Where do you read fic?

[Prix with a Silent X]

Since the actual fanfic forum is dead as a doornail, but recs occasionally manage to crop up on that thread I made, I wanted to know where any of you who read fanfic actually look for and find it.

Elaborate as much as you are willing to. My primary interest in fandom is transformative work, so I'm interested since this place itself is much quieter than it used to be but not actually dead.

[Imperial]

I mostly use Fanfiction.net and Archive Of Our Own, though it's less FFN and more AO3 these days.

A lot of author's use and abuse AO3's tag system to cook up a heaping helping of word soup, but at least you know exactly what you are signing up for. I've been burned by FFN stories that seem perfectly sane and sensible until I start reading, and then they run themselves off a cliff.

I will occasionally drop by the Sufficient Velocity, Space Battles, and Dark Lord Potter forums, too. Even my own milage varies on those. The users of those sites tend to have very specific tastes.

[Dullahan]

In word processors or in PM windows. Almost all I read [excluding technical/academic things (work-related) and novels (not work-related) and things I write myself (once in a blue moon) etc.] is things people send to me to look through. AO3 very rarely, on recommendation. Otherwise here on BL. Despite everything we are still the best-by-far TM fansite on the english speaking internet.

[Ratman]

Pastebin, to be completely honest. Pretty much everybody I talk to about the stuff go to FF.net, sufficientvelocity and spacebattles commonly though, so they link me something sometimes and it pretty much always staggeringly sucks.

It's supposed to be imageboards for me, or was a few years ago, /tg/ in particular, but even topical original content is a topic of contention these days 'cause people don't like things that are different.

BL's not bad, I've read a whole bunch of good stuff here.

My primary interest in fandom is transformative work, so I'm interested since this place itself is much quieter than it used to be but not actually dead.

That's because late TM is not very inspiring. Like with any pop culture, the two reasons why fanfics happen are for attention/brownies, and driven by inspiration. A social hive like spacebattles will inevitably have ten thousand people starting their shitty holy grail war quest with rider hitler and archer einstein baiting clicks, while having absolutely no knowledge of the source material. That's just being an entertainer - which you can still be a master of, of course - but it's something completely different from a writer noticing something weird about the work and wanting to explore whatever implications this bit has in a transformative work of their own. For a basic bitch example, Star Wars sequels are an example of the former, Heir to the Empire is the latter.

TM isn't doing as bad as we make it sound, and the culture here is basically still tight. It's not retroactively ruining itself or anything, it's just being kind of lame recently. The writers wait for bones to be thrown since the entire skeleton we have has been gnawed on to death.

[Mattias]

Most of the time I look for recommendation threads, that way I know the story has enough momentum going that I won't get only a prologue and a single chapter.
Tvtropes tends to be the most widespread so It's my go-to, so I have FFN, AO3,SB and SV all equally in my rotations.

[RoydGolden]

Fanfiction.Net, AO3, and this forum for me. Though, I really don't read much fanfic anymore for this to be a representative sample...

[WhiteFrenzy]

I admit that I'm probably not the main target here because I rarely consume Fate/fanfiction nowadays (that's on me, I'm so sorry) but back when I did I would search for them in AO3. Other than that, I just used other sites if there was where the story a friend recommended me was.

But I did looked from time to time the FF.Net section (didn't read anything there, just looked around.) Unfortunately I'm too pampered by AO3 and I can't use FFNet anymore...

[RoydGolden]

Wait, did the question mean Fate fics or just fanfiction in general?

[WhiteFrenzy]

Wait, did the question mean Fate fics or just fanfiction in general?

I DO ADMIT THAT I WAS VERY UNSURE OF THIS TOO. I replied only Fate fics because I didn't know if they were talking of general stories or just the ones pertinent to this forum's niche. but frankly nowadays I just tend to go for AO3 for everything too, so...

[Prix with a Silent X]

I mostly use Fanfiction.net and Archive Of Our Own, though it's less FFN and more AO3 these days.

A lot of author's use and abuse AO3's tag system to cook up a heaping helping of word soup, but at least you know exactly what you are signing up for. I've been burned by FFN stories that seem perfectly sane and sensible until I start reading, and then they run themselves off a cliff.

