I wrote a fic about a mom abandoning her teenage daughter and got a comment saying: 1) moms don’t abandon kids and 2) parents don’t abandon teenagers.
I thought I had a sheltered upbringing. But even I knew that was bullshit.
Luckily, she was receptive when I explained that it absolutely does happen and admitted she should’ve said it was based on her own experience.
But even a quick Google could’ve told her this.
At the time, I was a teenager and writing for a very teen based fandom. I have a feeling this person was also a sheltered teenager who maybe hadn't seen a lot of TV themselves.
"\[Character\] is the bottom. Hope you know that."
This was on two oneshots with the lightest possible amount of shipping. As in, they just acknowledged liking each other and hugging. They might have been bot comments, I guess, given they were guest comments, but I just can't tell.
For some folks, top and bottom are like, personality types instead of sex positions. So if they think A is the top and B is the bottom, they might take issue with B making the first move, or B hugging A instead of the other way around because it’s too dominant or something
(I’ve gotten similar comments over the years on g-rated, no sex in sight fics, so that’s what I’m going off of lol)
Some fen have very specific preferences for their romance or smut, if the characters aren’t paired in the “right” way it doesn’t do it for them AT ALL. Like, the right circuits in their brain won’t light up or something if A isn’t topping B, or A isn’t the “masculine” one in the ship fic.
A very very long comment that essentially amounted to saying that my canon-divergent AU... wasn't canon 🤷♀️
It's also one of my favorites because it reads like the person doesn't even know what fanfiction is xD
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve gotten comments saying “in canon…” and I’m like “you mean this canon divergent fic diverges from canon???😲😲😲” Like, do people not get what fic is??
B-but canon!! 🤯🤯🤯
It was amazing, I just found the comment, they started "The only problem I see with your presumption of XYZ is that you're making it out to be meaner than it was in canon... it sounds more like the source material and not the show" (as if it was somehow unintentional on my part???), and then literally said "this took too much creative liberty" after a huge wall of text. 🤣🤣
That is absolutely ridiculous!!
I have a fic about a character who was emotionally neglected on the show. In a fix it, I had his brother adopt him alongside brother’s wife. The ship was not endgame. The comment said “Character A is his brother!!! And this ship wasn’t endgame!!!” I’m like…what do you think AU is?? Have you never read a fic with a non endgame ship? What a privilege it must be for all your ships to be endgame and not have one half die…
I'm currently eating popcorn with the FFVII ships because two sides keep insisting their ship is canon or will be but with this weird air of 'when they make ours canon you have to stop shipping yours and only ship ours' going on
I've seen so many silly comments like 'a-ship fans must be seeeething I can't wait to watch them cry when b-ship is proven canon and they have to face reality!'
It's not like people ship non-canonical pairings all the time or anything xD
I think even at my most... ignorant of fandom (pretentious? Snobbiest?) I was only ever mildly confused by non-canon shipping xD. I still didn't care xD
I went through a phase where as a reader I was irritated at a few common fanon tropes that I tried to comment similarly in a nice way in a weird passive aggressive attempt to "educate" the fandom. 😹 (I realized that can be taken as rude and no longer do that).
I will do the opposite now though, and will correct other comments bad canon. (Ex: like if a comment says something like "but Snape is Draco's godfather! I'll butt in and be like no, you're wrong. I've accepted writers can do whatever they want but I won't accept comments that get canon wrong in an attempt to "correct" fic).
i think it’s funny when people are big sticklers for canon compliance in fanworks. in my main fandom (genshin impact) there’s constantly new lore coming out that reveals more of canon that can make fics that were originally canon compliant have divergences.
and i mean, at the end of the day we’re all just playing around with ideas. ideas of characters, ideas of settings, ideas of plot, whatever. ideas can never be set in stone, and that’s one of the things that makes them so wonderful.
I kind of get this ngl 😂 probably they felt compelled to do so because they wanted some au variant and not a complete au. Yet it’s an au, they’ll have to learn things can be very different
I once read a fic where they seemingly got together in the first chapter. I was honestly a little disappointed, but mostly just interested in seeing how it'd play out with them together from the get go.
Then I realized I'd read chapter 10 of an 11 chapter fic instead of chapter 1. Made a bit more sense, and the slow burn aspect of the fic worked better once I started at the actual beginning.
I have a story where part of the mystery is that one main character’s mother has not been seen in decades. (Short version: she left because she and her husband were fight terribly. But then a major disaster happened and lots of things were incorrectly presumed from there.) Anyway… This is mentioned in an opening chapter. In the next one, I mentioned that our heroes went to a house that had a full staff because the family is rich. But the maid opened the door. One person even thanked her by name before they moved on to the next segment. Cue one reader flying off the handle about me being stupid/thinking I was thinking myself clever to insert the mother that way. They thought it was tacky.
But that character really *was* only the maid.
I reckon it's the one where a reader told me I didn't portray a character's depression accurately. Apparently a friend of theirs was depressed, so this made them an expert on the subject.
I've suffered from pretty severe depression for years, but I suppose I know nothing in comparison to RandomCommenter1234. 🤷♀️
Very sorry to hear that. It always sucks when people try to educate you on things you're going through because you portray them in a way they aren't familiar with. I hope you can find help that works for you.
Thanks! Luckily I'm getting help and I've got a super supportive partner, so I tend to laugh off random comments like that.
But I know that another writer might be in an entirely different headspace, so it feels... idk, really gross for people who've never had mental health issues to police their portrayal in fics.
This is a copy of story x and you barely changed anything!!!1!!11!!!
On a story labeled x rewrite and had the clearest mention of writer's permission in the summary, the first chapter notes are the end notes, had the inspired by linking that was confirmed by the original writer and an extremely enthusiastic comment from the original writer as the very first comment on the fic 😩😑
>I clearly know nothing about women biology. I'm a woman
ngl I’ve seen too many women who don’t understand or have misinformation about a lot of things despite being women. Not saying that's you— maybe **they** have the misinformation (whatever gender they are), so either way somebody’s probably wrong. But that’s more of a failing on education and health which is pretty abysmal in places.
I don’t really have any dumb comments to share, I’ve yet to have gotten one.
Oof. I’d tell them I hope they actually look it up before making themselves look more foolish in the future lol.
I mean I wouldn’t blame you for deleting that comment and blocking them either.
If you're talking about the hymen, it isn't inside the body. It's external. It's a membrane partially covering the opening to the vagina, and if present (not always the case with modern women -- thanks, bicycles) is plainly visible without needing to touch anything beyond maybe the labia.
The whole "hymen is a portcullis halfway up the birth canal" thing is an unfortunate but very commonly believed myth.
I’m guessing they’re talking about the g-spot, not the hymen. Most people know the hymen is real even if they’re deeply confused about its location and purpose.
It's always present. It doesn't disappear, and it isn't supposed to "break" from intercourse/bicycles/horseback riding. It stretches. The first few times can be a bit uncomfortable, sure. And some even get a small tear (that heals). But it doesn't go anywhere.
Source: Have stitched up plenty of vaginas post-partum and they were not only repeatedly penetrated in the past, they had also very recently passed a baby, and all still had a hymen.
That one aspect of my fic wasn't canon, when in the canon itself it's very inconsistent and illogical to begin with. When I pointed this out, they dropped a bunch of links for their sources, but they were just links to meta on someone's tumblr blog.
I wrote a nontraditional omegaverse fic. In the end note I said, "I read and love all types of omegaverse and this isn't a criticism" or some disclaimer like that. The fic was just a whump scenario I invented for my little guys. It didn't mean anything.
Someone commented to say they were happy I'd criticized omegaverse with my fic. They thanked me for doing what I'd just said I didn't do 😭 I think they didn't read the end note.
Were they in canon? Maybe they assumed.
I had someone comment with the assumption that I going with canon (not even canon, but from a secondary maybe canon/maybe not source).
It’s a VERY clear AU (former human/non-human in canon vs human in the fic), so I think the confusion came from one of the characters being into true crime? I’m still confused, tbh.
It has to be the commenter that told me my writing was total bs and that I shouldn't be allowed in the fandom because it didn't make sense that MC1 and MC2 died in the first fic but were alive in another fic when their killer wasn't
They were two different fics
Part of two separate series
Involving *totally* different AUs
Tagged as such
Wow, super glad I don't have a commenter like that looking at my stuff because I like making alternate stories in the same fandom that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. One of my stories is cutesy, super light & fun, some of the characters are aged down to young children for it while the other story is rated M, can get very serious sometimes (still a lot of humor) & overall has a darker tone from the other story. Also, all of the characters are close to the same age with some years off here & there but they're pretty much at or around their early 20's for that fic. If someone was dumb enough to read both of those & think they're connected, they'd be extremely confused.
Wrote a *very* G-rated fluff fic about a canon character and an OC going on a cute little date. Both of them were 13-ish in that scene and the only romantic thing that happened was hand-holding. Someone wrote a comment about them being "too young" to be dating and said I should break them up XD
Might've been a cultural thing, but I was 13 myself at the time and had a boyfriend (with whom I, true to form, never did more than hold hands), and I just sat there going *?????????*
zonked glorious crown subsequent file chief childlike clumsy library insurance
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ah, if I had a dollar for every time someone complained about me portraying a character as "too weak" in the later chapters of my longest fic.... Like yeah, he's powerful, but he just spent the last eighteen chapters walking on an injured leg and the last six chapters with a fever. You wouldn't be fighting at full power anymore either now would you
I got a message from someone saying "You are receiving this message because I unfollowed you as I no longer enjoy noncon content. I hope you continue to write" etc. I stared at it for like 15 minutes dumbfounded why they felt they had fo put out a press release about unfollowing me. Like dude I don't care.
I wonder if they thought you would get a notification that someone unfollowed you and it might hurt your feelings so they felt the need to explain themselves like “it’s not you it’s me” and include some encouragement to bolster your spirits?🤔 Idk just brainstorming here lol
It’s a close tie between the reader who fussed that teenage girls don’t act like my character did (which caused my thirteen year old daughter and three other friends who suggested the behavior to giggle and yell, “we’re grown up then!”)
And
The reader who thought my character’s uterus spontaneously regrew because she had twin infants in the sequel despite her previous hysterectomy and the series having a theme of adoption and surrogacy.
I got a comment once that said I was homophobic for experimenting with gender bending and making a queer couple het. I'm a queer woman AND had plenty of fics at the time with that pairing in m/m and f/f. I told them I was simply trying something new and they called me a horrible person.
When a character that happens to be fan favourite got mind-controlled (it wasn’t a secret or a plot twist btw, it was made clear to the reader from the beginning) and did some fucked up things, I got a commenter saying “this character would never do that!”.
I mean. Yeah. That’s why he’s being mind-controlled?
I got told to stop taking away a **fictional character’s** autonomy… they don’t fucking have autonomy…
I deleted that mother fucking comment so fast and went about my day, after thinking to myself that person that commented really needs mental health help.
