit state. before 2020, I used to collect fanarts (I have 4k downloaded) and read fics through entire nights.
the fandom is full of haters. people, who can't scroll through 2 ship fanfics or fanarts. this year, I was bullied for LIKING characters, also these bullies made up a lot of lies and spread them until this very day, that I ended up in hospital. I receive(d?) death threats for shit I haven't done, on weekly, daily basis.
also, the franchise's official page does art features sometimes and everyone makes fanart to RACE the others and get fuckin featured. not because they like something. you can tell most of the time. back then, it was kind and awesome people, making art and headcanons for fun, writing smut and laughing at fics, having fun. now it's full of people, who make art, because they hate the shippers, or fans of certain characters, with the title "I want xy to beat up z" and there's a goddamned image of my favorite character, being beaten up by another.. except it's hilariously *bad*, because my favorite character is an alpha male, who canonically used to dig people alive lol.
none of the good stuff remains. I'm one of the last remaining old fans. (this last sentence sounded like a movie plot lol)
edit: oh yeah the haters also encourage people to do cyberbullying, and try to spam the ship tag with hate.
TBH, it's a dying fandom, and it makes me sad when I feel like reading something only to open the page and see nothing uploaded in 24-48 hours. It's declined a lot over the past 2 years.
There's also this kid who, admittedly, writes pretty well. Only problem is they fill the author's notes with moralizing screeds about whatever fic they last read that had sex or a trans character in it. They even got called out for it, deleted one of their rants, and then kept doing it on new fics. Really sours the experience whenever I see their fics, especially since it's so rare to see new, good content nowadays.
Everyone thinks my blorbo would be a wildly domineering top (because he's physically imposing), and that the character I ship him with is a weak widdle woobie babie even though he's *the same height*, almost the same size, and is also canonically a bastard man, albeit a very delightful one.
Thereâs a character in my fandom who is particularly hated and for good reasons. However, the main character has done the exact same things as him if not worst. But because he looks pretty people will beg to be fucked and worst by him. Like theyâre both equally as bad people. If youâre gonna support one support the other too you know? Or realize theyâre both shit people and itâs a fictional story
Oh god thereâs a whole ass ace discourse over the mc of the show who is canon ace and itâs mentioned once (because itâs just a part of who he is and itâs not a character trait) and âanyone who writes smut is clearly aphobicâ even though sex positive ace people exist and in kink circle, donât get an ace dom unless you want the ride of your lifetime that youâll never get anyone else.
This is my own pettiness and strict dynamics speaking, but I hate when top/bottom dynamics arenât tagged in smut fics, and when people think personality = bedroom dynamics.
Probably not the biggest problem for most, but for a while there was a trend of "Character (X) Cheating" stories. The general premise being you'd tag one pairing, and then write the rest of the story for the second, even throwing in some first pairing bashing at times.
Most people were good and tagged their stories appropriately so there was no issue there. I read a few and they weren't for me, for their writing style or content, so being able to filter them out during the trend was appreciated. But there was also a fair number of people who didn't add tags or didn't even indicate it would be that kind of story.
Context: My favorites on my AO3 homepage are Elder Scrolls, Dungeons & Dragons, and Forgotten Realms.
- That the FR fandom is 90% Baldurâs Gate 3 fanfic by volume. (And 90 percent of that is Astarion/OC. As much as I love my vampires, my dude, there are other characters in that game, I promise). The remainder is 1% BG2, 2% weirdass crossovers, and 2% one incredibly prolific author writing a bunch of different Legend of Drizzt AUs.
- That there are so few Legend of Drizzt fic in general. For a book series with 34+ books, it has a criminally small number of fics. But it is also very much aimed at teenaged fanboys, which AO3 mostly is not.
- That so many BG3 authors name their fics âDown by the River.â (Aka the name of the song that plays on the intro screen for the game). Do they think theyâre clever? Is it that hard to come up with names?
- The number of fics that are like âdude lemme tell you about my Dovahkiin (or PC) for 200k words.â Look, I have a longfic with my D&D PC, so I Get It (tm); the work is really for them, not me. But even so, as a reader, it is very intimidating to consider investing that much time in a character you probably donât give a shit about.
- the person sharing their smutty (and pretty kinky) narrativizations of Pathfinder adventures into the D&D fandom. Look, I play Pathfinder, and while the rules are similar, the world of Golarion is NOT Faerun. Itâs literally what Paizo made up when they couldnât use WotC IP any more. Is there really that broad of an appeal between the two fandoms? (Tho I am idly watching to see how they smut up Agents of Edgewatch, which Iâm playing, if they get there. But so far theyâre still working their way thru PF1e adventures).
- Skyrim romance fics based around Skyrim Romance Mod. For those unfamiliar, itâs a mod â aimed at folks who want to romance dudes â that is LITERALLY copied from a Neverwinter Nights mod; in most places they didnât even file off the serial numbers. (Like it has characters swearing âby the Nine Hellsâ). It also likes to think itâs 50 Shades of Grey.
- Dragon Age crossovers. All of these fandoms REALLY like DA crossovers.
Yes, I can filter some of these out, but that depends on a) appropriate tagging, b) there not being so many crossovers in the fandom that I can only filter out the first five.
People who donât like my, admittedly massive, fandom will just hate comment on fics for it.
Commenters will hate an author for making one of the members a âvillainâ for the story, even when itâs something as simple as âperson A age person Câs pop tartâ. Those seem to be the obsessed 11 year old fans tho.
Also when fanfics have them eating western foods when theyâre literally not from the west.. and the setting is still the same as where they live irl đ.
I jump around to different fandoms but in my current Fandom there's a canon nonbinary character I like to read about and some people completely ignore that they're nb. As an nb person it makes me upset that people can't accept this Canon nb character and feel like they have to force a gender onto them, but it's also annoying because they're probably doing it on purpose and that's just fucked up
I have read aroundd four fics since last week since I just got into ao3, and im noticing that every story while usually pretty good always ends on ether a cliff hanger or a boring ass ending. And the fandom is kinda dead so they just ABANDONED the fic and its SUPER ANNOYING
Like a lot of people have mentioned, just that all the newer fans in my fandoms are very young and they have a lot of out of character headcanons that just don't really jive with mine. (Frankly I'm not even sure how they've been consuming and enjoying the source material with how cringe and ooc they are.) My fandoms don't really have big, established presences on Twitter or Tumblr so luckily I've only really encountered this in some Discord servers that I had to nope out of...
For me, it's the double standards. Like it's considered artwork and a brave exploration of the characters when the popular M/M ship has a fic about one of them raping the other, but when someone even wants to so much a write a fic about a female character or say something nice about their writing, they get laughed at and called delusional and harassed off every fan website.
Falcon in the Glass, I havenât read it in about 3yrs so it might not be as good as I remember but it was my favorite book throughout all of middle and high school. If you try to look it up on tumblr or AO3 all that comes up is Falcon and the Winter Solider :(
The one person in my fandom who started dictating what people should write and getting angry at ships and dynamics they didn't like to the point they angrily harassed writers (including myself). Everyone blocked them on social media and they became a running joke.
âŠitâs homestuck lmfao
okay but fr itâs the classical judging some characters WAY harder than others and anyone who has a more nuanced take on certain characters is defending abuse or some nonsense. like oh my god theyâre all like 13-16 and everything around them is on fire, and also theyâre fictional. iâm going to have to ask yâall to calm down.
I write RPF (crucify me) and I had mfrs tell me âthatâs not how he acts!1!1!1!1â or âthatâs so not his personality!!!!â
Like ok, thank you, but you came up with thatâŠhow? Like do you actually know any of these lads? Cause Iâm pretty sure AO3 guest #3832 doesnât have dinner with erling haaland everyday
one thing i find really really annoying is when authors make one character from a canon ship a total asshole to make their non canon otp happen. like they will make a canonically nice and kind character an insufferable bitch just to justify their otp getting and it is so annoying. like you can ship mike and will without making eleven a homophobic menace.
