fic (opinion)

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.