Fanfiction, huh?

Pop Culture & Media Comics & Lit
1

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and-
(Don’t start your topic with an ironically detached joke) right. sure.

Hello! Fanfiction, huh?
Do you read it? Do you write it? What do you get out of it?

~*~

Here’s me:
What I primarily get out of fanfiction is queer characters with serviceable romantic plotlines.
‘But,’ I hear you ask, ‘Couldn’t you just consume already queer fiction?’ Yes, I could. Also, I do. But sometimes I also consume media that is tragically heterosexual, and get attached to the characters/setting/etc nonetheless.

I also write some fanfiction. Like perhaps a lot of people of a certain age, this began with Harry Potter. Then I didn’t write anything for years and years and somehow, of all things, The Flash dragged me back in.

~*~

Conclusion sentence! (I didn’t say I was a good writer…) Thread: go.

2

I read it sometimes. I’m pretty queer and I need good fanfiction to fill in the blanks in the media I consume. Like as soon as I beat Persona 5 I’m gonna hop onto Archive of Our Own and read the shit out of Akira/Ryuji and Akira/Yusuke slashfics, because their romantic chemistry is so plain to see and it’s kind of frustrating that we don’t have that option in the game. I’m sure this is a common sentiment.

3

I’ve tried my hand at writing some rather uninspired Deus Ex-related trash that I’m not willing to share. shrugs

There are some people who are extremely good at it and share it and build communities around it and I find that really inspiring.

Me personally… Well I’m worried about “ruining” established characters and settings and getting yelled at for it so I’ve mostly been working with my own original stuff lately. Maybe someday I’ll get past that (what is probably irrational) fear and write some fic.

4

oh man, I finally have an excuse to post this somewhere.

I’ve never read fanfiction and I never considered writing it. But two months ago, a couple of buds and I hanging out changed that.

“Yo, someone should write a crossover with the Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 and Donald Trump, that’d be hilarious.”

“What are you talking about, that’s absolutely already been done.”

“What? Let’s find some then.”

We looked. We looked but there was seriously nothing like that exact thing on either fanfiction.net or archiveofourown.

We laughed it up a bit, talked about how we would do it, and left it at that. But the bug was still there, in my brain. “What would his Palace be like? Where would it fit in the timeline? The midboss would totally be Mike Pence, right?”

A month later and, uh…well, here.

In the four parts I’ve written, across FF and AO3 it’s already gotten 2178 views. The feedback has mostly been positive, with a few “but what about Hilary?” and “P5 allows room for liberals and conservatives” awful hot takes sprinkled in between.

I post every Friday. I dunno if I’ll ever finish it, seeing as it’s just a joke that got out of hand. But I find it to be pretty fun. It’s kind of an exercise in writing in different tones across multiple characters, and has improved my own writing in that aspect. Also, keeping it 100, no one reads my original stuff…soooo having people actually read and comment on something I wrote feels good even if it’s not an “original property,” ngl.

e: in retrospect my favorite take was someone calling it hatefic, which…I mean, yeah

2 Likes
5

My dude. I’m saving this.

Someone please do the Phantom Thieves vs. Paul Ryan. The architecture of his Palace would be really something.

1 Like
6

hp fanfic is my favourite bc the ending is so ridiculously unsatisfying and no one actually processes all the trauma and war (remember how DH ended with no epilogue whatsoever) and so many fic writers have done The Good Work by writing about that.

my first big fandom was kingdom hearts and i read /a lot/ of akuroku when i was a teen but i find it quite hard to read now cause none of it is actually any… good

lots of the media i consume is either textually queer and unexplored or textually het with residual queerness that het authors don’t realise they’ve manufactured so fic is such a good place to explore shit like that and its just a wonderful enterprise populated by mostly queer women

honestly some of my favourite novels are fanfiction and its such a thankless thing to create and people still do it and literally its only function is to bring people joy i love it a lot

7

I used to read loads of HP fanfic as teen (my friend wrote several, including a several thousand word self insert where we met Harry and Snape on holiday, and I corrected the spelling and grammar). These days I just wish I could get recs for well written stuff- my eyes glaze over at PWP, but I’d love something that felt like an extra side story to some existing material, that kept the voices of the characters and tone. It seems fairly rare though, so, uh, if you know of any outstanding fics from somewhere in the fanfic-verse, let me know.

