[ SECRET POST #3821 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3821 ⌋

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

01.



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02.
[Movie: It Comes At Night]


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03.
[iZombie]


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04.
[New Girl]


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05.
[Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid]


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06.
(Doctor Strange)


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07.
[Fire Emblem]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 26 secrets from Secret Submission Post #547.
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

[(Anonymous)]

People don't necessarily frame it in these terms, but fluffiness seems to be one of the things that really sets off the Tumblr Fic Is The Worst Thing In The Universe brigade.

[kaijinscendre]

Really? Glad I don't see any of those people.

[(Anonymous)]

If you mean the people like me who hate the attitude that conflict is problematic and "how dare you make my gay small son go through troubles and trials" from the portrayal-is-condoning bullshit brigade, I'm under absolutely no illusion that the average tumblr fic would be better if my preferred angst happened to be as in vogue as all this other posturing because it wouldn't mean anybody would be writing anything in less than 20 sloppy minutes.

TL;DR I don't think fluff is the root of all badfic, but I still just think it's likely to be boring.

[ninety6tears]

Same. I mean, I have no general issue with fluff, but in some fandoms it's totally taken over to the point that people will prevalently state or imply that fix-its and saccharine pancake-making fluff are "what fanfic is for," like they literally don't see the point of writing anything else, and that burns me up too much for me to really care that the OP feels like they can't broadcast their love of fluff, because, really? But I'd concede that's just from my experience.

[ketita]

Gonna join with the ambivalence about fluff. I like my fics to have some sort of "point" to them. Canonical fluff, or fluff set somewhere in the midst of the series is fine, but a lot of the fluff I stumble across is AU, and then it just doesn't feel "earned" to me, I guess.

Nothing wrong with fluff, but man, I have not read good solid angst in SO LONG.

[(Anonymous)]

I was actually in the mood for good Destiel fluff recently, and couldn't find anything that WASN'T some au where Dean was never a hunter and Castiel isn't an angel and I wouldn't even known I was reading about them if it wasn't for the names and sometimes the descriptions (Dean's eyes are not "emerald orbs" ffs) and after three or four of those, well, at least I wasn't in the mood for fluff anymore...

[ketita]

I mean the random AU epidemic is a whole 'nother issue... it's funny how rare canon-fluff seems to be. Maybe because that demands actual characterization and whatnot...

[(Anonymous)]

I thought being short was what pissed off the TFITWTITU crowd?

I've seen complaints about fluff and angst (usually spelled with several more "a"s in about equal proportion.

But apparently Tumblr invented writing short one-shots that could be easily red on a phone in a few spare minutes, while pre-Tumblr it was all multi-chapter epicfics (as if the drabble didn't just predate Tumblr, it predates LJ, and in fact, the internet as a widespread mode of fannish communication https://fanlore.org/wiki/Drabble .)

[(Anonymous)]

Short fics obviously predate Tumblr, but in some of my fandoms I've noticed a definite increase in the numbers of short, simple, fluffy, low-effort fics.

[(Anonymous)]

O tempora, o mores!

[ketita]

For me it's the "imagine" stuff. I don't remember them being nearly as prevalent in the LJ days or on forums. Like, you'd sometimes share plotbunnies, but if you didn't do any actual writing, you generally wouldn't get much accolades.
Nowadays half the fics I'd be interested in reading ask me to imagine them instead.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my god, yes. Absolutely.

I mean, if you want to share a plotbunny, fine, go ahead, but that's not a fic. It's a goddamn plotbunny. AUGH. (I am saltier than I should be about this, maybe, but fuck.)

[ketita]

I'm so annoyed at it that the other day somebody shared one of those things on a fandom facebook group I'm in, and my comment among all the squeeing was "Imagine if this was an actual fic instead of an imaginary one".

[(Anonymous)]

You know, just today I saw a post that was basically a rundown of how you could characterize all the characters in this one canon in a specific AU, and this just happened to be the premise of a WIP I have sitting around. And I was initially amused that there were a couple ideas in there that were exactly what I was planning to do, but like...after long ago learning to have a sense of humor about the fact that I'm never going to be the first to write certain things in fandom because similar ideas pop up everywhere, it's pretty irritating to realize now you can be rapidly upstaged by the people who are too fucking lazy to write it themselves. And IME those posts can go so viral that people would inevitably assume I didn't come up with the ideas myself.

[(Anonymous)]

And ten years ago, people were complaining about how authors would churn out chapter after chapter of fics where nothing happened at great length (except the characters thinking about their super secret feelings for each other).

The one constant of fandom (especially internet fandom) is that there is always complaining about people Doing Fandom Wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

There are still too many chaptered fics like that. I dislike both short fluffy fics and pointless longfics.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure there have always been some complaints about both extremes. People just want to read good writing? Complaining about trends is not the same as policing. And you can't pretend the culture is the same as it's always been. As fandom has become more mainstream, and the internet in general has changed, fandom has definitely shifted into a more casual low-effort atmosphere. And yes, there has always been badfic, but I can absolutely proclaim that it's harder to avoid than ever before.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree drabbles and shorter fics obviously didn't originate with newer fandom trends, but the notion of how much time and polishing goes into a fic has absolutely diminished in line with how everything else on the internet is trending towards shorter form and short attention spans. I'm not here to tell anyone they have no right to put fic on the internet without getting it beta'd or at least proofreading it themselves, but not doing so simply is more the norm, and that's depressing.

[(Anonymous)]

Less feedback is also the norm. I wonder if those are related?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes to ALL of this. Short fic, drabbles, mini 5 Things fics, they've all been fixtures in fandom long before Tumblr was a thing. And there have always been people that churned out copious choppy, poorly edited stories as inspiration struck. But now that's the norm, rather than the exception. And you're the one with the problem if you're not of a mind to gush all over someone's latest microfic mindfart.

...Okay, so that last bit is somewhat harsh, but I checked AO3 this evening to see if anyone had posted something new for my current Beloved Shiny Object, and I found a single 500-word offering, and the summary included a line to the effect of, "this is haphazard and unfinished because I wrote it on my lunch break," and - I just - what??

[(Anonymous)]

If it makes you feel better (it won't), I was sorting AO3's fics by length in my current Beloved Shiny Object, and there were like, four things longer than 20K words and maybe twelve or fifteen between 4K and 20K. Fully half of the fics in the second category were "o hai Tumblr prompt fills" with like, 25 chapters for 15,000 words, and two of the longfics were "here is my crossover starring an Original Character!!!" WHAT IS THIS, FF.NET??

tl;dr - no, it is NOT somewhat harsh, and I have the same impression you do.

[(Anonymous)]

Not on Tumblr-what does "TFITWTITU" mean?

[(Anonymous)]

Tumblr Fic Is The Worst Thing In The Universe (from the anon above).

[(Anonymous)]

Ahhh, okay. Thanks :).

[(Anonymous)]

It's amusing that your comment about "short" fics happens to be on a secret that uses a 113,000-word story as its background.