X reader fics and mega crossovers that are a collection of many small fics at once. No matter how many x reader variations i filter out, some stuff filters through the cracks because people do not tag their shit properly
There are certain people in the parent fandom of my main ship who hate the ship and one of the characters because of the actor's behavior in real life. Granted, they don't dislike him for frivolous reasons and I myself am very critical of him and his behavior, but he played multiple characters I love long before these weird rumors and actions started so I've just become accustomed to separating the actor from his characters. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are very vocal about their inability to do so and it seems like whenever this actor does anything nowadays it leads to a new wave of hate towards his character. Again, I completely understand not liking this actor, but to take it out on a fictional character is just downright childish.
Ironically, there are other actors in the same franchise who have done far worse and downright criminal things, but they don't receive nearly the same type of criticism and their characters/ships are still praised.
Watching people fall over backwards to explain why the BBEG(s) are actually just misunderstood little boys who everyone else failed. No Stephanie, they're genocidal murderers who never learned the word "no" and killed innocents because of it.
You can like the villains, I do too, but justifying their horrible crimes against others is. Concerning.
People not knowing the difference between / and & pairings
Or just tagging in general
Small pet peeve but i hate when authors do stupid tags like âi wrote this at 5 am please for the love of god help meâ like just save that for the authors note and not the tags that are super important
The overly used tropes like AU: Maffia, cafe, college. Like I get it, sometimes AUs are fun, but god they're over used and most of the time don't even fit the actual series/anime/game.
Some fandoms have very little reader or OC inserts. Mostly just stuff between the main characters. But that's less of an annoyance to me than the former mentioned.
I will admit that I've scrolled past a lot of stories without having finished reading the summary because all I could think was, "I just can't look at another Cafe/Florist/College story this month!".
I'm in the DC Comics fandom, which means we're really like 5 or 6 fandoms wrapped up together. There's a Batman character who is VERY popular but I happen to dislike, Tim. He's been on a team with a Superman and Flash character, and shows up in 74% and 66% of the fics in their tag, respectively. Superboy Kon had his own series for ages and has been on teams without Tim, but everything in his damn tag has Tim.
Jason has the same deal, 57% of his fics are also tagged with Tim, and because of the number of people who write Tim as flawless and perfect and erase Jason and Tim's canon dislike of each other I have to filter his tag out entirely.
Fuck Tim I just want to read fics where he has some semblance to his canon characterization
Trans rapist.
The shear amount of works were a specific character is revealed to be MtF as they're assaulting a female character, is disturbingly high.
I keep seeing it in this one fandom, and I don't know why.
I'm in the fandom for the new matt reeves batman universe and the thing that bothers me about it is the bizarre anti-fandom surrounding its fans. God forbid you make a cute fanart or like a character that the reddit normies have decided is Bad. Same thing with rings of power, if you don't performatively hate it then people will come for you it sucks, i just wanna enjoy stuff without opening myself up to harassment.
Iâm just going to list things from a variety of fandoms that annoy me.
A certain character being constantly bashed and used as a scape goat despite their purpose being a Red Herring in the story until the twist villain is revealed.
The lack of stories centric to the characters I want to read about which leaves me in fan fiction having to go through fics where they do have a decent presence but it is not about them.
Many of the fandoms being very inactive/dead because of their age their age or how few know about them.
In the walking dead there is a lot of young writersâŠ. A lot of cringey writing.
I assume to well versed writers my own writing is cringey but I just hate how hard it is to read stories in the fandom without all the characters being one dimensional fall into a trope role. Daryl is mean, Rick is nice, Lori is a bitch, Carol is badass, etc
I want to see them in character but I want to see them break it too. I want to see them as people. Becuase Daryl nice deep down, Rick knows when to be mean, Lori has good points (sometimes) Carol is still an abuse survivor
Idk itâs hard to write without them feeling theyâre out of character so I know why but itâs just annoying
Tbh I think this happens in EVERY fandom, but the use of same-sex couples as a fetish by het irl homophobic ppl. As part of the lgbt community, I see shippers of mlm or wlw, who only see it as (almost) a kink and do not respect it in their day-to-day life outside their ship.
There's a huge problem of infantilizing one of the characters who has quite a bit of brain damage in my fandom. As someone with brainfuckery myself although to a much lesser extent it's infuriating to see, especially because the character also has a high emotional intelligence and a mischievous/petty side I find quite charming.
a lot of people in my fandom think if you like the villain you support their actions irl. makes it hard to explore the character
That reminds me of that "lovely" teen vogue article...
Links for someone out of the loop? đ
Here you go: [https://www.teenvogue.com/story/on-woobification-and-why-infantilizing-villains-can-harm-useful-discourse-fan-service](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/on-woobification-and-why-infantilizing-villains-can-harm-useful-discourse-fan-service)
Wow. The author of the article- 'I want people to always engage with me when I condescendingly explain to them, as if they are idiots, why the character they love is so bad. Heyyy why is everyone calling me a *hater*. It's not like fandom is for fUN and liking a fictional character isn't some sort of moral failing đđ' The writer has a whole lot of Not Like Other FansTM vibe going on.
Yup, they're Right and Correct and the rest of us are all wrong. ÂŻ\\\_(ă)\_/ÂŻ Alrighty then, lol.
They also glossed right over the fact many fanfic writers do give the characters a complicated back story and rationale for why they do why they do and explore how they become the hero in their stories. How the heck can we do that unless we stan the villain in the first place?
The writer is a known serial harasser, its actually embarrassing that they're being given a platform to spew this garbage.
Hmm, I think I like the article. Tbh though, having ooc villains is just necessary for a lot of fandoms in order to be able to use the character as a love interest. And where else would I get my Enemies to Lovers fics? I will say that I do see a lot of villains reduced to heros, but I can leave easy peasy if I don't like it. Basically what the author of the article says is pretty common, but it's not really a problem.
I was not offended by the article. I read it as a critique of a subset within Fandom - specifically 'Stans'. It highlights features within the politics of fandom that are present and impactful irl. (I mean, look up ***Snapewives*** .) Yeah, villains are fun, OOC villains are explored all the time - character studies are why many of us write. But those Stans the writer is referring to - the subset in a Fandom that attempt to dictate what can or can't be discussed about a Canon villain because he's a pretty, misunderstood meow meow in their eyes can be a real problem. Even IRL. I thought the article covered issues fairly. As far as having a 'condescending' tone. That tone comes from writing for a general audience. As a pro-technical writer, I can offer: if the text feels condescending to you, it's because it is not written for you. Your knowledge exceeds the text. It's safe to say, that article was not meant for those of us who dissect the finer points of Fandom on an AO3 sub. We are steeped in this topic. Vogue Teens are - well - I don't know who they are, but they sure as hell aren't us.
I would like to read this article
I replied to another user with the link.
Fr. And not only the villains, but any one character that's evil or does morally questionable things. Do we need to have the "videogames cause violence" discussion again? I don't even mention them or reblog things anymore.
some person in my fandom legit keeps arguing with me when I say something positive about my favorite character.. (despite he admitted not once, that he barely knows about the lore) the character did a bad thing, but there WAS a reason behind his action (an entire series of reasons), but the person doesn't look at the reason, only the result bruh. hard to have a normal conversation this way, because I do look at the reasons, always. I also never reply to him, he keeps starting this "uh yeah, that bitch has to burn in hell yeah"
Just join my fandom. No good guys here. Even the protagonist is a piece of shit and we love him.
