A funny day in fandomville

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

 
Two funny or weird things in fandom today....

- Someone sends me an annonymous Ask on Tumblr, telling me that someone (who I'll call J) who participated in a fanfic exchange I organized a few months ago is a groomer. It certainly is disturbing to think that J may've been interacting inappropriately with someone underage. But I ran this by my fandom friend F, and we are both agreed that there is not much I can do here. The fic exchange is over. I don't plan to post about it again. I don't know J from Adam, and I don't know if the allegations are true. The Ask came through anon, so I can't even discuss this with the asker. So I don't plan to take any action.

- On the Spartacus Discord, we were talking about the popularity of (THE AWESOME) Our Flag Means Death. Someone noted that they read a recent fic in that fandom that had 1,998 kudos. We all commiserated a bit, I pointed out that no fic of mine has even hit the 350 mark, everyone else was like 'same'. Then one person commented that sometimes it feels like some fics are so poorly written that you can take 1 from 1 fandom, change a few names to those of characters in a 2nd fandom, and post it in the 2nd fandom. We joked about doing that with works in progress. 

I decided to do it, for a lark. I took a Spartacus fic that I never finished, changed a few names and details, and posted it in the Our Flag Means Death section of A03. As of right now, it has 2 kudos and 2 followers - but nothing else. I have no way to promote the fic (not planning to make a fake Tumblr for that). Less than an hour after I posted it, there were already 9 newer fics atop it. The fic itself is a piece of poop anyway, but I'm having fun with this regardless and I'm shocked that 2 people subscribed to it. (Will I get a comment.....?)

Update - No comments, but 3 followers, 1 bookmark, and 5 kudos.

Update about 12 hours after posting - Still no comments, but 7 followers, 3 bookmarks, 9 kudos. I guess all this tells us is that when you write in a popular fandom, your fics will get more of a reaction even if they suck

Comments

[rhoda_rants]

Link meeee!

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

But....but....the fic is terrible. It's literally a Spartacus fic where I changed the character names to Stede and Ed.

I am deeply ashamed of it. :)

But I am enlightened. My little experiment might indicate that a poorly-written fic in a popular fandom can do better than a good fic in an unpopular fandom.

[rhoda_rants]

LOL fine then--I know how to find it if I really want to. It is true though, the bigger the fandom the more popular the associated fanworks. I get more Ao3 traffic for Doctor Who than anything else, even MCU stuff.

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[stormkeeper_lovesall]

It's the first time in history I've asked someone not to read a fic I posted!! LOL

[rhoda_rants]

Oh, btw, regarding what was in your first paragraph: that sounds like bullshit. "Groomer" when it comes to fandom spaces is more than likely code for "they write about a ship I don't like" or "they're over 25 and still write fanfic" as opposed to someone causing actual harm to actual humans. Ignoring it is the right response.

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Thank you. Yeah, I truly don't know if J did anything wrong or not, so it seems best to leave all this alone.

[nytshd3]

I guess maybe someone wants to make sure that J is not interacting with underage folks, but with an anonymous ask, and a fanfic exchange that's already over, what exactly do they expect you to do? And maybe I'm naive, but, are there a ton of active underage fans of a show that ended several years ago? idk, just kind of a weird situation all around.

Hilarious about the name change fanfic!! Also never forget that wildly popular 50 shades of gray was a find and replace name change on a twilight fanfic (though fans get SO OFFENDED when you say that). That said, it illustrates two things - one that people are looking for fanfic for the shows that are hot/popular right now and two - it means that the writing you do now has to be extra good for you to get the kudos and comments you get, so that should tell you that you are talented!!

Also, are you going to start writing Our Flag Means Death fanfic?

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Yeah, I just don't think there's anything I can do on the J situation. It's fully possible that they did nothing wrong.

That's so weird about Shades of Gray.

My crappy name-switch fanfic is up to 10 followers. So if you're gonna write fanfic, write in a fandom with lots of readers!

I have no plans to write for Our Flag yet; the bug just hasn't bitten me. But maybe it will.

[nytshd3]

Yes, definitely possible that J did nothing wrong. Just seems strange to reach out about a fanfic exchange that's already over.

I am so weirded out by shades of gray. At one point there was a website that had a comparison of the fanfic to the book and it was literally a find and replace. Like, every word was identical except for the characters. I'm sure there was some stuff that was cut/changed (like there must have been some vampire stuff right?) but just imagine if someone was like hey, we loved your x-dudes fanfic and we'd like you to turn it into its own book series, but you have to remove any mention of x-dudes and just change the names of your characters. idk how that would work 'these characters might SEEM like the x-dudes but they're a TOTALLY DIFFERENT set of characters!'

And I guess it makes sense - something that's super popular right now is, of course, going to get the most traffic. Still hard when you work so hard on your stuff though!