I feel like I only ever come to Reddit to complain and vent, and for that, I apologize, but I need to yell this into the void.
My first serious fanfic, the one I poured my whole heart into, is a modern Southern Gothic. You don’t usually see that genre in the fandom I’m writing for, so when it started gaining traction, I was genuinely surprised. For a while, I was getting really kind comments and solid engagement.
My original plan was to write for a couple of weeks, take one week off, and repeat. My job is demanding, and I don’t have a fixed schedule, so my hours fluctuate a lot which often leaves me feeling brain-dead.
After the holidays earlier this year, I agreed to let an online friend beta read and help upload chapters for me. We were really tight. I’ve known this person for many years, since the Xbox 360 days. I’m talking MW2 lobbies and toxic Left 4 Dead/Unreal Tournament competitions, so the trust was there 100%.
They were really excited about the fic too, since they’re very loyal to the fandom. They’re actually the person who introduced me to both the fandom and fanfiction in the first place. (Naruto high school fics and everything)
Because I was working longer hours for a few straight months and genuinely did not have the energy for cleanup, I would email them the chapter and let them help with posting. I gave my okay for minor edits, like punctuation and grammar, and asked them to tell me f they recommended changing anything beyond that.
Then, like a lot of us dealing with spam/hate bots and general fandom weirdness, I started noticing a drop-off in engagement. It still seemed understandable. People have lives, jobs, school, and burnout, so I ignored it.
Well.
After chapter 12 of 85 went up, I had one of those “damn, did I really write this?” moments. I got a little giddy and decided to reread the fic from the beginning.
Fam, they made a ton of edits to the point that it felt like they had reformatted my entire story. The prose felt emotionally flat. The lyrical style I’d worked so hard on was almost completely gone. Some of the author’s notes had been changed to include stuff that made it sound like they had a possessive claim over the story.
AND, they forgot to remove comments in a couple of chapters that were AI/edits, it had random things like:
“My pick: Option 1 if you want to keep your full rhythm / Option 3 if you want it leaner and more brutal.”
I feel like a dumbass because this person was my longtime friend, and I had shared my login so they could help with posting. I did not expect large parts of my fic to be rewritten or altered until it no longer sounded like me.
That part is on me too. I had made a rule for myself that once I created a chapter, I would leave it alone so I wouldn’t fall into endless cycle of trying to change things up later. Because of that, I wasn’t checking the chapters they posted as I should have. Lesson learned.
I changed my password immediately before reaching out and letting them know that I no longer wanted to keep them as my beta reader anymore. You can imagine how it went. Yep! They got petty and started bashing me in fanfic groups and on TikTok, claiming that I was putting out AI-written fics out there. I already had the comment moderation on, but the amount of “AI slop” hate spreading around right now is crushing.
At this point, is it even worth defending myself? What proof would I even give someone that I’m not using an LLM? It feels like it would turn into a she said/he said type of deal.
Should I tap out and delete the fic, or should I keep going and let readers know what happened? Thankfully, I still have chapters 1–12 saved with my original writing and can restore it sure, but part of me feels like this has already cheated readers somehow, especially the ones who left really kind comments on chapters that may not have fully reflected my original work anymore. Something in me wonders if this is why the engagement just dropped or if it's all just coincidence with how atrocious fandom is all over too.
I know that at the end of the day, it's still a hobby and I control how I react to it. My brain is saying, shit, this don't pay your bills. Fuck it all.
But then again, I love what I created. I really do. Just that right now, I also kind of want to throw the whole 137k word thing away.
Sorry for the long near-midnight spiral.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