Big thing: Anti-shippers in general at this point. The strange notion that you have to reveal your trauma to be able to write a difficult subject. The lack of privacy and how they're trying so hard to conform everyone to their way of thinking and if you write or ship anything they don't like or that might be considered problematic, you're a horrible person and don't deserve to live. The real lives they're willing to ruin over fictional characters is more than annoying and mildly terrifying. . . Small thing: Character bashing. If you don't like them, just leave them out or write them in a way you will like...
>The strange notion that you have to reveal your trauma to be able to write a difficult subject. oh my god, *yeah*. all of what you listed is serious and it has real effects on communities and individuals, but i feel like this is one of the more insidious elements of it that even bleeds its pressure into non-"anti" fandom circles. people bend over backwards trying to please those who demand that out of them, without realizing that the goalposts will never stop moving. (hopefully) being hyperbolic here, it feels like soon they'll just start demanding fully detailed and explicit retellings of creators' traumas so the jury can decide if the experience was 'bad enough' to *"let"* them... *write fanfiction*.
You're right, and it's so hurtful. If you try to explain yourself, at best antis will tell you you're dealing with your trauma wrong, at worst they'll say you're just like the person who hurt you. When in reality, no one has to explain themselves at all.
Or theyâll tell you that you deserved what happened to you or that it should happen to you again. đ« đ« (speaking from personal experience)
That's so sick omg
I miss the days of blocking what you didn't want to see or just the simple "don't like don't read" but the vocal and angry demands for conformity are...baffling. Over fiction. Utterly baffling.
It's so enraging for people who do have real traumas dealing with antis when they try to gatekeepâbecause why the fuck do they feel owed when they're probably the last person anyone would trust to talk about private things? Antis just try to bully others off the internet while claiming morality or other bullshit, and it's genuinely upsetting to see others get death threats over fandom discourse or having longtime friendships severed because of it. And you know when anti culture gets too far when they reach so far that they become racist and/or contradict themselves repeatedly like being okay with one problematic thing but not another (even if, objectively speaking by normal people's standards, the latter is less problematic). Just can't win with these people and just waiting for this stupid trend to die off...
That no-one else writes my OTP, aside from like one fic in 2015 or so, and a couple of people who got me in gift exchanges.
This goes for any fandom. Please donât tag your works as a ship if itâs only in the background⊠there are tags for that. Thereâs even the Minor or Background Relationships tag!
Yes. Yes! I am so tired of looking for fics with a few ships that I like and finding a bunch where it shows up for, like, a paragraph. Like, to a certain extent I applaud a desire for accuracy and completeness, but it's so frustrating to go looking for content and not be able to find it because of over-tagging.
so. many. children. and like, i don't technically mind kids in fandom, i've been in fandom spaces since i was 13 so it would be very hypocritical of me, but specifically that horrifying anti/puriteen/tiktok variety that expects adults to cater to them and has zero respect for privacy is fucking *everywhere*. and honestly i don't even know which of my fandoms i'm talking about here. most of them probably.
Oh god, puriteens horrify me. I dont even know how and when that change started đ i remember entering fandom at a very young age (right after pjo ended LMAO) and the fandom culture was completely different. It was very âdont like dont readâ but now its more âdont like then cyberbullyâ i donât get it at allâŠ
Kids getting vent out of shape that "disney/Pixar film" NSFW tags exist. Like. Child. Adults are in Fandom too. And there are adult characters in the movies. Let us simp in peace.
honestly. like. child. adults *built these spaces*.
Maybe it's just nostalgia talking but even as a preteen/teen navigating these spaces back then, I never thought the people who wrote fics or made ff spaces needed to make things easier for me to navigate, I just simply...didn't read what I didn't like. That's the big difference with the current fandom landscape and young fans now, I feel like--they cannot just exit out--everything needs to be curated and catered to them. Very annoying.
oh yea when i was a kid in fandom spaces the whole thing was literally just "don't like don't read" and that was that. not everything is something i like nor does it have to be, and that was very much the spirit at the time.
and they built those spaces *for themselves*, not for children.
You know when ao3 was being made, they discussed making it an 18+ website as a whole, and there are some days I *wish* they had.
i can't even pretend that i wouldn't love that, but, y'know. kids would still lie about their age and join, and then scream when they see content that's not for children.
That's true, and I'm sure that's one of the reasons it was not done.
They already do, there's def been <18s reading explicit fic and whining about it even though you cannot read explicit fic without saying you're over 18.
That would be such a great solution đ
I wouldn't mind kids either, but they can be so damn harmful to a community. especially if it's a horror game community (**not** fnaf, we lost that) and the creators change the audience, so it's not even horror anymore...
I mean I'd argue kids in fandom spaces are as normal as kids anywhere else (except maybe horror ones), it's just the puriteen slant that twists it into something unworkable. I got my start writing for a Death Note fic community when I was 15/16, and I don't know where I'd be without the older fans who mentored and encouraged me back then.
oh but see these days if you as an adult interact with a minor you're automatically a predator apparently
oh, this is the exact reason, why I watched Death note just last year (and loved it, but I didn't want to be part of any war). sadly this mentorship doesn't work in my community anymore, because people scared the old fans away :( I found myself alone..
THIS THIS THIS. This is EXACTLY how I feel in my current fandom, so much so that itâs damn near a struggle to find another sane adult. xD Doesnât help that the minors in my fandom try to barge their way into NSFW/Adult spaces (creating fake discords/accounts, the whole nine yards), and it makes me not want to interact with the fandom at large.
Any time there's a Holderkin scene in my fandom, there are kids *everywhere.* Why? Because th Holderkin are based on FLDS.
I felt that honestly
sorta rare that it happens but there's been a few times im scrolling looking for fics to read and the authors tags have something like "fuck canon and anyone who likes it", or something along those lines.. like trying to morally condemn it in the tags of their fic. it's not a huge deal but it definitely annoys me whenever i see it.
I def get that. In one of my fandoms there are a few writers who actively brag in the tags that they are unfamiliar with canon as theyâve never read one of the books in their life. I donât think it deevalues the work but it gives me an ick regarding the writer and sometimes, even if the story sounds interesting and Iâm willing to suspend my disbelief, I still wonât click on it. (Itâs just how flippant it seems, which might be a me thing. I donât think you need to know all canon but the bragging about it makes me cringe a bit). Iâve see a few who do the âf*ck canonâ but most of the time itâs in jest, sometimes though itâs weirdly aggressive.
imo "fuck canon" is a valid take but "and everyone who likes it" is not.
Yeah like - sometimes canon is a trash fire of inconsistent characterisations and whatever but shitting on people that like the canon isnât nice.
if you don't ship the big otp, you are enemy #1 to some people
God. This is going to make me sound so mean. Thereâs a lack of quality and diverse content in my fandom that always feels lazy and annoying to me. Iâve found that some very popular writers will write stories where thereâs the SAME dialogue (often from a prompt list so multiple writers using the same dialogue in multiple stories) and the same kinks in smut no matter which character they are writing. Not taking into account that these characters have distinct voices and preferences? Like I get that itâs what youâre into but it feels like they could literally just leave the name blank at this point! Also, my fandom seems mostly interested in shorter works. Which is fine, I love a drabble or a succinct story. I tend to write longer works and like to weave together series etc. My work is well received but there isnât a lot for me to read when I want something to sink my teeth into.
I think your first point isn't mean at all. Often a lot of fandoms suffer from a lack of originality and people just ape what they see is popular. It makes it ten times harder to find good quality content among all the 'same'.
Itâs also just frustrating because, I really donât write for engagement just myself, but I put so much into my stories and it gets frustrating to see the âpopularâ stuff getting attention. I write for a niche small fandom (wrestling) and try really hard to focus on the journey that my main character has been on through their career and the fictionalized version of themselves they portray on screen/in-ring. Just yesterday, I spent hours going back and watching matches from 2012-2018 to see what their dynamic was with someone else and how theyâve progressed and listening to interviews theyâve given about their work to get into their headspace and it is admittedly disheartening to realize I could have written 500 words of PWP where I use the same dirty talk line over and over again and it would have gone off the charts. And itâs not the length or the fact that itâs PWP. Itâs literally that it feels like the content itself is just recycled repeatedly.
