#fandom ethics

Creators do not owe anyone content. Do not ask writers when they will update.

If an author did not ask for [negative] criticism , do not give criticism.

Read the tags carefully before reading a fanfic.

If you ignored the tags and were upset, that is your responsibility, not the creator’s.

Disliking a ship does NOT give you the right to attack people who enjoy it.

Do not tell authors or shippers that their ship is “disgusting,” “wrong,” or “shouldn’t exist.” Shipping fictional characters is not a moral failing.

No one is obligated to justify why they ship two fictional characters.

Headcanons are PERSONAL interpretations, not universal truth.

Dark themes in fiction do not equal real life beliefs or intentions.

Leaving kudos or short positive comments genuinely matters.

Not every fanwork is made for you, and that is okay.

Scrolling past content you dislike is better than engaging negatively

Enjoying a fandom later than others does not make someone less of a fan.

I'm talking ESPECIALLY on friends to lovers.

Also- let me tell you- DID YOU KNOW that human emotions and relationships are COMPLEX and can be interpreted differently?

STOP MAKING PUBLIC CONTENT!

If you can't handle what you're fandom does, you shouldn't be making public content in the first place. If you want to create content but don't like fandom, leave your content for yourself.

Not only would your fandom be presumably insufferable to you, YOU would be insufferable to your fandom!

"How my fandom would mischaracterize my OCs😒" don't make your content public then.

"My fandom loves a character I don't want them to like!😫" don't make your content public then.

I've stumbled upon a post the other day. I can't remember exactly how it went but someone basically proposed that one of the mclaren interns should "take one for the team" and make mclaren invite the heated rivalry actors to the race in canada.

yk, because all of the "bottom eyes" thing. and that they should meet Oscar.

so I may as well be overreacting here (please tell me if I am) but what happened to "fandom stuff should - and for rpf needs - to stay in fandom spaces"??

maybe this was a joke and I didn't get it (possible). but wouldn't this, like, be the worst thing they could do? as in, exposing Oscar to that kind of rpf? I know they won't. that's not the point.

edit: I hope they won't.

because it just feels wrong to even think about this.

as much as I love and live in fandoms and fanfics and art... I think we need to remember once in a while that those are actual people and that we need to do what we can to not let our fandom stuff reach them.

So sick of the many, many “takes” that write Dick as a bad brother or “persistent” brother to create a make believe fantasy where Jason was completely sane in the league and the best brother ever to a perfectly normal and untraumatized Damain. And somehow Tim is a replacement and too cold to be a good brother and Bruce is too “apologetic”.

Like genuinely…what?

Since when is someone-Tim-being lovable a bad thing?

And Dick? Persistent? Sorry, his persistence only applies to one person and that’s Bruce. No one else is that special enough to get that side of him. Except Donna.

And Bruce feeling guilty for the death of a child is somehow bad behavior. He felt responsible because he took in a child and the child died under his watch. Regardless of the fact that he didn’t contribute to it AND did his best, Bruce is going to feel bad about it but it’s sooooooo OOC if he were to accept the actions of another that go against his morals. Killing? He would lock everyone up for that. That is the ENTIRE premise of Under the Red Hood - did you like miss that somehow when you read it or - for real - when you didn’t read it?

What is up with these posts?

Why does everyone in the Batfam HAVE TO BE BAD for Jason to be good.

Not to mention! These posts always hyperfixate on make believe flaws of each character but pretend Jason didn’t go through a trauma that caused terrible actions and pains for him and others.

OR they pretend Jason is the only one to have went through trauma and the others’ individual ones are over exaggerated or they’re disregarded because Jason’s has to feel the worst so the others can be villainized.

Why are there so many of these crappy posts?!

Like I don’t get it. Why does everyone have to look bad so your singular batfamily member - and be real, it’s ALWAYS JASON - can look good?

WHY?

Why do people write posts hating Tim or Dick or Bruce? They’re great people! They’re fantastic characters! They’re lovely, beautiful, pained, kind, and whole! They’re wonderful.

Why not include Steph or Cass? Because their trauma is worse than his so including them means he won’t be THE wee baby victim?

What the actual fuck?

Not even playing the worst trauma game, it’s not fun to read. It kills the mood! The intent of these posts are so obvious - “drag every character through the filth but mine”.

This doesn’t contribute to positive fandom culture, it creates a toxic echo chamber!

STOP THIS CLOWNERY

I feel like I see it especially in the byler fandom as a result of all the "byler" variants because they at some point stop actually being byler and start being another story where the characters have Will and Mikes names (if even that) and then suddenly it's not important if the writing resembles the characters at all, as long as the names are there then who cares if it's not at all connected to the core? And that lends itself really well to people using AI to pump out fics because suddenly the machines inability to properly characterise is just a result of it being a different world or a different variant.

I don't want people to take this the wrong way because; I love tropes, I love AUs and I will eat a story with my favorite charader tf up despite any personally persived inconsistencies. But I do think us in the byler fandom specifically sometimes need to look into what it actually is that we're asking for.

Do you want more fics just like the one you just read or could you take a little bit of time away from the site and just reread it again later?

Do you want a lescleradin au or should you maybe look into some original fantasy novels with wlw themes and characters? Hell maybe you should check out some other fandoms with the dynamics you're actually looking for.

Idk again pls don't give me the "piss on the poor" treatment here because I say this with the utmost love and respect but like. Maybe you didn’t like supersoaker because it was so accurate to Bylers dynamic or because it portrayed their relationship in an extra interesting way, maybe it was just similar enough to other fics you liked that reading it felt comfortable and maybe we should look into why it's so easy for us to hype up repetition.