What are your fan fiction gripes?

i think i’ve only read a few teen wolf fics that were crossed over with fandoms i actually knew, but i have read tons of spn fic to the point where i have entirely fanfic-osmosed the plot of the first 5-7 seasons. (i actually did watch spn season 1, but nothing beyond that.)

 

Let me tell you I have seen one (1) real life Naruto episode but damn if I can't probably recite the entire chuunin exam by heart now because boy howdy do the fanficcers love them some Naruto crossovers.

 

theres like nothing on tumblr and only one single oneshot on AO3...why is the open sorcery fandom so tiny why is there only one fic

 

"They're not attracted to each other because they're both omegas". Really? Really?

Spite writing o/o fic for this pairing because fuck you. Fuck you is why.

 

Give me nonstandard a/b/o pairings or give me death.

 

hmm, so they’ve decided to reject one set of heteronormative norms (gender), and then apply a new set of heteronormative* norms (to a/b/o status.)

*(hetero not specifically in the m/f sense but in the “different” meaning of the root that lead to the terms heterosexuality vs homosexuality — different sex vs same sex. in this case it’s different a/b/o status vs same status.)

 

Srry I'm too busy shipping all omega ot4 can't stop me.

 

The way most authors describe The Omega Experience, I honestly can't imagine wanting to be with an alpha, it sounds terrifying. Like you'd be at constant risk of getting jumped because today your BO erased their higher brain functions. No thank you.

 

Insert joke about straight women here

 

I feel exactly the same way. I have seen Supernatural, at least most of it, so that ship has sailed (and hit an iceberg, and sailed again unexpectedly, and hit another iceberg. Ahem). But I've never seen Teen Wolf and at this point I don't plan to.

And the only reason I can read bandfic at all is because the people might as well be fictional. If I knew anything about them as real people it would hit me right in the squick.

 

I mean, you're probably not wrong. I think at least some of that is a way to process a terrifying cultural narrative by having it happen to someone else.

 

Yeah, it's not like most other RPF in that way, because with the way many band members have entirely separate personas, it often makes more sense to treat them as characters who just happen to have the same name as the people playing them.

 

Reading Supernatural fic is what got me started watching the show. And now I'm, like, real snobby about characterization, so i might have ruined the experience for myself a bit.

I read Supernatural stuff in particular not just cause it's fucking everywhere, but cause there're character specific whump tags on AO3, and I'm all over that sorta cheap, intense but shallow angst.

 

Oh, and re the omega/omega thing, I've been trying to figure out how to word that complaint for so long! It's like, A/B/O exists as a trope primarily to facilitate kinky m/m sex, it's fucking absurd how much of it is casually like "oh yeah, no, alphas aren't into alphas, silly! It's just biology!!! You can't want to fuck someone you can't breed!! :O"

 

Honestly a/b/o fic is my least favourite thing because I just feel it's you know. casual gender roles.

But omega/omega and alpha/alpha is intriguing. Wish more people wrote that kind of thing, because it seems to me there's little point creating a system if you don't experiment and mess with it a Ton.

 

I think the fandom I see the most play around with the a/b/o dynamics (queering the a/b/o trinary lmfao) is the MCU fandom, actually. Which is nice. I know just enough about the MCU to be mmmmostly uninvested in hunting out fic, because characterization might bother me but I'm not hype enough to hunt for it, but when I'm in the a/b/o tags I see the most beta/omega, omega/omega, alpha/alpha, and beta/beta stuff in there.

Poly-pile and multishipping seems to crop up more in MCU a/b/o fic too, so that might be a contributing factor. When you have three main couples with three unique dynamics, people seem to try and find more ways than just personality to break up the monotony of alpha/omega pairings.

(On that note: p l e a s e, please, please let people just stop. with the half-hearted attempts at making a Moral Point About Misogyny Omega Oppression that just gets dumped as soon as the main couple fucks. either make a fic all about tackling the social issues of this sort of thing, or make a fic where you get your rocks off on the in-'verse justification for sex pollen and gay mpreg, but please stop leading with "THIS OMEGA ISN'T LIKE THE OTHERS, HE'S STILL GOT HIS SPARK AND HE'S GONNA FIGHT THE SYSTEM!!!" if you're going to end it with "lol btw he just needed to get the preggers to learn his place in society <3 luv that kidfic <333".)

 

Like, I don't even... care about the Unfortunate Implications if it's blatantly and unrepentantly a Smut Fic For The Smut Gods. Just have a little warning or something if your screed about how magical oppression is bad ends up with a navel-gazey ramble about how maybe fighting oppression is the Bad Thing, and we just need to accept our socially constructed place in the world.

Take three big steps back from the ending and beginning and go "oh shit maybe these should be two different fics actually, because this does not read well." That's all I want!

 

I’m lucky that my main fandom has a pretty high proportion of ot4 fic, enough that not all of the poly abo fic is “we tagged this as ot4 but really it’s just two alpha/omega pairs in a pack with no actually romance between the pairs.” God I do remember the fic that was literally “this whole elaborate handmaiden’s tale esque system of omega oppression was actually just one bitter guy, and once we got rid of him the whole thing ended!” Of course this was the same author who tried to write a fluffy handmaiden’s tale au without any dubcon so it’s. Not super representative. (There actually is a fic that I thought was gonna be just wilty omega and his three alphas but its been pretty good about having the omega come the fuck outta his shell and take control of his life.)

 

this phrase triggered my fight-or-flight response.