Guys maybe someday I'll finish and post fanfiction again. That was a fun time. When I was doing that.

when you get an ao3.org comment where someone quotes fic lines back to you?? unparalleled. brain exploding. best feeling in the world

the rpf will continue until morale improves

seeing people say "this trope has been done to death" as if that's ever stopped anyone from eating bread. BREAD HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH FOR LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND WE STILL WANT MORE BREAD. write your chosen one AU. write your coffee shop meet-cute. write your 47th iteration of "there was only one bed" because guess what??? we're still hungry.

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times

you write it once so it can be read forever

it's literally the evilest thing in the world to finally have time to write but then be tired. like wow you're telling me these two hours before going to bed are completely free but my brain is just Not Feeling It? fuck off

part of the “constructive criticism of fanfic” convo is this assumption that everyone wants to improve at their writing and should want to improve and i feel protective of the fact that actually you don’t have to. leaving aside the imo undecided question of if “concrit” from a random crosssection of strangers is likely to achieve this, you do not have to continually maximize in all areas of existence. people who feel really strongly they should have the right to critique fanfic to help writers “get better” are projecting an assumption about the inherent purpose of fanfiction (or any fiction writing) that is actually just that. like you probably will improve, if you do it enough, whether you get “criticism” or not, but you can maintain the same skill level forever and that’s fine. who cares! you don’t have to get better at singing to earn the right to have people not heckle you while having fun at karaoke with friends. you can paint 273646474 ugly paintings if you find painting soothing or relaxing. these are both examples of human creative expression that serve social and emotional needs just as posting fanfic does and which are not tied like this to a logic of improvement. there is no function that one can presume here. trying to improve on a craft level is a part of MY practice but that does not have to be universal and i do not believe it is.

we really should be calling it fanworks, not content

I'm here for fun and community not to rp a mega corporation's underpaid social media intern

I actually recommend everyone write for a rarepair once because it completely changes your relationship with fandom. Engagement stops being numbers and starts being names. You know who's going to show up. You recognize usernames. Someone disappears for a while and then comes back and you're like “OH MY GOD WELCOME HOME.” It's incredibly wholesome. It is also deeply inconvenient when all six of you simultaneously get writer's block-

Remember people, this is against AO3s terms of service. If you see a fic that does this REPORT THAT THING!!! These people may not know better or they might, but them doing this has the potential to ruin things for everyone.

Tell the writer to read the TOS. Writers absolutely CANNOT ask for payment in exchange for fanfic. If they won't take it down ASAP, report it to AO3.

sometimes rpf is like "i think they were actually fucking for real but but i can't 'prove it' so i'm going to vividly imagine it and then write it" and sometimes it's like "i know they weren't fucking but i think it would be hot so i'm going to viviidly imagine it and then write it" and sometimes it's like "i think they very well could have been fucking and if they weren't then i think they probably wanted to but for various reasons never did so i'm going to implement that theory & tension it into a beautiful story where i create a world where they can be together and fuck nasty" and i think that's beautiful