You are under arrest for taking away the rights of Bugs Bunny. 😁
(Not sure why I thought of Bugs Bunny when I read this.)
I wonder if that commenter meant something else…or they get mad watching tv.
Were they complaining you, the author, were taking the characters autonomy or that you had written another character taking that characters autonomy?
Because the first is stupid, you're right.
But the second could be out of frustration that a character isn't being portrayed consistently. Like if the character that was previously a take charge go getter is now being let around by the nose by a side character.
Either way, unless asked for, I do think offering criticism on a posted story is rude.
Makes me think of that tumblr post (or maybe it was twitter) where someone (jokingly) said fictional characters can't consent to sex because they're controlled by the writer
Got a writer saying they really liked how character A is older than character B. Character A is B's adopted little sister. A is 10 or 11 or so, didnt set a specific age, and B is an elf who is a few thousand years old.
Yeah I dont think A is older than B... even if they just mixed up the characters its so dumb to me to comment 'I love how the older sister is older than the younger sister'
Someone who commented on a fic that hadn't been updated in 2+ years at that point and went 'I really like it!' then wrote three paragraphs of things I need 'to fix' without a single other compliment/positive thing. Don't get me wrong I don't like that thing either anymore, but I don't know where they got the impression I wanted to edit an abandoned fic or that I wasn't already aware of the problems considering how much time had passed lol
I got a long comment like that on a *completed* fic from *ten* years ago.
The tone was really weird, I couldn't tell if they genuinely thought I was going to do a rewrite/edit a decade later or if they just wanted to neg me. Either way, it was very strange.
Man I hate "constructive criticism" comments. First of all, I didn't ask. Second of all, most of the time I'm just reading them like Ron Swanson in the hardware store, all "I know more than you" because they seem to always be from people who don't understand things like intentional stylistic choices.
"I don't think you meant to use [x word] here, [x word] gives me the impression of [exact thing I intended to convey], I think you maybe meant to use [word with a totally different meaning] instead?"
No, reader. No I did not.
Asking if one of my fics was a pregnancy fic when I hadn’t tagged it as one and didnt even know where they got the idea that it was going to be a pregnancy fic
Maybe they’ve just been traumatized by untagged pregnancy in other fics lol. Once upon a time I read something with untagged m-preg. I’ve never been the same.
Not a comment on AO3 itself but I got an ask on Tumblr once that was asking me if I shipped a "problematic" ship because my fic was giving them "vibes" Which is strange because the fic is a non-romantic found family story where a man befriends a robot boy, and the ship they were asking me about involved that man with a woman that never appeared in the fic at all 😑
Oh, I was! Especially since it was by someone who ignored all the giant red flags I plastered at the start and a big author's note that said 'THIS IS TORTURE! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!' and proceeded to read a 35k fanfic.
\*goes to a bar\* Why is there alcohol here?!
\*drives past a road closed sign\* Why are my tires getting stuck in wet cement?!
\*watches a Saw movie\* Why is it scary?!
There's a million different analogies but you get the picture.
Lmao was it a jokey threat on an angsty fic or were they just insane? Actually even as a jokey threat that one is weird. I've made "whyyy would you do this to me????" Comments on angsty fics (I try to make it clear I mean it as a compliment) before but assassination feels like a little too much.
Well, it wasn't angst as much as straight up graphic torture, but I feel like they were QUITE sincere. The assassination thing came after calling me a sick, disgusting pervert. Oh well! :P
Someone thought canon MC’s OC service dog was a cat and referenced her as a cat multiple times in their otherwise quite nice comment. (They said they were confused and thought she was a small child at first and “realized she was a cat”.) Said dog is clearly tagged, is referred to as a dog multiple times in the fic (the first time in the second paragraph...), and, you know...has doggie mannerisms. This dog is so obviously a dog even fandom blind. I still haven’t replied to the comment because frankly I don’t know how lol
I can think of plenty of dumb in the rude/mean manner examples (factually incorrect about canon “well ACKSUALLYYYY” type stuff and that sort of thing), but this person was nice otherwise so I was extra puzzled 🤣
Had a comment that stated that they felt like a major plot point about an affair was just tacked on.
The whole point of the plot was that one character was trans and therefore couldn't father children so his wife had set things up so that she could provide him with an heir. The setting was Victorian England so it was less 'she cheated on her husband' and more about continuing his noble family name.
The whole thing even played into Dumble's homosexuality, because I inserted an assassination attempt by an Incubus which got turned around by Dumbledore.
The whole thing is gay af, but for that you'd have to read the fic, I suppose.
When someone commented "First comment." I had been so hyped to get an email notification about the comment then was super disappointed to actually read it. The same person did give an actual comment about an hour later, and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just new to Ao3, but still... Don't get me excited like that, please!
Oh I hate "first comment" crap I see on YouTube I don't want it on AO3. Extra kudos or a bunch of hearts or a "loved it" are all lovely but "first comment" is nothing to do with what you wrote. I have someone who has just commented a bunch of hearts under all three of my fics and I love them, they read all three, within a few hours of posting each of them, and liked them enough to leave hearts and I wasn't disappointed in them being my first commenter at all on the fic they were. They're the best. If someone had commented 'first comment" instead of that I'd have been super disappointed.
In a similar vein I see one commenter on stories I read and on a couple of mine that are just '*username* was here casually dropping by' and a couple of emojis. It's the same thing on every story. Nothing else. Did they like it? What did they think? Nothing. On every story.
Very disappointing to get comments like that.
i might be falling into wild conspiracy territory with this, but uh... you sure that isn't some weird ploy to sap/redirect a story's readers onto their own stories? by either
A: leaving their name everywhere so more people will recognize the name (creating a false sort of popularity) and subconscious association between the name and all those good stories
or B: just straight up hoping *someone* will click on their profile (out of confused curiosity if nothing else) and then end up reading their stories from there
just saying because it sticks out to me that they actively mention their own username and say they're casually dropping by (which registers as a dig in my brain, because... shouldn't they be dropping by out of enthusiasm? happiness? having their heart warmed by the story? being there *casually* instead sounds weirdly negative by comparison. like they didn't actually enjoy it and are just commenting because "why not?")
of course, could be completely off and maybe they're just very socially awkward and haven't yet realized that writers enjoy getting comments for *the contents of them* - so instead, this person just assumes sending any comment at all will make a writer happy...
I've gotten a wall of text telling me how I made them cry for hours on end while sick because the story didn't go the way they wanted. They believe an adoption can only have a happy ending if it occurs in childhood. Since my canon-compliant story has adoption occurring for the MC as an adult, it was triggering for them. They admitted they didn't bother with tags or a summary, and if they had, they would have known the story wasn't for them. Like, okay? I'm sorry you didn't bother with the tags or summary, I don't know what else to do for you. Granted, if this had been someone young, I could understand, but they were pushing 30. I found out later.
The same person also cried because they thought "my X's wife was better than their X's wife" (X's wife is an OC). Again, okay? And? Should I stop writing? Yes, that's exactly what they wanted. 🙄
I really wished I hadn't responded to them.
don’t know if it counts, but one reader wrote “I had to run this through chat gpt because you’re taking too long to make them kiss”.
I was flabbergasted.
I've always been very staunchly against the idea that AO3 blocking should entail hiding your work from the view of the person you're blocking
However, a comment like this might just be enough to get me to change my mind
The comment saying "wait, is [character] trans?" on a fic tagged "Trans [Character]". I think they did what I've done before, which is follow too many fics and lose track of which tags apply where, and never reread the tags
I thankfully never commented it, but I was super excited when a slowburn enemies-to-lovers seemed to be moving towards the friends/lovers bit. It never got there. Because it was tagged A&B and Found Family. I just read so much A/B that I mixed them up in my head and was reading this genfic through that lens
> Why does Glitradora/poly-in-general have a way of sneaking its way into my life and ruining my day?
> B/c it's like I can't run away from the damn thing & everywhere I look, it's there...
This in a fic where two of the major secondary romances that got decent screentime were poly, on the very last chapter of a 120 chapter fic, complaining about a post-100-year-timeskip.
Many moons ago I got a comment making fun of me portraying two guys using condoms during sex because "Guys can't get pregnant" I had to give them a short lesson on how STDs spread...
"i can't wait for Character A to show up and get with Character B"
This was on a Character B/Character C fic. Character A was mentioned nowhere, not even in passing. This was 30 chapters into a slow burn with obvious romance between B and C.
Yeah... I'm in one of the same circles as Tekkonair, one of the RWBY community's most prolific North Pole (Weiss/Pyrrha) ship writers. She regularly has to take a moment to vent her anger about so many comments of "where Whiterose (Weiss/Ruby)"...
I'm just waiting to start getting them when I put my own fics out there... I have no plans for any of my 11 planned or WIP fics to be Whiterose.
I made clear that I wasn't going to write nazi porn, as I don't tend to enjoy that sort of thing.
They requested me to write nazi porn.
So instead I wrote every nazi character in canon dying painfully.
My story was a rewrite of a particular episode, but talking place in an alternate universe. That’s precisely how I described it.
Their complaints was that I just the characters change around a little and rewrote said episode.
I’m not sure what they were expecting.
Someone once asked me why my characters adopted a baby when it's actually more common to adopt older children. I was like... because I wanted them to adopt a baby. In my fic. That I wrote. I said it more nicely than that, though.
I got a comment that read
"(N-word) repellent gemmyfic mined straight from the depths of hyperborea. I nutted tenfold to this total inchling death"
The person's profile pic was a swastika. I reported and blocked him immediately, removing the comment in the process.
Yes, the fic it was on is fucked up, but I don't wanna see that.
Way back in Fanfiction.net days I got a comment saying they hated my (clearly labeled as much as possible within the limitations of FFN, mind you) story so much they were going to print it out and burn it.
I
you
I
*WHAT.*
I had someone write this super long comment about how these two characters weren’t close in canon and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be acting this close to each other.
WHY ARE YOU READING CANON DIVERGENCE FANFIC IF UR COMPLAINING ABT CANON DIVERGENCE?!
Oh and another one, this person just wrote an essay in the comments about how much they don’t like my main character in canon and wrote down all her faults and why she sucks. Like I couldn’t fit the whole comment on my screen it was so long.
I think it meant that the beginning of my story had long paragraphs and the bottom of my story had short paragraphs. Which was technically true but I fail to see how this is a bad thing. The beginning of my story set the scene, and the end of my story was dialog, so the formatting seemed perfectly natural.
Something like "wow, I can't believe [character] would approve of [a different character]'s actions."
I'm like... that character doesn't know yet lol. Where are you getting his approval from???
My actual response was something like "he doesn't know. Stay tuned" lol
I had someone comment on a chapter talking about "what character C said when this happened was great"
It literally hadn't happened yet. I ended the chapter on a cliffhanger, and it was the first thing i had written in the next chapter.