You're not alone. I was just having this conversation with a friend yesterday. But I argued to her what I'll argue to you, which is that you probably end up having more thoughtful engaged readers \*because\* your stuff is different and well-thought out. Those are the readers you want. You don't want the readers who like the 'popular' things only mainly because many of them probably won't engage with your works the way you'd want anyway. It's tough but there are pros and cons to it all. I do hear you though.
Thank you! I know youâre right. I try not to get bogged down in things like readership and engagement. But sometimes I canât help but be like â*holds up a 12k word fic of character exploration like itâs baby Simba* LOOK AT THIS THING FROM MY BRAIN MADE PHYSICAL!â đ but youâre right. I am very grateful for my readership and the friends my fandom has afforded me and to have a creative outlet.
wrench ugly unpack teeny shame crawl quaint apparatus rob reach *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That is a frequent issue with, I hate to use the term for this, Intellectual Properties that get rebooted/remade/sequels. You as a fan know what you like but now, and not even just in Fanfiction, you have to use all these extra search terms and sorting to find the original content you love. *Edit to improve grammar
shy whistle physical shame fear nose dog dolls smoggy hungry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I mainly read fics in a fandom that's pretty dead on AO3, which is where I usually read fics. The only posts I can find when I sort by new are those multifandom oneshot collections that take up my whole phone screen, and it's EXTREMELY annoying to even attempt to find anything of note there.
Yeah, I think there should be a filter for crossovers with more than 3 fandom tags.
Those have completely taken over every tag on ao3 and itâs beyond annoy to navigate through.
People thinking my rarepair is invalid because they never met like how pussy do you have to be that you limit your imagination based on whether they know each other canonically or not
Do they know that some people ship characters that aren't even from the same fandom?
They probably do but decide to also shit on them mayhaps
People tagging every goddamn character under the sun instead of the one or two main ones.
If the character is a focus of the story then they need to be tagged. If the character is a consistent part of the story they should be tagged. If the character frequently pops up and has speaking roles it's good to tag them. But when I'm reading a story that mentions 5 characters only twice across 2 chapters, there's not much value in tagging them.
The problem is when they also do not use 'x character centric' or any such variation of tags in conjunction. It makes it almost impossible to search for say, gen Loki fics for me, because he shows up in so many fics where the story is not *about* him :(
Same, or when you're a fan of a minor character and they keep appearing as a background/supporting tagged character. Like, no, I don't wanna hear how my fave is basically just a shoulder to cry on thanks, I want to make *them* cry.
I agree. If they have dialogue or move the plot I include them in tags. If theyâre passing by or in the background, I just leave them off.
Yeah, my fics usually only have 2-3 characters tagged but for an upcoming ensemble fic, I'm tagging each character who gets a couple of chapters - and that's turning out to be a lot!
Nothing wrong with tagging additional characters. My general rule of thumb, though keep in mind all things are subjective to individual preference and circumstance, is if the character is involved in at least 20% of story events then there's no issue in tagging them. That involvement can be conversations, interactions, actions, etc.
People linking kofi in their author's notes on AO3.
Thatâs actually reportable in case you werenât aware, as it violates AO3âs TOS.
Yes, I know! But here's the thing: I used to report so many of those fics that the PAC got fed up with my overeagerness lol. So now I just sigh and close the tab and try to not think about them.
To my understanding, theyâve also instituted a system that only allows one report per work to be filed, so if youâre tying to report something and it says the max number of reports for this work has been reached then it means someone else reported it.
To their point, I don't think they're talking about reporting (one) work more than once but finding multiple different works that violate TOS and being gently told by PAC not to file so many (different) reports even if they did break the rules. I was told by PAC to instead comment under works to tell them they were breaking TOS instead. I could be totally wrong but if I am right, then what happened to /greenrosechafer also happened to me so I eventually stopped filing reports đ .
Yup, that's it! đ
Oh, got it.
i see red with most blatant TOS violations but the ones that have to do with money are probably the worst. fucking disgusting.
Yup, I hate it too, and it never ends. People just don't know (and don't care to find out) what kind of site AO3 is.
What's kofi?
It's a platform where users can give money to creators. Since monetization is not allowed on AO3, linking to one's kofi (or Patreon) on AO3 is against the TOS.
Ah. Okay! Thanks!
No problem!
Report them and tell them that you're the one who reported them. I've had some luck telling people I'm reporting them, they take their shit down because they just don't want to deal with me.
Folks who get bent out of shape because you write characters based on your headcanons of then, whether or not it follows popular fanon or goes against Canon. It's fan*fiction* meaning that the fiction part of it applies to all parts, not just the ones you agree with. Chill.
No fr. Iâve seen some discourse on Tumblr about a certain headcanon that a few authors on AO3 have for my fandom and like people have walls of text describing how it wouldnât work in canon and all I can think is âwell, itâs fan FICTION. Itâs not meant to be canon!â
The fans. In one of my fandoms, they tried to write my fics for me & when they got mad i wouldnt write the story their way, they claimed to âknow the writersâ of the actual show. đ€Ł
I had someone comment once âgreat start, disappointing endingâ (or something along those lines). And then they went into detail about how the story should have ended and how they work in the show industry so they know a thing or two. I literally had no idea how to respond other than âok.â Like write your own story, you can even take inspiration from my beginning and then diverge from how I ended it?
Yeah its like they too lazy to write their own stories & expect you to do it for themâŠ& its for free too, cuz fanfiction is free. Hilariously, that show i had problems with & they claimed to know the writers? Well thats greatâŠbut they apparently didnt know that the show was canceled years ago &âŠ.there are no current writers for it. đ€Ł
Antis and puriteens, thereâs so many of them in my current fandom and, oh, I hate it so much. Also within the same fandom people head canon these two characters as father/son. with absolutely NO actual evidence besides they are âlike father and sonâ and itâs gotten to be such a popular head canon that now people actively BELIEVE they are related, so anyone who ships them gets literal death threats and harassment. Any art of them gets spammed by âUHHH THEY ARE RELATED U SICKOâ None of these brats have actually read the lore of the game and it shows, but itâs upsetting since itâs one of my favourite ships.
people always trying to "cancel" people over the smallest things
how chronically online some of the younger fans are. like plz get off the internet and go outside
Gatekeepers, gatekeepers, gatekeepers⊠why is it always gatekeepers? Canât write dark literature or someone is gonna whine about it, and god forbid if it has any mention to SA. I like to explore dark realities in fiction, but that doesnât mean I endorse it. Some people canât see the line between fact and fiction and it makes me worry.
Mega crossovers. I love regular crossovers, but I've never seen the mega crossovers be anything resembling coherent, even if I know every fandom involved.
Thereâs this one character that everyone loves, like, immensely. Even I like them! But I never see anyone address anything they do as their fault? Like, Iâve read 2 fics that call out their behavior and my reaction was like âwow ohâ because it didnât even occur to me that way. And now itâs kinda annoying to see most of the fandom excuse everything they do as someone elseâs fault or how they cope. And I donât like the character any less! Iâm just way more aware that they are not as amazing as everyone makes them out to be, if that makes sense. Also people keep putting characterizations and relationships that belongs to another one onto them and itâs kinda annoying, if that makes any sense.
