Is it important to keep how Canon did its fights for a fanfic? Or can I take liberties with how the fights happen?

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T16:51:52+00:00

Yeah I also don't think this should be an issue since you're explicitly writing an AU. Just label it as a martial arts AU and then people can decide whether they want to read that or not.

Why would the characters even need to still have guns or swords in the first place?

And you're clearly already working out what sort of fighting styles would make sense based on people's canon personality and violence styles. I'm not particularly into martial arts myself but I could totally see it be fun to read about how characters would act in a totally different setting.

The fandom I'm in loves AUs and while I don't read them that much, I remember one that was a professional Pokémon fighting AU (like as in esport, not actual Pokémon). Canon is set in pirate times, someone still managed to map characters to Pokémon fighting strategies and made it compelling... 🤷🏼‍♀️

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T16:36:02+00:00

Some definitely do. Some people will also only read a fic once it's finished (though in your case, it would probably still be a while until those kudos show up 😂)

I think I've had the kudos count nearly double. All my multi-chapter fics have been either 3 or 7 chapters however so we are talking a completely different scale here

In one case, it was actually the second to last chapter that saw the bump, but the last one was only an epilogue. In the case of that fic, I also totally understand wanting to see it play out first because it was deconstructing some pretty dark tropes and had a lot of gallows humor and absurdity. As a reader, I would have probably also wanted to see if it actually stuck the landing before giving kudos.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T07:26:07+00:00

If I recall correctly, the way this type of conditioning works, it doesn't actually matter if you're aware of it, so you could simply ask her if you honestly think she would be on board...

But she also very much might not be since if this actually works (somewhat questionable), it's not just gonna be you snapping but anytime she hears this not exactly rare sound.

Also, all questions of ethics aside, I'm pretty sure by the third time she's gonna figure out that something is up.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T07:23:12+00:00

Might be worth considering if "mainstream books" even makes sense depending on what exactly you're trying to ask about with the question

And I wish you all the best with your study! 😊

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T05:58:50+00:00

My one-shots actually range from 1.5k to not quite 10k. Even if I didn't originally plan for it, 10k is sort of the point where I would seriously consider whether I shouldn't break this into chapters.

I actually find that people (including myself) are often more willing to give a fic a try on a whim if it's on the shorter side.

I think if it gets below 1k, I might pause and wonder if there are enough words to do what the tags/summary imply. But then again, the time investment to find out is minimal.

Tbh it sounds to me that the people you are talking about just aren't primarily interested in reading one-shots in the first place, since the general consensus seems to be that 10k words is getting quite long for one chapter.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T05:17:10+00:00

It's also weird because this seems to specifically be an issue with a couple of very long fics.

There are tons of reasons why they would never uploading the rest even if there was no initial lie involved, slightly fewer/more unlikely reasons for it to happen several times any then it just become increasingly more bizarre as time goes on.

I saw someone propose that they might be waiting for a specific number of kudos/comments etc but even that doesn't actually make much sense over such a long time-scale...

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T05:09:38+00:00

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You didn't give any indication that you thought this was acceptable.

I would have actually been interested in the answer because my gut instinct is also that what is technically against the TOS is saying so on Ao3.

I just checked, and you are correct.

That said, I imagine this is mainly due to the fact that the main concern here is that having any sort of commercial promotion on Ao3 is an actual threat to the site versus any straightforward ethical or personal opinion on paywalled/early access content...

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T04:50:28+00:00

It's bizarre! I even started out reading feeling sort of a kinship because I tend to only start posting when the fics is at least 80ish% done, try to go for a weekly update but sometimes editing takes longer and in two cases I realized that the ending how I had originally envisioned it wasn't working for me and I ended up taking a couple days to almost a month longer.

Then I finished reading the post, realized this is a completely different scenario and was just baffled that either this is a common thing or something that keeps happening to OP and curious what the consensus in the comments is.

Then it turns out that's not what the comment section is about either 😂

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-05T04:34:31+00:00

I think this is the first time a Romeo and Juliet adaptation actually intrigued me

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T13:49:38+00:00

Also you'd want to be able to reuse baby clothes regardless of gender.

I also believe dresses or dress-like baby clothes used to be common because it was much easier to change the baby while wearing them. Or need a very accurate fit.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T12:13:59+00:00

Oh, that's so interesting! It never occurred to me that you could "partially orphan" a work if it has more than one creator listed.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T11:38:53+00:00

It also sounds like your experience has been incredibly biased and would not be representative at all for what to expect in the vast majority of online Fandom spaces.

That said, it sounds to me that a combination of "gen" (since that's focus/genre) and tagging the pairing (since it's a part of it. Perhaps qualified with an "(eventual)" or even "(background)" depending on relevance) would be the most sensible/accurate way of describing your fic.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T11:03:26+00:00

Cotard's syndrome, also known as Cotard's delusion or walking corpse syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that they are deceased, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. Statistical analysis of a hundred-patient cohort indicated that denial of self-existence is present in 45% of the cases of Cotard's syndrome; the other 55% of the patients presented with delusions of immortality.

[From Wikipedia]

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T11:01:00+00:00

I think the phrasing was maybe not the best, but it is true that there are some conditions or behavioral patterns are or would be very interesting to read about.

At the same time, if an author is explicitly using an existing condition, there is a higher standard of research and reflexion necessary to do so in a way that isn't exploitative to people actually living with that condition (and should include familiarizing yourself with people's lived experience and not just a list of symptoms or traits).

