[ SECRET POST #3521 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3521 ⌋

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

01.



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02.
[World of Warcraft: Legion]


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03.
(Fallout 4)


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04.
[Doctor Who - 12/Clara]


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05.
(The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)


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06.
[Bojack Horseman]


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07.
[Criminal Minds]


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08.
[Elite: Dangerous]


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09.
[Street Fighter]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #503.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I've realized recently that it's rare I enjoy reading fanfic these days. It's not even that so much of it is ship or kinks I don't share, it's that it's just...not good.

I know it's wrong to expect professional quality from hobbyist work -- and that a lot of these writers probably ARE really inexperienced and need this practice...but I just can't enjoy it. It all just feels so fake in every way. From characterization to plot, dialogue and writing in general, it's just BAD.

And that makes me so sad, because I used to live for being able to see and hear more from my favorite characters, and now...it just feels like I've lost something. I don't know if it's always been this bad and I'm just now realizing it or if it actually used to be better.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I'm seeing a lot of posts at the moment about how fanfic authors deserve to be paid/commissioned just as much as fanartists. But when I read most fanfic I think.... nahhhhh.

The last post I saw made the point that it's because everyone thinks they can write, therefore written works are devalued. I think that's true but I think that's why most authors can't justify charging for fanfic. Most people don't pick up a pen and then think they're amazing artists. A lot of fanwriters do just write terrible, OOC, cliche fic. They're not getting paid because they're not writing to a professional standard. Not because of a bias against written fanworks.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[iceyred]

I'd be content to let capitalism solve this dilemma. If people think a writer's work is good, they will buy it/commission work from that author. If what the writer produces is OOC, cliche crap, then it's unlikely* they will get commissions.

*but not impossible. Remember Twilight.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

As a fanfic writer, I can't imagine cashing in on someone else's work. Yes, there are some exceptions, but for the most part, this is someone else's universe and I'm just playing in it. Even if what I'm writing is on par with professional works, I'm creating things out of love for the series and don't understand the argument that I "should" get paid.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

It's not like fanartists get paid for everything they do and I can never look at fanart for free. I look at fanart for free all the damn time because artists post their stuff online. If I wanted a physical print or to commission a particular image, that's different and it makes sense that I can't expect to get that for free. Fic that's posted online is like art that's posted online in that both can be viewed for free. It's just that there's no fanfic equivalent of buying a print or keychain or T-shirt (but I can see commissions happening).

Also, just because people aren't going to pay anyone to write fanfic doesn't mean no one gets payed to write. When people suggest fanfic writers should get paid because people should get for their literary labor, I think "No one is actually stopping you from trying to get paid to write, you just need to write something people will pay you for, and this fanfic ain't it." (It's not like every fanartist who offers commissions actually sells any art, anyway.)

It's important to keep in mind that there are published authors (and not just E. L. James) who used to write fanfic or continue to write fanfic on the sly. Not just novelists, but non-fiction authors, journalists, screenwriters, and people who do all kinds of writing tasks for their jobs. They usually just keep their professional and fanfic-writing lives separate. Also, let's not forget people who write licensed tie-in novels or who grew up to write scripts for the latest version of whatever TV show or movie they grew up loving. It's like a form of fanfiction that pays.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[ketita]

It's interesting that you say that, because nearly 100 years ago the philosopher Walter Benjamin was talking about the same thing... he was very prescient about the future of writing. And it's true, people are forgetting that writing is a learned skill, and not everybody is good at it.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I've wondered the same thing. Although actually, I've gone back and re-read some fics I thought were great, and they really weren't. They were still better than a lot of fanfic out there, but they were just... fine. That was with them having been beta read. (Which might be part of why so many fics now aren't only "fine", but horrible.)

OTOH, I don't know what your experience was like before, but for me, I followed two fanfic archive where fics had to be approved and beta'd. At which point I pretty much abandoned fanfic sites like ff.n, and the fics I did read there were strikingly awful. On LJ there are fics that are still more of the same quality as the fics on the archives I went to, but there's way more fanfiction.net-esque fanfics. I also think, and maybe this is true of you too, that I just had more time to find the gold when I was still in high school/college.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I'm with you, anon. I don't know if it's an overall decline, though, so much as fanfiction always being bad, but good in pockets. Sometimes you just get a certain fandom and a certain platform and a certain group of fans, and for whatever reason they write really good stuff.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[ariakas]

It was always bad. You were young.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

IDK, I've gone back to fic I read a decade or more ago and am still shocked by how good it is. So, your condescending blanket judgment means fuck all.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[kaijinscendre]

Really? The fanfic I read has only seemed to get better written. When I look back at old fic, it seems terrible.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like this is an age-old complaint, and I just don't get it. I'm still reading as much great fanfic today as I was ten years ago. It does wax and wane depending on which fandom I'm in at the time, though. Sure, there's always a lot of bad stuff to sift through, but that doesn't mean there aren't really great fics out there too. I don't think this has really changed over the years.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[nightscale]

I've always found it to be a mixed bag tbh and that hasn't changed at all for me over the years.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

My interest depends a great deal on the fandom. I'm a fan of a lot of things where I've never had any interest in reading fic, despite following the show/movies/books religiously and greatly enjoying meta and discussions. I've also been a fan of a few things where I want to devour as much fic as I can every day. It really just depends on what I'm a fan of at the moment whether I'm likely to go looking for fic on a regular basis.

