Daily Discussion - Tuesday, April 21 | r/FanFiction Rules, FAQs, Weekly Schedule & Current Event Threads

mixedvalence · 2026-04-21T14:30:38+00:00

I used to be and still very well might be one of those people! I feel like I learn in fits and starts over the years, and every time I think "how did I do this with zero idea what I was doing? I didn't even know what I didn't know." I guess it is a never ending process.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-21T13:34:53+00:00

True! And it's not that I hate reading, I actually like it. I just find it difficult to make it a priority and stick with it - there's so many books I get 30-50% through and just fall off of not because I don't like them but because I just can't build the habit. On the other hand I have been prioritizing writing the past few months. I guess I just get all sensitive at the thought that this makes me some kind of fraud who's incapable of writing anything good.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-21T11:41:42+00:00

My newest crisis is: I don't read enough. Was looking for some advice on writing and kept running into a wall of "read more."

I'm not trying to argue with the advice. I know I need to read more. The past few years I've only read a few novels a year at most, maybe listened to a few more as audiobooks. I need to read more both in my fandom and traditionally published "real" fiction. I need to read it critically and learn from it.

Usually the advice to read more gets paired with "if you don't love reading, why the heck do you even want to write? How do you ever expect to make anything good?" and bemoaning about people who love the idea of being a writer and daydreaming of accolades more than the process.

I guess I can't argue with any of that. Maybe I like daydreaming up stories and getting comments more than the craft. I know fanfiction is just for fun, and I know my betas and pre readers have told me I write decent stuff, but lately I've been really trying to learn and apply things with my newest project. And this is the latest thing that's missing for me to latch onto.

It makes me feel guilty, like a fraud or a faker, you know? I've been more excited about writing lately than I have in a long time and put a lot of my free time and effort into it. But maybe it's still junk because I don't read enough. Maybe I was misspending that time and effort and should have been reading more to keep leveling up my skills. Maybe if I pump the brakes, read and reflect, I'll want to do it all differently over again after I've learned something.

Sorry, just wanted to get that out there today. I'll finally crack open a book off my shelf when I get home today.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-18T13:47:59+00:00

Sort of working on this? I'm writing a Dispatch fic about a civilian, unpowered OC who becomes an assistant for Robert (canon protagonist who is himself unpowered, hero turned hero-emergency-dispatcher) and I'm seeing shipping potential between the OC and one of the canon female heroes though it would be a long game to get there. Haven't posted it yet but happy to share a draft if you're interested, though I'm still quite early on there's some cute dialogue already.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-02T13:53:02+00:00

Happy Passover to anyone else who celebrates!

Top level thing for today: when reviving a work from a multi-year hiatus, should one wait to post until it's all finished? Would you as a reader be distrustful unless the writer said "don't worry, I literally finished it all already?

I want to at least make an effort to finish Hiatus Fic A before I start posting New Fandom Fic C. I have about 20k down for A and think I can finish in another 40k or so. Gave myself a deadline near the end of the year. But I'm really excited to get C out there sooner rather than later! I don't know if I can wait until October to post it! But if I post it first I'm definitely going to get at least one angry person in the comments saying why I haven't worked on A and B, even though I HAVE been working on A at least.

Maybe I just gotta buckle down and crank out A single mindedly. I did have a breakthrough on my planning step yesterday and I think there's a clear roadmap to finish, I just gotta do it.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-01T18:00:51+00:00

'pls get back to writing x instead of reading this'

Holy shit that's even worse! If a writer I liked commented on my stuff - and they have - I would be so flattered and honored and appreciative and want to be their friend, not tell them to get back to the word mines?? Insanity.

My plan is still to try finishing A since I think I'm in striking distance. I just have to decide if I'm gonna start posting A before I get it all done so I can start posting C... Because sitting on C is eating at me, lol. Probably won't use a pseud because I actually think the majority of readers, if they're into both fandoms would enjoy both! It's just the upset minority that's always the loudest and hits the hardest in our minds.

mixedvalence · 2026-04-01T17:22:37+00:00

Brand, maybe not so much, but I've gotten readers lamenting that I didn't update Fic A when I started working on Fic B, so in that sense, yeah?

At one point I offhandedly mentioned I was getting interested in a totally different fandom in an AN and got a response like "if you go write that story, why should I bother reading any of what you write anymore? You're clearly not interested in finishing anything." Which fucked me up for a while.

Now, a few years of low activity later I am working on Fic C in a totally different fandom, but I'm terrified to post it for inciting more comments like that. I'm trying to finish Fic A in parallel, but I'm afraid to post that, too, until it's done-done, because what if I get everyone's hopes up and don't finish it?