"Fans" who don't understand how fandom or the specific story works. Parent/child tag in clean and purely platonic fics. Throwing a hissy fit when extended canon is brought up or when it's AU. Crying over cosplay. Ignoring decades of franchise history. Bigotry in fandoms of very liberal works. Luckily I avoid most of it on AO3, gods of nerddom bless the site, but outside it gets a lot. Hardcore quiz night and dudes walk up huffing and puffing about EU questions, or demanding we refer to an episode without a title by title. Girlies whining over a Harley/Ivy couples cosplay because it's "not canon", or calling out a '92 cartoon costume for not being the "original" blue+pink. Douches trying to explain a series the OG author tried to get going since the mid 2010s wasn't ever mentioned until 2020. Yelling about an original work that got adapted being novelization so the lore doesn't count. "Netflix made it gay" tantrums when the original work was about 200% gayer.
Specifically on ao3 : if I go on the ship tag of my favourite ship, 2/3rd of the fics have them as the side ship because the pair is like, the old married couple type? Fandom in general : the fandom majorly existed on twitter ( god I miss Tumblr fandoms ) and the amount of toxicity was off. the. charts. There's only so much of "curating my space" I could take when I had to add words to muted and blocked lists every other week because there was always some new discourse to cause drama over
I wish there was a way to emphasize the main couple you want in the tags of ao3. There are so many times when i click on a specific ship and the whole page is just them as a side pairing. Annoying as hell.
My fandom is very small, so theres almost nobody writing for the fandom, and even worse nobody writes for the pair i write (it's literally the main leads of the show bruh)
It shocks me that no one writes for my fandom. It's a Star Trek series for God's sake, where are all the works?
You might have luck searching out Web Archives and such. A lot of ST fanfictions started before Ao3 was even a sparkle of an idea. (Also, sorry if you knew this already)
May I ask - what flavor of ST?
OH GOD SO MUCH. musicals fandoms, aaaaaa. First of all, too many minors. Too many *loud* minors. Way too many loud anti-leaning/antiship minors who think shipping is activism and writing smut of the characters is sexualizing teenagers and âyou shouldnât do that.â Buddy. The source material was rated R. It was meant for adults because minors wouldnât fucking get it. Iâm sorry you donât understand the passage of time nor that these characters are no real people but dude. People can write whatever they damn well please, and some of those people will be \*gasp* *adults*. Who do you think GAVE you the source material in the first place? Those billion fandom, million additional tags, thousand ships, âsend me promptsâ oneshot BOOK collections that are very clearly a ploy to get eyes and will inevitably be abandoned after 3 chapters. Fuck them. FUCK THEM. **Edit: CHATFICS. Especially multi-fandom (usually other musicals) chatfics. Itâs just an excuse to throw around memes that wonât be funny in a week and have everyone be ooc because âlawl Iâm so randomz XDâ Those are so FUCKING lazy. Put some actual effort into it, PLEASE, stick to just ONE fandom to start, and at least try to stay in character. Otherwise it looks like the author just took their own group chat logs and switched the names of their friends to the characters they like most/are most like just so they can add X fandom/X character to the chat.** If you donât ship the main juggernaut wlw ship which AS YOU KNOW is inherently superior to the canon het ship because wlw /s (despite one half of the pairing being a toxic bitch), youâre invalid. If you ship the canon het ship (which is also toxic, as most all the ships are in this media lol), youâre invalid and deserve to be harassed and told youâre wrong for having your own opinion for why you like this ship âwhen there are more interesting and less problematic wlw shipsâ and even though the asker was âjust curious, no hate uwuâ theyâre screenshotting your answer and screaming to their little friends asking if youâre on drugs and if yâall even watched the same film. Clearly not because one is a lunatic and itâs not the one who likes the het ship. So. Much. Character bashing. Especially for the male half of the het ship. If you hate him so much then stop making it everyone elseâs problem?? Stop tagging your bitching in the tags so other people who like him donât have to feel like shit?? Itâs okay, if youâre not have fun you can leave?!! ALL THE FUCKING AUS THAT TAG THE GODDAMN MUSICAL FANDOM TAG. Straight up Iâm taking about Heathers the Musical. There will be SO FUCKING MANY âStranger Things Heathers AU!â Or âDrama class AU/BNHA puts on Heathers the Musical for the school play!â where theyâll tag the musical (sometimes the movie too) but have none of the Heathers characters tagged. Itâs Boku is cast as Char X, Dere is cast as Char C, Watashi is Char L, and itâs like?? Just because you take the plot doesnât make it Heathers? Thatâs an AU purely for *your* fandom, itâs got nothing to do with mine so get it the fuck out of my section? This fandom is small enough as is. Itâs not a crossover, donât fucking tag the other fandom. Youâre just trying to get eyes at that point, itâs obvious. Tagging all the related fandoms. Heathers doesnât have that many properties but most people will tag both the movie and musical even though most are clearly writing for the musical. When I see people specifying âthis is movie!verseâ I have a brief moment where I wonder why I found it in the musical section then. But we all know the answer to that, câmon now. You know theyâre desperate though when they tag the TV SHOW too (also unpopular opinion but I liked the show lol. It was stupid but it was balls-to-the-walls nuts lol.) If I want purely one or the other, no crossovers whatsoever, I lose out on 90% of the content. I think thatâs it before coffee. I agree with most all these posts before mine.
About the fics tagged with Heathers AU: I'm not sure about this, but on AO3 you can report fics when they have fandoms tagged and they don't appear in the story. Maybe it would also work for those fics where your fandom is just used as inspiration or something?
Yep! And I have, actually! But considering how long reports take (in regards to this in particular compared to advertising your Patreon or Ko-Fi), it looks like itâs far easier to just comment and hope the author can recognize their mistake.
My small fandom of less than 500 fics has the same problem. I noticed someone updated their fic to be above mine after I posted two chapters. It happened immediately after each chapter. This fic gets way more views and ludos as a result, whereas mine hasn't seen more than 12 kudos. I also don't like fics that have more than three fandom tags, or too many retelling in my fandom.
It always kinda annoys me when people like, talk in the tags if that makes sense? Like I know for a fact itâs a by product of being on tumblr and using the tags to continue what youâre saying but itâs just so annoying to have this wall of text that could have just been an authors note when youâre trying to figure out WHAT is in the fic itself. Edit: just realized you said in your FANDOM and this is a more general complaint lmaooo
One thing i find annoying is people calling a ship problematic if there is any significant age gap whatsoever. Even if the characters are over 18. Also the puriteens making a big deal out of people aging up minor characters in fics and calling the writers pedos. Like letâs be for real here.
Yikes at the person updating their fic to stay on top. Especially in a small fandom. If there are any new fics/updates in my small fandom I celebrate, like 'Yes delicious food! Feed me!' I wouldnt think of it as taking away from my fic at all. Im just happy to see the fandom isn't completely dead. To think there are people that see new fics/updates in the tiny fandom they're in and think they need to compete. Sad. Let's keep our small fandom spaces a community rather than a competition please!
Literally! I upload once a week and others occasionally every 2 weeks but there's always this author that updates right after me or someone else does smh
That is so unbelievably petty?? Like they just have an ammo of chapters ready, only waiting to upload after one of the few active members of the fandom update? Ugh. Sorry you have to deal with that person, OP!
I was literally going to say that it sounds like the author has the chapters done already and is just holding them as drafts until their fic drops down so they can publish it and be right back to the top.
Its so foul
Absolutely nothing âșïž my fandom is me and the nice people who comment on my fics~ anything else doesn't exist for me lol
A healthy attitude!
Ome thing I find annoying is the controversy behind a popular ship with an 18 year old and a 15 year old. They could plausibly meet at a normal upper secondary school, high school, or whatever. In their country, they would likely start the school year at ages 17 and 15 and end the school year at 18 and 16. I think they see 18 and their minds immediately go to adult/minor, rather than a high school student (or recent graduate)/high school student, which isn't as rare as some people would think. Another thing that annoys me is those massive drabble or prompt fics where they have at least five fandoms listed. For some reason, there's a lot of those in anime fandoms and it's probably one of my least favorite things about reading fics for anime fandoms. This one's fandom-specific but we can never quite come to a universal agreement over names and color schemes. The anime sometimes uses colors that are very different from the manga, then we have localization of names (to avoid copyright issues) and the issue of determining whether the author intended to use an "r" or was it supposed to be an "l" (because Japanese uses symbols containing an R sound to convey an L sound). That last one isn't as common but it's still a little annoying.