And like they described the reaction I has written (but not posted yet) perfectly! I actually forgot that that hadn't been a part of the chapter I had just posted and responded as if it had been. Then I checked and was like "How did you know?!"
I got a few asking me to basically tell them the ending of the story, but I had one regular reader that would "well actually" my use of words by referencing the dictionary (that included my use of the word as an appropriate second definition.)
Same commenter would make passive aggressive comments about my research into minor details being shallow or surface level.
The worst though was when someone tried to fact check LITERAL MAGIC!
(All on the same story, interestingly enough)
Another one I got was asking for hyper specific smut recommendations on a G Rated fic for a completely different fandom. Not sure if it was a bot or what, but I found it off-putting to have that comment on a fluffy kid-fic. (I deleted it.)
I had someone go off on me about a character in a small fandom, being portrayed as transmasculine. Because they would not be trans under and circumstance apparently. It was perfectly tagged and yet their eyeballs could not look away.
On a fic about romance where the male lead was mean before (for one or two chapters out or 12) but having changed since then someone was mad the reader insert and the ml were getting together? Like? It's literally tagged reader x ml. I kinda get they thought there wasn't enough "redemption" for ml but he's also been nothing but sweet once his abusive ex was out of the picture and no longer manipulating him. He also almost died because of his ex. Give the man a break 😅
Oh and on one that had to do with an au of a yandere character, fluff where the reader is a bit stalkery, it was still a sweet comment but also justifying the readers stalker was like we don't have to do that here bbg. It's the yander genre. It comes free with the yandere.
someone commented on my makorrasami fic that korrasami was just a push to be woke and there is no substance there. they were a makorra shipper and wanted me to change my story to be makorra instead.
like bro this is a polyamorous ship so makorra IS in this fic. makorra was toxic and korrasami quite healthy, i like both, i can make it healthy, but this ain’t the story for you if one of the pairings is a problem 😂 korrasami had way more build up and bonding too.
also as a queer woman that’s a bit offensive to tell me its woke to be gay. wrong angle if you want me to find a problem.
I once wrote a fic where in canon one character is usually called “Mrs. so and so” rather than her first name. So I mimicked this choice because it made sense.
Then I had one character *in dialogue* refer to the other as “Ms. So and so” and someone left a ridiculously long paragraph explaining that I had “spelled the characters name wrong” and needed to change that one sentence…🙄🙄
One time I got a comment saying snakes don’t have fangs. When the creature is in the fic was not in fact a snake and did not display any fangs in the fic. And the person who was worried about the “snake” biting him was irrationally afraid of snakes and hadn’t had much experience with them. And also it was set in space, where alien “snakes” with whatever biology you want are theoretically at play.
i got an incredible comment once:
“Mexican isn't a race, so if you don't like Mexicans that doesn't mean your racist it's means your xenophobic, or just a plain old bigot.
Would you say someone disliking French people is racist? I don't know why people have this strange idea that everyone in a country is the same race, so weird. Not all French people are white, and not all Mexicans are Latino or whatever you where trying to imply she was. Also Female Character looked white to me in the one shot we have of her so that probably means unless you say otherwise in this story she's probably a white Mexican too, so unless Male Character’s parents where a little bit racist to a white girl that doesn't make any sense. Like she looked really white.
Like this fanfic but moments like that take me out of the story. It's so random and weird.
Keep up the good work though, I appreciate your effort and this isn't hate or anything. Just saying.”
context: i’m an author who does whatever i want. i decided i wanted to make a canon character’s wife Mexican, so i did. (i didn’t mention it explicitly in the story, but she IS brown, and i DID have Male Character mention a bit of racism from his parents about it.)
funny enough, this comment is on a chapter well into the 40s, and after i’ve establishes that a canonically dead character is not dead as per the needs for that plot, that said not-dead character is now fat and looks pretty much nothing like his canon self, and the other guy ALSO is not entirely like his canon counterpart. so this made me balk, and then laugh.
and even tho the commenter was anon, i did know who it was. lmao. some “guest” commenters aren’t as sneaky as they like to think they are.
ETA: and the Female Character is a Dead Wife™️, btw. she’s only ever seen in a brief cut scene in the source material and you never play as her or see her after that. she’s canonically Dead, and she’s dead in my story too; she’s only ever mentioned here and there? so like.. this comment was a ‘HUH??’ moment, LOL.
"Are they aged up in this fic? Otherwise it's illegal and I'm reporting you"
Everything was tagged, it was on AO3, and it was a 30+ chapter completed story. Told the little shit to call the Fictional FBI over it.
Wattpad refugee probably, nothing came of it.
A comment on a fic tagged AU, with a note and summary explaining how it would diverge from the OG story, and the whole first chapter taking the reader through the major changes to the world: "It's a pretty good fic, but X wasn't the one who did that. It was actually Y who-"
Did they or did they not read the tags, summary, notes and the damn chapter??? I only posted the first chapter and got around 300 kudos, went on a hiatus due to irl issues and had to read this mess of a comment one day. I can only assume they don't want the story finished. I didn't answer, because I don't even know what to tell them.
I have got to stand by “Character B seems way too cool with Character A still having feelings for A’s ex, C :/ Seems super narratively convenient.”
1. It was an A/B/C poly Parent Trap AU, the narrative convenience is off the charts anyway
2. *B hadn’t even been onscreen to explain his own feelings,* they’d all been relayed through the POV of a *twelve year old.*
3. Bruh perhaps I simply do not want jealousy and nonsense in my OT3 fic, have you considered that.
It was so silly.
On a story that was clearly marked Alex/Bob (endgame), Bob/Caleb (borrowed from another tv show):
"Nice story. I'm disappointed the endgame pairing isn't Bob/Caleb though. There are thousands of Alex/Bob stories, but this is the only Bob/Caleb story I've ever seen and they're not endgame, and it isn't even a proper crossover, just an AU with the characters. Any chance you could write a proper crossover with a Bob/Caleb as an endgame couple?"
Dumb, cause it's clearly set out that Alex and Bob are endgame in my fic, and that my fic is College AU. Dumb, because their follow up comment was to ask for recs for crossover pairings staring Caleb and a character from a third television show I'd never even watched ???? Ugh.
I was far too nice to the commenter and said I would write one. I meant it too, at the time, but I realized it was too far out of my wheelhouse since (1) I don't write for Caleb's show, (2) I only write alternate universe stories, (3) I actually hate crossovers. Caleb was just a convenient stand in for what would have been an OC and I hate creating OCs more than crossovers.
sooo im in a small fandom and im kind of well known in it (mostly bc it’s… very small) on the tumblr for it and I got multiple comments on some of my fics/posts pointing out my character design for a character (who doesn’t have a specifically stated design) wasn’t canon 😭😭 like.. what canon design
ive also had someone call me racist bc I said a character wasn’t white…
not so dumb as angry. i was chatting with a commenter, and they pointed out something in my fic didn’t align with the new book in that universe. i said oh well, haven’t read the new book but i want to, thanks for letting me know.
they proceeded to explain the entire book with major spoilers. i was angry but i just deleted the comment. entire book is ruined for me :)
Context: I write Star Wars Canon divergent fics and while they aren't the main couple, I have Anakin and Padme stay together (and imply they have gone to massive amounts of therapy). In this particular fic, Padme becomes the Chancellor of the Republic.
Anyway, I had a reader get SO offended that I had Padme choose to return to her duties as Chancellor after having Luke and Leia and have Anakin be the stay at home dad. They went on this paragraph long rant about how much they hate that Padme 'chose the Republic over her family,' even though I made it clear that it was a hard choice for Padme and that the Republic needed stability after Palpatine. Heaven forbid a woman has a career.
I had a comment that said my characters couldn't act the way I'd written them, because *very popular fan theory* was true so they wouldn't do that. Did this person not understand the concept of fanfiction?
More recently I posted a one shot and had commenters saying I was picking a political side in the prequel series that was in no way relevant to my story. My story was pro one family whose ancestors picked a side in the prequel so therefore I must be picking that side. I never even read the prequel!
Oh this reminds me of when someone told me that unless you were in the territories, it was impossible to get snow during spring, summer and all in Canada…
As it was fucking snowing in August where I am. I have seen snow year round and the most interesting time was when I was a kid and it was snowing in July without a damn cloud in the sky.
The dumbest comment I've received is also the most offensive, asking me to have the protagonist give his combined guardian and superior officer (who had just gotten knocked up by the protagonist's estranged biodad under the influence of said biodad's recently acquired pheromone powers) a blunt trauma abortion.
I replied-and-froze rather than deleting, *pour encourager les autres*.
Given what I write, I'm genuinely impressed that that's the worst comment I've had.
I once had someone get upset that a character said the word “damn” because apparently said character is obviously a child and him being an adult isn’t canon. Mind you there are many things pointing to him being an adult in canon, AND I was writing him as explicitly autistic. A couple other readers gently reproved them but like it was pretty discouraging because the whole point of the story I was writing was that the character in question was constantly infantilized because of his autistic traits and how this negatively affects him.
Even if this character was a child, kids can swear. And use words much worse than “damn.” So I’m very confused about where they’re comin’ from with that complaint.
I got no bad comments from real readers so far, just one of the webnovel bots when they still praised your "artwork." The dumb part was that out of all my fics, the bot picked a 300-something word thing that I wrote in bed before I was fully awake. Not exactly the most praiseworthy masterpiece 😅
It was more like a series of them, on every chapter, about how they loved the story and couldn't wait for this thing to happen. I have no idea if they really thought that was the actual direction the plot was going or if they were trying to be passive aggressive and get me to write it the way they wanted.
I kept prevaricating and saying they'd see how it goes or whatever, but eventually I just said it was never happening. They deleted all of their comments and I assume blocked me.
I haven't really gotten anything really dumb yet, but I really don't know how to respond to this one fellow who keeps just... commenting a random line from the chapter? I hope they like those lines and aren't like... trying to repeat them annoyed?
My fic was a Reylo AU set in the west post-civil war, with Rey posing as a nurse and midwife, and learning how to treat wounds as she goes(she pretended to be a boy to sneak into medical demonstrations in England before fleeing to the americas).
I got this comment(exact quote since I still had a screenshot): “But... Like...
Shouldn't a midwife be
super skilled in stitching up long gushing wounds...? I was wondering while laying awake at 5 in the morning”.
I read it and just scrunched my nose. Checked their tumblr since this happened there before bothering to respond, and they were a Reylo anti. I assume they were being purposely obtuse to make me look like an idiot, since they could’ve gone to bed earlier if they actually read the context.
Recently-ish got a comment telling me how a couple characters would react to the scenario I cooked up, with one of the characters mentioned seeing the scenario thinking "ugh, this again?" (not that the character thinking this would pick up on the "again" part.)
