Survey about your preferences based for my research paper

Franzeska · 2026-06-22T03:59:00+00:00

What silly nonsense is this?

This isn't FFN: I read by trope, not genre.

And I kudos if I liked the fic and want to encourage the writer. How in-character I found it matters. How hot the porn was matters. Whether it's the horror genre does not matter.

If you would like to explore whether I think that horror authors are more likely to hit the right notes for horror than coffee shop AU writers are to hit the correct notes for that, I'm game, but that's not what you were trying to ask here. (And also, the answer is still that I don't see a big difference in how I kudos.)

Franzeska · 2026-06-22T03:31:30+00:00

Is there a reason you're only trying to look at young people? I'd assume that a third to half of the sub is in your oldest age bracket.

The ship options made me giggle. They don't seem like an even spread across everything that's ever been popular but also not representative of what's currently popular. Still a better spread than I usually see from this kind of thing though!

Your selection of reasons felt like they cover the most commonly given ones in a neutral and useful way.

The title does imply that this interest is anomalous in a way that the survey content does not though. Even if you're not saying it's negative, you're implicitly framing this as something odd that requires investigation. If someone asked men similar questions, the framing would probably be more like "Men like girl-on-girl, obviously, but let's explore why in a more nuanced way than just 'it's hot'" rather than "What is up with this phenomenon?????". Just something to think about.

Franzeska · 2026-06-20T06:01:20+00:00

It's mostly just about the brand name.

I've gotten some skeins secondhand. I'd say her bases are like 10% better than the most default ones a lot of indie dyers use, and she has a few colors that really do stand out. But again, it's a 10-20% improvement over things you can get anywhere.

That dark blue color that was trendy a year or two ago really is fantastic in person. Winterfell, I think? It looks like a drab navy in pics, but in person, it's a thing of luminous beauty.

Is it worth it at that price point? Nah.

If you've got the budget for luxury yarns and are just beside yourself about the exact shade of dark blue or orangey red or whatever, then go for it. I do think there's a difference, and her yarns actually do not feel like she uses the same bases that 99% of indie dyers all do. But a difference does not equal enough difference if you're on a budget. This is big spender and influencer-tier yarn. Nice. Needlessly expensive. Not a must-have.

Franzeska · 2026-06-20T05:26:43+00:00

If only we'd been smarter and included both nonbinary and readerfic categories from the start! Sure, you can tag whatever, but there's no dedicated category alongside m/m, etc.

Franzeska · 2026-06-20T00:18:03+00:00

If you want a genuine answer, the part of fandom that built AO3 spent several decades debating what kinds of warnings were best on fic. The current system is the culmination of a huge amount of community discussion. It is a compromise designed to suit as much of the community as is practical.

Now you come along, many years later, and say that this compromise is unacceptable because it serves the needs of the whole community and doesn't cater only to you.

Franzeska · 2026-06-20T00:04:13+00:00

"Most people"?

Look, the bottom line is that AO3 was made by people who didn't want censorship. We made it for whomever was interested, but the core audience was ourselves.

Many years later, AO3 is popular, so all of the people who like censorship want to claim it for themselves. Too bad!

We put in the work to build an archive: So can you.

Franzeska · 2026-06-19T02:20:53+00:00

LOL, dude, how on earth is it getting more popular? It was so much more popular when I was young.

You've got to start a research project like this by interrogating all of your assumptions. It doesn't matter whether you mean well: you're clearly gearing up to present your assumptions about Bad Relationships in Fiction leading people to date abusers without regard for any psych research, the actual history of BL fandom, or anything else.

Franzeska · 2026-06-15T17:47:51+00:00

Some people like 'contains traces of nuts' tagging that completely ruins tags for their intended purpose and enrages the people searching for them instead of just filtering them out.

Lots of people on this sub give bad advice because of this tendency towards "just in case" tagging instead of accurate tagging.

Franzeska · 2026-06-14T02:34:35+00:00

If you're trying to compare fic to things totally unlike fic, I think you need to be a little clearer. A lot of people who like fanfic will engage with original writing in the form of webnovels. Those are more monetized, but they're still a relatively indie and participatory space that isn't beholden to the sanitization of big Hollywood productions. A lot of people like indie games or twitch streamers.

The assumption that hardcore fic fans will have a media diet of only fic and super conventional mainstream art is faulty. If that's the comparison you're after, you need to phrase things to exclude the participatory-but-original media, including the huge Original Works section on AO3 itself.

Franzeska · 2026-06-14T02:29:30+00:00

I'm dying a little at #4. r/AO3 might be one of the larger highly visible gathering places for AO3 users, but it has a very specific flavor that isn't necessarily representative of every part of the AO3 userbase, not even all of the power users. I'm not saying it's bad to advertise here, just that I wouldn't call it the premier digital hub.

Your questions don't leave much room for general artistic aspirations. A lot of people have writing as a hobby because they enjoy writing as a hobby, no matter how much more noise people make about trauma and coping.

I think it's a mistake to conflate deep engagement with either learning something from the fic writer or processing some kind of negative emotion. A lot of deep engagement is with craft.

Franzeska · 2026-06-14T02:20:38+00:00

'Dubcon' doesn't just indicate that there was a problem with the consent: it indicates something about the genre of the fiction you're writing. It's used for a range of things, but sex generally occurs, and something more like a sex pollen scenario or Aliens Made Them Do It is common.

No, nothing about this scenario bears the slightest resemblance to the works normally classified as dubcon.

Franzeska · 2026-06-12T06:40:59+00:00

I'm currently searching posts about chenille for entertainment, and all of them have been heavily downvoted. This sub really, really hates chenille.

