Is it AI or is it just lazy writing? Is it my attention span or is it just bad writing? What the heck is happening in the fan fiction space?
I am gonna preface this by saying that my fandoms may not be that active anymore nor have a lot of active writers, so my experience may be dissimilar from someone in a huge fandom. However, scrolling through Tumblr is kind of stressing me out.
"Why the fuck are you still on Tumblr?"
Look. AO3 is the main place for fics and that is also true for me. I know. But, I found out (years ago) that there were a lot of great writers not publishing their works there. There's Twitter—which you cannot pay me to go back to—for short form fics as well. I support authors writing their blorbos wherever they want to, but I'm sorry, no matter how much I like your work, I'm not going back to that hellspace. Wattpad is (somehow!!!) also used to be a big site for fics in my fandom, but I have not been there for years. Nope. Absolutely not. The only other place left for fandom content is Tumblr. Unless there is another site where the writers are (that is not TikTok please I beg), then we do not have anywhere else to go.
Recently, I went back to read fics after being away due to life and graduate school. After I caught up with my favorite writers and realized that most of them are either on hiatus or already deactivated, I just sighed and send best wishes to them into the void.
Aside from the usual discourse of authors putting their OCs on supposed reader inserts, authors behaving badly, and tagging etiquette, I realized that most published fic related posts with thousands of notes are SMAU (social media alternate universe) and multi-character smut scenes. Which… okay? New era, I guess. So I read some, skipped some, and block some. But then, just this week, I realized that I am only reading smut scenes. Scenes, yes. Not even full one-shots. Literally just common tropes: fwb, fratboi, nerd, yada yada. 1 idea = 10 authors. Literally the same shit just with different formatting. No build up. No substance. Straight up fucking. Not even creative fucking. Just the usual, shaking and trembling and pussy eating and cervix kissing whatever the fuck. If you're gonna throw sex to my face, at least MAKE IT GOOD.
Look. I am all for people exploring their sexuality. I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't do that in a safe environment. And I am not ashamed to say that I learned stuff from fics and books when it comes to sex. Then realizing once I had real life experiences already that most of it are fake, or rather, exaggerated.
But this is getting crazy.
I am not even saying to stop writing them or reading them but damn. Where is the exploration? Where is the imagination? Where is the curiosity?
It's not that deep bro, it's just smut.
Yeah, and you are the same person who talk to chatbots just to get a dopamine hit from your faves. The same person who scroll through fic tags treating it as TikTok content and screaming at the author for whatever entitled reason you have.
So, sorry, I do not care about your opinion.
Anyway.
I know that this is the scenario where we mostly scream THEN JUST WRITE YOUR OWN GODDAMN IT and believe me, that is the first thing I thought. But, I just had to get it off my chest.
There was a similar post that went days ago about the fan fic community dying which a lot of people agree. Meanwhile, the discussion about readers not appreciating their writers enough also joined in. Is it connected? Does it have a correlation? Is it a chicken and egg situation? I don't know. But that is a separate discussion on itself that needs its own spotlight.
Not gonna lie, it might really be just my fandom that is dying. But just as the book space being flooded with ChatGPT writing (yuck) unfortunately, our safe fandom spaces are being invaded too. Again, using genAI to create fan works is another whole new separate discussion I don't want to get into here yet. I have a lot of feelings with that.
So, where do I go from here?
I guess I just have to really do it myself. Maybe this is the motivation I was looking for?