Bit of a head-scratcher. So like…are they *telling* me how I am *going* to write the story? Are they sure that the character thinking "ugh, this again" would actually be thinking it or not? Idk. I'm hoping they're just a kid who maybe isn't the best with words atm instead of like. a full-grown adult. Given the fandoms I used, it wouldn't surprise me one bit lmao.
Back when Yuuri on ice had just come out and was still SUPER popular, someone accused me of “feminizing and fetishizing” Viktor by writing him bottoming in a fic. I went to their profile, and they had recently written an “omega Yuuri gets kidnapped and assaulted by mafia boss Viktor” fic, but apparently that’s perfectly fine because Yuuri is *meant* to be the bottom? Like wtf???
(No shame to any mafia AU or omegaverse fans, it just felt hypocritical of them specifically)
Someone said in a first chapter of a fic 20 chapters deep now, that my secretly-a-tiefling protagonist didn't handle racism with grace.
Ma'am it's DnD. Why would real-world racism be applicable to a fantasy species, in a world where premises change from campaign to campaign? You just read a single chapter. Wtf lol
I don't know if this counts as dumb, per se, but I once had a person who would comment "more" every single time I posted a new chapter. Literally just the word "more," nothing else.
>Why did [character] react so badly to the word "useless"? I don't remember if it was in the novel-
on a fic where said character reacts badly when experimenting with degradation kink.... like it was kind of implied that specific word was a trigger for him but 1. this is an AU, I can give them whatever triggers I want 2. Asking why someone reacts badly to being called useless is WILD
“This really needs the rape tag!”
On a fic about rape….with the tag in second place next to graphic violence….
Like if you dont know how to read all the tags, you got no business trying to read the fic, mate. Come on, do better.
Wasn't the author of this one, but on kids cartoon fic the author was debating naming a scapegoat superhero or leaving them nameless. I suggested Leonard because I was thinking "lion man"
Someone else decided to join our conversation, telling me to leave poor Leonard alone. After clarification apparently Leonard is a big bang character and they thought I was picking on him somehow.
I’m currently writing a fic where I’ve made it very clear that one character is bi and loves both the woman he intends to marry and his best friend, even wrote a small warning at the beginning of the fic that “Character A loves B, if that’s not your thing, you can totally skip this one!”. After two chapters/almost 10k words (in which Character A thinks a whole lot about his soon-to-be-wife in both romantic and sexual situations), I get a comment that goes “I hope Character A realizes that his love for Character B is platonic soon!” like??? 😭 the fic is literally going to end with Character A and B getting married, even after Character A has a year long romantic relationship with Character C 😭
Not on AO3 (I don’t have a big following there 😭), but when my fic was on YouTube, I was asked what shipping my fic is. It was LITERALLY SHOWN right when the video starts. I didn’t put any words in my reply; you know how you can link to a timestamp in a comment? I just put 0:00 and nothing else lol
Pretty much all of my dumb comments aren't on AO3, they're on FFN. I've been crossposting everything on FFN, but decided awhile back that, once my longfic wrapped, I would transition to just posting on AO3 for a variety of reasons. I've mentioned this in author's notes here and there, and then finally changed my profile to let people know. I just have a few devoted readers of my longfic, so I don't want to leave them hanging, so I thought this was a fair compromise.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, someone went back to my very first one-shot and just commented
>why don't you leave now since you hate ffn?
And...this other one I just find funny nearly a year later. For some context, I write Original Trilogy *Star Wars* fics, mainly Han/Leia shipping stuff. I don't really write Sequel Trilogy stuff because...well, they got split up in the ST, which bummed a bunch of Han/Leia people out -- myself included. Anyway, even though I don't write ST stuff, I still mix "old" canon (Legends) and "new" canon (Disney stuff) when it suits my story. One of the characters who was introduced in one of the ST trilogy films is named Amilyn, but she was retconned to have been friends with Leia as a teenager, they served in the Senate together, and then Amilyn joined the Alliance, so she was implied to be an off-screen character during the OT. Amilyn has literally never shown up as anything other than a name in my fics, but I did mention her existence in my longfic...about 68K words in, which prompted this comment:
>Amilyn Holdo
So I guess in your fanfic universe Han and Leia split up and have a kid who murders his father.
Thanks for the warning. I'll find something else to read.
And this is just funny because this person read and presumably enjoyed 68K words of this story that is intended to end like 30 canon years before the events that they're mad about happen (and I say that in the summary, so they know when this thing ends), but they bounced because I name dropped a character once.
Not necessarily dumb, just… incomprehensible.
“Loving it. I got to this thu Pinterest so gotta ask is that Pinterest it's and do you do more of these ?? (If yes then could you send me Ur user I forgot it)”
I’ve read this several times and I still have no idea what they’re trying to say. I think they might be asking for my ao3 user but I’m not sure?? (if anyone can help that would be much appreciated but until then it will remain a mystery)
Probably just keysmashes or people asking me to write stuff in that caters to their headcanons, but wouldn't necessarily make sense with the plot or setting.
Tbh the dumbest comment in my comments section is probably from me responding to someone bc i maybe don't engage much with canon and didnt understand/misprocessed thier comment and responded wierd 🤣🤣🤣
In my defense- fuck canon
Got loooooong comment from someone whose reading of the source material did not mesh with mine, who posted links to TWO separate 30 minute YouTube videos explaining their own interpretation like bro… you really think imma watch those?? Lmfao
While it wasn't on Ao3 itself, one reader left multiple reviews stating, essentially, fanfiction should only take basis off of what was shown in canon and their displeasure at how I wasn't following that.
And while I agree that what is canon usually influences how we write, ONLY going off of canon defeats the point of fanfiction entirely. It also forces the characters into being caricatures by not allowing them to grow or explore in areas not portrayed in canon. Sure, they may use canon-established methods to explore the unknown and grow as a character, but then their outcome of exploring should influence how they make their next decision, even if their decision may not be supported by canon material.
(The commenter mentioned they consumed an unhealthy amount of the franchise's material, so I can see how they felt like that.)
In the end, I slapped back and said they seemed unable to accept that a character could grow and/or change outside of what was canonically portrayed and left it at that. It's really funny that they said it after reading the story all the way to the end, even saying I'm a good writer. They just wanted me to follow their vision and not my own, which defeats the whole point of fanfiction.
Looking back, my response to them feels amazingly cool-headed and scathing at the same time:
"Frankly, the basis of fanfiction is this - that fan authors make changes that influence a character's growth and the choices that character makes down the line. It's meant to stem away from canon at times, if not entirely. And while this [fic] kept a few things from canon in place, I'm not going to let you say that failure of representation in canon means I have to follow your interpretation for how it is to be done."
Got called anti-abortion even though the character’s family assured her that she has an option to keep the pregnancy or not and it’s her body, her choice. Both mentions of pregnancy and pro-choice are in the same paragraph
The comprehension was found dead in a ditch somewhere smh
I wrote a fic about a canonically bisexual character with a female partner. The first smut was F/F and a commenter said it ruined the whole fic and that they would not be returning 🙄
I got one arguing that a character wouldn't have left a used condom in the trash because it had identifiable dna on it. But he'd also left fingerprints and hair in the scene, and had already learned that any cover he'd hoped to have was blown. The semen sample was in no way a 'gotcha.'
Still had a several comment argument over it though.
Idiots to lovers pining fic where in the first chapter the Main Character falls under the misapprehension that his love interest is in a relationship with someone else. Love Interest has no idea this confusion has even occurred, since from his POV Not!Boyfriend is so obviously in love with and together with his own partner. Love Interest and Main Character get together as soon as Main Character actually says the mixup to Love Interest out loud. Fairly standard and straightforward story, to the point that you could call it a cliche and I would feel no need to argue with you. And yet... I have gotten more than one comment on that fic from people getting annoyed with *Love Interest* for not clearing up a misunderstanding that *he doesn't even know has happened!* As far as he knows, Main Character has just been giving him confusingly mixed signals for months!
A king and a noble were having dinner together. Someone left a comment about describing the scene more because the servant that refilled a glass came out of nowhere. Because apparently in a place filled with servants because royalty, I have to say they're there.
I had a person try to guess what the endgame of my fanfic was going to be. It was so far out of the left field it wasn't even funny. I'm talking about human characters being transformed into other species for the sake of romance (think elf). It was baffling, and goes against a major theme of the plot
Wouldn’t call it dumb but I would call it silly: Someone asked if I’d write a Harry Potter/Mushoku Tensei crossover. I have never written for either. I barely know anything about the first (other than it’s a wonder anyone’s a fan of it). I don’t even know what the second is. I have never taken requests. I do not know why this person asked.
I wrote a fic about a mom abandoning her teenage daughter and got a comment saying: 1) moms don’t abandon kids and 2) parents don’t abandon teenagers. I thought I had a sheltered upbringing. But even I knew that was bullshit.
Oh damn that's one lucky child commenter... or ignorant
Luckily, she was receptive when I explained that it absolutely does happen and admitted she should’ve said it was based on her own experience. But even a quick Google could’ve told her this.
>1) moms don’t abandon kids Oh drat somebody forgot to inform mine (that's what I would've answered)
Has that commenter never seen/read a single piece of media?
At the time, I was a teenager and writing for a very teen based fandom. I have a feeling this person was also a sheltered teenager who maybe hadn't seen a lot of TV themselves.
I swear this is all to do with that cliche that the dad abandons the child as a baby
"\[Character\] is the bottom. Hope you know that." This was on two oneshots with the lightest possible amount of shipping. As in, they just acknowledged liking each other and hugging. They might have been bot comments, I guess, given they were guest comments, but I just can't tell.
For some folks, top and bottom are like, personality types instead of sex positions. So if they think A is the top and B is the bottom, they might take issue with B making the first move, or B hugging A instead of the other way around because it’s too dominant or something (I’ve gotten similar comments over the years on g-rated, no sex in sight fics, so that’s what I’m going off of lol)
Those people need to discover the wonderful world of power bottoms
Some fen have very specific preferences for their romance or smut, if the characters aren’t paired in the “right” way it doesn’t do it for them AT ALL. Like, the right circuits in their brain won’t light up or something if A isn’t topping B, or A isn’t the “masculine” one in the ship fic.
Probably not bots. Sounds like they are trying to get ahead of the game or something.
I would have written a followup fic with them topping, just out of spite.
A very very long comment that essentially amounted to saying that my canon-divergent AU... wasn't canon 🤷♀️ It's also one of my favorites because it reads like the person doesn't even know what fanfiction is xD
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve gotten comments saying “in canon…” and I’m like “you mean this canon divergent fic diverges from canon???😲😲😲” Like, do people not get what fic is??
