And another one!

[coalcube]

I see my nemesis getting a fic that I love
And I'm like, "Fuck you" 
I guess my 10k letter wasn't enough
I'm like, "Fuck you and fuck morbane, too"
Said, "If I was a long commenter, they woulda gamed for me"
Ha, now ain't that some shit?
(Ain't that some shit?)
And although there's pain in my chest
I still comment it's the best
And runs to coal to shout "Fuck you" 

Nominations: Monday 18 to Thursday 28 September (Coordination | Evidence Post)
Sign-ups: Friday 13 to Saturday 21 October (NYR | Promo Post)
Assignments Out: Monday 23 October (may be earlier)
Default Deadline: Monday 11 December
Assignment Deadline: Monday 18 December
Main Collection Opens: Monday 25 December
Madness Opens: Tuesday 26 December
Author Reveals: Monday 1 January


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Comments

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

In my life I wrote fan-fiction, original work in exchanges and fiction that was published professionally (not in English). In my opinion, Original Works are more similar to fan-fiction than pro-fiction. They have the same tropes, they're generally ship-focused and/or about a specific kink. I would not send to an agent my Virgin King/Arranged Marriage Husband Who Can Get Mpregnant original work. On the contrary, my AO3 readers may be into it!
There are always exception, of course, and no strict rules or definitions, but writing OW for a recip to me is not very different from writing fic. I understand why OW is part of fandom exchanges.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Do you write professionally published romance? That's the genre whose tropes overlap a lot with OW.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

No, but what you're saying about romance tropes is true about fan-fiction too. I think it's not the tropes alone, but also the general spirit. People write trope-y OW in exchanges as a hobby and they post it on an AO3 collection for an audience of fanfic readers who are into those tropes. The most important thing is writing the trope/ship dynamic/kink well. I'm not saying there aren't things in common with pro-writing, but if I have to write something professionally, I feel a lot more pressure and there are other things to keep in mind, to the point that it's like a different activity to me. I don't know, I used to be confused about OW in exchanges when I started doing them, but after seeing the kind of things people requested and wrote, it made perfect sense to me to see them as part of the fandom experience.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

The most important thing is writing the trope/ship dynamic/kink well

That's not fanfic. That's writing for kinks/likes. Fanfic depends on a canon.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

we have all long since moved on to a different wank

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Ao3 House Style OW is selfpub (and rarely picked up by tradpub) as OW literally all the time. Fanwork is transformative work. Original work is not transformative.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Except a lot of OW in exchanges is fic with its serial numbers filed off. It's no more or no less transformative than some random high school AU fic.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

"Original work is fanwork when it's fanfiction with the names find/replaced" is frankly even more reason that it doesn't belong in exchanges, any more than I should submit find/replaced MCU to a DC exchange

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

You shouldn't do a simple name replace for MCU and DC because it would mean the worldbuilding and the characterization is wrong and your fic will end up contradicting canon.

I really don't think that argument holds merit for OW.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Right....

Because OW doesn't have a canon to make transformative work from. Because it isn't transformative, and it's not fanwork.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to hear more about what you see in exchange OW that supports this thesis, I'm genuinely curious!

I've not read a whole lot of exchange OW but what I have read doesn't feel particularly like it's serial-numbers-filed-off large pairings; some of it feels like it's people's beloved OCs shoved into requester's prompt with different names, and some of it feels like ATG fic where they didn't have to slap canon names on for once, and some of it feels like it might have started as a fandom AU that then went seriously off the rails until nothing about it resembled the original canon or characters particularly, and some of it reads like issuefic that is more interested in the issue than anything else. All of these things turn up a lot in juggernaut pairings so I definitely see the similarity, especially if you are sick and tired of those kinds of fic! But I wouldn't class them particularly as serial numbers filed off, just as thank goodness they didn't try to pass it off as needing a serial number in the first place.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I feel like the anti-OW coalies here are not really familiar with exchange OW in the first place. They have probably never really checked the tagset, the requests or the OW that gets written.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

I have. It's original work. It isn't transformative. It is not fanfiction. It doesn't belong in a fanwork exchange.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

It's transformative; if you don't allow that it can be transformative on the tropes of a genre, it's at the very least transforming the requester's prompt.

And it's definitely fanfiction; fanfiction meant "any fiction produced by fans as fans for other fans" long before Star Trek girlies co-opted it for stuff about other people's IP. Any fiction posted on AO3 is definitionally fanfiction because by posting it on AO3 you're agreeing you're a fan writing as a fan for other fans.

It's not small fandom fic so it doesn't belong in Yuletide, and it's not crossover fic so it doesn't belong in a crossover exchange, or in an exchange for fic based on sci-fi canons, or whatever. But if it's explicitly an exchange for fans to write any sort of fan fiction for other fans, then sure, the hell not, that's what fan fiction is.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Then don't have it in exchanges you mod, and untie your knickers, that must be uncomfortable.

People having fun differently to you should not be your problem.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Super sure they don't mod anything or even contribute anything. Seems more like a angry impotent all talk type wanker.

Kudos though on how long they've keep this luke warm rant going.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

It's not allowed in exchanges I mod, thanks for your concern! And as I've said 5000 times while you huff your a2g juice, I'm fully resigned to it infesting the rest of the scene. I know it's not going away, because people love their wallpaper paste men.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

+1

While there is some space and superhero stuff, none of it feels remotely like Star Wars or the MCU like that one nonnie said. Historical or fantasy-historical royalty settings are really common. F/F isn't as popular as M/M, but there's a nontrivial amount of it. The character dynamics in shippy fandom-adjacent OW generally feel a lot like the self-published and trad published gay romances I've read.

Anti-OW coalies could make a less laughable argument if they actually had some idea what they were talking about. I'd still disagree with them, but at least their premises and conclusion wouldn't be objectively silly.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

You, yourself, are making the exact same "anti-OW argument" that everyone else is: that the OW that appears in current exchanges is the same as self/trad published OW, eg not fannish.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

While there is some space and superhero stuff, none of it feels remotely like Star Wars or the MCU like that one nonnie said.

Idk if you mean me, but that wasn't what I meant. I'm not writing Stucky fic and call them Anton and Bob and writing superhero OW about them. But my pirate OW might have a character called Anton, who's vaguely based on Bucky and a character called Bob who's vaguely based on Han Solo. (Obviously, this is a fake example.)

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

"Serial numbers filed off" was a glib way of phrasing it, sorry. I don't necessarily mean a 1:1 thing where the OW fic is Stucky with names replaced. But when I write OW, the characters are always vaguely based on existing characters I love. I don't think that's unusual or weird - I also see it a lot in other people's OW where the similarities are obvious when you look at their OW vs. the characters they write in fanfic. And for the record, this isn't an anti-OW opinion. There's nothing wrong with this (or with OW in exchanges).

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

NC

It surprises me every time I see someone say this, because it's not how I read or write OW at all. Not saying it's unusual or weird to do so, just that it's not my experience so I'm surprised when people say it's the norm.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I don't actually think it's the norm.

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I think it also depends on what kind of OW you read/write. Admittedly, my interests in OW are narrow, so I can only speak for that specific niche. Perhaps people writing, say, sci-fi OW never lean on their blorbos when they create OW characters!

Re: Reveals wank prediction

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, ok! I've definitely heard people complain about using OW to sneak in unrequested pairings, but yeah, what you're describing sounds more like what I see. That's pretty common even in non-fanfic-context original works, though. A whole lot of novels have characters vaguely inspired by other characters or by real people.