i’d like to share: book readers who think fic is trashy are reading the wrong fic and fic readers who think books are trashy are reading the wrong books.

i’ve been itching to write about this, so hold on. wild ride.

some people refuse to read fanfiction because it’s “written by 12-year-olds key smashing” and fic readers who refuse to read books because they can’t get invested in oc’s any more or prefer the tagged trigger warnings in front of fics.

let me give insight into that “twelve-year-old”. age doesn’t determine your quality of writing, although experience helps immensely. here’s a demography survey from the subreddit on fanfiction. age: only 1/5 were under 18. the major fic platforms include fanfiction.net, wattpad, and ao3. 80% of wattpad’s audience were millennials or gen z. from my experience, wattpad and ffnet tend to have younger writers/readers, ao3′s age demography is higher. some of my favourite writers range from 13 - 38 or have unknown ages. does that affect their stellar writing? absolutely not. (please check the links in the comments)

some fics do have questionable punctuation, terrible pacing and plot holes everywhere, but also masterpieces exist that could rival the calibre of official books.

in my opinion, it’s great with parameters. there’s the tricky business of writing about real people. there are multitudes of blogs that log what creators (ex: dream) feel comfortable with fic so their boundaries aren’t violated. fictional characters are different, but the rule of thumb is to write respectfully, as in any genre.

fic can be a coping mechanism; escapism’s blooming in quarantine. fic goes where traditional books haven’t. mindless fluff or unrequited love diseases, villain versions of comfort characters, crack-like humour, countless variations of cliche friends to lovers.

and it takes effort. one of my favourite authors wrote 147k (around 2x harry potter and the philosopher’s stone) in a few months, and another’s about to hit 1mil words for au’s. it’s easy to swallow 233k of fic over a weekend, 40k, 26k in a night because i love the characters already and there are countless stories.

fic’s incredible for learning to write for specific characters since a slate stbalished with references; amounts of research certain fic demands is rigorous and overall fic’s helped me develop my style.

some of my friends got into fic to get back into reading. one couldn’t visit bookstores and turned to fic for stories about her favourite character and his universe. now, she reads fic between classics like jane eyre.

however, the greatest asset of fanfiction’s the community it creates, it’s support in the skeleton of fandoms. writing’s typically thought of as solitary, but fic connects fans, artists, and creators. getting your writing out there, getting comments and sweet advice grows readers and writers.

ao3. it’s a bunch of broke and ambitious authors writing because they can. it’s pure and unmonetized art. no monetary gain for writers, no capitalism involved. only people mad about writing and mad about reading.

As a general rule, I tend to avoid fanfiction. Most of the fanfics I find are badly written, or they come up with ships out of nowhere.

But if I find a really good series, I want to write a fanfiction for it.

Currently, I'm posting a Percy Jackson fanfiction on Wattpad, and I'm actually really proud of the story. A friend and I are working on a fanfic set in the Harry Potter universe. Sometimes, fanfictions are fun.

I actually had a long debate with myself about whether or not I wanted to post my fanfiction. I felt like I should stick to more original stuff. But as the story went along, I just felt like I had to post it. And so, here I am.

(If you want to check it out, my Wattpad user is WhiteWolfe32 and the fanfic is called The Heir).

As a result, I'm currently pretty ambivalent about fanfictions. But who knows, maybe my position will change in the future?

I guess we'll have to wait and see...

I started writing fanfiction when I was in college, about ten years ago. A friend got me reading Harry Potter fanfiction in high school, but I only ever read what she recommended, which was well written. It wasn't until much later that I realized how many poorly-written fanfictions there are out there, and I got tired of trying to sift through it all. So, I don't read it often, but I can get in the mood for it.

I didn't post my first fanfiction until about a year ago, and I've only posted four or five since (mostly in the StarGate fandom on fanfiction.net). I have a tendency to come up with plot ideas while I'm watching a series, and I start writing it, but as the show plays out, my idea isn't possible with the canon, or I lose interest after I'm done watching the show. So, I end up with a bunch of half-finished fanfics on my computer.

Even without finishing them, I enjoy writing fanfiction, as it gives you parameters - already established characters and worlds - and you get to play within them. It makes for good writing exercises without the hassle of coming up with your own original characters and situations. I like to use it to practice certain parts of writing - dialogue, setting the scene, etc. It takes a lot of the pressure off if you don't feel like you have to introduce everything like you do when it's original. It takes a lot of the "work" out of writing and allows you to just have fun and write.

I started writing fanfiction back in middle school. For me, middle school was about eight/nine years ago. I start writing fanfictions for Teen Wolf and then spread to Supeenatural and have since opened to even more fandoms. I do share my work on a couple different sites including the fandoms rescpective amino group, Wattpad, Ao3, here, and Quotev. All of these use the same username of Zynestehildar. My reason for using so many different platforms is to get more feedback so I can improve my work.

Some time ago Reaper showed the 1st draft of his spin off to an acquaintance who commented that it was possibly the best fan fiction she ever read. Reapers 1st thought was she must not fear death if She’s so casually insulting a reaper. Fortunately before Reaper sent her to meet her maker he realized this statement was not meant to be an insult. 

Fanfic gets a bad wrap. And in Reapers opinion this is... justified. Now admittedly at this point Reaper’s stance on fan fiction is far less extreme, it seems necessary to break things down so let’s begin.

In Reapers Opinion the vast majority of fan fiction is really quite bad. Though it’s true if you know where to look and sift around for quite a while there’s a chance that you may find a diamond in the rough, generally speaking, if you’re on a fanfic sight you’re likely to encounter, glaring plot holes, basic characters, predictable plots, scenes copied straight out of a popular anime TV show, or movie, cliché after cliché, and of course fanfics most popular trope, entire stories created seemingly for the sole purpose of shipping two or three of the most unlikely characters. And though Reaper could go on about such things, its perhaps necessary to flip the script at this point.

Back when D was just a wee-reaper he remembers filling numerous notebooks with his stories. You see back in those days things like laptops and the internet were not the mainstream resources we know them as today. For a young writer there was nothing like the plethora of options we see today where people can share their projects with the world. and on that note Reaper addresses the common “insult” seen in the comment section of fanfic websites. “This must have been written by a 3rd grader.” “Jeez the author must still be in middle school!” etc.  Well, if you ask Reaper that’s fantastic! Can you imagine a youngster typing away at their keyboard, tablet, and writing pages and pages just for the joy of writing? That’s something to be celebrated not mocked.

A negative occurrence that came along side our interconnected world is that everyone’s a critic. We believe just because someone posts a story, or video, it must have been for us, and if it doesn’t meet our standards then shame on them! When we think this way we miss a very simple explanation. Maybe these authors were not trying to write the next best seller. Maybe they just wrote this piece because it made them happy. And if it served its purpose who are we to berate it with insults. So, in Reapers opinion if you’re perusing the net for fanfic you might not encounter the most compelling, sophisticated, original piece of literature you read this week. But it’s much more likely you’ll find the works of an inspired young artist putting their best foot forward as they start down the path of a writer and that’s A-OK in Reapers book.