I will occasionally drop by the Sufficient Velocity, Space Battles, and Dark Lord Potter forums, too. Even my own milage varies on those. The users of those sites tend to have very specific tastes.

Tagging can get obtrusive, but I personally think that over-tagging is better than under-tagging if you write sensitive content. Plus, some tags are hilarious. The other day I saw one that said "weapons-grade pining" and I've been thinking about it ever since. I think it was one one of the fics on the rec list I've been going through.

In word processors or in PM windows. Almost all I read [excluding technical/academic things (work-related) and novels (not work-related) and things I write myself (once in a blue moon) etc.] is things people send to me to look through. AO3 very rarely, on recommendation. Otherwise here on BL. Despite everything we are still the best-by-far TM fansite on the english speaking internet.

I think I'm guilty of this somewhat, though now that I am starting to accept the life of a shut-in due to the global health situation, I am starting to occasionally read fic just to read fic again. I've talked about this before in different places, but I think a spirit of reciprocity and community is kind of needed for fic to get a lot of back and forth engagement. The reason I was thinking about it was seeing how some people I either know personally from this forum at this point or people I've at least interacted with were a lot more engaged in times gone by.

For one thing, I think a lot of people just hang onto this space/fandom as a part of their identity because they formed a social bond through it rather than really liking Type Moon anymore, but even for those who haven't moved on, the climate is different. But that isn't just on BL. It's everywhere. And I think that it may have to do with the fact that the internet itself rewards constant scrolling/refreshing rather than investment of time if it grants social rewards at all. People are dopamine-blind.

Also, I mean... best Type Moon site on the English speaking internet? Format-wise, I might be inclined to agree, but even in the time I've been around the rate of content here has plummeted while the amount of available content that's actual anime and stuff has gone up. And I think we know why.

Pastebin, to be completely honest. Pretty much everybody I talk to about the stuff go to FF.net, sufficientvelocity and spacebattles commonly though, so they link me something sometimes and it pretty much always staggeringly sucks.

It's supposed to be imageboards for me, or was a few years ago, /tg/ in particular, but even topical original content is a topic of contention these days 'cause people don't like things that are different.

BL's not bad, I've read a whole bunch of good stuff here.


That's because late TM is not very inspiring. Like with any pop culture, the two reasons why fanfics happen are for attention/brownies, and driven by inspiration. A social hive like spacebattles will inevitably have ten thousand people starting their shitty holy grail war quest with rider hitler and archer einstein baiting clicks, while having absolutely no knowledge of the source material. That's just being an entertainer - which you can still be a master of, of course - but it's something completely different from a writer noticing something weird about the work and wanting to explore whatever implications this bit has in a transformative work of their own. For a basic bitch example, Star Wars sequels are an example of the former, Heir to the Empire is the latter.

TM isn't doing as bad as we make it sound, and the culture here is basically still tight. It's not retroactively ruining itself or anything, it's just being kind of lame recently. The writers wait for bones to be thrown since the entire skeleton we have has been gnawed on to death.

You kinda lost me on the Star Wars versus Heir to the Empire example. I don't even know what the latter is, but I liked the first two Star Wars Sequel movies, and I follow the fandom some. Their fanfic ranges a lot from canon exploration/divergent AUs from those fanfics that just take the character archetypes and transplant them into completely irrelevant AUs. I tend to prefer the former and the latter rarely feel worthwhile to me, but it's a pretty active creative community.

I don't really necessarily agree that the "skeleton being picked to death" is the only reason that fanfic here has run dry. It gets posted every day or two in at least one Type Moon fandom on AO3, and look at something like Marvel (not just the MCU but even the comics). Even though not a whole lot of people follow the comics religiously, there is still a pretty steady diet of Marvel multimedia fandom content available at any given time. I know that my experience of trying to write Type Moon fic has been the most creatively frustrating, back when I tried to please people here. Like, I think that a lot of people get so bogged down with the mechanics and the need to be "original" that the kinds of character-based fanfic that tend to be the steady diet of most fandoms I've been around don't get produced that often. Blah blah something masculine feminine curative transformative blah blah blah.