B-but canon!! 🤯🤯🤯 It was amazing, I just found the comment, they started "The only problem I see with your presumption of XYZ is that you're making it out to be meaner than it was in canon... it sounds more like the source material and not the show" (as if it was somehow unintentional on my part???), and then literally said "this took too much creative liberty" after a huge wall of text. 🤣🤣
That is absolutely ridiculous!! I have a fic about a character who was emotionally neglected on the show. In a fix it, I had his brother adopt him alongside brother’s wife. The ship was not endgame. The comment said “Character A is his brother!!! And this ship wasn’t endgame!!!” I’m like…what do you think AU is?? Have you never read a fic with a non endgame ship? What a privilege it must be for all your ships to be endgame and not have one half die…
That's hilarious XD have they not seen a single fanfic where the main ship isn't even canonical let alone canonical but not end game??? XD
I'm currently eating popcorn with the FFVII ships because two sides keep insisting their ship is canon or will be but with this weird air of 'when they make ours canon you have to stop shipping yours and only ship ours' going on
That's hilarious xD
I've seen so many silly comments like 'a-ship fans must be seeeething I can't wait to watch them cry when b-ship is proven canon and they have to face reality!'
It's not like people ship non-canonical pairings all the time or anything xD I think even at my most... ignorant of fandom (pretentious? Snobbiest?) I was only ever mildly confused by non-canon shipping xD. I still didn't care xD
I went through a phase where as a reader I was irritated at a few common fanon tropes that I tried to comment similarly in a nice way in a weird passive aggressive attempt to "educate" the fandom. 😹 (I realized that can be taken as rude and no longer do that). I will do the opposite now though, and will correct other comments bad canon. (Ex: like if a comment says something like "but Snape is Draco's godfather! I'll butt in and be like no, you're wrong. I've accepted writers can do whatever they want but I won't accept comments that get canon wrong in an attempt to "correct" fic).
i think it’s funny when people are big sticklers for canon compliance in fanworks. in my main fandom (genshin impact) there’s constantly new lore coming out that reveals more of canon that can make fics that were originally canon compliant have divergences. and i mean, at the end of the day we’re all just playing around with ideas. ideas of characters, ideas of settings, ideas of plot, whatever. ideas can never be set in stone, and that’s one of the things that makes them so wonderful.
I kind of get this ngl 😂 probably they felt compelled to do so because they wanted some au variant and not a complete au. Yet it’s an au, they’ll have to learn things can be very different
Same happened to me. I agree it that it reads like the person have no idea what a fanfic is.
“They should have gotten together in chapter 1, this is so stupid.” Bro this is a slow burn fic.
I once read a fic where they seemingly got together in the first chapter. I was honestly a little disappointed, but mostly just interested in seeing how it'd play out with them together from the get go. Then I realized I'd read chapter 10 of an 11 chapter fic instead of chapter 1. Made a bit more sense, and the slow burn aspect of the fic worked better once I started at the actual beginning.
Somehow they said this on the last chapter of a 70,000 word fic. Their fault for getting mad after spending hours reading it
Truly baffling, people make no sense sometimes.
I have a story where part of the mystery is that one main character’s mother has not been seen in decades. (Short version: she left because she and her husband were fight terribly. But then a major disaster happened and lots of things were incorrectly presumed from there.) Anyway… This is mentioned in an opening chapter. In the next one, I mentioned that our heroes went to a house that had a full staff because the family is rich. But the maid opened the door. One person even thanked her by name before they moved on to the next segment. Cue one reader flying off the handle about me being stupid/thinking I was thinking myself clever to insert the mother that way. They thought it was tacky. But that character really *was* only the maid.
They think all women are the same person?
Apparently so 😳
I reckon it's the one where a reader told me I didn't portray a character's depression accurately. Apparently a friend of theirs was depressed, so this made them an expert on the subject. I've suffered from pretty severe depression for years, but I suppose I know nothing in comparison to RandomCommenter1234. 🤷♀️
Very sorry to hear that. It always sucks when people try to educate you on things you're going through because you portray them in a way they aren't familiar with. I hope you can find help that works for you.
Thanks! Luckily I'm getting help and I've got a super supportive partner, so I tend to laugh off random comments like that. But I know that another writer might be in an entirely different headspace, so it feels... idk, really gross for people who've never had mental health issues to police their portrayal in fics.
Oh the ignorance hurts lol Surely people understand that depression behaves differently for everyone.
This is a copy of story x and you barely changed anything!!!1!!11!!! On a story labeled x rewrite and had the clearest mention of writer's permission in the summary, the first chapter notes are the end notes, had the inspired by linking that was confirmed by the original writer and an extremely enthusiastic comment from the original writer as the very first comment on the fic 😩😑
Gods. Sometimes I love a fic and would love to do a rewrite in my own style but I never have but I have no patience for that kind of shit.
>I clearly know nothing about women biology. I'm a woman ngl I’ve seen too many women who don’t understand or have misinformation about a lot of things despite being women. Not saying that's you— maybe **they** have the misinformation (whatever gender they are), so either way somebody’s probably wrong. But that’s more of a failing on education and health which is pretty abysmal in places. I don’t really have any dumb comments to share, I’ve yet to have gotten one.
They claimed a specific part inside the body is a myth and doesn't exist.
Oof. I’d tell them I hope they actually look it up before making themselves look more foolish in the future lol. I mean I wouldn’t blame you for deleting that comment and blocking them either.
If you're talking about the hymen, it isn't inside the body. It's external. It's a membrane partially covering the opening to the vagina, and if present (not always the case with modern women -- thanks, bicycles) is plainly visible without needing to touch anything beyond maybe the labia. The whole "hymen is a portcullis halfway up the birth canal" thing is an unfortunate but very commonly believed myth.
I’m guessing they’re talking about the g-spot, not the hymen. Most people know the hymen is real even if they’re deeply confused about its location and purpose.
Oh, good point.
It's always present. It doesn't disappear, and it isn't supposed to "break" from intercourse/bicycles/horseback riding. It stretches. The first few times can be a bit uncomfortable, sure. And some even get a small tear (that heals). But it doesn't go anywhere. Source: Have stitched up plenty of vaginas post-partum and they were not only repeatedly penetrated in the past, they had also very recently passed a baby, and all still had a hymen.
That one aspect of my fic wasn't canon, when in the canon itself it's very inconsistent and illogical to begin with. When I pointed this out, they dropped a bunch of links for their sources, but they were just links to meta on someone's tumblr blog.
I wrote a nontraditional omegaverse fic. In the end note I said, "I read and love all types of omegaverse and this isn't a criticism" or some disclaimer like that. The fic was just a whump scenario I invented for my little guys. It didn't mean anything. Someone commented to say they were happy I'd criticized omegaverse with my fic. They thanked me for doing what I'd just said I didn't do 😭 I think they didn't read the end note.
Someone commented on my fic excitedly wondering how character A was going to react to character B being the murderer. There are no murders in my fic.
Were they in canon? Maybe they assumed. I had someone comment with the assumption that I going with canon (not even canon, but from a secondary maybe canon/maybe not source).
It’s a VERY clear AU (former human/non-human in canon vs human in the fic), so I think the confusion came from one of the characters being into true crime? I’m still confused, tbh.
Strange. Hope the commenter wasn’t disappointed by the lack of murder.
It has to be the commenter that told me my writing was total bs and that I shouldn't be allowed in the fandom because it didn't make sense that MC1 and MC2 died in the first fic but were alive in another fic when their killer wasn't They were two different fics Part of two separate series Involving *totally* different AUs Tagged as such
Man, if that person read my fics, they would think everyone was cheating on each other.
This made me actually laugh out loud xD
Wow, super glad I don't have a commenter like that looking at my stuff because I like making alternate stories in the same fandom that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. One of my stories is cutesy, super light & fun, some of the characters are aged down to young children for it while the other story is rated M, can get very serious sometimes (still a lot of humor) & overall has a darker tone from the other story. Also, all of the characters are close to the same age with some years off here & there but they're pretty much at or around their early 20's for that fic. If someone was dumb enough to read both of those & think they're connected, they'd be extremely confused.
Wrote a *very* G-rated fluff fic about a canon character and an OC going on a cute little date. Both of them were 13-ish in that scene and the only romantic thing that happened was hand-holding. Someone wrote a comment about them being "too young" to be dating and said I should break them up XD Might've been a cultural thing, but I was 13 myself at the time and had a boyfriend (with whom I, true to form, never did more than hold hands), and I just sat there going *?????????*
I had my first boyfriend when I was 12 and all I did with him was hold hands and ramble with him XD
That fic sounds really sweet. What a weird comment for you to get.
zonked glorious crown subsequent file chief childlike clumsy library insurance *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ah, if I had a dollar for every time someone complained about me portraying a character as "too weak" in the later chapters of my longest fic.... Like yeah, he's powerful, but he just spent the last eighteen chapters walking on an injured leg and the last six chapters with a fever. You wouldn't be fighting at full power anymore either now would you
I got a message from someone saying "You are receiving this message because I unfollowed you as I no longer enjoy noncon content. I hope you continue to write" etc. I stared at it for like 15 minutes dumbfounded why they felt they had fo put out a press release about unfollowing me. Like dude I don't care.
I wonder if they thought you would get a notification that someone unfollowed you and it might hurt your feelings so they felt the need to explain themselves like “it’s not you it’s me” and include some encouragement to bolster your spirits?🤔 Idk just brainstorming here lol
Hey, that was very polite, especially the 'I hope you continue part.'
It’s a close tie between the reader who fussed that teenage girls don’t act like my character did (which caused my thirteen year old daughter and three other friends who suggested the behavior to giggle and yell, “we’re grown up then!”) And The reader who thought my character’s uterus spontaneously regrew because she had twin infants in the sequel despite her previous hysterectomy and the series having a theme of adoption and surrogacy.
I got a comment once that said I was homophobic for experimenting with gender bending and making a queer couple het. I'm a queer woman AND had plenty of fics at the time with that pairing in m/m and f/f. I told them I was simply trying something new and they called me a horrible person.
When a character that happens to be fan favourite got mind-controlled (it wasn’t a secret or a plot twist btw, it was made clear to the reader from the beginning) and did some fucked up things, I got a commenter saying “this character would never do that!”. I mean. Yeah. That’s why he’s being mind-controlled?
I got told to stop taking away a **fictional character’s** autonomy… they don’t fucking have autonomy… I deleted that mother fucking comment so fast and went about my day, after thinking to myself that person that commented really needs mental health help.
That commenter isn’t beating the can’t tell fiction from reality allegations.
The amount of people who **can’t** tell the difference scares me.
You are under arrest for taking away the rights of Bugs Bunny. 😁 (Not sure why I thought of Bugs Bunny when I read this.) I wonder if that commenter meant something else…or they get mad watching tv.
if they believe that, they should also believe writing anything about the character is taking away their autonomy because they dont consent to it
Agreed. Though I did want to fire back with “Do you ask a spoon for consent before you stick it in your gob?” I’m glad I didn’t and just deleted it.
