I Think More People Need To Understand That Fics Are Not Books. Aside From The Occasional Professional

I think more people need to understand that fics are not books. Aside from the occasional professional writing it on the side of their published work, fanfiction is written by amateurs in their spare time. Do some of these amateurs write at a professional level? Yes, of course. But you shouldn't have the expectations going in that you would have for a book you paid money for. There's a bare minimum expectation of quality there, because it was written and edited by professionals (supposedly, in some cases). Is it extremely obnoxious to find a bunch of poor grammar and typos in something professionally produced that you paid actual cash money for? Yes. Is it appropriate to vent about the poor quality in a review on whichever platform you use to rate books? Sure. It's pretty unprofessional to put out a crap book that was half-assedly proofread and then charge, in this day and age, quite a bit of money for it

But a fic author doesn't owe you professionalism. You're reading a free story on the internet. Even fics with betas usually do not have actual professional editors working on them. There isn't even a veneer of quality gatekeeping the way there is in traditional publishing. The stupidest person you know could write some gay porn and throw it up online. Literal children are writing fics. People learning a second language are using fic to practice their skills.

If you find something unreadable because of the grammar and spelling, just click out of it. It's not that deep. It's not a personal affront. It's not something you need to bitch or snark about in the comments. It's usually pretty apparent very early on if something isn't technically well-written. I cannot even count the number of times I've read a paragraph or two of a fic and quit because I know the punctuation or writing style isn't something I can overlook. You don't owe the author your time and they don't owe you the correct 'their.' If you're so angry that a free story you found on the internet isn't well-written that you have to leave a scathing comment about it, go the fuck outside and breathe some fresh air.

Sometimes spring fever hits my students so hard that I miss their earlier mimicry of headless chickens. Let’s go back to January, when you weren’t all feral, hormonal squirrels.

A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

Fic Writing Updates:

I have WIPs and no time or intrinsic motivation to nudge any of them over from Drabble Style Paragraphs into Complete Scenes and Thoughts. However, the fuel for my brain that is my reading 100+ books last year has kept my private writerly experiments quite fun. Maybe sometime later this year, I will have something I feel the need to share again.

Quick PSA, if you get one of those "Work scanned, AI use detected" comments on AO3, just mark them as spam.

Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.

There is no scanning process, your work doesn't actually resemble AI writing, it's all bullshit. Mark the comment as spam (on AO3, not the email notification you got about the comment!) and don't let it get to you.