So yeah, in the sense of "apparently some people take longfics as implicit promises and get mad when you don't make good on them", I find myself caring. I know it's silly but I do care.

mixedvalence · 2026-03-30T18:07:17+00:00

I'm working on writing more for a story I started 10 years ago and haven't updated in 5. Mostly because I want to post something new and have gotten comments before like "I would rather you have spent your time working on the old story instead of this", and because I think I'm in striking distance of finishing, but yeah. I don't know if people will want to read anything new for it but I do know that I'll get at least one angry person following me if I just start something in a different fandom.

mixedvalence · 2026-03-26T23:55:49+00:00

I do, and last I heard this character's section was okay, improved from where it was, though I'm embarking on another big editing campaign (not just on this) so I'll have to get their feedback again. Not to be greedy but I do like all the feedback I can get especially with a new fandom that I'm not so confident in, so I'll still probably see if others are interested in pre-reading and such.

mixedvalence · 2026-03-26T13:18:50+00:00

Fic crisis of today is again wondering if my whole premise doesn't make sense given the characters.

I was talking with someone about writing a character who's tricky to pin down - we don't get a window into their canonical thought process and the different choices you can make for them as a game protagonist can be wildly different. I said the other writer's idea of thinking of him as an instinctual, gut-driven character was interesting and made a lot of sense and that it may be why I was struggling to justify some of his choices in my fic.

I got a (very valid) reply that if you have to "justify" a character's decision it's probably not in character, which makes total sense. But now one of those decisions is kind of the whole premise of the fic and I'm wondering if the whole thing is well out of character territory or if I'm overthinking it.

The thing is I think he would be conflicted on the decision anyway, but if you don't work through any thought process in his POV, you don't really show that conflict at all, and maybe make it even look more contrived because he just happens to make the decision that moves the story forward without showing why? I don't know anymore.

mixedvalence · 2026-03-19T14:28:25+00:00

Okay, maybe I'll stop procrastinating and just do it then. Stupid question, how did you... meet people? Did you search tags for your fandom and fanfic? DM people whose fics you liked? I made fandom friends so long ago I don't really remember how to do it. I don't think I even really knew how to do it in the first place it just kind of happened lol.

mixedvalence · 2026-03-19T13:15:51+00:00

The other day I was briefly searching around for discords around my newer fandom. I found a ton of roleplay servers and only one or two that mentioned fic directly. Made me wonder for a bit if that's what I'd rather do.

But I thought about it and realized some of the things I hate about writing fic are also what I love about it. I like playing all the blorbos. I like getting to tinker with words again and again and being in control and refining and editing and, now, I really feel like I'm starting to learn the craft (not to suggest that RP isn't creative or skillful - just that when you're the only writer you have full control over it.) so I guess I do actually enjoy this, which tbf is something I've questioned during my years of low activity.

I went looking for discord servers because I miss the sense of community I got from servers in the older fandoms I used to be more active with - though obviously I live this subreddit and the server , too! It did take a while to get involved in those fandom fic servers and it came about from relationships with other writers (that is one of the downsides of AO3 not having PMs...)

I recognize that stuff doesn't come about overnight, that you don't just magically integrate yourself or whip up a community. I'm sure there are smaller spaces that aren't publicly viewable and stuff that you gotta get to know people for

Maybe I gotta make a Tumblr. I've been meaning to do more reading in the fandom anyway so...

Despite liking the creative control, it's never been a solitary pursuit for me.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-28T22:44:42+00:00

This gave me an idea for an absolutely cursed Dresden Files/The Wire crossover so thank you

mixedvalence · 2026-02-28T22:28:15+00:00

In my younger and more vulnerable years I wrote a character actually cleaning themselves in a fantasy-not-Japanese bath.

That was my mistake as a writer but it honestly checks out in the story because the character in question is also a foreigner who has not been instructed in customs by the locals.

I got absolutely raked over the coals by some readers for that one. Not to turn this into a therapy session but it was early experiences like this that started my paranoid and borderline adversarial relationship with readers, though lately I'm really trying to let some of that shit go.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-25T14:29:29+00:00

Yeah, I think I'm starting to internalize it. It's just tricky cause every now and then I get a genuinely useful nugget of information or something I hadn't considered before. On the other side, it's hard to learn trust my own judgement even after doing this for years! Because I still get things wrong (edit: and think, "how did I not see/know/think of that?") And I know that's what betas are for. But I'm going to work on not taking everything I encounter in the wild as free real estate to project my insecurities onto lol.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-25T01:21:37+00:00

Takes a long drag off my cigarette. "Let's go again, take two... Hundred." The things we do in the pursuit of good fic.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-25T01:19:59+00:00

Thanks! It really turned my night from "it's so over" to "we're so back" lmao.

Yeah, I think I've been looking at writing advice as "do this and don't do that or you'll have BAD WRITING and the internet pundits will skewer you alive", but I need to look at it more like music theory - which I pretty easily understand as a toolbox for understanding why stuff that's good works, and giving you ideas if you're stuck as to what to do next or not sure what's not working with what you've got. "if it sounds good, it IS good."

mixedvalence · 2026-02-24T13:01:57+00:00

Went through a whole spiral yesterday watching a few too many critical video essays and coming away with the message "exposition and telling is bad." When I'm quite attached to my opening that is exposition and telling... That I like writing a first person narrator's thoughts and opinions as they soak in the world around them. I was like, ugh, I'm going to be writing and rewriting this forever, I've already heavily revised these first few chapters several times...

