September 2, 2025

Liner Notes #21: No, I Won't Tell You My AO3

Confession, however little of one this may be: I have an AO3 account, have had one for a long time, and have been in fandom since the mid 1990s. I have read and written plenty of fanfiction, and the last time I logged into my AO3 was today.

All right, now that that’s done with—I know many of you are shocked at this revelation—let’s talk about the hot trend that’s going on right now in capital-R romance: repackaged fanfiction.

It used to be that if we were going to take fanfic and try to publish it that we’d have to file the serial numbers off and give the fic a full Grease makeover. There are plenty of books out there whose authors have followed that path and plenty of books that have been dragged into existence via inspiration from another person’s IP (Fifty Shades of Grey is a blatant example). I don’t have any issue with this; what is creation if not iterating on something? What is creation if not “yes, and” or “no, but”?

However, we’ve entered a new era where it’s blatantly obvious from the marketing, the cover, and the author’s own admission that the book is fanfic with an Instagram filter on. And this for me raises several issues, many of which I have seen expressed by others in private but not in public.

Let’s put some cards on the table. First, I have enormous respect for fanfiction. I’m not only the fic club president. I’m also a client. Fic exists as an uncontrollable, feral, beautiful, transformational thing that has a necessary place in our discussions about media. People write fic for all sorts of reasons, and it’s in fanfiction that I have read some of the most moving, profound, and gorgeous writing.

(AO3 had a booth at WorldCon this year and I basically shrieked and ran over to them to gush over fic, then gleefully wrote a fic suggestion to put on their board. It’s Tanukiham’s The Other Hawke, a Dragon Age 2 fanfic that pairs Carver with Fenris, and if you have good taste, you’ll read it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/411741/chapters/683278)

The second card goes down now. Fic is open to anyone and everyone, which is what makes it so radical, but also, when you open your doors to everyone with the caveat of “the only requirement is your enthusiasm,” you get what you get. And this is where fanfic picks up its bad reputation, because when your baseline is enthusiasm and not any other metric, you’ll get bad writing along with the good and the mediocre. That’s fine. It’s fanfic. It’s about a creator’s love of the game. Also, I will defend My Immortal forever, as well as bad fanfic, because nothing has ever had me rolling on the floor cry-laughing the way bad fanfic has, and that’s worth real currency.

Third card down to complete the flop. Fanfic’s popularity has exploded. Maybe what we all did during lockdown was rediscover AO3, agents and editors included, and now fanfic has hit the mainstream the way nerdy shit like comics and Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons has hit the mainstream. It’s no longer taboo to love nerdy, geeky stuff, though I’d say it’s still a bit taboo to admit you read fanfic, which parallels how some people feel about admitting to reading romance.

Fanfic’s popularity and social media audience has people looking at it in a new way, one that’s got dollar signs attached to it. This is a problem and an affront to fic writers as fanfiction has always, always been created and consumed for free, and that position was only solidified further by Anne Rice’s tendency to “Je téléphone aux lawyers” and throw lawsuits at fans. Which, like, I can’t lie, has worked, thereby spawning millions of author’s notes and an entire fanfic culture shift.

Okay, we now survey the flop. Apologies for the poker references, since my husband has been playing Balatro and I’m refining a workshop on the Texas Hold’em structure that I made up some years ago. So, what do we do when publishing realizes that fanfics have hit it big, like Manacled, and that there’s a built-in audience for that specific fic and for that specific author? What do we do when fanfic hits BookTok and spawns entire Discords just to talk about an author’s works? We monetize, and to hell with copyright infringement! On the surface, this seems like a winning combination. Transform the fic into a book-shaped thing with just enough of a paint job to elude IP lawyers, especially the ones from the House of the Mouse, ???, then profit. Or, hell, don’t even put the paint on; better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. This has already worked. The accessibility of the books and their similarities to the IPs in question are undoubtedly a home run. Writers have picked up life-changing paychecks. I can’t be as mad as I want to be because— Have you seen the world lately? Get your money and run for it.

If you’re like, “What fandoms are you talking about?” I will point you toward Reylo (Kylo Ren and Rey from Star Wars), Finnpoe (Finn and Poe from Star Wars), and Dramione (Draco and Hermione from IP from She Who Must Not Be Named), with dramatic new appearances from BlackBonnet (Ed and Stede from Our Flag Means Death) as well as real person fiction in the Hozier and Paramore fandoms.

