Fainting. Why the fuck does it happen so often? I'm not talking about after losing liters of blood or getting punched by Hagrid, but fainting in response to something a functioning human being should be capable of coping with. Harry sees his dead parents? faints. Harry realizes he traveled in time? faints. A girl strips nude in front of Harry? faints.

I've never fainted once in my life, not even at the worst situations, and I'm hardly a bold Gryffindor. I don't know anyone who fainted, for that matter, unless it was in response to crushing a motorbike into a truck. Whenever I read about Harry fainting in a situation that doesn't include a grievous injury it just seems stupid and unrealistic, like a 19th century Victorian lady fainting in shock at hearing a swear word. Are you writing a 19th century Victorian lady, or are you writing a 90's action hero? because there's a pretty big fucking difference in their constitutions. Seeing it makes me want to close the tab violently and spitefully rate the story 1 stars.

(On second thought it seems that some authors just use it whenever they don't know how to end a wham scene, but that's just a whole new level of bad writing)

 

Just discovered a new one for myself. I saw someone (who, bafflingly enough, was otherwise a decent author) seriously use the word "thicc" (yes, that exact spelling) in their HP story, to describe a character's body. Not only was the word used, it was spoken aloud by a character who is supposed to be from early-90s Britain. I almost left a furious essay-comment on exactly how utterly butt-fucking retarded that was, but it was a several year old dead-fic, so it would have been thread necromancy. The only word that fits what I felt seeing that word used is "rage." It took real effort to not punch my screen.

 

Locking chapters for a fanfic behind a Patreon paywall, leaving the fanfic out of date on FFN or wherever, while those paying money to the author get to read the next chapter or two in advance. I sincerely wish such people would get leprosy.

 

A chapter? Latest Black’s resurgence story is like 20-30 chapters behind a “discord members only” library, which is in turn something like 20 chapters behind the patreon library, so 40-50 chapters total lol

 

Fanfic community: AO3 is amazing, because it allows you a detailed tagging of story so you can filter in/out precisely what you want to read.

AO3:

Spoiler: AO3

Category:
[Gen]
Relationships:
[Harry Potter & Ron Weasley], [Sirius Black & Harry Potter], [Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley], [Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter], [Sirius Black/Remus Lupin]
Additional Tags:
[Time Travel], [Crack], [Fluff], [Ron Weasley Is The Time Travelling Grandpa], [basically he's lived the same life again and again], [Time Loop], [draco likes corned beef sandwiches], [Humor], [Fix-It], [Chaos], [human disaster ron weasley], [POV Multiple], [Blaise Zabini is a Little Shit], [i love blaise zabini], [im here to brainwash you into liking ron], [pansy is a queen and draco is a princess that's all], [Ron Weasley-centric], [Anti-Snape], [apparently i need to add that tag but let's be honest it's just canon snape], [draco is like a distressed dramatic sad kitten], [Friendship], [Slytherin Harry Potter]

bold mine. Not even talking about the tags

 

Genuine question: how the fuck does this kind of shit not incur some kind of takedown, since he is getting money based off another person's IP?

 

The irony is that those tags completely prevent effective filtering. While FFN lets you tag only four main characters, writers on AO3 tag literally any fucking character that shows up in the story, no matter how briefly. Want to read a story that doesn't have Hermione Granger as one of the main players? well, you're fucked, because she'll be tagged regardless of how minor her role is. Just one of the deficiencies of this annoying website.

Anyway: Broom racing. Most boring sport I can think of, and authors always act like it’s so much better than Quidditch, which at least has some complexity, and isn’t utterly reliant on having the fastest broom model.

 

I believe it's because you're not paying for the fanfic.

You're paying for EARLY ACCESS to the fanfic. If you didn't ever give a single penny, you'd be able to read it. Later, but still.

Whether this would stand in court, I don't know. But it's popular amongst original fiction writers, and I suppose if it were phrased as "get access to my beta checking process", it's a badly disguised legal facade

 

If the creators cared it probably would quickly get taked down, but as is, there just isn't enough money involved for them to give a shit and potentially face backlash.

 

But this stuff isn't always about money. Copyright must be defended, else it may be considered to have been abandoned. I'm sure if one of those patreon fanfic operations got enough of the wrong kind of attention (like maybe an article in a big publication) swift legal action would follow regardless of the money involved.

 

That sounds like nonsense. I am reasonably sure George Martin claimed that to and there was nothing to it.

 

You're thinking of trademarks, not copyright. You have to defend the former, but not the latter. Nothing stops you from selectively enforcing it years down the line.

 

As I understand it, it's because Patreon technically isn't a site where you buy things, it's a site where you donate money to struggling artists whose work you like, and if they magnanimously choose to "gift" you with more of their work as a way of thanking you for your donation, well, that's not quite the same thing as you purchasing it. Of course, in practice that's all little more than a polite fiction, but it's one that the courts generally accept, because the law does not define gift exchanges as a form of commerce.

 

Flashbacks in the middle of scenes. Can those authors not plan ahead even a little bit? Can they not copy paste their flashback to before or after the scene? Do they have to staff a long flashback just at the point where it's required in order to explain some detail? It's distracting as fuck and just looks amateurish. Learn from LOST and put it at the start of the chapter or whatever. Or not. To be honest, flashbacks just suck, period.

Another peeve is Harry angsting over being a bad man who doesn't deserve friends or happiness because he's a ruthless Death Eater killing machine, or some stupid shit like that. It's so corny and overly dramatic. Who even thinks like that? Am I the only one who has absolutely no qualms with executing servants of a Dark Lord? Sure, Harry showed some guilty angst in canon, but fanfiction likes to exaggerate his survivor guilt to the level of a legit mental disability.

 

Aren't gifts subject to capital gains tax after a certain yearly threshold is passed? In Ireland I think you're allowed to get three grand free before they come in and charge you 33% on it, which is 13% higher than our regular tax rate. If Patreon donations are considered gifts, then people who rely on them are probably paying much higher rates of tax than people who have normal jobs.

 

It's not exactly the same here in the U.S., as far as I know. You can accrue up to several thousand dollars (the last I checked it was about $5,000, but that was 10 years ago, so it might have changed) of under-the-table income before you have to pay income taxes on it. Monetary gifts probably count toward that, but I'm not 100% sure.

Even if they do though, the Federal tax rate isn't particularly onerous (states can vary, but most aren't too bad either). You just report it on top of your regular income when you file your taxes, and pay the same rate you normally would on it. The only exception to that would be if your unofficial income put you over the threshold into the next tax bracket, in which case you'd have to pay the higher rate for every dollar above that bracket threshold.

Having never dealt with it myself, I honestly couldn't tell you where (or if) U.S. Capital Gains taxes come into it.

 

You guys have much lower tax rates in general either way, but I guess that it really depends on how Patreon donations are seen. I did some digging, and I think that they're just considered as a regular income, although there were a lot of questions about whether or not they're tax deductible.

 

The tax deductible questions were probably for the benefit of the donors, not the people receiving the donations. In the U.S., recorded charitable donations (among a few other types of expenses) can be deducted from the Federal income taxes you owe every year. Basically if you owe the government $2,000 but can prove you donated $1,200 to some charity or other, then you'll only owe the IRS the $800 difference.

 

Just a quick update/info - "When the Roses bloom" by Black's Resurgence has 49 chapters… I've just noticed on the Discord a message about patrons having reaching 100 chapters available.

 

What the fuck is this dragging on for 100 chapters? What is there to even write about so much? I say this as someone who has read up to the latest chapter on FFN.