8

if you want long-fic drarry that feels like this i can rec you an absolute mammoth list

1 Like
9

I read a bunch of fanfics (mostly Harry Potter or Naruto or HP/Naruto crossovers) “”“ironically”"" as a dumbass teen, but fell off when i hit 20 and decided i was too old for it, like a dumbass. then around, oh, late july last year i got a sudden craving for an actually decent and well-written HP sequel for some strange reason, so i hit up ao3 and realised hey actually fanfic is cool as shit

i have of course also been working on my own extremely shitty HP sequel fic which is almost certainly never going to be finished or to see the light of day even if it is

1 Like
10

Only Fanfic I’ve read any significant ammount of is Evangelion and Warhammer 40’000, which is WAY better than what you’re currently thinking. It adds just one change early on in the Evangelion story, Shinji finding a washed-up case of Warhammer figures during his childhood, and allows it to spiral out into something radically different. He gains confidence, becomes more manipulative and ends up completely obsessed with the Warhammer mythos. The broad strokes of the story are still amazing, Shinji using the Jet Alone situation to broadcast a religious rant about False Machine Gods and making the Americans build Warhammer themed armor and weapons for the Evas is exactly the kind of mad shit I signed up for with the concept. It’s got a lot of very fanfictiony rubbish to be sure, like the 4 figures that shinji brings with him when he moves to Tokyo-3 talking to him in his head and a less-than-stellar attitude towards sex and sexuality(though it does feel somewhat in keeping with the spirit of Evangelion, no matter how bad it all is), but it’s worth it for stuff like Rei becoming an Eldar-Obsessed vigilante.

Never finished it though, worth noting. But I never finish anything.

1 Like
11

Yeah, hit me with you mammoth list! :musical_note:

12

I primarily read Harry Potter fanfic before the series was finished so ‘unsatisfying ending’ was never part of the draw for me. (Cedric was the main draw. Yeah he survived in my fic. Fight me.) What post-series stuff I did read was mostly centred around the kids so was essentially OC hogwarts fiction, I guess. (I suppose with the play now they have canon personalities/relationships but at the time they didn’t.)

My primary taste is also ‘this could just about conceivably fit in canon, ish’, with matching character voice and tone, and so this is 90% what I write. (My favourite possible comment on any of my fic is that the character voices fit. it’s tricky!)

Persona stuff can be great, shadow selves and palaces are a really convenient macguffin for character exploration. I’ve rarely come across stuff using people outside the games though @eightbitsamurai it seems like such an obvious thing to do. and yet.

3 Likes
13

I have written and read my fair share of fanfiction. Mainly f/f pairings (both reading and writing), but I’ve dipped my toes into m/f before. Watch me live vicariously through my ships as I write them being happy, sappy, in love (angst is not for me. I use fanfiction as an escapism and I love writing and consuming content of a fluffy romantic nature.)

(This thread literally prompted me to look up the ao3 tag of a rarepair I’m a huge fan of to see if there was new material…and guess what, there was! I’m so happy!!!)

1 Like
14

Fanfiction is a blessing unto this earth. Fanfiction gave me a community when I was a depressed queer kid with crippling anxiety. Fanfictions waters my crops and clears my skin.

I don’t much write anymore, and don’t read nearly like I used to (I had an abundance of free time in college. Not so much anymore) but I will always be grateful and always, always defend the ability of fanfiction to be as well-written as published and often more emotionally satisfying.

2 Likes
15

I started reading fanfiction when I saw Gundam Wing and only really went to several geocities/angelfire (?) sites to read stuff which was fun. I even made my own shipping site for Fruits Basket sometime in highschool (having frames was all the rage!) I started writing Naruto and some Harry Potter fanfiction when I was 13 and had my mom help edit (:v). Probably around the end of highschool, I stopped writing or reading it.

