[ SECRET POST #4969 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4969 ⌋

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


01.



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02.
[Gank Your Heart]


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03.
[final fantasy xiv]


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04.
[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]


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05.
(Final Fantasy XIV)


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06.
[Harry Styles, "Watermelon Sugar"]


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07.
[The Untamed/MZDS]


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08.























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #711.
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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/dLRZAVX.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe you just have bad taste in fandoms.

[(Anonymous)]

Hah, I was going to say the same thing. Sounds like a 'you' problem OP.

[(Anonymous)]

Put up or shut up

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Point me at the superior het pairing fic then, anon!

[(Anonymous)]

That's a trend I've noticed for years OP, my two decades in fandom. M/F fic tends to be not as good as M/M fic at the top end of things. Don't know why.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I am old enough to remember the fandom-specific archives and I remember reading decent M/F fic but I don't know where it's being written these days.

[(Anonymous)]

It probably depends on the fandom and whether it attracts a lot of teenagers.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

That's true! I have fairly broad interests. I am finding that a lot of the more serious stuff I like has no one writing fic for it at all. :(

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect a lot of older fans who would write M/F fanfiction are more likely to publish or self-publish their work rather than actually write pairing fanfiction. M/M tends to skew older because it's harder to sell so you have more adults and older adults among its writers.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if it's the same for everyone but yeah, several of my friends who wrote exclusively m/f have transitioned into self publishing original fiction.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

That's true. Publishing has changed a lot in the time I've been fandom, and people my age are probably busy doing real life things too.

[(Anonymous)]

This is fascinating. I've tried looking for m/m romance novels and the quantity compared to fanfiction is abysmal.

This could very well be the thing.

[(Anonymous)]

I totally agree (and I think the same is true, mutatis mutandis, with f/f).

And, like, it's not that there's not a crapload of awful M/M fic. I think it's that the amount of good M/M writers is just larger, both absolutely and relatively to the amount of writers. There's a core of good writing in m/m pairings (IME) that makes it easy to find at least some good writing for any pairing. M/M fans are absolutely spoiled and I'm NGL I'm incredibly jealous and I wish M/F and F/F ships had the same access to quality.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I never had much luck with finding good F/F fic either after the love for Buffy/Faith died down lol. The current trend in fandom is super fluffy F/F stuff because lesbians are pure. Not my thing.

Agreed! More options would be nice.

[philstar22]

Honestly, OP, I'm mostly with you. While I have a ton of M/F ships, when it comes to fic, besides action/adventure/plotty-centric stuff, I mostly stick exclusively to M/M and F/F stuff. I definitely mostly stick to M/M and F/F for PWPs. I just find most M/F-centric fics to be trope-drive and those would be tropes I really hate and actively avoid that place women and men into specific roles. I will read M/F femdom fics sometimes, but even those aren't always well written, they are just less likely to be full of my most hated tropes.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Ah. Yeah I'm not a fan of the usual hetero romance novel roles either. Manly alpha male seduces shy girl and turns her into sexy womanly woman with his throbbing member? Vom.

I used to find a fair bit of M/F fic that was true to character, and since I only go looking for fic when I don't want to punch those characters in the face for being typical love interest stereotypes, I had some luck.

The writing quality just hasn't been there in anything I've been interested in lately.

I know there's a so-called "migratory slash fandom" but where's the migratory het fandom at right now?? Lol

[(Anonymous)]

I think there’s a lot of factors at play with this.

1. As someone else said, there’s just a lot more m/m writers in general, which means even if the percentage of good to bad writers is the same as for m/f, there are bound to be more good m/m writers writing.

2. Filtering out the total badfic is a lot easier on AO3 than it is on any other fanfic site, and AO3 skews heavily m/m. So someone who reads m/m is likely to go to AO3 for fanfic, use the superior search functions, and come out feeling like the fanfic for that pairing is pretty good. Whereas someone looking for m/f is less likely to rely on AO3, because AO3 has fuck all for the majority of m/f pairings. So instead they go to some other archive, with an inferior search function, and come out feeling like they just read a lot of crap.

3. AO3 skews heavily m/m, and AO3 also skews heavily adult. Those two things create a feedback loop--a culture of adult readers and writers who lean heavily slashy. And since adults tend to be better writers than teens and tweens, you end up with more good writers writing slash.

4. Purely going off of personal speculation, I feel like the kind of id-tastic fanfic where you write one of the characters as a blatant self-insert Mary Sue so you can fantasize about being in the story yourself is more common in het fic. And those stories are more likely to be regarded as badfic.

5. Also, I just feel like het skews younger, these days? But I have no way of proving that, it's just an impression I've gotten along the way.

There's a bunch more points I'm missing, I'm sure, but those are the first ones that spring to mind.

[(Anonymous)]

Sturgeon's Law. 90% of anything is crap.

[(Anonymous)]

And here I keep running into m/m fic that appears to be written by teenagers.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, as an adult writer who likes m/f I tend not to write so much of it just because my m/m gets more engagement and better feedback and makes me feel happier. So whilst I may like a lot of m/f and have concepts in my head and maybe write things for myself, the stuff I publish will more often be m/m.

[(Anonymous)]

lol

Reading through some of the comments...

I ready, 9/10 times, het fic, and...I guess depending on the fandom the bar is adjusted. A pairing I like currently has major youth writing this vibes lol I don't begrudge it at all! I just adjust my taste or pack my bags and keep searching for more (my current pairing has a bunch of fics on wattpad, but the quality is...I don't know if I can adjust my standards accordingly, tbh. Slugging through ff.net currently, as the pickings on AO3 were paltry and I don't do tumblr with these brief little "imagines" and shit...ugh. I want a full length novella. PLEASE.)


I then also consider what I think was a truly great het fic (I'm racking my mind right now) and one of them was a Dramione fic, another was a super lengthy Hermione/Tom time travel fic and those are just off the bat ones I thought were SO good. Also a Sess/Kag fic. And a MAster/Martha fic too.

Also, are you looking for something lemony (heh, couldn't resist using the term), something slowburn, etc. Because Sometimes I'll find really good smut, other times, really good oneshots (so sad when they're over). What are the dynamics you're looking for?

[(Anonymous)]

Now that I think about it, all my het ships are from ancient fandoms back when fan writers skewed older. I don’t think I would ship Spike/Buffy if I watched the show now, but the fics keep me coming back. Great stories still being written as recently as a few years ago!

[(Anonymous)]

Are you at all interested in reader-insert fic? That Y/N stuff? Because I see TONS of that and I personally don't enjoy it but everything I've ever seen of it has been Het. It's "new" to me and thus feels "young" but I absolutely haven't put in the effort to read it and know if any of it is "good."

[(Anonymous)]

As others have suggested, it's nothing to do with the gender combinations and everything to do with the luck of who happens to be writing most of the fic for that pairing/fandom. I've definitely encountered terrible m/m fic likely written by teenagers, where the characters talk like aliens pretending to be human and the sex makes no sense in a "You don't have that many hands" kind of way. If the pairing is really popular, there will be a lot of bad fic to wade through to get to the good. If the fandom is tiny, then it's luck of the draw whether most of the relatively small number of people writing for it are any good at it.