[ SECRET POST #4435 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4435 ⌋

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

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05.
[The Umbrella Academy, Cha-Cha and Hazel]


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06.
[Death Mark]


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07.
[Casey Affleck]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #635.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - 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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/Z3KxC10.png

[(Anonymous)]

Just here to say I love how adorable Dean looks in that pic. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Controversial perhaps, but I don't think "reads like fanfic" is necessarily a compliment, either. Readers frequently put up with a great deal to read about favorite tropes, favorite pairings, porn, etc. that doesn't fly outside of fandom.

(And before any picks up their torch and pitchfork, I'm not saying that published fiction is superior to fanfiction or that there's no poor quality published fiction. I'm saying that fanfiction has a rather specific set of socially acceptable standards that has the potential to make it terrible in a way that differs from terrible published fiction.)

And if you can trust your critique partners' abilities, don't worry about it. Like I said, fanfic-specific quirks stand out, even if readers don't recognize the origin. They can beta for writing quality without understanding the ins and outs of fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, "reads like fanfic" is mostly neutral, depending on your priorities. Fanfic tends to have more emphasis on character and mood than plot and pacing, and to be...emotionally indulgent in a deliberate way, targeting some fairly specific kinds of tension and catharsis.

I don't just mean porn, but stuff like H/C and all those reams of "mutual pining" fic - the catharsis there is confession, not consummation. Mainstream stuff often tries to access similar emotional payoffs - see every interminable hetero Will They/Won't They ever - but fanfic has both a defter and a heavier hand with it, distilling it down into a pretty high-octane version of itself.

If a book was logistically meandering but nuanced and intimate, I might enjoy it and consider it objectively good and say it read like fanfic. If a book was myopic and glurgy, I might enjoy or hate it depending on my mood that day, and consider it objectively bad and still say it read like fanfic.

On the other hand, I know some people definitely use the phrase differently to indicate a kind of flashy off-the-wall take on things "season 8 reads like bad fanfic" - because they're using tropey and exaggerated plots - or just to mean that it has a sloppiness about threads and payoffs that comes with fewer expectations/requirements in terms of repeated editing.

In general, I don't think it's a terribly useful phrase out of context unless you verify how an individual person is using it.

[sabotabby]

IA.

When I've use it, there are several different connotations. It might be because it's character-driven, particularly where the characters have tropes I'm weak for. Or it might be because the characters are tropey in a way that I don't like (which, to be fair, is prevalent in genre fiction in general even if the author doesn't have a fannish background). Or there is a certain writing style that I will tolerate in fanfic but might bother me in professional writing, depending on my mood (the Captive Prince, while I enjoyed it, had this in spades).

So...pretty meaningless.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't just mean porn, but stuff like H/C and all those reams of "mutual pining" fic - the catharsis there is confession, not consummation. Mainstream stuff often tries to access similar emotional payoffs - see every interminable hetero Will They/Won't They ever - but fanfic has both a defter and a heavier hand with it, distilling it down into a pretty high-octane version of itself.

I agree with your entire comment, but I especially LOVE this bit. Especially the "both defter and heavier hand" part, because that perfectly articulates something I've been feeling about fanfic for many years - an almost paradoxical quality that fanfic has.

[(Anonymous)]

I rarely use "reads like fanfic" in my reviews, but when I do, I almost never use it in a positive context. For me "reads like fanfic" means that the author basically didn't bother to flesh the characters and world out before they threw lots of tropes at them. Kind of how fanfic authors don't need to do that because they (usually correctly) assume that everyone who reads their fic is familiar with canon.
Not sure if I'm describing this right, but sometimes books just read like the author's fanfic of their own canon. To them it's all deep and meaningful cause THEY know their characters/the world but have sort of forgotten, that readers don't.

[(Anonymous)]

And sometimes it 'reads like fanfic' because it actually is.

I one actually felt motivated to review somebody's book on Amazon just because it had annoyed me so much that it felt like somebody had taken fanfic and filed the serial numbers off. Like...if you'd done a find/replace on the the characters' names, you would've just accepted it as fanfic without any other changes, pretty much.

If I'd found it on AO3? Okay fine that's where it belongs. But paying money to read it because it was supposed to be a new setting written by an author I liked? Annoying. At least it was Kindle so I didn't pay much.