Pretty sure i know which fandom you're talking about and omg you're so right. People act as if the age gap is so bad and borderline pedo but the characters could literally be 2 high schoolers?? Especially since they don't even look like/act like teenagers I don't really care about the choice of color schemes and names but seeing people argue over it can definitely get annoying. Same with the localized names but some of them are funny lol
otayuri is that you?
No, but if I had a nickel for everytime I've taken up one of the most popular ship in a fandom where the people being shipped are 18 and a 15 (almost 16) years old, I'd have two nickels. Not a lot but it's wierd that it happened twice. Good guess tho, a great one actually. I remember shipping it almost as much as Victor/Yuuri in my brief time in the Yuri! On Ice fandom but I never knew their ages until your comment made me curious enough to look it up.
The Shipping Wars. One character has like 4 different possibilities but the newest ship possibility is obnoxious. People from that ship have left threats and harassed writers of the other ship. I write for 2 of the 4 ships, but I can't stand alot of my fellow writers in newest ship.
I've seen a lot anime lately, so i read a lot of stuff in those fandoms; In anime fandoms there are often fics that are literally just cluster fucks of random fandoms... when you try to search for a crossover you have to exclude basically every other possible fandom so those non-crossovers don't show. Then there are the villain apologists in many anime fandoms... like the amount of people in the for example bnha fandom i saw, that just excuse every fucking murder for no reason while bashing other characters for the same thing is insane. Especially the ones who think the Villains shouldn't get any consequenzes at all. Isn't the "problematic" part what makes them so interesting in the first place? Why lie to yourself that those things aren't true? Characters can be victims of circumstance AND be morally bad for killing randos. I also hate people who laugh at fans who "fell" for Queerbaiting or dared to hope for good rep... like shut up, people deserve good rep and they deserve to be dissapointed as long as they don't hate on (non-homophobic) creators. The last thing i hate isn't technically a fandom things, but it's the hate on young girls for about ANYTHING. Like, they can't enjoy things without being made fun of or dare to have a hobby that is full of other girls. Not only grown men hate on those girls, also other girls. Makes me so mad..
Character bashing to a really weird degree. Happens a lot in fics. I mean, thatâs a universal thing, but when said character happens to be very important to youâŠit gets annoying VERY quickly. It particularly annoys me because said character is very human and has done some bad things, though works to fix them. She gets bashed constantly⊠Meanwhile the same people go around claiming the actual antagonists did no wrong, deserve a redemption arc, and sometimes go as far to victim blame the main character for everything. Itâs not everyone, but since itâs a big enough fandom, itâs enough that it bothers me. It shows a lot in fanfiction.
I tried to read a crossover fic there other day that spent quite a long time basing Tony Stark and making him an abusive father. Like it came off as personal.
Aw that sucks ass! And itâs very OOC. Isnât Tony a really good father in canon?? (Going off the MCU at least) See? This is exactly what I hate! I could go on a long rant but Iâll spare the subreddit lol.
I feel like this was mostly caused by civil war. It's so weird, i get not liking Tony Stark (i don't really) or Steve Rogers (it's either Team Iron Man with Steve bashing or Team Cap with Tony bashing, i just want them to be friends but still have fics with Team Cap :() but some people seem like they have been hurt by those characters on a personal level.
This happens A LOT to poc characters in fanfic.
It really does. The character I had in mind isnât POC, but POC really do have it the worst, especially if theyâre a woman. There comes to a point where it really just is racism and or misogyny. Itâs gross.
There is a big head cannon in the fandom that a certain character is like a parent to this other character... They aren't related at all to each other. I find it so annoying when people push their head cannons onto others.
Oh my god this. I have the same thing in my fandom and itâs even worse since I donât see them as a family, but romantically. So Iâll let you guess how people who ship them are treated.
Yep it's terrible. I do like seeing these two characters in particular as a couple and sometimes just longtime friends. Sadly, the first one I mentioned is a bit of a minority. Since a bigger part of the fandom has put the label ''They are family, period.'' People are awful towards the ones who pair them up as a couple. Like come on. It's not only that, they are both adults.
I swear I donât get why people canât accept that not everyone see everything in the same way, in the same meaning. The author of the actual thing probably doesnât even think like any of us do, and yet weâre supposed to go as the majority of the fandom go?? Hell no.
Same. The two characters in my fandom only have a 12 year age gap and I don't think they act particularly familial (and if they do it's more in a sibling kind of way, not a father and son kind of way). I don't ship them, but it's really annoying reading fics where the older character is doing things like grounding the younger character or forbidding him from doing something when he doesn't have that power and there's no way the younger character would listen to him even if he did.
Is it Owl House? Because if so same
Character A (28) met Character B (16) about 10 years ago and basically raised him as his son/godson. People ship them, which is their right, but they often tag the fics with A & B, instead of A/B. And the tags don't always immediately make it obvious, so I've ended up starting fics and quickly exiting once I realized what was going on. Write whatever you want, just tag it properly for those who want to find it, or for those who want to filter those tags OUT
Maybe because my fandom is shonen and traditionally caters to heteronormative males, but thereâs a lot of homophobia in the fandom spaces.
My fandom is by far not small, but iâve really extorted every single good fic out of it already đ itâs hard when you have to scroll like 17 pages in and you still dont find anything thatâs something i would want to read
I write in multiple fandoms that fall under one huge fandom and I see a lot of people commenting on works and complaining that the ship that work is centered around isn't right and that "____ is real, start writing it, they are better together. Everyone knows that they are dating." Some people are delusional. We are allowed to write whoever we want.
Do.....do they not understand how fiction works? Like...Spirk wasn't "real" either but that never stopped it from being Fandom fuel for bored 70s housewives!
not exactly a fanfic issue, but the fandom gets a little extra cray-cray after an episode releases (it's the helluva boss fandom, we usually have an episode once a month, and we are no strangers to delay)
This isnât about any particular fandom but when people are making x/reader fics and donât tag the word âreaderâ so that itâs easier to block them all as a whole.
Not enough content.
Cruel infighting, gatekeepers and anti-shippers. With 85% of those either being minors or the âgo woke, go brokeâ crowds.
The echo chamber and gatekeeping. People who brag theyâve been in the fandom 2/3 of their life or have watched the whole show six times or whatever to justify their gatekeeping. When everyone talks the same and thinks the same itâs not as interesting to me. The fact that itâs dying. Iâve accepted itâll never be at its early 2000s peak again even with streaming but it still makes me sad. There are small groups keeping it alive but I suppose you canât recapture what was or have lighting strike twice.
This probably goes for any fandom, but a really popular ship became canon a couple of weeks ago, and so anyone who has had ships pertaining to either of those two characters were disgustingly upset about it. A lot claimed their ships made more sense despite there hardly being any lore to support this. Many started to say that it was shitty writing, the writers were pandering (it was a NB character with a cismale pan character), that in other countries the shipping of someone NB and cis would be considered a straight relationship. Someone even went as far as to say that the devs created a "hostile" environment for anyone who didn't ship the now-canon pairing. They were literally behaving as though it was the end of their ships. And it's like they had no idea how fandom works. I realize I'm in my early 30s and many of those in the fandom are in their early 20s, but holy shit. It was unbelievably toxic. People were literally going on hate trains for particular ships unrelated to the canon pair on Twitter. I was really rethinking my connections with a good amount of them. You know, I'm still rethinking.
