fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3180 ]

[ SECRET POST #3180 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3180 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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09. [WARNING for rape]

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10. [WARNING for rape]

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11. [WARNING for domestic violence/abuse]

[The Musketeers]

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12. [WARNING for rape]

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13. [WARNING for rape]

[Babylon 5]

Notes:

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Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I've seen more than a few people on this comm complain about how all the fic starts to look the same once a shiny new fandom has settled down, as soon as that fandom's particular tropes and conventions have established themselves.

I like to experiment with styles and concepts that I don't see in fanfiction very often, and most of my fics are either written in a style or have content that is unusual or unconventional by the standards of the fandom. These "weird" fics make up the bulk of what I write, and they don't get nearly as much attention as the few generic fluff pieces I've written.

That doesn't bother me very much, but it does make me think that the reason so many fandoms don't have much fic that strays from fandom "norms" is because most readers simply aren't interested. I know that getting feedback is very important for many writers, and perhaps they're hesitant to write things outside the typical mold because they don't think it will be received well.

What do you guys think?

I don't think fandom wants "weird" and "experimental," they want "different."

People who want hamburgers would like the choice between McDonalds and Burger King, but fewer are willing to go to an organic gluten-free vegan burger joint. You can't jump too far at once and expect people to follow.

Jumping in small distances, people will flock to.

AYRT

But what's "weird" for a specific fandom may not necessarily be so in a different context.

For example, most school AUs are unrealistic wish fulfillment fantasies taking place in a stereotypical modern American high school setting, utilizing certain tropes that are expected to go along with this setting. If someone were to write a fairly realistic school AU set in a school in 1940s rural Canada, and no one in this fandom had ever done something like that before, would you consider it more akin to the Burger King or organic gluten-free vegan burger joint in your restaurant analogy?

That's the sort of stuff I'm talking about.

Of course it's dependent on context and fandom.

I would say the 1940s rural Canada thing is more like the gluten-free thing, honestly. If you have to get that specific. The more adjectives you need to describe the AU and the narrower the category gets, the more readers you lose.

High school is generic high school. 1940s rural Canada is a time period, a setting, and a country. Mafia AU is generic and will get attention. Triad AU in 1950s Kowloon is going to lose people.

To add to this, the more you expect people to know, or the harder people have to try, the less they'll want to read your fic. Generally speaking.

Using the example of the "Mafia AU" only it's Triad AU in 1950s Kowloon, how many people in Teen Wolf fandom do you think are familiar with A) Triads B) mob politics in Hong Kong in the 1950s, C) Kowloon's layout, atmosphere, culture? If you need all that in order to get all the references in a piece of fanfiction, not many people are willing to put in the effort. It's so specific that it turns people off.

Re: Does fandom as a whole actually WANT variety in its fic?

(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 01:14 (UTC) - Expand

Nope. It wants mad libs of generic smut where you could easily replace characters a and b with characters x and y of [insert popular fandom]. Decades of research has lead me to this conclusion.

DA

I don't think so. I would say mad libs of generic smut where you can replace characters a and b with x and y are always welcomed and accepted, but when you ask fandom what the want more of, it's never "more of exactly the same!!"

It's always "more of something similar but with unique twists or takes." Which doesn't stray too far from the basic fanon.

The numbers don't lie. Fans saying "I wish there was more of x!" go out and read the same old thing everyone else is reading. Along with OP, my most viewed works are a) PWP smut that (if you erased a few key details) you could slap any other names on and it would switch out perfectly

b) Fluff that is the exact same thing as above.

My experimental pieces only get attention if I shove in a bit of a or b to literally trick people into reading them.

This situation is the exact same for every single author I have ever spoken to. We are a culture of people claiming to want art games and where Call of Duty is the best selling series of all time.

ayrt

Nah. You can't determine that from sheer number because of a lot of factors. Rec lists. Staple fanon fics. If your fic ends up one of the basics of the fandom's fanon, all the newbies are going to be recced to that fic, boosting its numbers. Of course all the staples get read the most, because they're the staples that everyone reads. What fandom wants would be everything beyond that "primer to X fandom" rec list.