[silverr]

"They can beta for writing quality without understanding the ins and outs of fanfic."

I came here to say exactly the same thing.

[philstar22]

Just here to say how much I love that picture of Dean. It makes me happy whenever I see it. It is just really hot.

[type_wild]

I've read two novels where I definitely suspected the authors had fannish backgrounds, and both times I got it confirmed.

I wouldn't say that "reads like fanfic" by necessity needs to be a negative; this might be in your interest, discussing how fanfic - or perhaps better said, "fanfic mode" - could be considered its own genre. To quote:

"it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t."

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of good points in the linked discussion but the gushing over coffeeshop AUs isn't one of them.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesring

[(Anonymous)]

This is the problem I have when I write fanfic. It's technically fanfic in that it's about characters from a book or movie, but it's not fanfic *the genre*

I just don't have the knack of writing the fanfic genre.

[(Anonymous)]

To me Outlander read like fanfic, and of course Carry On by Rainbow Rowell did, but what has been advertised as reading like fanfic?

[(Anonymous)]

Outlander was inspired by Doctor Who :)

[tabaqui]

I guess I don't get what this means, so...i have no clue if it's a 'good' or a 'bad' thing.

[(Anonymous)]

It depends what you like. I like character driven stories that focus on emotion, growth, etc., and so if someone says a story feels like fanfic, I hope that's what they mean, not that it will be hard to follow because nothing's explained properly. *shrug*

Sort of like if someone says a story feels like literary fiction, some people will love that--deep, awesome, well-written, yay!--and some people will hate that--longwinded, nothing happens, boring and slow, ugh!

[riddian]

I don't think there's any need to lay out exactly what your critiquers should be looking for. Bad writing habits are bad writing habits regardless of what kind of fiction they appear in, so as long as people have their eyes open they'll be able to spot it.

[(Anonymous)]

There are good and bad things about stories being like fanfic. It all depends on who's doing the reading, and if the story can be followed and enjoyed by the target audience without having to have preexisting knowledge. Sometimes, I know a story started out as fanfic (and i'm even able to locate the original fandom), but I can still absolutely enjoy the story on its own original merits as long as the author has done a good job with character, setting, and plot, and hasn't left me feeling like I missed season 1 and all the in jokes.

It all depends on what ones likes as a reader. It can absolutely work, since many people like many qualities they find in fanfic. And it can also reveal weaknesses where people haven't fleshed out story and character and learned how to make it work on its own merits. Nothing wrong with knowing you need to practice more and learn things; that's awesome! But I don't think you should be ashamed of your roots because lots of people love those sorts of things / feelings / tropes /etc. in stories.

I've also tried to read books that I don't know if they were related to fanfic or not, but I absolutely couldn't follow shit. These were popular, supposedly well-written books, but they felt chaotic and crazy to me, like it was all aesthetic stuff and bombshells being dropped, and random sex scenes, but no real sense, nothing tied together coherently. I don't blame fanfic for that, and it might be that it just wasn't my thing. My point being that authors, no matter their background, can mess up, or succeed, in a variety of ways. People have different tastes. And original fiction stories need to make sense and hold up on their own merits.

[(Anonymous)]

God damn do I hate that photo.

[(Anonymous)]

Having read some stuff by fanfic authors who've tried to make the jump, the thing they fall down on is worldbuilding and consistent characterization, because they're too used to the shortcut of someone else having done the heavy lifting on the WB and the fans all kind of knowing how the canon characters act and behave already.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. When people try to argue that writing fanfiction is great practice for writing original fiction, I think they fail to grasp that well, only up until a point. Fanfiction doesn't tend to develop peoples' skills at creating and developing characters, and it rarely develops peoples' world building skills... those are kind of important in original writing. I'd also argue that most fanfiction doesn't really help you practice coming up with a decent plot, either.

[(Anonymous)]

agreed.

i have completely different expectations wrt fanfic than i do with published fiction and what i'm willing to forgo and accept in the former i would never be happy with in the latter.

It's a warning

[(Anonymous)]

"Reads like fanfic" isn't a compliment. Seeing that as a quality of a piece would pretty much assure I wouldn't be reading it, unless I had to critique it for a class.