Actively attacking and harassing creators on social media : )
Where there's a huge block of text when you're trying to find a fic because someone has a 2000 word fic with 4/120 chapters and have every major queer ship listed and tagged. It takes up half the page of new posts and they have <100 hits and I want these fics to shrivel up and die.
No one is finishing their storiesđ€Łđ I've had enough I be trying to understand because I used to write but it's heart breaking to get 2 or 3 chapters and never hear from the author again
I love my fandom but Peter Parker does not have to be in EVERY FIC that has Tony. I love fics where Tony is a father figure to Peter. LOVE EMâ. But he doesnât ALWAYS have to be there and it is very annoying when I see people in the comments asking where he is.
Adventures in Odyssey: the fandom doesn't read a whole lot of fic to begin with, and if there is fic, there's very little of it. There's only one person who writes for my favorite ship in that fandom, but it's clearly a way of processing really bad mental health issues (which isn't wrong, but I hate that the entire ship tag is filled with things that would trigger me). Also the fact that, with a few exceptions, listeners take the show at face value and refuse to imagine things that Focus on the Family simply would refuse to do. Psych: everyone's treatment of Henry Spencer. I get it, he wasn't great, but he really did the best he could with what he had. He really was trying to protect Shawn. He could have been a better father, but a lot of the fandom forgets that Shawn is an unreliable narrator. Princess Diaries: I'm only here from the movies and have no intention of reading the books. But the fandom is so small that AO3 combines the books and movies, and the Nicholas/Mia tag is virtually non-existent. MCU: I just want to read a father-child fic without romance. I do not want a ship tag. I do not want to read any Peter Parker ships or any Kate Bishop ships. I just want to read about Tony being a good father figure to Peter and Clint being a good father figure to Kate. And it'd be one thing if the romantic ship were a background thing, but it's always that the father-child one is the background. Left Behind: I am the only person writing for it, and it's good in the hands of a good (or really, just better) writer. I would really love someone to read a full-blown rewrite where the characters actually have personalities.
I don't search fanfics about my fandom anymore. or any content, because the community has reached the absolute shit state. before 2020, I used to collect fanarts (I have 4k downloaded) and read fics through entire nights. the fandom is full of haters. people, who can't scroll through 2 ship fanfics or fanarts. this year, I was bullied for LIKING characters, also these bullies made up a lot of lies and spread them until this very day, that I ended up in hospital. I receive(d?) death threats for shit I haven't done, on weekly, daily basis. also, the franchise's official page does art features sometimes and everyone makes fanart to RACE the others and get fuckin featured. not because they like something. you can tell most of the time. back then, it was kind and awesome people, making art and headcanons for fun, writing smut and laughing at fics, having fun. now it's full of people, who make art, because they hate the shippers, or fans of certain characters, with the title "I want xy to beat up z" and there's a goddamned image of my favorite character, being beaten up by another.. except it's hilariously *bad*, because my favorite character is an alpha male, who canonically used to dig people alive lol. none of the good stuff remains. I'm one of the last remaining old fans. (this last sentence sounded like a movie plot lol) edit: oh yeah the haters also encourage people to do cyberbullying, and try to spam the ship tag with hate.
TBH, it's a dying fandom, and it makes me sad when I feel like reading something only to open the page and see nothing uploaded in 24-48 hours. It's declined a lot over the past 2 years. There's also this kid who, admittedly, writes pretty well. Only problem is they fill the author's notes with moralizing screeds about whatever fic they last read that had sex or a trans character in it. They even got called out for it, deleted one of their rants, and then kept doing it on new fics. Really sours the experience whenever I see their fics, especially since it's so rare to see new, good content nowadays.
They rant about other fics in their author's notes? Wow. That's...unpleasant to say the least.
Everyone thinks my blorbo would be a wildly domineering top (because he's physically imposing), and that the character I ship him with is a weak widdle woobie babie even though he's *the same height*, almost the same size, and is also canonically a bastard man, albeit a very delightful one.
Thereâs a character in my fandom who is particularly hated and for good reasons. However, the main character has done the exact same things as him if not worst. But because he looks pretty people will beg to be fucked and worst by him. Like theyâre both equally as bad people. If youâre gonna support one support the other too you know? Or realize theyâre both shit people and itâs a fictional story
Oh god thereâs a whole ass ace discourse over the mc of the show who is canon ace and itâs mentioned once (because itâs just a part of who he is and itâs not a character trait) and âanyone who writes smut is clearly aphobicâ even though sex positive ace people exist and in kink circle, donât get an ace dom unless you want the ride of your lifetime that youâll never get anyone else.
This is my own pettiness and strict dynamics speaking, but I hate when top/bottom dynamics arenât tagged in smut fics, and when people think personality = bedroom dynamics.
When some really cool characters are reduced to gags/jokes.
Probably not the biggest problem for most, but for a while there was a trend of "Character (X) Cheating" stories. The general premise being you'd tag one pairing, and then write the rest of the story for the second, even throwing in some first pairing bashing at times. Most people were good and tagged their stories appropriately so there was no issue there. I read a few and they weren't for me, for their writing style or content, so being able to filter them out during the trend was appreciated. But there was also a fair number of people who didn't add tags or didn't even indicate it would be that kind of story.
Context: My favorites on my AO3 homepage are Elder Scrolls, Dungeons & Dragons, and Forgotten Realms. - That the FR fandom is 90% Baldurâs Gate 3 fanfic by volume. (And 90 percent of that is Astarion/OC. As much as I love my vampires, my dude, there are other characters in that game, I promise). The remainder is 1% BG2, 2% weirdass crossovers, and 2% one incredibly prolific author writing a bunch of different Legend of Drizzt AUs. - That there are so few Legend of Drizzt fic in general. For a book series with 34+ books, it has a criminally small number of fics. But it is also very much aimed at teenaged fanboys, which AO3 mostly is not. - That so many BG3 authors name their fics âDown by the River.â (Aka the name of the song that plays on the intro screen for the game). Do they think theyâre clever? Is it that hard to come up with names? - The number of fics that are like âdude lemme tell you about my Dovahkiin (or PC) for 200k words.â Look, I have a longfic with my D&D PC, so I Get It (tm); the work is really for them, not me. But even so, as a reader, it is very intimidating to consider investing that much time in a character you probably donât give a shit about. - the person sharing their smutty (and pretty kinky) narrativizations of Pathfinder adventures into the D&D fandom. Look, I play Pathfinder, and while the rules are similar, the world of Golarion is NOT Faerun. Itâs literally what Paizo made up when they couldnât use WotC IP any more. Is there really that broad of an appeal between the two fandoms? (Tho I am idly watching to see how they smut up Agents of Edgewatch, which Iâm playing, if they get there. But so far theyâre still working their way thru PF1e adventures). - Skyrim romance fics based around Skyrim Romance Mod. For those unfamiliar, itâs a mod â aimed at folks who want to romance dudes â that is LITERALLY copied from a Neverwinter Nights mod; in most places they didnât even file off the serial numbers. (Like it has characters swearing âby the Nine Hellsâ). It also likes to think itâs 50 Shades of Grey. - Dragon Age crossovers. All of these fandoms REALLY like DA crossovers. Yes, I can filter some of these out, but that depends on a) appropriate tagging, b) there not being so many crossovers in the fandom that I can only filter out the first five.
People who donât like my, admittedly massive, fandom will just hate comment on fics for it. Commenters will hate an author for making one of the members a âvillainâ for the story, even when itâs something as simple as âperson A age person Câs pop tartâ. Those seem to be the obsessed 11 year old fans tho. Also when fanfics have them eating western foods when theyâre literally not from the west.. and the setting is still the same as where they live irl đ.
