Anyways have a lovely day

model the behavior you want to receive tbh. on the whole my audience is very respectful because if they're not they get the

or they just get ignored. my personal rule is it's only worth responding if i can be funny and it doesn't hurt anyone else to see what i'm responding to.

I think a good comparison is a box cake versus one from scratch. You can add things to the box mix if you want, or use the instructions as-is, but at the end of the day it's still a box-cake. With a cake you're making from scratch you have utter control over every aspect of the final product. Every ingredient can be weighed and considered carefully.

You'd never call someone who only uses a box cake a professional pastry chef. That's a baker who baked that cake, sure, but they haven't put in the education and training that it takes to be a professional chef. That fissnt mean it's a bad place to start to find that you enjoy baking, but it isn’t the same.

Sorry the internet is a stupid place. Know that someone (me) has found your advice insightful and helpful.

i don't think i'll be posting any other asks on the topic but you wrote a fair bit and i wouldn't want it to go into the void. but yeah. aside from the professional aspect of the comparison, which i cannot stress enough is not the core of the point i was making, you've pretty much got it.

lets set aside the obvious square::rectangle analogy and get to the real question you're asking, which is 'what is your problem with fic'.

which is technically not even the right question, because i don't have a problem with fanfiction as an activity. my only problem with it is as an end.

fanfiction is not serious writing. you can take it seriously, it can be tonally serious, but at the end of the day, by virtue of it standing on another person's shoulders, it is not serious writing. there is still that little bit of development you're opting not to do, there is still that little shortcut you're taking. there is an expectation of your audience that they will engage with it because they liked the thing you're riffing on, and not because they like you. they might engage with it because they like your ideas, or have read your other work, or your prose is legitimately good, but these are happy accidents. your work, no matter how good it is, is not standing on its own. and that's why it's not serious, the way playing covers on guitar for your friends is not serious. it's not a bad or lesser thing to do. but you're only going to get so far with it.

now, are there exceptions? of course. wicked (the maguire novel) was arguably a fanfiction. is all writing that isn't fanfic therefore inherently serious? of course not. i've read some garbage not worth the paper it was printed on. i don't want to be misconstrued as saying i think coolsville sucks, that fanfic is a waste of time. fanfic is perfectly good as a hobby, as a way to connect with others, to engage with or critique existing ideas. it just can't be where you stop if your desire is to grow.

so when i say fanfic is not serious writing, and when i say i have a problem with fanfic as an end, and when i say my writing advice is not directed at fanfic, what i am specifically saying is i want you 🫵 to want more for yourself. if you're passionate about improving your writing, if you're going to work hard, it should be for yourself. your ideas. your own work. your own message you want to convey. your own characters you care about. your own perspective. you can only get so far when you squeeze all of those things through somebody else's lens, and i want you to go as far as you can!

le guin, always. left hand of darkness, the dispossessed, earthsea if you feel like wizards, always coming home if you enjoy speculative anthropology.

octavia butler's lilith's brood series. great alien science fiction about human nature.

pratchett, of course. look up the discworld reading list and pick anything that suits your fancy, but i'll specifically recommend either starting with Equal Rites or Guards, Guards!

i really enjoyed scott lynch's lies of locke lamora. i also just finished michael chabon's the yiddish policeman's union, which i would describe as jewish disco elysium.

it's also genuinely worth giving the Classics that they made you read in school another try, or seeking out the ones you missed. i read fahrenheit 451 and 1984 for the first time as an adult, and they're legitimately good reads when you're doing it for pleasure and not for a grade.