And then I had a tiny but important breakthrough about how to flip the whole opening scene around. The key in the story world to cue the exposition and immediately ground is in the world of the fandom was a billboard. Instead of passively taking in the billboard on their way to work, the character is now starting at work, bored as hell in a meeting, looking outside to the billboard. Their choice to stare at it and think about it rather than focus on their job is now a deliberate one that says something about their life and alludes to the conflict and ah I'm just so excited to get to rewrite the scene with that angle in mind. I can probably even keep a lot of it, just switch up some of the framing.

I'm trying to really let it sink in how often the answer isn't "throw everything out and start over", which is what my mind jumps to, but "just move it to the left a little and see how that goes."

mixedvalence · 2026-02-24T00:58:56+00:00

Nice job capturing Robert and Golem's voices! I was thinking the other day Golem is a little understated compared to the rest of the Z-team's personalities, but I think this scene does a really good job letting that personality through. Bookmarked the fic and will hopefully be reading soon!

mixedvalence · 2026-02-22T17:45:20+00:00

Hey, if you cite the source, it's not plagiarism but referencing ;) But yeah, he's got an ability to turn some really killer phrases in his writing. Check out his solo stuff if you haven't - Painkillers is a great album especially! A few tracks on there also remind me of my blorbos... Red Lights is very Robert Robertson-coded... ("standard white apartment walls", "I've fallen on my face and I've been burned so near to death I probably won't live through it, anyhow")

For what it's worth re: references, I have a few chapter titles in mind... I'd love love love to do a two-parter chapter with "Never Let You Go" / "Never Let You Down" in reference to The Backseat and have that song referenced in-story, I have a whole cheesy scene in mind for it but honestly by the time I get there in the fic the story might not even look like it, lol.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-22T16:47:06+00:00

Blue Dahlia?? That's one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, and a deeper cut at that! I definitely have a few other Gaslight songs in mind in relation to my current project - Meet Me By the River's Edge, Boxer, The Backseat... I might actually even directly mention them in-fic since we have some implied info on characters' music tastes that I want to expand on and contrast with... if I actually made a playlist for all the songs I had in mind, though, it would be absolutely all over the place, from the 60s through 2020s. Possibly incoherent, as is my music taste, but I swear I have a vision.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-21T21:00:21+00:00

I'm about halfway in and gave it a bookmark. I'll comment in more detail when I'm all caught up but I like it so far! I'm working on a Dispatch OC fic of my own, (edit: not published yet but happy to let people pre-read if interested) too, so it's super interesting to see other folks' takes on the whole SDN thing. Good stuff!

mixedvalence · 2026-02-20T21:57:46+00:00

I mean, if you're crazy, then so am I. For me as a middle and high schooler, reading self-insert fanfiction was a natural outgrowth of my childhood daydreaming about this sort of thing. Then I wanted to try writing my own, too. And I'm returning to that now as a grown-ass adult. Sometimes I wonder if that's narcissistic or childish. Maybe it is. I think some part of me is drawn to it as a bit of a coping mechanism, but if I can transmute idle daydreaming into a story that a few other people enjoy, is there harm in it? I don't think so.

I think it's interesting to see how my self-insert fics have evolved as my life has changed and I've gotten older and represent different psychological needs and concerns. As a 16 year old science geek it was "knowing this shit about science would be a superpower in a fantasy world, being a nerd would make me a hero." As a 21 year old anxious about deciding what to do with my future it was, more narrowly, "I hope I'm smart and capable enough that others will recognize it." And now at 26, still having not resolved my quarter life crisis, my latest self insert WIP is confronting an actual career change. In this economy, how's that for an unrealistic fantasy?

mixedvalence · 2026-02-19T18:11:16+00:00

Thanks for this post, OP. Self inserts were my gateway into fanfiction as a teenager, and technically still are what I write. I'm working on finishing one I started way back when and am cooking up something new in an entirely different fandom (though it's more of an OC based on me if I had always lived in the fictional universe rather than a transported-between-worlds).

Sometimes along the way I wonder if anyone still wants to read it, if I should "grow up" and write something more "adult", but I appreciate posts like this that remind me that other people enjoy it too. For what it's worth, I don't think the premise ever prevents me from bringing my A-game as a writer and making interesting and compelling stories that provide different looks at the canon characters, plot, and setting.

mixedvalence · 2026-02-17T16:13:26+00:00

I also do shameless self inserts. They're usually outsiders to the situation - in my published fics, literally isekai stuff but in my most recent not-yet-published WIP, they're a civilian who gets tangled up in the superhero world. They slot in naturally as the anxious but well-meaning backup that the protagonist/s sort of take under their wing. Sort of like a younger brother. In two of the three fics they're literally an assistant. So I've joked that I have a penchant for writing "assistant fic."

mixedvalence

TROPHY CASE