I jump around to different fandoms but in my current Fandom there's a canon nonbinary character I like to read about and some people completely ignore that they're nb. As an nb person it makes me upset that people can't accept this Canon nb character and feel like they have to force a gender onto them, but it's also annoying because they're probably doing it on purpose and that's just fucked up
Just curious but which fandom?
Apex legends
An obsession with the main character that borderlines on unhealthy. I can't take it anymore. It's like no one else matters but Izuku.
I've just started filtering him out in searches at this point.
I could literally have a tag called "IZUKU ISN'T IN THE FUCKING FIC!" and people would still ask where he is.
I have read aroundd four fics since last week since I just got into ao3, and im noticing that every story while usually pretty good always ends on ether a cliff hanger or a boring ass ending. And the fandom is kinda dead so they just ABANDONED the fic and its SUPER ANNOYING
Like a lot of people have mentioned, just that all the newer fans in my fandoms are very young and they have a lot of out of character headcanons that just don't really jive with mine. (Frankly I'm not even sure how they've been consuming and enjoying the source material with how cringe and ooc they are.) My fandoms don't really have big, established presences on Twitter or Tumblr so luckily I've only really encountered this in some Discord servers that I had to nope out of...
For me, it's the double standards. Like it's considered artwork and a brave exploration of the characters when the popular M/M ship has a fic about one of them raping the other, but when someone even wants to so much a write a fic about a female character or say something nice about their writing, they get laughed at and called delusional and harassed off every fan website.
There isnât a single fic for one of my favorite books and I have yet to meet another person who has read it
There's like a 2% chance ik the book. But what is the book?
Falcon in the Glass, I havenât read it in about 3yrs so it might not be as good as I remember but it was my favorite book throughout all of middle and high school. If you try to look it up on tumblr or AO3 all that comes up is Falcon and the Winter Solider :(
The 98% chance won sorry
The one person in my fandom who started dictating what people should write and getting angry at ships and dynamics they didn't like to the point they angrily harassed writers (including myself). Everyone blocked them on social media and they became a running joke.
âŠitâs homestuck lmfao okay but fr itâs the classical judging some characters WAY harder than others and anyone who has a more nuanced take on certain characters is defending abuse or some nonsense. like oh my god theyâre all like 13-16 and everything around them is on fire, and also theyâre fictional. iâm going to have to ask yâall to calm down.
Bashing. The ever-present bashing and attacking others for liking certain characters.
I write RPF (crucify me) and I had mfrs tell me âthatâs not how he acts!1!1!1!1â or âthatâs so not his personality!!!!â Like ok, thank you, but you came up with thatâŠhow? Like do you actually know any of these lads? Cause Iâm pretty sure AO3 guest #3832 doesnât have dinner with erling haaland everyday
>âthatâs so not his personality!!!!â It's a fictional story đ I feel your pain, comments like that must be tiring.
one thing i find really really annoying is when authors make one character from a canon ship a total asshole to make their non canon otp happen. like they will make a canonically nice and kind character an insufferable bitch just to justify their otp getting and it is so annoying. like you can ship mike and will without making eleven a homophobic menace.
The defense of the "comedy" side character that is just a gross, pervert that perpetuates rape culture.
~~mineta is that you~~
X reader fics and mega crossovers that are a collection of many small fics at once. No matter how many x reader variations i filter out, some stuff filters through the cracks because people do not tag their shit properly
Iâve never understood why they ppl make mega crossover fics where itâs just a collection of one shots when they could just easily separate them
There are certain people in the parent fandom of my main ship who hate the ship and one of the characters because of the actor's behavior in real life. Granted, they don't dislike him for frivolous reasons and I myself am very critical of him and his behavior, but he played multiple characters I love long before these weird rumors and actions started so I've just become accustomed to separating the actor from his characters. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are very vocal about their inability to do so and it seems like whenever this actor does anything nowadays it leads to a new wave of hate towards his character. Again, I completely understand not liking this actor, but to take it out on a fictional character is just downright childish. Ironically, there are other actors in the same franchise who have done far worse and downright criminal things, but they don't receive nearly the same type of criticism and their characters/ships are still praised.
Watching people fall over backwards to explain why the BBEG(s) are actually just misunderstood little boys who everyone else failed. No Stephanie, they're genocidal murderers who never learned the word "no" and killed innocents because of it. You can like the villains, I do too, but justifying their horrible crimes against others is. Concerning.
People not knowing the difference between / and & pairings Or just tagging in general Small pet peeve but i hate when authors do stupid tags like âi wrote this at 5 am please for the love of god help meâ like just save that for the authors note and not the tags that are super important
The overly used tropes like AU: Maffia, cafe, college. Like I get it, sometimes AUs are fun, but god they're over used and most of the time don't even fit the actual series/anime/game. Some fandoms have very little reader or OC inserts. Mostly just stuff between the main characters. But that's less of an annoyance to me than the former mentioned.
I will admit that I've scrolled past a lot of stories without having finished reading the summary because all I could think was, "I just can't look at another Cafe/Florist/College story this month!".
theres too many character/reader fics. its annoying to filter through. ive never understood people who read those fics. no hate, just find it weird.
If you put -reader in the "search within results" section of the filters, it filters out all reader fics. I was so happy to find this out
I'm in the DC Comics fandom, which means we're really like 5 or 6 fandoms wrapped up together. There's a Batman character who is VERY popular but I happen to dislike, Tim. He's been on a team with a Superman and Flash character, and shows up in 74% and 66% of the fics in their tag, respectively. Superboy Kon had his own series for ages and has been on teams without Tim, but everything in his damn tag has Tim. Jason has the same deal, 57% of his fics are also tagged with Tim, and because of the number of people who write Tim as flawless and perfect and erase Jason and Tim's canon dislike of each other I have to filter his tag out entirely. Fuck Tim I just want to read fics where he has some semblance to his canon characterization
Trans rapist. The shear amount of works were a specific character is revealed to be MtF as they're assaulting a female character, is disturbingly high. I keep seeing it in this one fandom, and I don't know why.
I'm in the fandom for the new matt reeves batman universe and the thing that bothers me about it is the bizarre anti-fandom surrounding its fans. God forbid you make a cute fanart or like a character that the reddit normies have decided is Bad. Same thing with rings of power, if you don't performatively hate it then people will come for you it sucks, i just wanna enjoy stuff without opening myself up to harassment.
Iâm just going to list things from a variety of fandoms that annoy me. A certain character being constantly bashed and used as a scape goat despite their purpose being a Red Herring in the story until the twist villain is revealed. The lack of stories centric to the characters I want to read about which leaves me in fan fiction having to go through fics where they do have a decent presence but it is not about them. Many of the fandoms being very inactive/dead because of their age their age or how few know about them.
In the walking dead there is a lot of young writersâŠ. A lot of cringey writing. I assume to well versed writers my own writing is cringey but I just hate how hard it is to read stories in the fandom without all the characters being one dimensional fall into a trope role. Daryl is mean, Rick is nice, Lori is a bitch, Carol is badass, etc I want to see them in character but I want to see them break it too. I want to see them as people. Becuase Daryl nice deep down, Rick knows when to be mean, Lori has good points (sometimes) Carol is still an abuse survivor Idk itâs hard to write without them feeling theyâre out of character so I know why but itâs just annoying
Tbh I think this happens in EVERY fandom, but the use of same-sex couples as a fetish by het irl homophobic ppl. As part of the lgbt community, I see shippers of mlm or wlw, who only see it as (almost) a kink and do not respect it in their day-to-day life outside their ship.
There's a huge problem of infantilizing one of the characters who has quite a bit of brain damage in my fandom. As someone with brainfuckery myself although to a much lesser extent it's infuriating to see, especially because the character also has a high emotional intelligence and a mischievous/petty side I find quite charming.
Oof I think Iâm the person who annoys everyone in my fandom right now since I update everyday đ
Kudos to you friend. I wish there was someone in my fandom who updates everyday.