Now, if we had a thriving literary environment where these offerings would be available alongside others, including original romance, I wouldn’t be so sore. But these books feel like they’re everywhere, and when booksellers are looking to social media to see what they need to stock, the books continue to be everywhere. This is what publishing wants right now, and marketing is pushing so damn hard to get us to buy and read these books, leaving other authors to fend for themselves during a time when visibility, much less discoverability, is low. Add that to marketing/publicity personnel cuts at publishing houses and you get what we’ve got right now—an endless corporate chase for the next dollar absent of respect for the reader, the writer, and fanfiction itself, which I and many other writers of fanfic believe should remain free.

After seeing the nth iteration of fanfic-shaped book today, I got to wondering where that leaves original romance writers. Does publishing believe there’s a market for original romance out there? Stuff that pushes boundaries and is transgressive and genre-defining? Not every romance has to tick those boxes. It’d be exhausting if that were the case. But publishing sure isn’t acting like there’s a market for originals. It’s acting like premade books are the way to go. (Actually, there are a fair number of fic authors whose aim is to hit it huge with a fic, then transition to tradpub. Yes, that’s the strategy. Yes, it defies logic. Just write the book and query or write the book and save up for self-publishing.)

It’s incredibly disheartening to get an amazing idea and then realize the work you need to do just to pitch it is a barrier because you can’t encapsulate the pitch in tropes or ships. It’s incredibly disheartening to look for new romance only to find the biggest marketing pushes in the last year were for Dramione fics. On the fantasy side, it’s also disheartening to realize you can’t sell your [insert fantasy subgenre here] because the houses want romantasy and only romantasy, and not even mildly complicated romantasy. Romantasy that doesn’t make anyone feel too conflicted or attacked; romantasy that doesn’t invite interrogation; romantasy that does nothing but reinforce colonial and imperial models of power; romantasy that fucks, but don’t think about who you’re fucking, only that he’s tall, dark, and handsome and likes to growl, “Good girl.”

I honestly don’t know where we go from here. In America, the trend is to think less and less. It’s cool to eschew education and expertise. It’s cool to outsource your thinking to genAI. It’s easy to lose skill and hard to build it up, and so many people are not willing to do that work. Discipline is tough and doesn’t always come with rewards, after all. Product over process, which is antithetical to me both as an author and a Dalcrozian. I want to believe that we can be more complex, that we can find value in earnest criticism. I want to believe that I and other authors can sell the next book and make enough money to pay bills without having to take on a gajillion extra jobs.

Unfortunately, after WorldCon and talks with other authors, I’m not sure if the publishing system has enough under it to make good on its promises. It starts with publishing believing in its people and putting money and resources into its departments rather than spending it on integrating genAI or chasing virality. At least, I’m not sure if the publishing system has enough value to keep me invested in it. I have heard in the last week the same question repeated over and over: What is publishing doing to earn its 92%? If I earn 8% of a book’s value as the author, what is publishing doing that justifies them getting their 92%?

The answer has been, repeatedly, a lot of shrugging and helpless looks.

I’ve said to friends that my relationship with publishing has to be one where I am never in too deep. I need to be able to walk away at the drop of a hat. I’m under contract for the second book in the Consecrated duology, and I’ll deliver on that contract. The next one, though, I don’t know. Political romantasy is simply not hot right now, and it’ll take me years to write the fated lovers anyway, so that’s off the table. Humorous fantasy? Hard sell. Basketball romance? Mascot romance? A romance about rival contractors in Houston? Haaaaaa. And I refuse to turn my fics into a book; it’d be too much work and those fics need to exist solely as fics I wrote out of love and devotion. So, now what? What are our strategies here?

Jill Tew began releasing a book on her website for free last month. I’ve commended her bravery because it’s something I wish I could do, had I a book to release. But maybe that’s the next step: walk away, write on my own time, edit on my own time, then release with no expectations of earning money or garnering readership. Be able to say in the future that I dabbled as a novelist. Scream into the void as one traditionally has done. Or perhaps I start a free pop-up newsletter, subscription only, where I release draft chapters of a new book or a series of short stories. Or keep everything to myself, since I write to answer the questions I’ve raised. That way, at least, Anthropic can’t steal my shit.