Most of the time I look for recommendation threads, that way I know the story has enough momentum going that I won't get only a prologue and a single chapter.
Tvtropes tends to be the most widespread so It's my go-to, so I have FFN, AO3,SB and SV all equally in my rotations.

TVtropes fanfic rec pages are an interesting format to me but I feel like they're often very sparse/rarely updated. I never did try SB or SV so I don't know much about them.

Fanfiction.Net, AO3, and this forum for me. Though, I really don't read much fanfic anymore for this to be a representative sample...

I think a lot of people have stopped reading, and while it may have to do with waning interest I think information overload is also the cause of a lot of it. And, of course, there are people who think they outgrew meager, paltry fanfiction and only read Real Literature or whatever, but I balk at that, so.

I admit that I'm probably not the main target here because I rarely consume Fate/fanfiction nowadays (that's on me, I'm so sorry) but back when I did I would search for them in AO3. Other than that, I just used other sites if there was where the story a friend recommended me was.

But I did looked from time to time the FF.Net section (didn't read anything there, just looked around.) Unfortunately I'm too pampered by AO3 and I can't use FFNet anymore...

I like to read fic, but I suck at choosing it for myself, so I read less than one would think for how much I care about the medium on principle. And, as mentioned several times, information overload from the act of "being online" in the ways that we tend to be now, as opposed to eight or ten years ago, makes it harder to commit to reading enough to read longer fic. I remember the days where fanfiction archives were self-hosted websites by people with dreamweaver skills and niche interests and having to request to be included... Yikes.

I mirror post some stories on FF.net because people are generally more likely to actually randomly comment on things they read since there isn't a kudos button there. But gosh the interface to post anything on the website is SO BAD and unnecessarily complicated. Reading on it is bad enough, but it is just so "no you can't do that, no you can't use that character, no you can't post this," and its categorization system is awful. The ONLY thing I like about it is the ability to mark genre specifically, but even that requires you to choose a pre-determined one and... anyway.

I'm considering posting some stuff on Wattpad because I like the way they handle the dumb coverart thing, but at the same time even the name Wattpad makes me feel a little bit of fight or flight.

Wait, did the question mean Fate fics or just fanfiction in general?

Fanfiction in general, though obviously Fate / Type Moon is what is most relevant on this website.

[SpoonyViking]

I used to rely on specific websites I'd visit semi-regularly, sites which worked as a collection of fics and authors similar to FF.net and AO3, but specifically focused on a single franchise (i.e., RuroKen fanfics, Tenchi Muyo fanfics, Inu Yasha fanfics, and so on and so forth). I think some of them still exist? These days, I mostly rely on BL, which admittedly means most fanfiction I read is TM-related.

[Ratman]

You kinda lost me on the Star Wars versus Heir to the Empire example. I don't even know what the latter is, but I liked the first two Star Wars Sequel movies, and I follow the fandom some. Their fanfic ranges a lot from canon exploration/divergent AUs from those fanfics that just take the character archetypes and transplant them into completely irrelevant AUs. I tend to prefer the former and the latter rarely feel worthwhile to me, but it's a pretty active creative community.

There's a lot of different examples to look at in Star Wars, because just about everything except OT and prequels (too bad) is fanfiction, including and especially Disney content. The events that followed Return of the Jedi were not only Jorge's vision, they were authored by a swarm of different people with different understandings of what Star Wars was, lending their Original Characters to each other not unlike tumblrinas, making them act in or out of character, making the original characters act in and out of character, contradicting each other, contradiciting the original material, and generally ending up with a weird mash of really laughably terrible stuff, as well as some pretty cool stuff that the fandom had to pick through. You can easily recognize who was trying to make money on the brand, who was inspired by the material to do their own thing, and who was a competent enough author that you can't tell which it was.

What have we learned from this statistical sample? That replicating the original material (SUN CRUSHER) was pointless content that has been lost to time, and it is the unique and unseen character of an actually competent imperial officer, Thrawn, that is remembered well enough to survive EU purge on fan demand. That's something you didn't see in Star Wars, you know? A smart imperial officer. That's exciting. You wanted to see that in Star Wars after Tarkin wasn't it. But you need the hook of Tarkin jobbing as inspiration. You need to be shown just enough to be curious what the rest of the Empire we're not shown is like.