What I got out of it, was re-doing some characters cause I felt their characterization sucked or the author’s didn’t utilize them (ex: Sakura in Naruto) so it was cool to take something then mold it a bit. Also, getting reviews and feedback was kind of a rush.

16

OKAY SO:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/5439374/
Such Great Heights by softlyforgotten
(almost immediately post-war, very good, my favourite, my favourite draco bc the author makes him a bit horrible which is in character imo)
NB: the same author has a WIP called dwelling which is VERY GOOD SO FAR but is a WIP so i can’t in good conscience rec it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/879835
what we pretend we can’t see by gyzym
(also immediately post war with a brief time skip, lots of good stuff with grimauld place as a character/stuff about place and buildings and residual magic in places and physical manifestations of trauma)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/879835
salt on the western wind by saras_girl
(saras_girl is most well known for Turn which is crazy long and epilogue-compliant which i dont love [although i did mostly like it but it is /so long/] but this shorter fic about summer and long days and being trapped is v good and lazy and longing and i like it v much)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/5625616/chapters/12957970
stop and stare by saras_girl
(another saras_girl, very tender, lots of animals and shed building, i read this a while ago but afai remember there is some good trauma stuff in here but don’t hold me to it)

sorry if this isn’t specifically what you’re looking for (i just reread yr original message and i worry its not exactly your jam) but hopefully you like the look of one of them! such great heights is my absolute favourite thing ever i rec it to everyone so if you read ANY you should read that one.

17

I started reading fanfiction in elementary with DBZ Bulma/Vegeta fics. After DBZ, it was Harry Potter then LOTR then Hellsing then whatever fandom I was into at that moment. I read a lot until high school. Now I have spurts of reading fanfiction every few months. Mostly pairing fics of couples that didn’t happen in canon or didn’t happen in a satisfactory fashion. I like the build up of relationships until it finally happens and not so much the aftermath. Part of it is because once they get together, the relationship dynamic changes to them being happy ever after in most fics and the other is that plots that don’t involve the relationships is often not as compelling.

I’ve written a few fics, but I’ve never published them since I am not confident in my writing and I also never finish shit. Right now, I have this huge Star Wars Revan/Malak fic sitting on my computer unfinished and haven’t touched it in at least a year.

I would love to write a Yakuza fic of either Kiryu/Nishiki or Kiryu/Tachibana since I can hardly find any good ones, but I lack inspiration besides I really want them to make out lol.

1 Like
18

Fanfiction is good~

I find there are some series where I am interested in reading fanfics and some where I’m not. I was really into Homestuck years ago but I never read a single fanfic. On the other hand I love reading fanfics about Sherlock Holmes because there’s always new mysteries and situations that writers can put them in that wasn’t possible in the stuffy victorian age.

And there are some great authors out there. Fanfic writers are like the indie game devs of the writing world.

19

I unfortunately can’t link my AO3 because it is not really good to have it out there for public consumption given the nature of what I write but I’ve been having a lot of fun dabbling in fiction writing (since I’m predominantly non-fiction) through Overwatch characters. I really like writing fun, femme-posi smut of all varieties, particularly emphasis on bisexual headcanons. It’s been really nice to see things out there in the wild making people really happy, even if I can’t attach my name to it.

2 Likes
20

This was not the right link but I found this and read it and it was so good, thank you. (it’s What We Pretend We Can't See - Chapter 1 - gyzym - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own] here)
it’s funny, I was never into Harry/Draco stuff, and I’m not sure why? probably I was just being needlessly contrarian. but I can get behind it now, so, I guess I have a lot to catch up on.

@fivedroids absolutely same, my eyes completely glaze over anything that says ‘established relationship’. everything I’ve written ends with the ‘getting together’. (even the, uh, less PG stuff I’ve written is never established relationship). I want the pining, and tension, and will they/won’t they even if it’s a foregone conclusion. And yeah, I almost never read canonical pairings. Almost.

@AppleCider also same, wrt deliberately not linking my AO3. it’s like, 2/3rds fluffy PG stuff, but then the other third… is mostly fine probably but, just I’m not super comfortable saying ‘hey go read this’, you know.

1 Like