There's a difference between smut as such and generic smut. You can write porn in an imaginative, unique manner and give your heroes subtle and ingenious characterizations through their respective behaviours. You can do the same with fluff.

Re: Does fandom as a whole actually WANT variety in its fic?

herpymcderp - 2015-09-19 00:38 (UTC) - Expand

To be fair, not everyone wants mad libs of generic smut.
Some sickos want mad libs of generic fetish smut.

Touche. I like to think I cater to the needs of those sickos.

AYRT

I would like to see this research of yours. Do you have any empirical data? Has your research been peer-reviewed?

:P

What are you doing stop it. Stop making me want to publish something on this.

I bet you there's some dumb little niche journal out there that would absolutely eat this up.

AYRT

I know I would eat it up! Academic studies of fandom things are so much fun.

I think the problem is that most people can't actually write the characters that they are trying to portray. So instead they write generic fluff or tropes, using those as a crutch to prop up their otherwise crap stories.

Tbf that is true of the weird-fic writers as well. They use the twist or anti-tropes to prop up otherwise unsupported characterizations or stories.

Not saying OP is one of them, don't get me wrong, but those edgy for the sake of edgy fics abound too.

AYRT You're not wrong.

OP

I sincerely hope I'm not one of those people. I just write about things I think are interesting, not because I'm intentionally trying to be edgy.

Re: Does fandom as a whole actually WANT variety in its fic?

(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 00:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Does fandom as a whole actually WANT variety in its fic?

(Anonymous) - 2015-09-19 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

AYRT

I won't deny that the phenomenon you're describing exists, but what about writers who do have a good grasp of the characters yet still don't venture outside their fandom's popular tropes? Do you think they write that stuff just because it's what they like to write, or because they think if they try something new it will be ignored?

AYRT Interesting question.

I think there tends to be two different types of tropes. General tropes found in every fandom (genderswap, aliens made them do it, sex pollen, etc) and then canon specific tropes (.

In my experience at least, the canon based tropes that emerge in fandom tend to be in part informed by the one or two gem fics that exist. The fandom classics.

There's another angle to this that muddys the water. Good authors often write stories which fit into the universe they're writing about. If you're writing about that Universe, there's not a huge amount of room to experiment. People are telling each other stories about the same Universe and so tend to rely on similar frames of references to build up that feeling in their stories.

Hope that made sense, it's really late here and I'm rapidly losing consciousness!

I think that fandom as a whole would be up to reading anything that is 1) well-written and 2) has specific tropes fans generally love - e.g. epic hurt/comfort.

If your fics are for one of the major fandoms but aren't well-received, it probably means that you either don't write as well as this fandom requires or that you don't make any use of the popular tropes.

The only case in which I can really imagine a fic that answers these criteria getting ignored is when it's written in a James Joyce style or is very hard to understand for other reasons.

AYRT

I tend to write for fandoms that are either really, really small or really, really big, so maybe that has something to do with it?

"it probably means that you either don't write as well as this fandom requires or that you don't make any use of the popular tropes."

Hopefully it's the second thing you said! I don't often use popular tropes in my writing, but I've noticed that when I do use them the fic is more well received.

Couldn't tell you in general.

All I can say is, for myself, that I'm very willing to try new and unfamiliar and novel things in fic, but that it's inherently hit-or-miss - sometimes it's just not going to work for me.

At the same time, while I do enjoy new stuff, I'm also completely comfortable reading a basically infinite amount of the same basic tropes. And it's going to be much less hit-or-miss there - like, you can pretty much just give me all the fluff or all the hurt comfort or all the domestic fic you have, and I'll pretty much vacuum it all up.

So maybe that's part of what's going on? Just intrinsically, there's a bias towards things that fandom knows it likes.

For me, what's important in a fanfic is whether or not I can picture it taking place within the framework of the canon itself. Even AUs need to feel plausible within the canon context or I'm just not interested in them.

There are a lot of fics that are well-written technically but just stray too far from the overall "feel" of the canon to hook me into them. I read fic for a canon because I like that particular canon and want more of it, so something that's too drastically different from the canon itself is going to put me off.

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