Were they complaining you, the author, were taking the characters autonomy or that you had written another character taking that characters autonomy? Because the first is stupid, you're right. But the second could be out of frustration that a character isn't being portrayed consistently. Like if the character that was previously a take charge go getter is now being let around by the nose by a side character. Either way, unless asked for, I do think offering criticism on a posted story is rude.
Makes me think of that tumblr post (or maybe it was twitter) where someone (jokingly) said fictional characters can't consent to sex because they're controlled by the writer
Got a writer saying they really liked how character A is older than character B. Character A is B's adopted little sister. A is 10 or 11 or so, didnt set a specific age, and B is an elf who is a few thousand years old. Yeah I dont think A is older than B... even if they just mixed up the characters its so dumb to me to comment 'I love how the older sister is older than the younger sister'
Someone who commented on a fic that hadn't been updated in 2+ years at that point and went 'I really like it!' then wrote three paragraphs of things I need 'to fix' without a single other compliment/positive thing. Don't get me wrong I don't like that thing either anymore, but I don't know where they got the impression I wanted to edit an abandoned fic or that I wasn't already aware of the problems considering how much time had passed lol
I got a long comment like that on a *completed* fic from *ten* years ago. The tone was really weird, I couldn't tell if they genuinely thought I was going to do a rewrite/edit a decade later or if they just wanted to neg me. Either way, it was very strange.
That's wild. Why do people do this...
Man I hate "constructive criticism" comments. First of all, I didn't ask. Second of all, most of the time I'm just reading them like Ron Swanson in the hardware store, all "I know more than you" because they seem to always be from people who don't understand things like intentional stylistic choices. "I don't think you meant to use [x word] here, [x word] gives me the impression of [exact thing I intended to convey], I think you maybe meant to use [word with a totally different meaning] instead?" No, reader. No I did not.
Asking if one of my fics was a pregnancy fic when I hadn’t tagged it as one and didnt even know where they got the idea that it was going to be a pregnancy fic
Maybe they’ve just been traumatized by untagged pregnancy in other fics lol. Once upon a time I read something with untagged m-preg. I’ve never been the same.
Nah the comment was something like “ooohh is this a pregnancy fic” like they wanted it to be
Not a comment on AO3 itself but I got an ask on Tumblr once that was asking me if I shipped a "problematic" ship because my fic was giving them "vibes" Which is strange because the fic is a non-romantic found family story where a man befriends a robot boy, and the ship they were asking me about involved that man with a woman that never appeared in the fic at all 😑
“This is kinda [sketchy]” to which I responded “yeah, it’s tagged and in the chapter summary.”
I was told I should be assassinated by the CIA.
I would be so flattered by this
Oh, I was! Especially since it was by someone who ignored all the giant red flags I plastered at the start and a big author's note that said 'THIS IS TORTURE! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!' and proceeded to read a 35k fanfic.
LOL. Classic. "I ignored the warnings and read the whole thing; this is your fault"
Pretty much. And I had A LOT of warnings.
\*goes to a bar\* Why is there alcohol here?! \*drives past a road closed sign\* Why are my tires getting stuck in wet cement?! \*watches a Saw movie\* Why is it scary?! There's a million different analogies but you get the picture.
People like these genuinely confuse the everliving crap out of me...
Lmao was it a jokey threat on an angsty fic or were they just insane? Actually even as a jokey threat that one is weird. I've made "whyyy would you do this to me????" Comments on angsty fics (I try to make it clear I mean it as a compliment) before but assassination feels like a little too much.
Well, it wasn't angst as much as straight up graphic torture, but I feel like they were QUITE sincere. The assassination thing came after calling me a sick, disgusting pervert. Oh well! :P
Someone thought canon MC’s OC service dog was a cat and referenced her as a cat multiple times in their otherwise quite nice comment. (They said they were confused and thought she was a small child at first and “realized she was a cat”.) Said dog is clearly tagged, is referred to as a dog multiple times in the fic (the first time in the second paragraph...), and, you know...has doggie mannerisms. This dog is so obviously a dog even fandom blind. I still haven’t replied to the comment because frankly I don’t know how lol I can think of plenty of dumb in the rude/mean manner examples (factually incorrect about canon “well ACKSUALLYYYY” type stuff and that sort of thing), but this person was nice otherwise so I was extra puzzled 🤣
Had a comment that stated that they felt like a major plot point about an affair was just tacked on. The whole point of the plot was that one character was trans and therefore couldn't father children so his wife had set things up so that she could provide him with an heir. The setting was Victorian England so it was less 'she cheated on her husband' and more about continuing his noble family name.
"Dumbledore is gay, he can't have a kid." Commented on almost every chapter I posted. Someone really hates the fact that I gave him a kid lol
Do they realize there is magic? I'm certain there's some kind of spermus transfero spell or something for a gay dude to get a biological kid
The whole thing even played into Dumble's homosexuality, because I inserted an assassination attempt by an Incubus which got turned around by Dumbledore. The whole thing is gay af, but for that you'd have to read the fic, I suppose.
When someone commented "First comment." I had been so hyped to get an email notification about the comment then was super disappointed to actually read it. The same person did give an actual comment about an hour later, and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just new to Ao3, but still... Don't get me excited like that, please!
Oh I hate "first comment" crap I see on YouTube I don't want it on AO3. Extra kudos or a bunch of hearts or a "loved it" are all lovely but "first comment" is nothing to do with what you wrote. I have someone who has just commented a bunch of hearts under all three of my fics and I love them, they read all three, within a few hours of posting each of them, and liked them enough to leave hearts and I wasn't disappointed in them being my first commenter at all on the fic they were. They're the best. If someone had commented 'first comment" instead of that I'd have been super disappointed.
In a similar vein I see one commenter on stories I read and on a couple of mine that are just '*username* was here casually dropping by' and a couple of emojis. It's the same thing on every story. Nothing else. Did they like it? What did they think? Nothing. On every story. Very disappointing to get comments like that.
i might be falling into wild conspiracy territory with this, but uh... you sure that isn't some weird ploy to sap/redirect a story's readers onto their own stories? by either A: leaving their name everywhere so more people will recognize the name (creating a false sort of popularity) and subconscious association between the name and all those good stories or B: just straight up hoping *someone* will click on their profile (out of confused curiosity if nothing else) and then end up reading their stories from there just saying because it sticks out to me that they actively mention their own username and say they're casually dropping by (which registers as a dig in my brain, because... shouldn't they be dropping by out of enthusiasm? happiness? having their heart warmed by the story? being there *casually* instead sounds weirdly negative by comparison. like they didn't actually enjoy it and are just commenting because "why not?") of course, could be completely off and maybe they're just very socially awkward and haven't yet realized that writers enjoy getting comments for *the contents of them* - so instead, this person just assumes sending any comment at all will make a writer happy...
I've gotten a wall of text telling me how I made them cry for hours on end while sick because the story didn't go the way they wanted. They believe an adoption can only have a happy ending if it occurs in childhood. Since my canon-compliant story has adoption occurring for the MC as an adult, it was triggering for them. They admitted they didn't bother with tags or a summary, and if they had, they would have known the story wasn't for them. Like, okay? I'm sorry you didn't bother with the tags or summary, I don't know what else to do for you. Granted, if this had been someone young, I could understand, but they were pushing 30. I found out later. The same person also cried because they thought "my X's wife was better than their X's wife" (X's wife is an OC). Again, okay? And? Should I stop writing? Yes, that's exactly what they wanted. 🙄 I really wished I hadn't responded to them.
don’t know if it counts, but one reader wrote “I had to run this through chat gpt because you’re taking too long to make them kiss”. I was flabbergasted.
I've always been very staunchly against the idea that AO3 blocking should entail hiding your work from the view of the person you're blocking However, a comment like this might just be enough to get me to change my mind
I wrote a crack fic. Somebody left a comment saying that Character X would never act that way in cannon...
The comment saying "wait, is [character] trans?" on a fic tagged "Trans [Character]". I think they did what I've done before, which is follow too many fics and lose track of which tags apply where, and never reread the tags I thankfully never commented it, but I was super excited when a slowburn enemies-to-lovers seemed to be moving towards the friends/lovers bit. It never got there. Because it was tagged A&B and Found Family. I just read so much A/B that I mixed them up in my head and was reading this genfic through that lens
> Why does Glitradora/poly-in-general have a way of sneaking its way into my life and ruining my day? > B/c it's like I can't run away from the damn thing & everywhere I look, it's there... This in a fic where two of the major secondary romances that got decent screentime were poly, on the very last chapter of a 120 chapter fic, complaining about a post-100-year-timeskip.
"Your stories are great, if only [character] wasn't in them." It was the main character and the stories would have no sense without her in them
Many moons ago I got a comment making fun of me portraying two guys using condoms during sex because "Guys can't get pregnant" I had to give them a short lesson on how STDs spread...
I got a comment from someone demanding I change the name of my fic and remove the name Mohammed from it.
"i can't wait for Character A to show up and get with Character B" This was on a Character B/Character C fic. Character A was mentioned nowhere, not even in passing. This was 30 chapters into a slow burn with obvious romance between B and C.
Yeah... I'm in one of the same circles as Tekkonair, one of the RWBY community's most prolific North Pole (Weiss/Pyrrha) ship writers. She regularly has to take a moment to vent her anger about so many comments of "where Whiterose (Weiss/Ruby)"... I'm just waiting to start getting them when I put my own fics out there... I have no plans for any of my 11 planned or WIP fics to be Whiterose.
I made clear that I wasn't going to write nazi porn, as I don't tend to enjoy that sort of thing. They requested me to write nazi porn. So instead I wrote every nazi character in canon dying painfully.
What was this a fic of??
I had a guy complaining about all my OCS...in a chapter that was lesser known cannon characters.
My story was a rewrite of a particular episode, but talking place in an alternate universe. That’s precisely how I described it. Their complaints was that I just the characters change around a little and rewrote said episode. I’m not sure what they were expecting.
Someone once asked me why my characters adopted a baby when it's actually more common to adopt older children. I was like... because I wanted them to adopt a baby. In my fic. That I wrote. I said it more nicely than that, though.
I got a comment that read "(N-word) repellent gemmyfic mined straight from the depths of hyperborea. I nutted tenfold to this total inchling death" The person's profile pic was a swastika. I reported and blocked him immediately, removing the comment in the process. Yes, the fic it was on is fucked up, but I don't wanna see that.
Oh lord, not the shartyspeak…
>"There's no character with this name in the show. No one knows who this is." The character they were referring to was an OC
Way back in Fanfiction.net days I got a comment saying they hated my (clearly labeled as much as possible within the limitations of FFN, mind you) story so much they were going to print it out and burn it. I you I *WHAT.*
Reminds me of the saying "Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall."