Well, that’s heavy, so I’m going to pivot and pivot hard. ConCurrent Seattle was a success! No one caught Covid from it! WorldCon was— Well, I had a good time with my friends. I had to do some soul-searching about whether I’m willing to go to industry events and how suited I am for them (the answer is that I am very ill-suited). I’m taking up my own publicity torch since I am currently sans publicist. I may be lighting some other torches along the way now that ConCurrent has given me the confidence to say, “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself, then.” I engaged in free speech and protest at an AI narration booth at WorldCon. I took headshots for friends, spent a week and a half recovering from WorldCon at home, hit DragonCon, am now recovering from that before I move on to Armadillocon (schedule graphic will be at the bottom of the mailing letter).

And lastly, Hozier and I touched hands at his concert, which means I have been reborn and I am no longer the person I was before Thursday, August 14, 2025.

I hate leaving on a downer note. I was asked by a reader to write some words of affirmation for her book club last week, so I figure maybe I will include those words below. I’m the world’s worst cheerleader by virtue of being East Asian; I’m so sorry. I don’t do sappy or uplifting. Anger is a renewable resource and I tap it daily.

I made the mistake of opening social media today and getting a face full of news. I think this is something common to all of us in that we want to be up to date on what's going on with friends, family, and people who say or do funny/good/interesting things as well as what's going on in the world, but the problem is now we know things that we cannot unknow. Certainly, I do not wish to unknow someone's announcement of their new name and pronouns or that a dog was rated 14/10 on We Rate Dogs. But consuming news is like consuming days-old Jell-o salad. The flavor is still there, but everything else is soggy and terrible.

I don't really have any tried-and-true methods to get out of the funk, and I also don't believe in wrapping myself up in Styrofoam and ignoring what's around me. I've been asked if Elle is me, and she most emphatically is not. I could never do what she does. (I am probably most like Luc in the sense that I am seventeen anxieties in a trench coat, except for Luc, it's seventeen anxieties in a bespoke Savile Row suit.) Times like these, I try to escape into the things I know will always be good and always be there: Nature and music. Today, I've been listening to Hank Mobley's Soul Station and singing along, trying to learn every note. The vanda orchid I bought last year is blooming for the first time and I can finally see what color the flowers will be. The flower buds swell and unfurl with no mind paid to what's going on outside; they exist in a state of inevitability like the rest of the natural world. The sun rises and sets. Rains come and go. The ocean waves climb up and down the beach, and every day, flowers bloom.

The knowledge that the world will keep spinning and that Nature will always find a way to keep going is maybe a weird kind of assurance, but it's one I hold on to. No matter what we do to ourselves, for the next five billion years, our side of the earth will turn its face toward our neighborhood star and let the light chase off the darkness. Green things will sprout in the concrete. Plants and animals and everything else Linnaeus could imagine will go about their business with or without us. It turns out that life is the most tenacious motherfucker in existence. Each day we wake up and go forth and survive is a win. Each day we're alive is resistance. There's nothing we can do to stop the impulse of living now that this world has known it. And the best part of that is that we are here living together at the same time. We're trapped together, so we might as well have a face-to-face with our friends and have a good time and laugh ourselves silly.

Have I mentioned that I am not good at pep talks? Just ask my kids. I hew to an optimistic fatalism (remember: seventeen anxieties in a trench coat) that allows for joy while we're sinking in open water. But I think: Why put off joy for tomorrow when it can be had today and when sorrow is so easily gotten? Joy is work. Joy makes other people so mad. Do the thing that makes you happy with someone you get along with. The devil hates happy people, so spite him. Don't just spit in the devil's eye. Grin at him too, while you're at it.

Let me know how you’d like to get writing from me, if you have any ideas. I’ll see you on the B-side.

What I’ve been listening to:

• The Rogue Prince of Persia soundtrack, notable in that an actual Persian American composer, ASADI, is behind this and not, like, Stuart Chatwood (nothing against him, but I think it’s wonderful that someone living within the musical traditions of the Middle East finally gets to score a game about a prince from fantasy Persia)

• The Memory Hunters audiobook—it’s the only way I can reread what I wrote without wanting to hurl myself out the window. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

• Emperor of Sand, Mastodon. RIP Brent Hinds.

• Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, Hayley Williams