Do you ever see a mediocre fic get really popular in a fandom just based on the author ran a semi-popular twitter account and it becomes kind of like a cult and nobody's allowed to say anything against that fic (not even that you're not interested in it) or the hoarde will come after you and the author even searches for indirects and sends their minions after people and you can't escape people talking about this fic no matter where you go and it's NOT EVEN THAT GOOD
MEDIOCRE FIC LIVEBLOG
OK starting out there’s a huge blurb about the author’s life choices and links to their socials before we even get to anything about the story... Definitely a good start
Is the basic premise that all of them work at Staples?
Chapter 1:
Maybe it’s because I’m not invested in this fandom but the characters don’t really read as separate people at this point. They don’t have specific “voices” or anything interesting that tells them apart. The prose is bland the way most prose on AO3 is bland.
The premise of all your faves working at Staples is... OK I guess?
I could read it very quickly because nothing interesting happened. Even though it’s a set-up exposition chapter meant to hook you, it didn’t hook me or tell me anything very new about teh characters, save that they work for Staples or are about to work for Staples.
The SPAG is not very bad so there’s that. It was very legible.
- OP
oh and the staples thing is because on of the people once said he worked at staples for a few days when he was a weed smoking teen and I guess that resonated with this person
So does this fic span the course of a few days? Why is it 14 chapters long???
- OP
no they said in the first author's note *exactly* how long it takes place for and how each chapter corresponds to a week of time or something
14 weeks?????? 14 weeks of this? I thought each chapter was like a day from how little stuff was happening
I will enjoy this in a cathartic way
Chapter 2:
Dear god author’s notes before the fic should not be this long. I feel like I’ve been transported to the early FFN era.
So last chapter they make a joke about the PMS section’s acronym but do not ever explain what the hell PMS stands for in the context of Staples. Because I am not a regular Staples customer nor have I ever worked there, this is annoying and obtuse. This acronym, completely unexplained, continues to be used in this chapter.
There are little setups for interesting stories to be told by the characters, which could give them some flavor, but instead of writing them, the author decides to say they couldnt come up with something. You’re not smooth!! I know you couldn’t come up with anything either, author!
I guess the POV switches between characters every chapter because of course it does.
The author is obviously going for the “2 characters hang out together and through their interactions we get to know their character and relationship with each other” but keeps doing the friendship equivalent of fading to black.
And then they spent an hour wasting time before getting back to work. OK but what did they do??? Why not even write that??? Why are you so afraid to write meaningful interactions between characters instead of little quips back and forth??
"keeps doing the friendship equivalent of fading to black." i love you
Chapter 3:
I thought as time went on the author’s notes would subside. Instead, they are only getting longer. Oh you’re trying to create suspense? How? By writing boring stuff and making the audience go “Oh it’s going to get better”?
Yet another “character establishing chapter”... Pity the characterization isn’t that interesting.
Our protagonists talk about starting a band. Some gay stuff happens between one of them and a side character like in last chapter, to kind of keep establishing that this is a slash fic. The job turns out to be seasonal.
The prose continues to be bland. This feels like the writing of a college freshman, if that makes any sense. Like someone who’s taking their mandatory writing course for the first time and focusing on making the prose not-bad instead of good. There is more excitement and character in the author’s notes than in the fic.
Maybe that’s why the author’s notes are so long.
Chapter 4:
I can’t keep commenting about the author’s notes. I don’t have the strength.
Out of nowhere, someone picks up the idea that Character A in the pairing has romantic designs on Character B. Genuinely didn’t see this coming from the writing because so far their interactions haven’t been close at all. Unless you count the offscreen time that’s happened and been alluded to. I’m writing Character A and Character B in part because I don’t want to spoil what fandom this is for other people, but also because it really just reads like 2 generic characters with little substance. A cookie cutter characterization trap many modern workplace AUs fall into.
Without the context of the original setting and relationships derived from that setting, the author has to work extra hard to make the characters recognizable and their relationships transposed in a meaningful way. It’s a challenge with all AU, the same way it’s going to be more work for the canon-setting writer to create new events that seem believable in the context of the original setting. But this extra work doesn’t seem to happen here.
For being a workplace AU, nobody seems to ever do work. This actually tracks pretty well with my ability to ever find a Staples worker in my time of need (trying to find a product in their stupidly reorganized layout) so this was funny. I’ll give the author that. It’s really capturing what I imagine to be the Staples Employee Experience. You just do fuck all for the whole day.
Jesus christ there’s a whole party they go to and it’s completely skipped over? All that happens is we read about the hangover the next day? What?
Why are you afraid of writing things that drive characterization and plot?
Sadly I am a big hater but I have the decency not to come into someone else’s web space and blast my meanie opinions directly into their inbox where they can’t avoid it. So like if I’m reviewing your fic directly to you I’ll put things more nicely
- OP
I am terrified of and long for feedback, because most of my friends when I ask them to help me just say they liked it and that's it. And I'm like. I know there's things I need to edit and fix please help me T_T lol
I love this liveblog you're so funny and I'm also really scared what you would say if you ever read one of my fics but I have to believe in myself that I'm better than /this/ :')