[ SECRET POST #4969 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4969 ⌋

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


01.



__________________________________________________



02.
[Gank Your Heart]


__________________________________________________


03.
[final fantasy xiv]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]


__________________________________________________



05.
(Final Fantasy XIV)


__________________________________________________



06.
[Harry Styles, "Watermelon Sugar"]


__________________________________________________



07.
[The Untamed/MZDS]


__________________________________________________



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

[(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.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, you're right about AO3. I wish everyone would get on it, even the writers I'm not going to read. Just knowing I could see everything and use the filters to go through it would make things easier.

You make some good points. I don't know how accurate my judgement is for age anymore. After I made this secret I was struggling through a very juvenile tropey fic and one of the author notes was apologising for a delayed update because one of their kids was sick. I was like whaaaat. Clicked on their profile and they listed their age as 30 something. I did not see that coming. From the way they write sex I assumed they'd never had any. :/

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - Out of curiosity, would you say it’s the tropes themselves that ping as juvenile and “bad writing” to you? Or is it more in how the tropes are handled?

I ask because, personally, I quite like tropey fanfic, and will give a lot of tropes a fair bit of leeway. Like, yes, the one bed trope is quite juvenile, really. Most adults wouldn’t freak out if they had to share a bed for a night with someone they 1. knew well, and 2. were attracted to. They might have a little internal bit of a moment over it, but ultimately it wouldn’t really be a big deal for most adults, I don’t think. But I’m there for the shippiness, so I’m willing to go along with the trope and let the author milk it for all the UST it’s worth if that’s their wont. (I’m 32, for context.)

Hell, I can sometimes even enjoy the most egregious of juvenile tropes: the spin the bottle trope, and the truth or dare trope. If the writing is otherwise solid (good pacing, the writer tries to make it as in character as possible and does a decent job of it under the circumstances, etc) I can usually roll with it, even though, in my experience, both of those games are rarely played by adults.

What really pings as bad writing and/or juvenile writing, to me, is when the SPaG is weak, the set-up is flimsy or non-existent, the pacing is wobbly, and the characterizations are very generic or wildly inaccurate. Basically, to me, juvenile writing doesn’t bother to set up or earn anything, or is very perfunctory about it. It’s clunky and oblivious. It’s just like, “I want the character(s) to be doing [thing], so I’m going to write them doing [thing].” No set up. No structure. Like icing without cake.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely how the tropes are handled!

I will read anything from super serious angst to silly "oops we got magically stuck together" stories. If it's done well I can get into it.

The pacing is important. This particular author just wanted them to be married with babies ASAP and bulldozed the mildly interesting premise to achieve that. They also kept describing exactly what everyone was wearing.

Icing without the cake is a great way to put it!