#go into a different popular fandom and find the biggest ship and filter out the most popular ship or all ships and watch how fucking low

[bargledblocks]

Every time someone complains about a genre of fic (i.e. superhero au's) I make 5 more just to piss them off.

The reason for this is because their takes always reek of entitlement to people's hobbies and free time and they always demand for something "different" instead of realizing that a story someone isn't actually passionate about would be way more shit than one they like despite it being a genre you personally have grown bored with <3

#the blocks yell #Like I'm sorry but so many of y'all have been blessed with copious amounts of fic that isn't highly saturated by a ship #and I'm sorry but loosing a couple of fics by filtering them out really is not that bad #go into a different popular fandom and find the biggest ship and filter out the most popular ship or all ships and watch how fucking low #the fic count gets. Stop acting so entitled. #And that's not to say shipping is bad! It can be really really fun! But the idea of 'over saturation' in this fandom has become so skewed! #But don't complain becaus You Personally want something different. If you want something different then write it yourself! #And don't try and come at with a 'But I can't write!' do you know how many people Start Out writing fics? This day in age its a fucking lot #So get out there and make the stories you wanna see because until you do? Nobody else is gonna. Nobody else has your exact artistic vision #They can't do it like you. #And if one day you get to the point where you still like the story but don't like how you wrote it? Write it again! #Make it bigger and better! Use the old version as the first draft or even a really comprehensive outline! #And if you Don't like it anymore and don't feel any passiin for it then thats fine! You can let it sit because the thing is? #One day someone is gonna read that story and it'll be their absolute favorite thing in the world! #They might even make their own based off of it. Wouldn't that feel Good? Having someone love something you made so much that they create #something of their own. Despite the flaws you may now see? #Anyway. That was kind of a lot but if you can't tell I have a lot passion for this subject. #But just remember: fic writers make things to have fun. We don't get paid for what we do and yet we share it for free! #You accomplish nothing by whining about somethings success despite not having tried for yourself. Now go write a and have some fun #big rants at buildmart #<- also look i have a tag for these now

[hazellvsq]

frank/hazel/leo most popular pjo ot3? an analysis

okay so the love triangle poll had me thinking. i knew frank/hazel/leo had ship content on ao3, and i was curious to see if other love triangles or popular trios got the same treatment.

(this is very long and rambling)

this is the amount of ao3 content frank/hazel/leo has:

these are the other trios i was looking at:

last one is crazy lol. anyway, other potential trios like jason/reyna/piper or different combos of percy/annabeth/piper/jason all had less than 20 fics each. its possible i missed one but i'm pretty sure i tried of all of them.

for context, the general state of pjo character and ship content looks like this:

the vast majority of tagged fandom content with frank and hazel has them as background characters. finding content that centers them takes digging. aside from calypso/leo, they have the least popular canon ship, and the only other character that either has any substantial fan content with is leo. the pjo fandom has shipped leo with literally any character he was in proximity with, and hazel was a canon love interest of his. in addition, the pjo fandom has incredibly popular mlm ships and has gone through the time-honored tradition of finding ways to sideline, if not villainize, the canon female love interests. which makes these next stats so interesting to me:

a decent portion of works in both of these tags are frank/hazel/leo fics that got crosstagged. obviously, frank/hazel have more fics than frank/hazel/leo:

however, its impossible to figure out how many of these fics actually center frank/hazel, as opposed to them just being background characters. so i did a test and filtered out all of the more popular ships in their tag:

this isn't a perfect representation, because there are definitely frank/hazel centric-fics that had other ships in the background, and frank/hazel/leo aren't the main couple of every fic they get tagged in. still, though. that's less than the frank/hazel/leo fics.

the other thing about hazel and frank content is that they are the two characters who are most frequently headcanoned as straight. it's died down some in recent years but it used to be CONSTANT (it happened to leo too, but not as much). most fans thought they were the two most "traditional" characters, value-wise. so i was thinking, if frank and hazel got this much content for a poly ship, then the characters that this fandom actually thinks are gay have to have more:

and then i was like, hmmm well okay i'm very surprised there's not more for those three. but there's so many people who ship some combo of nico/percy/jason/will. i've seen so many big 3 edits that leave out the girls. there's no way frank/hazel/leo is beating out the white slash ship industrial complex.

frank/hazel/leo beat out the white slash ship industrial complex (big threesome is a very funny ship name tho).

my biggest guess would be that there was some sort of beef between the percy/nico and jason/nico crowds that has led to this lack of ot3 content. i wouldn't know. i'm wondering if they're going to catch up; its not far off right now. as far as i can tell will solace has no popular ot3's that broke more than 20 fics and is pretty much only shipped with nico.

other potential ot3's like jason/piper/leo...i have a theory that a lot of jason/piper shippers only really shipped it in conjunction with percy/annabeth because they were were a good secondary couple for percabeth-centric fics, and didn't care about leo as much (which could explain why there's more overall content for jason and piper than for leo). also, i think historically a lot of leo fans thought jason and piper were bad friends, although these days there's a lot more renewed appreciation for their trio. piper has also been commonly written as a ship obstacle since the inception of her character, when people thought she was homewrecking jason and reyna (the jason/nico crowd uses this trope too), which might be why she's not commonly put in ot3's despite having chemistry with most of the cast. on the other hand, the "ship wars" between hazel/frank and hazel/leo shippers in the mark of athena era were pretty mild, because most readers liked all three characters and didn't have strong enough feelings about either pairing to fight about it, whereas other ot3's don't get written because fans have a very strong preference for their other ships.

i know frank/hazel/leo has its origins on ff.net, but it was mostly one author and mostly just kink. there's a much bigger variety on ao3. i'm wondering why people liked it enough to make it a side pairing for other fics, and at what point the bulk of content for it was written. i'm wondering what people get out of combining the three of them that you don't get from just two. is it because all 3 dynamics are so clearly defined in canon? some of them also are based on kinks like mpreg that historically exclude women, so why do these authors include one? this is also interesting because the rest of the fanbase, including both fans who ship frank/hazel and fans who think that shipping hazel with anybody is problematic, refuse to write about hazel or frank having sex to the point where it was a fandom meme for a while. except in frank/hazel/leo fics, where a large percentage have explicit content. i'm wondering which of the nico/jason/percy or frank/hazel/leo tags has more mpreg, but i'm okay not knowing.

if you made it this far, there's not a real point to this post, except pointing out that for characters who barely get shipping content, frank/hazel/leo is unexpectedly popular considering how much content exists about them otherwise, and also goes against popular fandom perception of the characters in interesting ways.