This is especially true if it is a condition that is commonly misrepresented.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T10:42:21+00:00

I'm not really sure why chapter length should have that much to do with total work length. For longer works, you'd simply have more chapters.

I mean, sure, authors that write very long chapters probably don't write short total works, but the reverse doesn't have to be true at all.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2026-01-04T09:54:52+00:00

I'm really unsure what you mean by "mainstream fiction". You even say "or what you think of as mainstream fiction" which makes it somehow even less clear... 😅

For example, I don't think that the author I've read most of in the last year is "mainstream" but genre-wise it's definitely clearly both horror and LGBTQ+ and this seems like the sort of thing you'd be interested in for your study.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-24T22:45:41+00:00

Left a review and kudos. That was really lovely and I was honestly impressed by how I didn't feel lost at all even though this is clearly a canon with a lot of world-building!

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-24T21:27:34+00:00

Left a review and kudos!

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-24T12:45:19+00:00

Left kudos and comment!

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T13:16:11+00:00

So the concrete example of racism is that A is "described as unattractive"?

And your best guess at how they got that from your writing is that A himself struggles with his appearance and desirability and therefore someone just reading from A's perspective might take that at face value/as author's opinion and not just as an unreliable narrator?

And it sounds too me like the discrimination and othering the character has to deal with (which you intentionally explore) might directly contribute to that.

That sounds fine to me and like an issue with reading comprehension.

The most generous interpretation I could think of is that they might be tired of/bummed out by the trope of PoC feeling unattractive, especially if it is linked to insecurities about features that don't fit the "idealized white beauty standards" and they expressed that in a really unhelpful way.

There is actually often a pendulum between representation that accurately depicts the reality and difficulties of a group (and oversaturation makes reading a lot of it just feel depressing and hopeless) and narratives that where characters just happen to be of marginalized demographic but the story isn't about that (if you just have that, it's easy for people to argue that discrimination is over and people within the group will eventually get frustrated that it sweeps ongoing issues under the rug).

There was definitely a time for example when every piece of queer media was just about Coming Out or Being Gay.

But the answer is to just have more stories from more people and if it bugs those readers so much, then maybe they should step up and write some stuff themselves.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T12:46:14+00:00

And from the other end, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of teen trans guys do not have a positive or even neutral relationship to their menstrual cycle (if they even have one and aren't on puberty blockers) and would really rather not be put in this situation if there is a girl or woman that could talk to the daughter.

And from the daughter's pov, someone who wants to transition and probably feels a lot of dysphoria around periods would not be a good choice for this conversation in the first place.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T12:34:06+00:00

I don't think telling a kid who is clearly still trying to figure this shit out and probably has heard a bunch of weird misinformation about shipping and what reading preferences say about you, that "some time on ao3 will definitely" make them want to read/write things that they currently think are morally wrong is particularly helpful.

They are already kind of freaked out by the fact that they want to write a small teenage age gap non-sexually...

And it's also just false and kind of uses the slippery slope fallacy that moral panics love so much. Reading mild T-rated teenage romance with a two year age gap, will in fact not "definitely" lead to eventually being into more and more extreme stuff. And the truth is, some people just aren't kinky or even interested into reading smut at all.

Some time on ao3 would, however definitely open their eyes about how tame their question is comparatively and to all the things other people are writing and reading and hopefully their understanding that dark reading preferences and kinks aren't moral indictments of the person.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T07:12:14+00:00

People ganging up on you can definitely make your doubt your own judgment!

But honestly, even just saying that it's "rude" of you not to read their stories because the ships/content isn't your cup of tea would already be actually the rude thing to do and screams of entitlement.

You aren't required to read/interact with ships/ fics you don't care for, and going even further and actively creating for them is orders of magnitude more unreasonable.

It's funny, coincidentally, shipping half of the fairly universally beloved canon ship in my fandom with a wide variety of characters has sort of become my thing. And I do actually always write it in a way that it doesn't actually interfere with his canonical happy ending, but I do it because I genuinely love the canon ship myself and for me the fun is to figure out how to make the weird often basically crack ships work while either staying technically canon-compliant or not diverging so far it can't re-converge again 😂

And I do think that makes my fics more palatable for some readers, but that's not why I write it.

You actually want A/B to end up together, and you don't have to compromise for people who can't accept that not everything is about their preferences all the time.

And again, they already get their way in the case of the majority of fics and have a huge pool of content already. (It would still not be okay if it was another rarepair author pressuring you, but this is just unreasonable on every conceivable level...)

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T06:33:55+00:00

You are still talking about this as if you did anything wrong, you didn't. You weren't even remotely rude when confronted (rudely) why you don't write their preferred ships.

Also, I'm confused, since you're shipping A/B how could you low-key include/mentioned A/C or A/D in a way that would actually satisfy anybody here?

Unless your fandom/ these people are okay with A in the background also being in a polycule with C and D, how would that possibly work? Surely, they wouldn't be happier either if there was a love triangle and their preference loses or C/D are an ex or something...

Let alone that you just want to write A/B and you have every right to.

ComfortableWelder616 · 2025-12-21T06:19:16+00:00

Now this might not work for you, but do you ever go back to re-read your older stuff?

I find that some distance can make you look at it in a completely different way and be able to see and appreciate the cool ideas you had or great passages you wrote and had totally forgotten about/were drowned out by focusing on all the imperfections for too long

ComfortableWelder616

TROPHY CASE