I've been lucky and the latter category tends to be fandoms that happen to be large and have a big fanfic output. That way, I can afford to be picky and trigger-happy with the back button. I don't feel like I read a lot of bad fic because I don't have to invest any more time in a story once it turns out to be bad, and that usually makes itself apparent early.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I think the larger the fandom the better the chance of quality fic. There's always been good and bad, but if your fandom has only a couple of writers and they're both struggling, I can see why you would feel that way about it.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[dethtoll]

While I have read fic, I don't consider myself a reader of it, but I have read a LOT of video game tie-ins over the years (and a few Warhammer 40K books too, for good measure) and...

It's kind of both surprising and not how similar they are. Books tend to be slightly better written, and depending on the author they can be decent literature in their own right (Simon Spurrier's "Lord of the Night" is a good example, bad title aside) but I've read some really, really bad ones, the kind that make you wonder if someone didn't just copy a fanfic they found wholesale and put a book cover to it.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I have probably read thousands of fanfics over the years. I have about 300 of my favorites in my bookmarks. I am easy to please, actually, but I do have some absolute favorites that are just perfect from beginning to end. These go in a special folder.

I tend towards larger fandoms (sometimes on purpose), so usually I have plenty of fodder.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I would have disagreed with you two hours ago. But I just finished a Olympics AU where it is painfully clear the author did zero research on the sports their characters were participating in. Or the Olympic calendar. Or Rio. And now I'm frustrated (because I can't leave a review, since concrit is apparently rude) and tipsy. Also, correctly punctuating dialogue seems to have become the exception in fanfic rather than the rule.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

Also, correctly punctuating dialogue seems to have become the exception in fanfic rather than the rule.

Oh my god this. I've read too many fics that were otherwise decent (after weeding out all the ones that were, to put it bluntly, crap) that got it wrong.
And most of the time it throws me out of the story.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[ketita]

Nah, that's pretty true, and I've been feeling it for a long time. A lot of fanfic just isn't great, especially if you aren't deeply immersed in the fandom at that moment.
For me part of it is that since I'm studying literature and analyzing it way more than before, everything has gotten worse. I see issues where before I didn't, and it takes more of an effort to turn off the critical part of my mind, and some fics are just so badly edited I can't take it.
I think part of it is that to really enjoy fanfic you have to coast on your emotions for the characters very strongly.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, same. In my small fandom, I think it's because most of the older writers were the authors who made it so good in the first place and they've moved on to other fandoms or to writing original fiction. The younger writers are not of the same caliber, IMO. The quality of writing is sloppier, there is less attention to characterization and dialogue, and nobody seems to care about having a decent plot.

I haven't found that.

[(Anonymous)]

And I don't actually buy the 90/10 rule (or the 95/5 one or the 99/1 one) - 90 percent of all fic is horrible that other people talk about. I feel like I've observed something more like 30 percent is horrible, 25 percent is bad, 35 percent is adequate, 10 percent is good (maybe a fraction of a percent are excellent). Of course, I don't read every fic and there are variations across fandoms and then there's the subjectivity of judging something good or bad.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think fanfic as a whole has become better or worse, your perception of it has changed. I believe that has a lot to do with the way a reader consumes fanfic vs. published (original) works. You are much more likely to try or even finish a fic about your favourite characters than actually buy a whole book, where you can tell it's not to your taste after looking at the first few pages.

When I buy a book, I don't check for genres I'm not interested in or authors I know don't do what I like or subject matters I find boring etc. Meaning I already narrow down my choices before I even read a single page. And after that, I will read the first page(s) of a book I'm interested in as a quality check and so on.

For fic, however, I usually already click if I see the rare pairing I like or a kink/scenario etc. and if it's short, I will probably finish the whole one or two thousand words of it, even if it's not really good.

As a reader I am much more forgiving with fic than professionally published works. But there are tons and tons and tons of extremely bad books on the market. However, the majority of them simply pass you by unnoticed.

You've probably read too much fic over the years and are simply exhausted by it. Give it a break, read something else for a change, and you'll probably be able to enjoy it again after that.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

I've only recently started getting back into fic after NOT reading it for years. And I was never a voracious reader of it before. But what I read was better. I really think part of my problem is the opposite of what you say. I DON'T lower my standards for fanfic, and I'm always looking for a good story, not a ship or a kink.

Re: Enjoying fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

Not all fanfic is bad, some of it is excellent, and while we're at it, not all professionally written original fiction is good either. Some of it is absolute shit.