#i have NO idea what to tag this as lol #frank zhang #hazel levesque #leo valdez #frazeleo #i'm still kinda shook that this had more fics then the nico ot3 i did not see that coming #lost hero trio deserves more fics tho tbh like every combination of it has been popular at one point. its time for a merger #also this essay is not an endorsement or criticism of any ships listed idc about any of them #just trying to figure out what makes different ships tick in fandom #if someone ran a ot3 poll rn i do not think frazeleo would win. but if you ran it during the height of the pjo ship wars? #my running theory is that ship wars prevent ot3s. since ppl usually have a strong preference. this is just one of the rare cases where peo

[analyzen]

Italian Fandom Meta | Most Popular Types of Pairings on EFP vs. AO3

EFP (2001–, Fanlore) is the most popular writing archive in Italy, and it hosts both fanfic and original fiction. Under the cut you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular types of pairings on EFP in comparison to the most popular types of pairings in the Italian section of AO3.

The Italian version of this analysis can be found here.

TL;DR:

53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted

49% of the registered users on EFP have deleted their accounts

M/F works amount to 60% of the whole website

EFP’s three most popular fandoms (Harry Potter, One Direction, Original Fiction – Romantic) all have a majority of M/F works

On AO3, most Italian works are M/M (56%)

F/F doesn’t have much content on either site (4-5%)

Methodology

I’ve followed @olderthannetfic’s methodology from this earlier Fanfiction.net analysis. Basically, I picked a sample size of 666 chapters and organized them in four categories (M/M, M/F, F/F, Not tagged; more on this later).

Why I chose chapters instead of stories

On EFP you don’t have specific links for every single story. Instead, every chapter you post gets a unique id, which can be seen in the link itself. For example, at the time of writing this the last updated chapter on EFP was this one:

viewstory.php?sid=3974099

Which means that this was the 3'974'009th chapter ever posted on EFP.

Ids follow the usual numerical order, so if a link reads id=3, then there have to be id=1 and id=2, and the next link will have id=4.

So I’ve used a randomizer to select ~1200 unique ids to analyse.

Weren’t 666 chapters enough?

I started out with 700 chapters, but half of them weren’t working. That’s because 53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted from the website.

Thanks to the link of the last updated chapter, we know that almost 4 millions chapters have been posted on the EFP. But EFP's homepage shows different stats:

Registered users: 602395, 205974 of which are authors Last registered user: [blacked out] Total of stories: 517083 Total of chapters: 1869573 chapters Total of reviews: 6222695 Online users: 17 logged in and 53 visitors

While we should have almost 4 million chapters, the stats show ~2 million chapters. Why? Because the stats only show the stories, chapters and users that are still on the website, and they don’t show the stories, chapters and users that have been deleted.

(Sorry, I forgot to translate this one. It reads: Total of chapters posted on EFP between 2001 and today. Orange: deleted chapters. Blue: chapters that are still online.)

Thanks to the stats on the homepage we also have a link to the last registered user. User ids follow the same numerical order as chapter ids, so once again we know that 49% of the users ever registered on EFP have deleted their accounts. That's a lot of deleted accounts.

Categorization

After selecting 666 (accessible) chapters, I organized them into 4 categories:

M/M: contains all stories tagged as “yaoi”, shounen ai” and “slash”

M/F: contains all stories tagged as “het”

F/F: contains all stories tagged as “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash”

Not tagged: which contains a) poetry, b) stories tagged as “no pairing”, and c) untagged het stories.

As for the untagged het stories, there are two issues:

Many M/F fics simply aren’t tagged

Many gen fics include untagged M/F ships

If the description made it clear that the story included a heterosexual relationship, I added the story under the M/F tag. Otherwise I left it under not tagged.

Also, on EFP “yaoi”, “shounen ai” and “slash”, and “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash” actually mean different things.

This screenshot here is from the posting page on EFP. It reads:

Pairings * You must select at least one tag from the list, and you can choose up to three tags. Het: for heterosexual relationships Shonen-ai: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Shojo-ai: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Yaoi: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Yuri: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Slash: for male/male relationships from TV shows/movies/books FemSlash: for female/female relationships from TV shows/movies/books

The thing is. People either respect the rules and use different tags for different kinds of stories, or they use these tags interchangeably to maximise the chance to appear in other users' searches. Which means that you’ll find RPF tagged with “shoujo ai”, and Attack on Titan fics tagged as “slash”. (More info on this later.)

Findings

On EFP, the majority of the stories are M/F.

To confirm this, I checked some specific fandoms:

Some notes:

Because EFP doesn't have metatags like AO3, what I did was: 1) go to a specific fandom, 2) filter through every single tag, and 3) jot down the number of pages per search. Every page contains up to 15 stories, so for example searching for het in Original Fiction – Romantic gives you 846 pages, which amounts to around ~12690 stories.

The tag in red, “Nessuna”, means “no pairing”. It is used for gen fics but also for untagged M/F fics. This is especially true in some fandoms, ie. Original Fiction – Romantic, and Harry Potter.

EFP’s filtering system sucks. You can only filter through stories with specific relationship tags, but you can’t filter out relationships tag. So what you see in the graph is how often a tag is used... which brings us to some issues. For example, Harry Potter is the biggest fandom on EFP, so much that Harry Potter stories amount to 11% (!) of the whole website. But in the graph it looks like the One Direction fandom has more stories—wrong. Actually, One Direction has many stories tagged as both slash and het, while Harry Potter stories tend to be either one or the other.

EFP’s filtering system sucks, part 2. Because “shounen ai”, “yaoi” and “slash” are often used at the same time, you can't really smash together all three of the tags to get a total amount of stories. I'd say that around 50% of the stories tagged as shounen ai and yaoi probably overlap, but there is no easy way to find out because, again, EFP’s filtering system sucks. The same goes for “shoujo ai”, “yuri” and “femslash”.

Fandoms with a majority of M/M stories

While there are some fandoms with more M/M stories (ie. Death Note, Hetalia, Glee, Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf), these fandoms are simply extremely small in comparison to other bigger fandoms full of M/F fics. Which obviously skews the numbers in favor of M/F fics.

What about femslash?

EFP suffers from the same lack of femslash as AO3 as a whole. In the fandoms I've analysed, only two have a big enough number of F/F. The fandoms are Glee (which has more F/F stories than M/F stories) and Grey's Anatomy (which has as much F/F as M/F stories, with little M/M).

Original Fiction

I thought it might be interesting to explore the original sections too, especially because Original Fiction – Romantic is the third biggest fandom on EFP after Harry Potter and One Direction. These Big 3 all have a disproportionate amount of M/F stories.