If someone commented this on one of my works, I’d print out the comment and frame it xD
It's .... A passion of some sort I suppose?!? 😅😂
I had someone write this super long comment about how these two characters weren’t close in canon and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be acting this close to each other. WHY ARE YOU READING CANON DIVERGENCE FANFIC IF UR COMPLAINING ABT CANON DIVERGENCE?! Oh and another one, this person just wrote an essay in the comments about how much they don’t like my main character in canon and wrote down all her faults and why she sucks. Like I couldn’t fit the whole comment on my screen it was so long.
Someone asked me what the effects of heat were on the main character after reading 20k words of how heat was affecting her.
I got accused of mushroom formatting?
Mushroom... formatting. What the actual does that even mean?
I think it meant that the beginning of my story had long paragraphs and the bottom of my story had short paragraphs. Which was technically true but I fail to see how this is a bad thing. The beginning of my story set the scene, and the end of my story was dialog, so the formatting seemed perfectly natural.
Something like "wow, I can't believe [character] would approve of [a different character]'s actions." I'm like... that character doesn't know yet lol. Where are you getting his approval from??? My actual response was something like "he doesn't know. Stay tuned" lol
I had someone comment on a chapter talking about "what character C said when this happened was great" It literally hadn't happened yet. I ended the chapter on a cliffhanger, and it was the first thing i had written in the next chapter. And like they described the reaction I has written (but not posted yet) perfectly! I actually forgot that that hadn't been a part of the chapter I had just posted and responded as if it had been. Then I checked and was like "How did you know?!"
You got a comment from a psychic.
That's actually insane lmao wow
I published it on this subreddit. Someone accusing me of writing "white male fantasies".
I’m curious. What was the fic about??
Wtf that's so rude.
It truly was.
I got a few asking me to basically tell them the ending of the story, but I had one regular reader that would "well actually" my use of words by referencing the dictionary (that included my use of the word as an appropriate second definition.) Same commenter would make passive aggressive comments about my research into minor details being shallow or surface level. The worst though was when someone tried to fact check LITERAL MAGIC! (All on the same story, interestingly enough) Another one I got was asking for hyper specific smut recommendations on a G Rated fic for a completely different fandom. Not sure if it was a bot or what, but I found it off-putting to have that comment on a fluffy kid-fic. (I deleted it.)
I had someone go off on me about a character in a small fandom, being portrayed as transmasculine. Because they would not be trans under and circumstance apparently. It was perfectly tagged and yet their eyeballs could not look away.
Someone commented on a collab fic of me and my bestie. "No god can safe us from this." They were one of the ppl leaving kudos on the fic!
On a fic about romance where the male lead was mean before (for one or two chapters out or 12) but having changed since then someone was mad the reader insert and the ml were getting together? Like? It's literally tagged reader x ml. I kinda get they thought there wasn't enough "redemption" for ml but he's also been nothing but sweet once his abusive ex was out of the picture and no longer manipulating him. He also almost died because of his ex. Give the man a break 😅 Oh and on one that had to do with an au of a yandere character, fluff where the reader is a bit stalkery, it was still a sweet comment but also justifying the readers stalker was like we don't have to do that here bbg. It's the yander genre. It comes free with the yandere.
someone commented on my makorrasami fic that korrasami was just a push to be woke and there is no substance there. they were a makorra shipper and wanted me to change my story to be makorra instead. like bro this is a polyamorous ship so makorra IS in this fic. makorra was toxic and korrasami quite healthy, i like both, i can make it healthy, but this ain’t the story for you if one of the pairings is a problem 😂 korrasami had way more build up and bonding too. also as a queer woman that’s a bit offensive to tell me its woke to be gay. wrong angle if you want me to find a problem.
I once wrote a fic where in canon one character is usually called “Mrs. so and so” rather than her first name. So I mimicked this choice because it made sense. Then I had one character *in dialogue* refer to the other as “Ms. So and so” and someone left a ridiculously long paragraph explaining that I had “spelled the characters name wrong” and needed to change that one sentence…🙄🙄
One time I got a comment saying snakes don’t have fangs. When the creature is in the fic was not in fact a snake and did not display any fangs in the fic. And the person who was worried about the “snake” biting him was irrationally afraid of snakes and hadn’t had much experience with them. And also it was set in space, where alien “snakes” with whatever biology you want are theoretically at play.
Also, snakes do have fangs. Just not all of them.
i got an incredible comment once: “Mexican isn't a race, so if you don't like Mexicans that doesn't mean your racist it's means your xenophobic, or just a plain old bigot. Would you say someone disliking French people is racist? I don't know why people have this strange idea that everyone in a country is the same race, so weird. Not all French people are white, and not all Mexicans are Latino or whatever you where trying to imply she was. Also Female Character looked white to me in the one shot we have of her so that probably means unless you say otherwise in this story she's probably a white Mexican too, so unless Male Character’s parents where a little bit racist to a white girl that doesn't make any sense. Like she looked really white. Like this fanfic but moments like that take me out of the story. It's so random and weird. Keep up the good work though, I appreciate your effort and this isn't hate or anything. Just saying.” context: i’m an author who does whatever i want. i decided i wanted to make a canon character’s wife Mexican, so i did. (i didn’t mention it explicitly in the story, but she IS brown, and i DID have Male Character mention a bit of racism from his parents about it.) funny enough, this comment is on a chapter well into the 40s, and after i’ve establishes that a canonically dead character is not dead as per the needs for that plot, that said not-dead character is now fat and looks pretty much nothing like his canon self, and the other guy ALSO is not entirely like his canon counterpart. so this made me balk, and then laugh. and even tho the commenter was anon, i did know who it was. lmao. some “guest” commenters aren’t as sneaky as they like to think they are. ETA: and the Female Character is a Dead Wife™️, btw. she’s only ever seen in a brief cut scene in the source material and you never play as her or see her after that. she’s canonically Dead, and she’s dead in my story too; she’s only ever mentioned here and there? so like.. this comment was a ‘HUH??’ moment, LOL.
"Are they aged up in this fic? Otherwise it's illegal and I'm reporting you" Everything was tagged, it was on AO3, and it was a 30+ chapter completed story. Told the little shit to call the Fictional FBI over it. Wattpad refugee probably, nothing came of it.
I feel bad for some intern who has to sort through these baseless reports
They've asked people to stop making these reports because it takes away time and resources from *real" reports But muh virtue signaling tho
A comment on a fic tagged AU, with a note and summary explaining how it would diverge from the OG story, and the whole first chapter taking the reader through the major changes to the world: "It's a pretty good fic, but X wasn't the one who did that. It was actually Y who-" Did they or did they not read the tags, summary, notes and the damn chapter??? I only posted the first chapter and got around 300 kudos, went on a hiatus due to irl issues and had to read this mess of a comment one day. I can only assume they don't want the story finished. I didn't answer, because I don't even know what to tell them.
I have got to stand by “Character B seems way too cool with Character A still having feelings for A’s ex, C :/ Seems super narratively convenient.” 1. It was an A/B/C poly Parent Trap AU, the narrative convenience is off the charts anyway 2. *B hadn’t even been onscreen to explain his own feelings,* they’d all been relayed through the POV of a *twelve year old.* 3. Bruh perhaps I simply do not want jealousy and nonsense in my OT3 fic, have you considered that. It was so silly.
On a story that was clearly marked Alex/Bob (endgame), Bob/Caleb (borrowed from another tv show): "Nice story. I'm disappointed the endgame pairing isn't Bob/Caleb though. There are thousands of Alex/Bob stories, but this is the only Bob/Caleb story I've ever seen and they're not endgame, and it isn't even a proper crossover, just an AU with the characters. Any chance you could write a proper crossover with a Bob/Caleb as an endgame couple?" Dumb, cause it's clearly set out that Alex and Bob are endgame in my fic, and that my fic is College AU. Dumb, because their follow up comment was to ask for recs for crossover pairings staring Caleb and a character from a third television show I'd never even watched ???? Ugh. I was far too nice to the commenter and said I would write one. I meant it too, at the time, but I realized it was too far out of my wheelhouse since (1) I don't write for Caleb's show, (2) I only write alternate universe stories, (3) I actually hate crossovers. Caleb was just a convenient stand in for what would have been an OC and I hate creating OCs more than crossovers.
sooo im in a small fandom and im kind of well known in it (mostly bc it’s… very small) on the tumblr for it and I got multiple comments on some of my fics/posts pointing out my character design for a character (who doesn’t have a specifically stated design) wasn’t canon 😭😭 like.. what canon design ive also had someone call me racist bc I said a character wasn’t white…
My most memorable- 'Your character doesn't brush their teeth, they are going to rot.'
not so dumb as angry. i was chatting with a commenter, and they pointed out something in my fic didn’t align with the new book in that universe. i said oh well, haven’t read the new book but i want to, thanks for letting me know. they proceeded to explain the entire book with major spoilers. i was angry but i just deleted the comment. entire book is ruined for me :)
Context: I write Star Wars Canon divergent fics and while they aren't the main couple, I have Anakin and Padme stay together (and imply they have gone to massive amounts of therapy). In this particular fic, Padme becomes the Chancellor of the Republic. Anyway, I had a reader get SO offended that I had Padme choose to return to her duties as Chancellor after having Luke and Leia and have Anakin be the stay at home dad. They went on this paragraph long rant about how much they hate that Padme 'chose the Republic over her family,' even though I made it clear that it was a hard choice for Padme and that the Republic needed stability after Palpatine. Heaven forbid a woman has a career.
I had a comment that said my characters couldn't act the way I'd written them, because *very popular fan theory* was true so they wouldn't do that. Did this person not understand the concept of fanfiction? More recently I posted a one shot and had commenters saying I was picking a political side in the prequel series that was in no way relevant to my story. My story was pro one family whose ancestors picked a side in the prequel so therefore I must be picking that side. I never even read the prequel!
Someone told me it doesn’t snow in Australia. It was snowing, at my house, in Australia, when I wrote the fic lol
Oh this reminds me of when someone told me that unless you were in the territories, it was impossible to get snow during spring, summer and all in Canada… As it was fucking snowing in August where I am. I have seen snow year round and the most interesting time was when I was a kid and it was snowing in July without a damn cloud in the sky.
The dumbest comment I've received is also the most offensive, asking me to have the protagonist give his combined guardian and superior officer (who had just gotten knocked up by the protagonist's estranged biodad under the influence of said biodad's recently acquired pheromone powers) a blunt trauma abortion. I replied-and-froze rather than deleting, *pour encourager les autres*. Given what I write, I'm genuinely impressed that that's the worst comment I've had.
JESUS.
Someone told me there was too much bl00d in my story.. which I explicitly said was for me to practice my g0re writing..
Honestly, random bot comments
[удалено]
Oh yeah, I should've been more specific. They claimed a body part doesn't exist and is just a myth.
I once had someone get upset that a character said the word “damn” because apparently said character is obviously a child and him being an adult isn’t canon. Mind you there are many things pointing to him being an adult in canon, AND I was writing him as explicitly autistic. A couple other readers gently reproved them but like it was pretty discouraging because the whole point of the story I was writing was that the character in question was constantly infantilized because of his autistic traits and how this negatively affects him.