FGO is kind of locked up in its own ivory tower where none of its exposition is any use for anything but its specific particular situation at the time. There's really not much to wonder about there. People don't get hooked, they just read the spoilers, and move onto something else.

I don't really necessarily agree that the "skeleton being picked to death" is the only reason that fanfic here has run dry. It gets posted every day or two in at least one Type Moon fandom on AO3, and look at something like Marvel (not just the MCU but even the comics). Even though not a whole lot of people follow the comics religiously, there is still a pretty steady diet of Marvel multimedia fandom content available at any given time. I know that my experience of trying to write Type Moon fic has been the most creatively frustrating, back when I tried to please people here. Like, I think that a lot of people get so bogged down with the mechanics and the need to be "original" that the kinds of character-based fanfic that tend to be the steady diet of most fandoms I've been around don't get produced that often. Blah blah something masculine feminine curative transformative blah blah blah.

'Cause posting here is dangerous 'cause people actually know their stuff and will sperg at you when you get it wrong. Elsewhere you get low effort fanfics that just replicate Apocrypha and Singularities and Lostbelts times infinity, and don't dare dream. I'd like to imagine what we have here used to be a little more ambitious than that. There's just not much to work with recently, is all, unless you want to write the same thing everybody is writing. So people who compulsively write fanfiction went to write it about something else that's actually got them hooked.

[Walnut Sparks]

I'm super-passive about seeking out fanfics, since I usually feel like there's too much else to do/think about. I swing by here and FF.net every morning 'cause I've done it for years now and it only takes a minute to see whether there's anything that interests me.

AO3, on the other hand, shows up more often than any other site when I feel like searching the Web for fanfics.

[Prix with a Silent X]

'Cause posting here is dangerous 'cause people actually know their stuff and will sperg at you when you get it wrong. Elsewhere you get low effort fanfics that just replicate Apocrypha and Singularities and Lostbelts times infinity, and don't dare dream. I'd like to imagine what we have here used to be a little more ambitious than that. There's just not much to work with recently, is all, unless you want to write the same thing everybody is writing. So people who compulsively write fanfiction went to write it about something else that's actually got them hooked.

I don't think this is something to be proud of (the "people will sperg (what is that) at you" thing), and I also really doubt that it would happen anymore.

I also don't think that the vast majority of fanfiction I come across in any fandom where I look is ambitious, sprawling plot stuff that treats the mechanics of the world like an RPG they're DMing. Fanfiction is often just... writing that uses the presupposed characters and aspects of the world that exist. Character study and relationship fic and so on. The fact that there is so little room for that here mostly seems like a case of people having ruined their own fun with ambition and self flagellation about not having anything more to say about it.

Trying to thread the needle here when it was more active and likely to draw any response at all really hampered my creativity for a while because I was terrified of getting something wrong, just like what you're saying, only to realize that most of the people who were likely to do that weren't there to enjoy the content even if it had been perfect in the first place.

Concerning the Star Wars discussion, I don't think that everything that follows the original author's work is fanfiction. Fanfiction is a cultural type of production that is not the same thing as writing when you have the official sanction of the creator. I mean, it may be comforting to talk about it in those terms when one doesn't like where an extended canon goes, but I think that conflating something a person writes that gets a thousand views on the internet with a blockbuster movie by Disney is an unfair comparison.

[neveron]

Also, I mean... best Type Moon site on the English speaking internet? Format-wise, I might be inclined to agree, but even in the time I've been around the rate of content here has plummeted while the amount of available content that's actual anime and stuff has gone up. And I think we know why.

Let me guess, it's the death of traditional forums in the wake of the rise of social media. There's still content being made, it's just mostly shortform stuff that gets posted straight to Twitter or Reddit or wherever. A lot of fanart, mostly, perhaps because it's faster to draw a picture of your waifu than it is to write a story of a couple thousand words.

I don't think this is something to be proud of (the "people will sperg (what is that) at you" thing), and I also really doubt that it would happen anymore.

It's a derogatory term playing on the social incompetence that comes with Asperger's Syndrome. (Usually made out to be a temper tantrum, sometimes used interchangeably with various slurs for autism because the internet is a horrible place. If you've ever seen one of those 4chan memes with the frog going "REEEE", it's that.)