By logic, this would mean the the majority of the userbase on EFP prefers M/F stories. But then, aren't fans always complaining about “too much slash”? If “Any Two Guys” were enough to find slash appealing, wouldn't it be easier to simply write original M/M?

I think that looking at original stories might help us understand why people might prefer slash over het in some fandoms. For example, the amount of M/F stories in Original Fiction – Romantic implies that, when authors have to chance to choose what types of stories to create from scratch, they might prefer M/F stories.

This would support the theory that many people might prefer slash because of the lack of (well written/primary) canonical female characters + how well M/M relationships, both platonic and romantic, are written in canon texts in comparison to M/F or F/F relationships.

Obviously, we have to keep in mind that not all fanfic writers write original fiction and viceversa, so I'm not trying to find a universal explanation here. Also because not every website has a majority of M/F stories.

Which brings us to...

AO3 vs. EFP

As per today 20/04/21, the Italian section of AO3 contains “only” 24777 stories, divided between many different fandoms. To make a comparison, the Italian stories on AO3 amount to 5% of all the stories available on EFP. To make another comparison, the whole Naruto fandom on EFP has 20129 stories in total.

EFP has also been active for 20 years, while the boom of Italian fics on AO3 only started around 2018. We can't really make a 1:1 comparison between the two archives, but we can still try to understand the preferences of their users.

M/M and M/F stories on EFP vs. AO3

EFP: 60% M/F, 25% M/M

AO3: 56% M/M, 23% M/F

The percentages are almost swapped.

This might be because of the archives themselves. EFP has always been the general website for any Italian fandom (and actually at first it mostly hosted M/F content), while AO3 has always had a big M/M userbase. I'm basing this statement on this AO3 analysis from 2013, in comparison to this FFN analysis from 2018 which showed a majority of M/F fanworks, and finally this AO3 vs. FFN vs. Wattpad analysis from 2019, which showed that AO3 has always been the outlier for its majority of M/M content.

Then again, M/M stories on EFP have always been subject to the “usual” type of borderline-to-direct harassment that M/M fans are used to, which is something that still happens to this day especially in certain writing groups on Facebook, where the Italian writing community is pretty active. It wouldn't be weird for slashers to move to AO3, where they know they'll find more like-minded people and less headaches. (Also, the Italian section of AO3 has a lot of M/M RPF that's banned on EFP.)

The “Multi” tag on EFP

The only thing that barely resembles a multi tag on EFP is threesome, which for some reason is often used as a synonym for love triangle. So from the tags it isn't easy to understand if a fic includes an actual threesome (as in, a sex scene), a polyamorous relationship, or a simple love triangle.

This doesn't mean that there aren't poly stories on EFP—it simply means that they're impossible to find using the search system.

And that's all, I think!

#italian fandom meta #efp analysis #ao3 analysis #fandom meta

[khxpresh]

Anonymous has sent: 12 and 35

TRUTHTFUL TUESDAY [Accepting]

12. what’s overrated in the rpc?

// The big and popular ships in the fandom (puzzle, pride, puppy are the ones that comes to my mind atm), to a point where if you don’t rp those things then you and your muses don’t exist.

I’ll say it once more. There’s no problem in only wanting to write ships, however I feel like it becomes a problem when it escalates to the entire RPC, and it limits what one is capable of doing around here. Ultimately there’s nothing that can be done about it, because there’s no such thing as demanding or forcing people, to change their approach to RP. This is just a matter of finding partners, who will more or less match with your style and what you’re looking to write.

However, I’ll say how it ends up creating an unwelcoming environment. I’ve lost track over the number of people who either trampled my rules, because they assumed I’d be into a ship. Or quickly dropped my muse, the moment they realised they wouldn’t be getting the same ship, for the billionth time.

35. what’s the biggest problem in the rpc?

// I don’t want to come off as preachy, or anything like that. However, I feel like it needs to be addressed to at least a small extent.

It’s 2021, Tumblr’s YGORPC is majorly consisted of people who are either around my age or older than me, and people are out there blatantly whitewashing black characters in their edits.

Before anyone say anything, no, I’m not calling anyone a racist (because racism, is a lot more complex than just a shitty filter choice for a RP icon or even a poor choice for a muse’s FC). However, I find this quite astounding and shocking, considering the current state of the RPC. I thought we had all agreed that doing this sort of thing, was something of extreme poor taste and that should be avoided.

I’m not here to go into any details about why doing this is bad, there are many posts that explain the issues of it out there, it shouldn’t take long to find one. But that’s one of the reasons why there are so many readily available & free of charge PSDs, that won’t affect a poc’s skin color. So on a technical level, this is a no brainer, right?

And yet... It feels like I can’t be so sure about that for this community. Ultimately, what this shows me is that the people who pull this crap are clearly looking for a few things. Those being trouble and attention (regardless if they are good or bad). In my eyes, they are no different from those trolls who intentionally post whitewashed versions of black characters, just to elicit a reaction out of people who are deeply involved in these matters (& a lot more emotional as well).

This isn’t a call to action, and much less a callout to the folks who do that. I feel like this would be way less of an issue if we weren’t on tumblr, where everyone seems to be so passionate about combating this sort of bs. But alas, this is where we are, on top of being at an age where we should know better than to do this crap. I’d also be more lenient, if there were younger users, unfortunately since that isn’t the case here. There’s literally no excuse, for defending this shit.

I’ll never post a callout or anything like that, however I won’t entertain neither give any amount of my attention to someone who pulls this crap.

#would you like some salt in your tea? #ooc / #anonymous #thank you for the ask! #once more I must repeat: I'm not going to police or denounce anyone but I feel like I should at least #put my two cents on this subject & bring it up #oops this got long but hi hello

[ohayohimawari]

On Tumblr-ing

I used the most recent Self-promotion Sunday to experiment with sharing my works on Tumblr. As everyone knows, this site is difficult to get a handle on.

Is it worth it to play nice with this site, so my posts show up in tags?

That’s the question that I wanted the answer to and why I chose to fill my queue with all of my original works for one day but posted them in a way that I hadn’t before. I’m not an expert on Tumblr, but I’ll share what I’ve learned from it. However, my observations aren’t going to be helpful to all.

The situation: I create fanfics and podfics. I don’t typically create for popular ships or tropes. I fall in the category of content creators that are no longer new but aren’t battle-hardened fandom veterans.

If any/all of the above applies to you, and you’ve experienced frustration with having your work ‘seen’ on Tumblr, and you’d rather read about someone else’s experiment with this site than do one yourself, keep reading.