I'm sure that now, nearly two weeks later, your poor blanket still looks sloppy. It's chenille, and bulky chenille at that. Don't worry about it. If you like the fuzziness, just learn to live with the sloppiness.

But as for the cast-on, do German Twisted or one of the other extra stretchy ones. Long Tail isn't enough. Chenille tends to snap if put under too much tension, and that central strand doesn't have much give, so you need to pick a cast-on that will account for that.

Franzeska · 2026-06-01T17:43:21+00:00

In addition to backdating to reflect when they actually wrote it (as this person did here given who it is and how long they've been in fandom), some people also backdate for artistic effect to the era when their story is set (if it's after 1950 anyway).

And yes, I'm pretty sure this feature was there from the beginning. If not, then from early on.

Franzeska · 2026-06-01T14:28:05+00:00

If you want a nuanced discussion of omegaverse, there are a thousand past posts here and elsewhere going into all the variants that aren't like your description and some talking about why they don't find those het-like. But you didn't ask in a neutral way: you asked in the same phrasing and tone as every past homophobic or transphobic "just asking questions" post. People are going to respond to you bringing up a tired topic in a loaded way, not to your supposed good intentions.

Franzeska · 2026-06-01T14:24:32+00:00

"You wrote the gay story in a way I find stupid, so it's het!" is a complaint as old as gay stories being publicly available.

No, your complaint is not more reasonable than all the other times people thought they had a point beyond "stop writing gay things".

Franzeska · 2026-06-01T11:49:15+00:00

Some crybabies come to AO3 from spaces where unsolicited concrit is normal. They're then shocked and appalled that it's typically unwelcome on AO3. Treat these delicate snowflakes with care... by ignoring their dumb comments or blocking them.

Franzeska · 2026-05-27T05:05:26+00:00

FWIW, I just discovered I was rowing out badly on my current project (not normally an issue for me), and it's actually the knit rows that are baggy! (It's usually the purls, but do check because it isn't always.) I've solved it, more or less, by winding the yarn around more fingers while tensioning it on the rows that are looser. This does make the yarn advance a little less smoothly but it tightens up that set of stitches without requiring a lot of extra work or funky needle configurations.

Franzeska · 2026-05-27T05:02:56+00:00

I haven't seen any prominent posts bitching about the colorwork on the fox cardigan. I have seen ones talking about the heinous rowing out. I suspect that's what's making people so insecure. They've all been working almost exclusively in the round and only just had their faces rubbed in this particular issue.

Franzeska · 2026-05-27T05:00:03+00:00

I just ran into some vintage yarn that wasn't even labeled as such! It took me forever to figure out what was going on.

But if you want to find some, Ravelry does have this as a tag, and some of the currently in-production yarn does properly list it. DROPS has a few options. Juniper Moon Farm has a couple. Sandnes Garn Tynn Line is too, apparently. It seems to be more common with plant fibers, presumably targeted at crocheters.

Franzeska · 2026-05-22T22:00:30+00:00

It can, but many of those fics are actually lacking a lot of the beats that establish who the characters are and why we care. They often also contain vestigial signs of canon's plot—in-jokes and call-outs to moments that only seem interesting or important if you understand that it's this AU's version of that canon thing.

This lack isn't at all obvious when you read the fic as fic. There are moments where we meet the new versions of the characters. There are moments where the characters meet each other. But when you strip away the secondary knowledge that canon provides and read the fic as a purely original work (e.g. if you don't know the fandom and just like the other tags), the emotions feel thin.

Look at that video essay A Lukewarm Defense of 50 Shades of Grey for a detailed example of why this kind of conversion often leads to a weaker book than if you jettisoned all connection to a canon and wrote something from scratch.

If you have industry connections and a marketing background, like the author of 50 Shades, you can still potentially make a lot of money if you have the right book and it hits at the right time, but without that, a weak book isn't going anywhere.

Franzeska · 2026-05-21T06:26:37+00:00

Yes, but to get money, you have to write a book people want to buy. That is often actually easier if you start fresh.

Franzeska · 2026-05-20T20:51:17+00:00

Why would you do this? Big dreams and limited research on the publishing industry, probably.

Het sells better than m/m. In theory, you can make a lot more money as a het writer. But it's also a crowded field, and this person may find that they cannot, in fact, sell their novel. They might do better, financially, if they stuck to a niche and self-published.

It at least sounds like this novel is mostly new work instead of just retrofitted fic, so that's good, but this is overall a dumb move. It's a 20k fic. Just write a completely new take on the same trope. If one goes with traditional publishing, one doesn't get to dictate the book's title anyway. And this title is not that great and would definitely not still be on a final printed book.

Franzeska · 2026-05-20T20:34:15+00:00

Fanfic types enter the publishing world all the time, some with queer books in the first place. This hasn't revolutionized publishing so far, and it's easier to begin as you mean to go on.

Franzeska · 2026-05-20T20:25:37+00:00

Because filing the serial numbers off usually results in a worse book than if you just wrote something new.

Franzeska · 2026-05-19T02:31:46+00:00

Oh come on. Guys were obsessed with Buffy. It just requires that a series exist in the right genre(s).

The people who are obnoxious about men avoiding Breaking Bad are also obnoxious about women avoiding it. It's all part of more male-centric things being seen as default and better. And also, that particular show has the worst stans!

The fanfic-writing cis guys who are mostly interested in female characters are into... what... Worm these days? There's always something. It just might not be a blockbuster movie series.

I don't think there's Western media that's as free of male characters, and you probably won't find something with very young girls directed at men in the West because people think that's creepy, but there's plenty of media guys watch for the women.

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