fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3849 ]

[ SECRET POST #3849 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3849 ⌋

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

01.

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02.

[Horizon Zero Dawn]

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03.

[Jurassic World]

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04.

[Michelle Gomez in Doctor Who, Jack Davenport in Pirates of the Caribbean]

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05.

[Longmire, Cady Longmire/Jacob Nighthorse]

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06.

(Animal Kingdom)

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07.

[Sirens]

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08.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #551.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I ranted about it a few days ago, but I got "Love the fic, hate the pairing" on a romance fic and couldn't figure out why anyone would do that. Just... why? Why read a pairing you hate and then announce it?

Also kind of annoying, one where I stranded two characters away from the others and made it very through that no, they couldn't get back on their own with the resources they had and would need to be rescued, one of the first comments was "If they'd brought along one of the girls she'd have fixed everything and saved them by now!" .... um. Ok? Just... pull a war rig out of her vagina and drive them off in it I guess?

Oh man, let me tell you about a multi-chapter fic I was writing that was clearly marked pairing X/Y. I kept getting comments from this person who kept wondering when Y/Z was going to happen. It wasn't!

It was a love triangle fandom, but the fic was marked for pairing one, nothing suggestive of pairing two in the notes, tags, summary or the actual PLOT of the fic, but they persisted in commenting for several updates, oblivious to what was actually happening in the story.

Yikes.

The best (and one of the last) comments I got from them was like, "I'm starting to think Z is the bad guy in this story." NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

Is Y/Z the most popular pairing in the fandom? Maybe that reader just assumed everything would be Y/Z.

I got that too~! What happened was, I started out in this one fandom writing for the juggernaut ship, but halfway through a multi-chapter fic I started hardcore shipping the rival pairing instead. For me this is nbd because I multi-ship all the time, but that story I was writing had gained a bit of a following, and many of them went on to my subsequent fics thinking that I was an OTP-er for the juggernaut.

I'll read ship fic for fandoms I'm not in, but I definitely don't understand reading pairings I legitimately dislike. Unless it was my NOTP and it was a super angsty character death thing, maybe. I've never done that, but that's about the only situation I think would make sense for this.

As for your second point, this is slightly OT, but I feel you. I love genderbending fanfic and yet as a genre, this is one of the biggest problems I find within. I once read a female!Merlin fic that was meant to encompass the series, writing it with a female Merlin, but from the first chapter Merlin was this self-assured, assertive woman, who was super confident in her magic and I could not backbutton faster. That's not Merlin. That's "girl power" fantasy Merlin and is nothing like the character in canon.

Similarly, one of my favorite people retweeted one of my least favorite people saying, most likely as an aside response to the Doctor casting hubbub, that if Harry Potter were a girl, there'd be no story because Harry would just go get McGonagall to act on her behalf. I hate that sentiment so much. It's false and wrong and bad. It's not empowering to women, and would, in fact, rob the world of one of the best selling series of all time, written by a woman? But then again, I already dislike the person who wrote this tweet, so I'm biased against them, even if in this case they're demonstrably wrong.

I think I hate the super-competent-perfect-woman thing. I saw it too with a "Why Disney Princesses don't have moms" thing and it was all basically "Because they'd be perfect and keep any problematic conflict from happening."

They seem to be by people who think 'strong female character' means perfect, not 'well developed with flaws and character growth'

Dude, I used to get this ALL the time! I wrote RarePair in a fandom of OTP! and there were always people that would comment, "I really liked this, too bad it was RarePair instead of OTP!"

I actually got so annoyed once that I put a disclaimer on one fic that was along the lines of, "There is no OTP here. There will be no OTP here. Do not look for OTP here."

lmao.

"where's the OTP tho???"

If there's a writer I love who writes a pairing I'm not into, I'd probably check out that fic simply because I like the author's work in general and I'd be curious to see how they'd handle the pairing in question. That, and there's the fact that I don't really have much in the way of outright NOTPs-most pairings I don't care for are simply more in an, "Eh..." sense than outright hatred. So I'd also read the fic to see if they could make me see what's so appealing about that pairing.

Even then, though, yeah, I wouldn't dare think to be like, "Yeah, so this was good, but you should write about a pairing I like instead." or go on about how much I don't care for the pairing they write about. 'Cause I'm pretty sure they don't care about my personal feelings on that subject. I'd simply stick to reviewing the story itself, and complimenting their take on the pairing, and the individual characters themselves (after all, even if a particular pairing isn't a favorite of mine, the chances are good I still love the characters in question themselves, so at the very least I'm getting to read a good story about characters I enjoy).

There's always That Person who feels the need to butt into situations just so they can inform you that they think something you did or liked isn't up to their high standards. Ego, probably.

I sometimes want to say something like, "I never liked this pairing before, but the way you wrote it really worked for me", but I've seen people rant about that before so I just... keep that one to myself.

I'm not really sure why some people hate this so much. "Your writing has converted me to like a pairing I didn't really like before" would be a pretty great compliment for me.

NAYRT

Agreed. I was thinking upthread that one of my favorite types of review comment is, "I don't usually like [pairing or character or genre] but your fic really drew me in."

For me I like that one as long as the person doesn't go overboard in explaining and justifying why they usually hate the pairing? Because sometimes people feel the need to throw their 1k meta post about why the pairing sucks in along with the brief compliment that the fic made it tolerable and... I love my pairing enough to write about it. It sort of feels like tainted candy to get a lecture on why it's a bad pairing and I should feel bad, wrapped up in a compliment about how they liked the fic anyway.

Basically
"I never really liked Thor/Loki before, but the way you wrote it really worked for me!" = Good Comment, A+

"I never really liked Thor/Loki before. I mean they're brothers, they think of each other as brothers and incest is awful, plus in Asguardian years Loki's still underage so that's automatically skeevy right there. And every time Thor tries to reach out to Loki he gets a knife in the ribs, literally! Who looks at that and goes 'ah yes, true love'? It's ridiculous and Thor would be better off just smashing Loki over the head and stopping all his bullshit. Plus Loki threatened to rape Jane, Thor's actual love who's brilliant and beautiful and could handle an infinity stone and who so doesn't deserve Loki's bullshit. But the way you wrote this really worked for me and I liked it." Bad Comment, F- Take it to your own blog.

This kind of feedback I love. I love converting people to new pairings.

It's the "this would be great except it's [pairing]" or "you should write [pairing] instead!" feedback that drove me crazy.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3849 ]

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