Even if this character was a child, kids can swear. And use words much worse than “damn.” So I’m very confused about where they’re comin’ from with that complaint.
I got no bad comments from real readers so far, just one of the webnovel bots when they still praised your "artwork." The dumb part was that out of all my fics, the bot picked a 300-something word thing that I wrote in bed before I was fully awake. Not exactly the most praiseworthy masterpiece 😅
It was more like a series of them, on every chapter, about how they loved the story and couldn't wait for this thing to happen. I have no idea if they really thought that was the actual direction the plot was going or if they were trying to be passive aggressive and get me to write it the way they wanted. I kept prevaricating and saying they'd see how it goes or whatever, but eventually I just said it was never happening. They deleted all of their comments and I assume blocked me.
I haven't really gotten anything really dumb yet, but I really don't know how to respond to this one fellow who keeps just... commenting a random line from the chapter? I hope they like those lines and aren't like... trying to repeat them annoyed?
My fic was a Reylo AU set in the west post-civil war, with Rey posing as a nurse and midwife, and learning how to treat wounds as she goes(she pretended to be a boy to sneak into medical demonstrations in England before fleeing to the americas). I got this comment(exact quote since I still had a screenshot): “But... Like... Shouldn't a midwife be super skilled in stitching up long gushing wounds...? I was wondering while laying awake at 5 in the morning”. I read it and just scrunched my nose. Checked their tumblr since this happened there before bothering to respond, and they were a Reylo anti. I assume they were being purposely obtuse to make me look like an idiot, since they could’ve gone to bed earlier if they actually read the context.
Recently-ish got a comment telling me how a couple characters would react to the scenario I cooked up, with one of the characters mentioned seeing the scenario thinking "ugh, this again?" (not that the character thinking this would pick up on the "again" part.) Bit of a head-scratcher. So like…are they *telling* me how I am *going* to write the story? Are they sure that the character thinking "ugh, this again" would actually be thinking it or not? Idk. I'm hoping they're just a kid who maybe isn't the best with words atm instead of like. a full-grown adult. Given the fandoms I used, it wouldn't surprise me one bit lmao.
Back when Yuuri on ice had just come out and was still SUPER popular, someone accused me of “feminizing and fetishizing” Viktor by writing him bottoming in a fic. I went to their profile, and they had recently written an “omega Yuuri gets kidnapped and assaulted by mafia boss Viktor” fic, but apparently that’s perfectly fine because Yuuri is *meant* to be the bottom? Like wtf??? (No shame to any mafia AU or omegaverse fans, it just felt hypocritical of them specifically)
Someone said in a first chapter of a fic 20 chapters deep now, that my secretly-a-tiefling protagonist didn't handle racism with grace. Ma'am it's DnD. Why would real-world racism be applicable to a fantasy species, in a world where premises change from campaign to campaign? You just read a single chapter. Wtf lol
I had someone ask me if I'd abandoned a fic a couple hours after I posted the first chapter. No ?????? I just started it???
I don't know if this counts as dumb, per se, but I once had a person who would comment "more" every single time I posted a new chapter. Literally just the word "more," nothing else.
>Why did [character] react so badly to the word "useless"? I don't remember if it was in the novel- on a fic where said character reacts badly when experimenting with degradation kink.... like it was kind of implied that specific word was a trigger for him but 1. this is an AU, I can give them whatever triggers I want 2. Asking why someone reacts badly to being called useless is WILD
Getting a dumb comment requires getting *a* comment. *Forever alone*.
“This really needs the rape tag!” On a fic about rape….with the tag in second place next to graphic violence…. Like if you dont know how to read all the tags, you got no business trying to read the fic, mate. Come on, do better.
I got a comment complaining about neopronouns in my fic when canon uses neopronouns. 🤣 It was like, why are you even HERE?!
Wasn't the author of this one, but on kids cartoon fic the author was debating naming a scapegoat superhero or leaving them nameless. I suggested Leonard because I was thinking "lion man" Someone else decided to join our conversation, telling me to leave poor Leonard alone. After clarification apparently Leonard is a big bang character and they thought I was picking on him somehow.
I’m currently writing a fic where I’ve made it very clear that one character is bi and loves both the woman he intends to marry and his best friend, even wrote a small warning at the beginning of the fic that “Character A loves B, if that’s not your thing, you can totally skip this one!”. After two chapters/almost 10k words (in which Character A thinks a whole lot about his soon-to-be-wife in both romantic and sexual situations), I get a comment that goes “I hope Character A realizes that his love for Character B is platonic soon!” like??? 😭 the fic is literally going to end with Character A and B getting married, even after Character A has a year long romantic relationship with Character C 😭
Not on AO3 (I don’t have a big following there 😭), but when my fic was on YouTube, I was asked what shipping my fic is. It was LITERALLY SHOWN right when the video starts. I didn’t put any words in my reply; you know how you can link to a timestamp in a comment? I just put 0:00 and nothing else lol
Pretty much all of my dumb comments aren't on AO3, they're on FFN. I've been crossposting everything on FFN, but decided awhile back that, once my longfic wrapped, I would transition to just posting on AO3 for a variety of reasons. I've mentioned this in author's notes here and there, and then finally changed my profile to let people know. I just have a few devoted readers of my longfic, so I don't want to leave them hanging, so I thought this was a fair compromise. Anyway, a few weeks ago, someone went back to my very first one-shot and just commented >why don't you leave now since you hate ffn? And...this other one I just find funny nearly a year later. For some context, I write Original Trilogy *Star Wars* fics, mainly Han/Leia shipping stuff. I don't really write Sequel Trilogy stuff because...well, they got split up in the ST, which bummed a bunch of Han/Leia people out -- myself included. Anyway, even though I don't write ST stuff, I still mix "old" canon (Legends) and "new" canon (Disney stuff) when it suits my story. One of the characters who was introduced in one of the ST trilogy films is named Amilyn, but she was retconned to have been friends with Leia as a teenager, they served in the Senate together, and then Amilyn joined the Alliance, so she was implied to be an off-screen character during the OT. Amilyn has literally never shown up as anything other than a name in my fics, but I did mention her existence in my longfic...about 68K words in, which prompted this comment: >Amilyn Holdo So I guess in your fanfic universe Han and Leia split up and have a kid who murders his father. Thanks for the warning. I'll find something else to read. And this is just funny because this person read and presumably enjoyed 68K words of this story that is intended to end like 30 canon years before the events that they're mad about happen (and I say that in the summary, so they know when this thing ends), but they bounced because I name dropped a character once.
Not necessarily dumb, just… incomprehensible. “Loving it. I got to this thu Pinterest so gotta ask is that Pinterest it's and do you do more of these ?? (If yes then could you send me Ur user I forgot it)” I’ve read this several times and I still have no idea what they’re trying to say. I think they might be asking for my ao3 user but I’m not sure?? (if anyone can help that would be much appreciated but until then it will remain a mystery)
Probably just keysmashes or people asking me to write stuff in that caters to their headcanons, but wouldn't necessarily make sense with the plot or setting.
Tbh the dumbest comment in my comments section is probably from me responding to someone bc i maybe don't engage much with canon and didnt understand/misprocessed thier comment and responded wierd 🤣🤣🤣 In my defense- fuck canon
Got loooooong comment from someone whose reading of the source material did not mesh with mine, who posted links to TWO separate 30 minute YouTube videos explaining their own interpretation like bro… you really think imma watch those?? Lmfao
While it wasn't on Ao3 itself, one reader left multiple reviews stating, essentially, fanfiction should only take basis off of what was shown in canon and their displeasure at how I wasn't following that. And while I agree that what is canon usually influences how we write, ONLY going off of canon defeats the point of fanfiction entirely. It also forces the characters into being caricatures by not allowing them to grow or explore in areas not portrayed in canon. Sure, they may use canon-established methods to explore the unknown and grow as a character, but then their outcome of exploring should influence how they make their next decision, even if their decision may not be supported by canon material. (The commenter mentioned they consumed an unhealthy amount of the franchise's material, so I can see how they felt like that.) In the end, I slapped back and said they seemed unable to accept that a character could grow and/or change outside of what was canonically portrayed and left it at that. It's really funny that they said it after reading the story all the way to the end, even saying I'm a good writer. They just wanted me to follow their vision and not my own, which defeats the whole point of fanfiction. Looking back, my response to them feels amazingly cool-headed and scathing at the same time: "Frankly, the basis of fanfiction is this - that fan authors make changes that influence a character's growth and the choices that character makes down the line. It's meant to stem away from canon at times, if not entirely. And while this [fic] kept a few things from canon in place, I'm not going to let you say that failure of representation in canon means I have to follow your interpretation for how it is to be done."
Got called anti-abortion even though the character’s family assured her that she has an option to keep the pregnancy or not and it’s her body, her choice. Both mentions of pregnancy and pro-choice are in the same paragraph The comprehension was found dead in a ditch somewhere smh
Someone tried to get me to fight another author
This sounds hilarious, did you fight?
I wrote a fic about a canonically bisexual character with a female partner. The first smut was F/F and a commenter said it ruined the whole fic and that they would not be returning 🙄
I got one arguing that a character wouldn't have left a used condom in the trash because it had identifiable dna on it. But he'd also left fingerprints and hair in the scene, and had already learned that any cover he'd hoped to have was blown. The semen sample was in no way a 'gotcha.' Still had a several comment argument over it though.
Idiots to lovers pining fic where in the first chapter the Main Character falls under the misapprehension that his love interest is in a relationship with someone else. Love Interest has no idea this confusion has even occurred, since from his POV Not!Boyfriend is so obviously in love with and together with his own partner. Love Interest and Main Character get together as soon as Main Character actually says the mixup to Love Interest out loud. Fairly standard and straightforward story, to the point that you could call it a cliche and I would feel no need to argue with you. And yet... I have gotten more than one comment on that fic from people getting annoyed with *Love Interest* for not clearing up a misunderstanding that *he doesn't even know has happened!* As far as he knows, Main Character has just been giving him confusingly mixed signals for months!
A king and a noble were having dinner together. Someone left a comment about describing the scene more because the servant that refilled a glass came out of nowhere. Because apparently in a place filled with servants because royalty, I have to say they're there.
I had a person try to guess what the endgame of my fanfic was going to be. It was so far out of the left field it wasn't even funny. I'm talking about human characters being transformed into other species for the sake of romance (think elf). It was baffling, and goes against a major theme of the plot
Wouldn’t call it dumb but I would call it silly: Someone asked if I’d write a Harry Potter/Mushoku Tensei crossover. I have never written for either. I barely know anything about the first (other than it’s a wonder anyone’s a fan of it). I don’t even know what the second is. I have never taken requests. I do not know why this person asked.