#but over all I think they've gotten less fun and creative and wild

[rookaby]

You know what I miss? Totally bizarre, long, story-based fanfics. When I was in high school, that was basically all there was. Like, there was a KH one where Roxas and Sora moved into a new house that was haunted by two ghost GANGS and they were at WAR and there was a super EXTRA evil ghost in the attic and also Roxas could somehow slip into a different dimension or something. I remember reading a story where the group (pretty sure it was KH again, I read nothing but AkuRoku and SoRi for two years) was ghost hunting and they wanted to summon a demon and it worked and they all died, but the demon took one of them back to hell with him and heaven got super mad because that one was supposed to become a new angel so they kept calling hell to try and get him released and when they finally got through to him he was just like ‘nah, I’ve got no responsibilities and a hot demon boyfriend now, I don’t want a job as angel of (whatever it was)’ and then they had to both undergo trials to escape The Plan (very Good Omens-y, that bit) and convince heaven the he wasn’t fit for that role anymore. 

There was ‘I accidentally joined a gang, but a nice gang and we run a casino and only murder sometimes and mostly work with charities’, and there was ‘I am an assassin and I snuck onto a ship to kill a noble, but we were attacked by pirates and now I’m posing as that noble to play hostage, but I kind of just want to hit on the hot captain’ and there was ‘my parents are bigots and I am gay so I ran away to join the circus, and we came back to town for another show the next year and my brother joined the circus to travel with us and try to convince me to go home, but it turns out he’s gay too and now we’re both married to other performers.’ the sequel ‘my brother’s ex-fiancee is super mad that he’s gay and is trying to end the circus because he won’t apologize for wasting three years of her life and then skipping town and not telling her they broke-up, she had him filed as a missing person, whoops’ And ‘I made a wish/met a witch and got a lover out of it who may or may not be part animal and now I have to teach this whole-ass adult how to be human and somehow get them legal papers’ and ‘I’m a spy in a war, but it turns out the ‘enemy’ isn’t that bad, so I turn coat and also get married, possibly into the royal family, and help with treaty talks’ And one time ‘I bought porn, but all the text on it was in, like, Japanese or something and that’s how I accidentally got a sex slave fairy and he wants me to rescue a bunch of other sex slave fairies who now live in my cabinet and go happily about their independent lives and we’re all activists.’

Most of the fanfiction I read now is introspective pining and tenderness and sweet moments that may or may not be embarrassing and very... mundane, I guess. Small scale and focused on just the romantic relationship and not the world they’re in or the rest of the lives they’re leading. And they’re amazing! They’re beautiful and I love reading about these characters falling in love over and over again, but, like... I get so sad when I get into a newer fandom and there aren’t any mermaid or supernatural AUs where we learn about those societies and how they interact with ours or ABO fics that care about how that would change our social hierarchy and the civil rights issues we face or even a random ‘I used to be a dog, but I fell in love with a human, and now I can turn into a human sometimes because, I don’t know, the Moon probably’ AU. Now it just feels like it’s always ‘Canon, but OTP is in love and will date later.’ or ‘gods, imagine people falling in love in small and realistic ways, need me a freak like that, it’s so soft’.

Maybe it’s because of moving from FFNet to AO3, maybe it’s because the fandoms I’m in now have more adults than teens in the fanbase and they don’t have time to sit and plot out something like that, maybe the time for these kinds of stories has just passed and I’m out of luck, but I just miss these ridiculous, complicated, absurd adventures where some lovable idiots meet and have this big, whirlwind romance where they have to overcome something bigger than their own miscommunication and self-doubt.

#LOOOOOOONG post #Might make a shorter version later #But I've just been thinking about this for a few days #Fan fic are still good and touching and amazing #but over all I think they've gotten less fun and creative and wild