Beast's Lair has definitely chilled out a bit, I feel, although maybe that's just because it's getting old. Then again, I've always felt like the overly hostile attitude has been a bit overhyped.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Let me guess, it's the death of traditional forums in the wake of the rise of social media. There's still content being made, it's just mostly shortform stuff that gets posted straight to Twitter or Reddit or wherever. A lot of fanart, mostly, perhaps because it's faster to draw a picture of your waifu than it is to write a story of a couple thousand words.

That's part of it, though it wasn't all I was referring to with regard to Beast's Lair in particular. I think the sea change was more that the core "community" of BL who were just hanging around out of habit moved to private places like their discord where they didn't have to deal with people who liked FGO, among other differences of opinion.

I do think you have a point about fanart versus fanfiction. I always want to be careful not to be rude about visual artists in fandom, but it does drive me crazy that there's such a huge difference of privilege between being a fan writer and a fan artist. Fan artists are often treated like "legitimate" artists even though their work is technically not very legal. Y'know, artists alleys at cons and all of that. And I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but it is actually a baked in part of fan writing culture that asking for money in exchange for your work is frowned upon. These days some super popular artists get kofi tips or whatever, but it is actually against the terms of service on AO3 for example to even mention a means of making money from your "labor" because they are an actual nonprofit.

I think there's also a point to be made that most people are not very good visual artists, and so the skill and equipment involved in generating art is respected because the average person knows that they could not sit down and do that if they tried. However, in a mostly-technically-literate internet, observers of fandom don't really think about the amount of skill that is involved in making something that is even passably readable as prose or whatever. Even, like, baby's-first-readable-fanfic takes skills that many people who technically know how to read and write do not possess/have not honed, but that is not really considered by most people. They think, "I can do that," when they let their eyes glaze over paragraphs that they feel they don't have time to read anyway.

It's a derogatory term playing on the social incompetence that comes with Asperger's Syndrome. (Usually made out to be a temper tantrum, sometimes used interchangeably with various slurs for autism because the internet is a horrible place. If you've ever seen one of those 4chan memes with the frog going "REEEE", it's that.)

Beast's Lair has definitely chilled out a bit, I feel, although maybe that's just because it's getting old. Then again, I've always felt like the overly hostile attitude has been a bit overhyped.

It's nice to see someone who recognizes this as deplorable behavior/language. I had a feeling it was a gross term.

I don't think the hostility was overhyped, just fairly concentrated.

[neveron]

I think another difference between fanart and fanfic is that the former is much more easily digestible and therefore leads to faster gratification. If you see a piece of fanart on Twitter, you can understand it within seconds, like/retweet/reply/follow, and move on. If you see a new piece of fanfic, chances are that you're not even going to dedicate the minutes needed to read it unless you already trust the work (because you know the author, it's been recommended, etc.) and might not even like/comment/review. The barrier to entry is so much lower on art. A picture might say a thousand words, but it says them fast.

On another level, there's probably plenty of Japanese fanfics but their length means that nobody will translate them. A Twitter comic with a handful of speech bubbles per page, though, that'll get translated and maybe even typeset.

And also, yes, it's easy to recognize skill in art but more difficult to recognize skill in prose. If an amateur draws something, they can probably tell its quality. If an amateur writes something, they often can't. This translates directly into how hard (and therefore deserving of respect) they think something is, which is probably why amateur writers are so awed by high wordcounts?

[Dullahan]

most japanese [TM] fanfiction is just as bad as ours - some of it, astonishingly, worse

I have seen horrors you would not believe

[You]

most japanese [TM] fanfiction is just as bad as ours - some of it, astonishingly, worse

can vouch.

[neveron]

Japan has a lower barrier of entry to get into Type-Moon stuff, so that doesn't surprise me at all. Over here you're either watching an anime on Netflix or playing FGO, but in Japan you could also just be watching the anime on broadcast television or pick up a random light novel volume. The barrier of entry is lower, so more people can become fans, and most people aren't good writers. You also get younger fans, and everyone knows that 13-year-olds make fantastic fanfiction authors.