First, realistically consider what content you share and how it appears to someone scrolling through the site. For example: sharing fanfic and sharing fanart on Tumblr are two totally different beasts. I cannot overstate the importance of this fact. Be fair to yourself and don’t compare your stats as a writer to those of an artist.

Another thing to remember about sharing your written works to Tumblr is that you’re asking someone to click a link to view/read it. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is.

Imagine a member of your target audience laying in bed in the morning, waiting for the need for breakfast or coffee to be great enough to coax them out from under their blankets. In the meantime, they’re scrolling down their dash (and what appears is dependent upon how they filter posts, but that’s a whole other box I’m not going to unpack here). They’re laughing at memes, getting riled up over politics or social issues, gasping at celebrity controversies, wishing for the days before Tumblr purged the naughty stuff, cute baby animal videos, etc. It’s so easy for a text post to get lost in all of that. It’s too easy for a text post to be overlooked in all of that.

It’s important for posts to show up in tags because sometimes, people don’t just scroll through their dash. Sometimes, they search tags for something specific, and when they find it, they’re more inclined to click on that link to check out your stuff.

I’m going to reel it back to myself and explain why I played with posts and tags. I run a fandom server, and I see folks (mostly new to fandom) who feel bad because their works don’t get many notes on Tumblr. During my first year in fandom, I felt invisible, and it was awful. I want to give advice and encouragement, so I experimented with making my posts visible in tags to see what kind of difference it would make, or not make. I’m going to be the first to say that if I created for popular ships, or popular tropes, or a hot and thriving new fandom, or were a BNF, I probably would’ve seen a huge difference. While what I experienced wasn’t an immediate tidal wave of new admirers of my work, I see how this could increase my readers and listeners over time.

Tumblr, in its infinite wisdom (???), hides posts that have linked works within them. So how do you share a link to your work and have it show up in tags? AO3 has a handy ‘share’ button at the top of your individual works (if you don’t see the magical ‘share’ button, check your account settings to confirm that it’s on). You can share your work directly to Tumblr or Twitter (an even worse site for promoting fanfic) and add bells and whistles to the post, and customize it with what tags you think should be assigned to it.

When it comes to tagging, start with the biggest first, and put the most important in the first five tags. For example: Fandom, pairing, characters, and genre tags should be listed first. Do create a unique tag for yourself to tack on at the end (more on this later). Don’t add tags for popular characters, genres, pairings, etc., that don’t appear in your work.

For the purpose of my experiment, I didn’t add any snazzy images or gifs to my posts. I simply shared the post from AO3 and added tags. I shared all different pairings, genres, and content of various ratings. They appeared utterly unremarkable to me. They were boring, and exactly like something that I, myself, would scroll past. However, I did it that way because the more you add to a post, the more you risk using a word or image that Tumblr doesn’t like. And if it doesn’t like it, your post simply won’t show up in tags. Then you’re left with dissecting your post and editing editing editing until you figure out which word or image was the offender.

At the end of the experiment, I had to conclude that I receive more immediate activity on posts that I draft on this site that include links to my work, even though those don’t show up in tags. I’m going to assume that’s because those original posts are more attractive. However, most of the slight interaction that I saw with my experimental posts were from new-to-me Tumblr users, and I earned some new followers from it. The fact that those posts now reside in tags means that I can expect more of that in small doses, in the future.

Will this change how I post new works going forward? Yes. Typically, I draft an original post linking my work, then reblog it for my followers in different time zones. Now, I’ll share that same work from AO3 in a new original post instead of reblogging the initial one. But I’m going to try to make them look more interesting, and hope they still show up in tags.

I learned from this, but I want to stress something to content creators who feel invisible and get down on themselves for it. There are a million reasons why posts don’t get traction on Tumblr, and they are not because people don’t like your work. Basing your work’s worth on statistics is incredibly unfair to yourself. However difficult that is to ignore, don’t do that to yourselves.

I once shared something that I was proud of writing. Then, I cried for three days straight and ate my entire ice cream supply because it received fewer hits than I have fingers, never mind kudos or comments. Then I realized that I shared it on the same night as the GoT finale. Facepalm.

The joy that comes from creating something new is (or should be) the reason you do it. Congratulate yourself on being so incredibly clever to come up with your work and brave enough to share it on the wilds of the internet where it will remain for someone to find and love. And when your gem of a work is found, make sure you’ve added a unique tag that is all your own to it, so that others can search that tag and binge on all the beauty you’ve made.

#writers and writing #tumblr #tagging #fanfic writers #sharing what i learned #long-winded opinions #hima speaks

[rockislandadultreads]

2020 Contemporary Romances: a reading list

Love Your Life by Sophie Kinsella

Call Ava romantic, but she thinks love should be found in the real world, not on apps that filter men by height, job, or astrological sign. She believes in feelings, not algorithms. So after a recent breakup and dating app debacle, she decides to put love on hold and escapes to a remote writers' retreat in coastal Italy. She's determined to finish writing the novel she's been fantasizing about, even though it means leaving her close-knit group of friends and her precious dog, Harold, behind. At the retreat, she's not allowed to use her real name or reveal any personal information. When the neighboring martial arts retreat is canceled and a few of its attendees join their small writing community, Ava, now going by "Aria," meets "Dutch," a man who seems too good to be true. The two embark on a baggage-free, whirlwind love affair, cliff-jumping into gem-colored Mediterranean waters and exploring the splendor of the Italian coast. Things seem to be perfect for Aria and Dutch. But then their real identities--Ava and Matt--must return to London. As their fantasy starts to fade, they discover just how different their personal worlds are. From food choices to annoying habits to sauna etiquette . . . are they compatible in anything? And then there's the prickly situation with Matt's ex-girlfriend, who isn't too eager to let him go. As one mishap follows another, it seems while they love each other, they just can't love each other's lives. Can they reconcile their differences to find one life together?

The Business of Lovers by Eric Jerome Dickey

Unlike their younger brother, Andre, whose star as a comedian is rising, neither Dwayne nor Brick Duquesne is having luck with his career--and they're unluckier still in love. Former child star Dwayne has just been fired from his latest acting role and barely has enough money to get by after paying child support to his spiteful former lover, while Brick struggles to return to his uninspiring white-collar job after suffering the dual blows of a health emergency and a nasty breakup with the woman he still loves. Neither brother is looking to get entangled with a woman anytime soon, but love--and lust--has a way of twisting the best-laid plans. When Dwayne tries to reconnect with his teenage son, he finds himself fighting to separate his animosity from his attraction for his son's mother, Frenchie. And Brick's latest source of income--chauffeur and bodyguard to three smart, independent women temporarily working as escorts in order to get back on their feet--opens a world of possibility in both love and money. Penny, Christiana, and Mocha Latte know plenty of female johns who would pay top dollar for a few hours with a man like Brick... if he can let go of his past, embrace his unconventional new family, and allow strangers to become lovers. Eric Jerome Dickey paints a powerful portrait of the family we have, the families we create, and every sexy moment in between.

