Some Fanfiction

Okay but just to let you know- i have no plan for how this story is going to go and end, I'm freestyling the plot lmao

no one says you have to like every fic. no one says you can’t find a fic ‘terribly written’. but if at any point you find yourself not liking what you read, instead of being a dick about other people’s harmless hobbies that they do for themselves and you got to read for free, you could have just clicked the back button and looked for something else to read. or, better yet, you could’ve started writing what you wanted to read yourself.

this normalization of openly mocking other people’s fics — especially now with the raise of ai, bots harassing/trying to scam writers and the lack of positive engagement writers get — is why writers are wary about sharing their works with you. writers are kind enough to share with you what they wrote for free. you can just not read it if it’s not your cup of tea. but if you keep this mean girl bully energy up by screenshotting their works to mock and shame them, eventually there will be no fics for you to read, eventually there will be no fan contents for you to enjoy.

There's a difference between mocking published books by authors who are MAKING MONEY from their work (think Colleen Hoover, JK R*wl*ng, Jeff Kinney) and mocking fanfiction which the authors are NOT MAKING MONEY FROM and are doing this because they enjoy the work. "Why did this fic I was mocking stop updating?" maybe because the author thought that nobody liked it because of YOUR (and several other peoples) mocking!

You can give criticism to fanfiction. You can criticize anything. But mocking it? No. Do not.

I’ve been arguing with the same person for three days now over the most basic concept in fandom: fanfiction is not canon.

LET ME REPEAT THAT:

Fan. Fiction.

It means fans take canon and… change it.

That’s the whole point.

Alternate universes exist, vanon divergence exists, different ships exist, different interpretations exist, different sexualities exist.

That’s why tags exist.

That’s why filters exist.

That’s why AO3 literally lets you curate your own experience.

If you don’t like something, you can just… not read it.

Wild concept, I know.

Also, let’s not pretend this is new.

People shipped Dean/Castiel in Supernatural for YEARS when Dean was canonically straight.

People shipped Naruto/Sasuke for decades.

People shipped Hinata/Sakura.

People ship gay characters with straight characters and straight characters with gay characters all the time and somehow fandom survived.

No one died, no one’s story was “erased", no canon collapsed.

Because fanfiction does not rewrite the source material.

You are not being “brave” or “morally superior” for writing essays in people’s comments about how they’re “disrespecting canon.” You’re just refusing to accept that fandom doesn’t revolve around you.

Respecting canon and enjoying fanfiction are not mutually exclusive.

Writing Shane in a straight relationship does not erase his story.

Writing him in a gay relationship does not erase his story.

Writing him in an AU coffee shop does not erase his story.

None of this hurts anyone.

What is exhausting is people acting like fandom is a courtroom where everyone has to justify their creativity.

It’s a playground.

You play. You leave. You find something else you like.

That’s it.

Don’t like → don’t read

Don’t like → blacklist tags

Don’t like → scroll

Ships you hated? Ignored.

AUs you disliked? Filtered.

Cringe? Blocked and moved on.

Nobody wrote morality essays in comment sections 24/7.

Now a lot of younger fans grew up on TikTok callout culture and Twitter dogpiling.

“If I don’t like it, it’s problematic” mindset.

So instead of curating their space, they try to police everyone else’s.

They don’t know fandom etiquette because no one taught them:

“Your triggers = your responsibility.”

“Your preferences ≠ universal rules.”

“You don’t own characters.”

And the Mishapocalypse / Superwholock / Destiel / Johnlock era taught us one thing:

Fandom is chaos.

Meanwhile we survived:

✨fake CIA sites

✨cockles conspiracies

✨100k slowburn AUs

✨dashcon ball pit

✨cursed gifsets

I’ve been arguing with the same person for three days now over the most basic concept in fandom: fanfiction is not canon.

LET ME REPEAT THAT:

Fan. Fiction.

It means fans take canon and… change it.

That’s the whole point.

Alternate universes exist, vanon divergence exists, different ships exist, different interpretations exist, different sexualities exist.

That’s why tags exist.

That’s why filters exist.

That’s why AO3 literally lets you curate your own experience.

If you don’t like something, you can just… not read it.

Wild concept, I know.

Also, let’s not pretend this is new.

People shipped Dean/Castiel in Supernatural for YEARS when Dean was canonically straight.

People shipped Naruto/Sasuke for decades.

People shipped Hinata/Sakura.

People ship gay characters with straight characters and straight characters with gay characters all the time and somehow fandom survived.

No one died, no one’s story was “erased", no canon collapsed.

Because fanfiction does not rewrite the source material.

You are not being “brave” or “morally superior” for writing essays in people’s comments about how they’re “disrespecting canon.” You’re just refusing to accept that fandom doesn’t revolve around you.

Respecting canon and enjoying fanfiction are not mutually exclusive.

Writing Shane in a straight relationship does not erase his story.

Writing him in a gay relationship does not erase his story.

Writing him in an AU coffee shop does not erase his story.

None of this hurts anyone.

What is exhausting is people acting like fandom is a courtroom where everyone has to justify their creativity.

It’s a playground.

You play. You leave. You find something else you like.

That’s it.

Today I got a sudden need to write something new.

But guess what.

My fucking laptop died. I'm so fucking pissed. It's gone. With all of my work and unfinished ff for ao3.

And I'm too poor right now to just go buy new one.

You will suffer the curse of caw!