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he's known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster.  Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately. April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction. Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide from her. With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?

No Offense by Meg Cabot

A broken engagement only gave Molly Montgomery additional incentive to follow her dream job from the Colorado Rockies to the Florida Keys. Now, as Little Bridge Island Public Library’s head of children’s services, Molly hopes the messiest thing in her life will be her sticky-note covered desk. But fate—in the form of a newborn left in the restroom—has other ideas. So does the sheriff who comes to investigate the “abandonment”. The man’s arrogance is almost as distracting as his blue eyes. Almost… Recently divorced, John has been having trouble adjusting to single life as well as single parenthood. But something in Molly’s beautiful smile gives John hope that his old life on Little Bridge might suddenly hold new promise—if only they can get over their differences.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account. Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time. All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built. As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

Just Like You by Nick Hornby

Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she'd been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she's a nearly-divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn't exactly looking for love--she's more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It's not a match anyone one could have predicted. He's of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through.

#romance #romance readers #contemporary romance #currently reading #reading recommendations #books recs #booklr #booklist #to read #tbr #library #recommended reading #fiction

[allisonilluminated]

A Comprehensive Guide to Tagging

Hey all,

Tagging is super easy to figure out, but can be deceptively hard to figure out how to master.  Most authors will probably change their tags at some point in between starting and finishing their story.  The thing is, tags are one of the biggest ways people will discover and read your stories, so it's super important to get them right.

Why are tags so important?  Your tags, along with your summary, are the criteria your readers will use to decide whether to read or not.  This means that it’s important to both advertise what’s great about your story, but also any objectionable content that some readers want to avoid.

One of the biggest challenges about tags is that FFN and AO3 have completely different tagging systems.  If you're cross-posting your work, you're going to have to figure both out.  This post will be broken down into types of tags, then specified between the two sites.

Before we get into any specifics, this should be your fundamental tagging philosophy - “Would I be satisfied to come across this story if I was browsing this tag? If so, tag it. If not, don't.”  (Awesome quote from u/Zaluzianskya on reddit)

Now, to get into specifics...

Ratings:

The rating of your fic requires you to have an answer to the question, “Who is my target audience?”  If you don't know how to answer that, think about maturity.  Am I writing a dark gritty fic, or a light comedy? Do I have gratuitous sex, or is my story gen?  

FFN has four different ratings, and AO3 has five.  Here's a breakdown of each one:

K (FFN Only) – These fics probably have no violence, no swearing, and no relationships stronger than friendship.

K+ (FFN) and General Audiences (AO3) – If you're writing one of these stories, there's probably some cartoon violence, maybe some light swearing, and some cutesy shipping.  This tag is for lighter fics, especially if they fall under the Slice of Life, Humor, Family, or Friendship genres.  Nothing here should merit an archive warning on AO3.

T/Teen (Both) – This is the default rating for a fanfiction, so if you're not sure, it probably fits here.  Violence, cursing, and non-explicit relationships are enough to land a fic here, and the majority of works do fall under this description.  The Adventure, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, and Drama genres all find their home here, although works of every genre are in this rating.

Mature (FFN) – If you write a mature story and post it to FFN, it will be automatically filtered off the home page.  That's okay, because a ton of people seek out these sex filled, violent stories about immoral acts and other horrors.  If there is explicit sex, your story must go here – especially non-con.  Since FFN doesn't have content filters, it's extremely important that your reader knows when they're reading a story about suicide, rape, or another triggering event.  It's your responsibility to make your story M if there is any explicit description of such things.  If you're not explicit about sex or such, T is still a fine rating, but use your discretion. The Horror genre has a nice home here, I don't need to see that scary stuff on my front page.  Note: Explicit sex is not allowed under FFN’s terms of service.  AO3 is a much friendlier place for smut, with more readers as well, so you would be better off posting it there.

Mature (AO3) – Same as FFN, with two key differences.  First, these stories will show up on the front page, so no worries about that.  Second, this is for graphic and objectionable content with no sex or nudity.  Save your lemons for…

Explicit (AO3 only) – Smut smut smut smuttity smut.  If your characters are having sexy time, it's an E for you.

Not Rated (AO3 only) – Honestly, if I see a not rated fic, I automatically assume it's Explicit and avoid it.  If you're writing a G fic and it's not rated, I can guarantee you you're losing readers because of it.  Don't use this one.

Genres (FFN):

Genre is a totally underrated aspect of the FFN tagging system, partly because it is horribly misused.  It's hard to know what genres to tag, especially when your work is an amalgamation of a bunch of different genres.  On top of that, you get to tag one before the other.  

I don't want to run through each one, but I'll walk you through how to choose your two genre tags.

Step One – Necessary Tags: Some genres are far more important to tag than others.  Here's a list of Genres you need to tag if it's a part of your story.

Horror: Believe it or not, a lot of people hate horror.  Absolutely tag this so those of us who scare easily get a fair warning.  Remember this will usually be an M rated fic.

Sci-Fi: This really is only important for non-sci-fi fandoms, but if you cast your heroes several thousand years into the future I want to know before I click on the story.

Parody: Note – this is different from humor, you don't need to tag a fic that's just funny.  If you're not taking canon seriously, or just playing around with it for your own amusement, please let me know ahead of time.

Poetry: Cool underused writing style in fanfiction, you should definitely tag it.

But wait, what about my Twilight Fic where Bella is trapped on a spaceship avoiding a tentacle monster named Edward trying to bewitch her into falling in love through stares and sparkles written in blank verse?

First off, that's incredible and somebody should write that.  Second of all, just choose two and roll with it. If you really need to know an order, Horror should probably come first, then Sci-fi, then Poetry, then Parody.

Step Two – Target Audience:  Who are you writing for?  Why are you writing this fic?  Why is somebody going to click on this story?  Here's a brief rundown.

Note: Don't use the general tag.  Passerbys want to know what your story's about, and this tag doesn't help at all.  I can guarantee that your fic fits at least one of the other genres.

Romance: Slash. Yuri.  Yaoi.  The singular het couple on AO3.  This is the most popular genre, and people want to look for it!  This is the single most important non-essential tag; if your story focuses on any kind of romance, let the crowd know!  We'll get back to this in character tags.

Adventure: Perfect for fandoms like Pokemon or TES.  If it's about the journey, this is the one for you.

Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy, Drama, Angst: For the feels.  Up to you to chose which one fits best, but you probably only need one of these unless your story is specifically telling you otherwise.

Mystery, Crime, Supernatural, Suspense: If it would fit on an airport bookshelf with the other thrillers, one of these is the genre for you.

Everything Else:  I think for the rest, it'll be pretty obvious which of these you want.

Remember that you don't need two genres. If you wrote a romance novel, it makes the most sense to tag it as pure romance!  Similarly, if you have one important guiding genre and a bunch of others that are less important, just tag the important genre.  Your tags should be the best summary of your fic possible given the limited system at hand.

Step Three: What Comes First?: So you've chosen one or two genres.  If there's only one, great!  You're done.  If you have two, ask yourself which one is more important to the story, what feels right, or just what looks more aesthetically pleasing.  Getting the tag down is what really matters, so you've already done the hard work.  Go you!

Completeness:

Completeness can be changed in the Manage Stories screen on FFN in your profile, or by editing your story and entering the number of chapters on AO3. A lot of people filter out works in progress, so make your hard work known!

Alright, that's it for the easy stuff, now let's talk about…

Character Tags (FFN):

Okay, the two tagging systems are about as different as is physically possible, so I'm going to do each on separately.  FFN is so much simpler and more efficient in terms of characters, so it's easier to cover.  There are two main character tagging philosophies for FFN, so we'll go over both before we talk about AO3's bloated mess.

Philosophy One: Main Character or Main Relationship – This is far and away the easiest tagging philosophy to execute.  Are there one or two characters who are most essential to your story, or whose perspective the reader gets to see?  Tag just them, and you're done. Is the whole point of your story shipping your OTP?  Just tag the romance and you're done.  For this philosophy, you don't have to use all four spots – it's absolutely fine if you only use one or two.

Philosophy Two:  All Four Tags – Basically after determining who you would tag for number one, choosing more characters so all four of your tagging spots are filled.  People will often tag a secondary relationship here, or give some of their secondary characters a spotlight.  It's important to remember that lots of people filter out by character, so if there's a character in your fandom who's much more popular than the rest, tagging them can increase your view count.

Note – Having no tags generally isn't advisable.  There are still amazingly written and popular fics on FFN with no character tags, but you're not doing yourself any favors.

Character Tags (AO3):

So, this one's a little bit more complicated.  First, let's breakdown what not to do.

Unlike FFN, you should have at least one character tag.  AO3 gives you so much more freedom than FFN with tagging, so it's way more jarring when a fic is completely untagged.

Do NOT overtag.  If you've ever been on AO3, you've probably seen the overtagged story too many times before.  This is probably the single worst tagging mistake you can make, don't do it.

Don't name your OCs in your tags.  Your original characters may be great, but that doesn't change the fact that nobody knows who they are unless they read the story.  Stick to the “Original Characters” tag and the gendered variants, no matter you have.

The most important thing about tagging on AO3 is something people forget far too often -  Just because you can use as many tags as you want doesn't mean you should. This is the golden rule for tagging on AO3: You shouldn't have more than 10 character tags and 5 relationship tags with one massive exception, see below.

A couple more things:

Use the “Undisclosed Relationships” tag.  You don't have to tag every relationship – surprise!  If two side characters (read – not important) falling in love is a side plot that the story doesn't focus on, then you don't need to tag it!  If two characters were dating in a flashback, you don't need to tag it!  Keep your relationships tag to the important ones.

Usually, you shouldn’t tag platonic relationships.  As a general rule of thumb, don’t tag these, because they’ll distract from your other relationships.  However, if your story is gen (no shipping) then it’s okay to tag the main relationship your focusing on.  To do this, tag it using the & sign instead of the / sign to indicate it’s a platonic relationship and not slash.  

Relationship Tags are distracting.  This might seem like a trivial point, but it’s actually really important to remember that relationship tags are designed to stand out.  That’s why they have a gray background.  If you have to many, it’s much harder to focus on your other tags.

None of the principles apply to smut.  People are kinky.  If you're writing a fic where you're shipping one character with literally everyone else from that fandom, feel free to tag every single pair/trio/orgy mentioned and shown in the fic. People want to know when their desired relationship is being shown, so tell them.  Basically for Explicit fics only, but also might go for a big harem fic that's rated M/T.

Archive Warnings (AO3):

These aren't that hard to understand.  If your characters are dying in droves, tag Major Character Death.  If rape is mentioned, then tag Rape/Non-Con.  If you're writing smut about fifteen year olds, tag Underage.  If your characters are getting torn apart in a slow torturous death with lots of blood, tag Graphic Depictions of Violence.  

Do not use “Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings.”  Some writers accidentally equate this with “No Warnings Apply,” but it’s an instant red flag for most readers.  It comes across as shady and untrustworthy, and readers won’t want to read your work.

There really shouldn't be any General rated stories with archive warnings. If you need to use them, then it's at least a Teen rated fic.

Content Tags (AO3):

Finally, we come to content tags.  These pose an interesting question, because you can tag literally anything here.  Your goal here should be to pose the more technical side of your summary – talk about plot points and devices here, not there.  FFN doesn't give you that liberty, so you should take advantage of it.  

What to put in your content tags:

Tropes:  People search for things like “Soul Bond” or “Time Travel” all the time.  You should absolutely be tagging these things, because they will attract your target audience to your story.

AUs: For all of the college and high school AUs out there.  Not a bad idea to tag “AU – Canon Divergence” or “AU – Alternative History” if and when they apply.

Trigger Warnings: AO3's content warnings don't cover everything.  You should tag specifications for general warnings, things like self-harm and bullying, and generally darker content.

Sexual Content: Tag your kinks, folks.

Alternative Relationship Tags: This is mostly personal preference, but I think tagging things like ship names should happen in the content tags, not the relationship tags. For example, my OTP has five different ship names and I tag them all, but I only put the “Character A/Character B” in the relationship tags.  Again, remember that the gray can be super distracting and should be minimized.

Genre: Basically, follow the same Genre process as FFN or tag some more specific subgenres. Great examples would be tagging “Noir” or “Steampunk.”

Other Keywords: Most things should have been covered by the others, but any important one to three word descriptors can be added to.

What Not To Do:

Long Tags:  No tag should ever be more than four words, unless it's something Canon specific.

Tumblr Tags: The tags are not a place for your meta thoughts.  Throwing a “omg i need more coffee” or a “bumblebee is literally the cutest thing ever” says the same thing as the classic “I suck at summaries, read anyways.”

“I suck at summaries, read anyways.”: We've established this.  If you tell me you suck at writing or “Why Did I Post This,” I will take your word for it and avoid your story.

Unimportant Tags:  If it's not important to the story, don't tag it.  So simple.

The discourse from the last post was amazing and a lot of people brought up awesome points.  What's your personal tagging philosophy?

Thank you all, Allie

Support Me:  Fanfiction.net - Archives of our Own

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #tagging

[footballmetrics]

Football RPF Survey -  Reading section

This section features responses to the Reading Football Fanfiction part of the Football Fandom survey. To remind everyone, it follows the Demographic section that was posted yesterday. The first question had 202 responders, while the rest of the section had 187 responders. A big thank you to everyone that participated and we hope you’ll find the results interesting.

Do you read football fanfic?

The vast majority of responses (187 of a total 202 participants, or 92.6%) told us that they read football fanfiction. Responders mentioned that it’s fun, interesting, that it makes them happy to read about their favorite people falling in love. Several people also said that reading fanfiction allowed them to get a different perspective of the players, and that while they realized that it’s a guess at their personalities, they still liked to think about the fullness of their lives beyond the ninety minutes on the pitch. They also mentioned that reading fanfic helped them improve their English and vocabulary.

For some, fanfiction was a way for them to see themselves represented in a way they would never get from traditional media, particularly in terms of gender identity and sexuality. Most of the responses we got said that they read fanfic because it was well written, and that reading and commenting on fanfic was their way of interacting with fandom.

There were a few people who said no to reading football fanfiction, because they had ethical reservations about writing about real people, or because they felt that a lot of fanfic was sexual and they didn’t see the players like that.

Is football your first RPF fandom?

Over half of responders who answered yes to reading fic have been part of other RPF fandoms aside from football (105 surveyed, or 56.1%). 82 responders (43.9%) said that football is their first RPF fandom.

In general, how often do you read fic?

Of the 187 participants who read fanfiction:

13 (7%) read fanfiction a few times a year

39 (20.9%) read fanfiction a few times a month

66 (33.7%) read fanfiction a few times a week

70 (37.4%) read fanfiction every day

2 (1.1%) said the amount of fanfiction they read is limited by either their ship or the amount of time they have

Quite a large number of people said that they read football fic on a daily or weekly basis, which surprised us, because it’s a higher number of consistent readers than we expected. Based on our survey, over half of those surveyed read fanfiction at least a few times a week. Our working theory is that the readership is scattered because of the different clubs people support/read about and that’s why it feels like consistent readership is smaller than it actually is.

Are you satisfied with the amount of fic for the pairings you prefer to read?

Only 15 people are satisfied with the amount of fic for the pairings they prefer to read, and those are mostly popular Real Madrid pairings (Seriker, Crismes, Criska), Germany NT pairings (Benedikt Höwedes/Mats Hummels, Marco Reus/Mario Götze) or Liverpool FC pairings (Gerlonso, Gernando, Hendollana), as well as Reader/Player fanfictions. A lot of those people also mention not being picky about pairings.

But the vast majority feel that while there are some fanfics written for their favorite pairings, there should be more. Some people also told us that they were the only ones creating content for their pairings. A lot of the ‘other’ answers, were people saying that for some pairings there was enough fic, but for others not.

What is the primary language of fic you read?

A majority of answers to this question was ‘English’, three people put German and one person put Chinese.

In what other languages do you read fic, if any?

In this section, people mentioned Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Serbian, Russian and Bahasa Indonesia.

How do you find new fics?

The majority of responders find fic through searching Archive of Our Own. Quite a few (106 out of 187) choose following authors they were already familiar with, and a few (94 out of 187) choose the searching the player or ship tag on tumblr.

This would suggest that we need to compile a list of writers and their tumblrs, as well as special tags on tumblr that would allow us to spread awareness of fic more easily.

Do you have other ways of finding fic?

People mentioned that they find fic through searching Wattpad, Google search, following the AO3-feed tumblr or searching through livejournal communities.

How often do you read fanfic by authors who are new to you?

A significant majority of survey participants who read fanfiction (164 responses, or 88.2%) are willing to read authors they are not familiar with. This may be particularly reassuring to new writers that readers in football fandom are largely not concerned with their familiarity of the author, but what is being written.

15 responders (8.1%) answered they will read new authors sometimes, if recommended; and 7 (3.8%) tend to read authors whose works they already know.

Where do you read fic?

Archive of Our Own is the most popular platform for reading fic (173 responders, 92.5%), and Tumblr the second most popular platform (127, 67.9%). 64 responders (34.2%) read fic posted on Livejournal, while some are also using Dreamwidth (9, 4.8%), Wattpad (36, 19.3%), and Fanfiction.net (41, 21.9%).

Other sites used for reading fic included fanfiktion.de and Lofter, for German and Chinese language fics, respectively.

What is your preferred platform for reading fic and why?

The majority of people prefer ao3, because it’s easier to search and tag, it’s better for long-format reading, legibility, and has the options of bookmarking, sorting, and filtering. It’s also easier to leave a comment there. A lot of people mentioned that they liked to download fic and read it on other programs.

Tumblr can be problematic for text based content, because many people have themes that are hard to read, and Read More cuts frequently disappear on mobile. Fic also frequently gets lost among the other content and some people might be uncomfortable putting it in the player tags.

A few people mentioned liking livejournal, but find it hard to navigate and feeling like the communities on there are dead.

After reading a fic, how often do you leave feedback?

When asked how often readers leave feedback on the fics they read, 187 of the total number of people surveyed responded:

Always - 23 (12.3%)

Frequently - 69 (36.9%)

Sometimes - 72 (38.5%)

Rarely - 16 (8.6%)

Never - 7 (3.7%)

In what form do you leave feedback? Check all that apply.

In addition to how often fic readers leave feedback, we asked what kinds of feedback they left. Almost all of the 181 responders to this question stated that they leave kudos or likes on Tumblr (168, 92.8%). Comments were the second most popular form of feedback (139, 76.8%), followed by reblogging a rec post on tumblr (56, 30.9%), and messaging the author on tumblr (54, 29.8%).

After reading a fic, how often do you leave feedback and in what form?

We also asked more specifically for people to rate how frequently they left different kinds of feedback, such as comments, kudos or likes, messaging the author directly, and reblogging a post on Tumblr.

These graphs show that the fic readers surveyed almost always leave kudos on the fics they read, but less frequently interact with authors directly, whether through comments or private messaging.

What other kinds of feedback do you leave, if any?

Other kinds of feedback that people mentioned are bookmarking, putting a link to the fic on a fic rec blog, making a spin off fic, fanart or a graphics edit for the fanfic, or recommending it to other people privately.

Why do you leave feedback on a fic? If you leave a comment, what makes you decide to do so?

Responders mentioned that they leave comments on fics that really touched them in some emotional way, or when they feel like there’s something that stood out in it, either style-wise or content wise. A lot of people mentioned that they are writers themselves and know how important feedback is to other writers, and that this is their biggest motivation when leaving comments especially.

If the pairing is rare, they might leave a comment to encourage the author to write more of it, or if they’re just starting out, to encourage them to keep going. Some people mentioned that they only comment on fic written by their friends.

A few people mentioned that they’d been really trying to comment more recently, which we think is really positive.

Several people mentioned that they don't always have the time to comment, but that they might end up coming back to the fic weeks/months later, because the know how important it is for artists to be recognized for their work and they know the time and effort that goes into crafting fic.

If you rarely leave feedback on a fic, why is that the case?

Responders said that they rarely leave feedback because of shyness or anxiety, or because they’re not confident in their English skills. Commenting is harder on mobile so those who read on their phone don’t comment because of that, and the people who have downloaded the fic rarely return to comment on it, even if they liked it.

Some mentioned that they wanted to leave the author a longer comment, instead of just ‘I liked it’ and this was why they sometimes struggle, because either they don’t know what to say or they don’t have to energy to do that. Several also mentioned that they were afraid that the author would not reply to their comment or that they feel like they wouldn’t care.

How do you think reading fic in football fandom compares with other fandoms?

A few responders mentioned that they felt like the football fandom had an inherently tribalised nature and that because of this, people don't tend to read fic outside their teams and players, which makes everything quite niche.

Someone mentioned that it sometimes felt like this fandom had more extreme highs and lows compared to some larger fandoms they’ve been in. Fics can be very poorly written, or are really incredibly written and characterized and stick with you for several days. They said that it’s less often that have a very 'meh' reaction to a fic, where they find that in most large fandoms the majority of the fic is pretty standard, competently written using standard tropes, while someone else felt that the fic was less diverse and less tropey than in other fandoms, and that there were a lot of AUs and PWP.

Several people mentioned that they felt that the European background of the fandom is pretty distinct (especially when you're coming from an American fandom), which made it interesting. Someone said that in other larger fandoms they’ve been in, there were more works but most of them were bad, whereas in the football fandom there are fewer works but nearly all of them are good.

Someone also mentioned that they were pleasantly surprised at the amount of 'old' fic that still gets passed around and circulates.

Someone said that they felt that reading in football fandom is very similar to reading in small fandoms in that there isn't a huge amount of new content being produced on say, a daily basis, but, unlike a lot of small fandoms, football produces a bright wide array of pairings because there are literally so many possibilities. Responders also mentioned that they were more likely to read a pairing out of their usual pairings in the football fandom than in other fandom, just because they like the author.

Some also felt like there is a higher prevalence of fics with tropes they dislike in football fandom (fic featuring cheating, homophobia, etc.)

What do you think would improve your experience in fandom as a reader?

Responders mentioned that they wanted to see better grammar and formatting in fic, which could be helped by the presence of a beta reader. They also felt that awareness of other readers and writers was low, and that this means that their fic goes unread. Several mentioned feeling a lack of a writing/reading community that would exist in the bigger football fandom, and the absence of places to connect and talk about fic.

Several people said that they wanted more fic exchange type of events as well as the return of the cornerflag fic challenge on livejournal.

They also mentioned that they felt like there was an absence a space to solicit and share fic recommendations.

Several people also asked for less fetishization and misunderstanding of the LGBTQ+ community and the experience of people of other minorities, whether it be race or religion. Someone also mentioned that it would be good if people started writing more fics where the main ship included a POC. They said that it's important for fandoms to self reflect on racism and that one of the most glaring examples of racism in the (tumblr) football fandom is the lack of popular ships involving POC (specifically black men and women) despite the amount of diversity there is on the pitch.

Someone mentioned that they wanted more accurate tags, specifically when it comes to things like hate crimes, slurs, and other bigotry and summaries that are actual reflections of the fic. They would also like to have better ideas of how to connect with the authors who do produce content for their pairings (like their multiple accounts being linked somehow) and with authors who don't necessarily produce content for their pairings but whose style they like who I could convince to write for their pairings.

Someone mentioned that they would be more comfortable if people stopped hating on other people's ships (especially hating on rarepairs and polyamory) and also if they stopped hating on stories and interpretations they didn't personally agree with.

Someone also mentioned that there should be a dedicated tag(s) on tumblr for recs, and someone asked if writers could tag their stories with the club they were writing for, because that way they would be able to find all the fic for members of their clubs, even the rarepairs.

Someone said that they would like to see the Women's Soccer RPF tag separate from the men's when they search for football RPF, because they didn’t want to scroll through dozens of USWNT fics to find new stories.

Conclusion

In conclusion to this section, I wanted to focus on the feedback aspect a little bit more. In the following section on writing football fic, we will talk about how the lack of feedback makes writers feel more in-depth, but to summarize, several people felt discouraged by the low amount of feedback, but were mostly satisfied with the quality of the feedback they received.

But, let’s talk about what it feels for an author to see the hits and kudos rise, but to get no comments. The best allegory I’ve been able to find is that it feels like you sent a text to someone who you want to talk with and you see that the other person saw it, but chose not to respond. Not a nice feeling, is it?

This can lead to authors thinking their stories aren’t good, which can frequently discourage them from writing. It might lead them to compare between fandoms, deciding that they favor the one who gives them more feedback, and driving them out of the fandom (this is a thing that has happened to the football fandom - reading older fic, you can frequently see that the authors moved to other fandoms).

Commenting allows us to establish and strengthen personal relationships between the author and the reader, fostering a sense of community that we all seem to be missing. It encourages authors to produce more content, and constructive criticism enables them to improve, producing higher quality content as a result.

And as writers, we should also be reflecting as to why our fics don’t get as much feedback as maybe other fics in the same tag do. Is our formatting/grammar not up to the task? Did we tag things poorly or write a summary that isn’t eye-catching? Are we writing tropes and pairings that just aren’t appealing to the majority of readers?

There’s so many reasons as to why some fic gets more feedback than other, and it can be nothing to do with the quality or the writer of the fic.

This is why it would be helpful to have a meta space where not only authors, but also readers can share what they like and dislike about fic in the fandom, preferably anonymously.

Straightening the bond between reader and writer benefits everyone, and will help our fandom hopefully produce content that writers love writing and readers love reading.

Join us again tomorrow, on the @footballmetrics blog, for the Writing section of the report. As ever, feel free to leave your comments in the reblogs as you like, or contact us through the askbox.

#football fandometrics #report #reading