What's your IF take that would get the crowd throw tomatoes at you?

[solavellan]

Don't remember the name but it was a demo on itch.io about mc when out training finds some sort of dungeon where we find the first emperor who's an immortal and they were a half elf.

Oh wait i think i already know which one is this lol

 

[Serpent]

Omfg yes, this 100%. I’ve been into IF for almost 10 years now, but in the last 2–3 I’ve been reading less and less IFs exactly for this reason. I can show some grace, because a lot of writers start out in fanfiction and tbh that’s not a bad thing in itself. Some great and even popular writers came from that space. I mean hell I do too lmao. I’ve been writing as a hobby since I was a kid, and when I was a teenager, I was just as deep into various cringe fanfic and the big YA trends of the time.

But there’s a point where you’ve got to grow up and branch out, read things that aren’t just fanfic or the same handful of YA tropes. And to clarify, there's nothing wrong with reading those too, as long as it's not everything you consume. I haven't read YA books since I was a teenager, but I do still read fanfics on occasion, when the mood strikes me every now and then. However, your writing should grow as your reading habits do. What frustrates me is how a lot of newer IFs feel stuck in this narrow creative loop, where the same tone, tropes, and character dynamics just get recycled endlessly. And there's nothing inherently wrong with tropes, they're popular and tropes for a reason, but in these IFs, it feels like they're executed in the same way, every single time, there's nothing new or creative.

Even when I was a teenager, the YA landscape was full of pretty cringe stuff like The Maze Runner, Divergent, Hush Hush and slop like that, but idk the vibe still felt different somehow, I can't rlly explain it. There was more of a sense of authors trying to tell a story or explore a world, even if it was messy and still chasing whatever trend was popular at the time, which I guess was dystopian for the most part lol. Now, with Booktok and this flood of copy-paste "romantasy" and “dark romance” content with cringe protagonists, nonexistent plots and shadow daddy romance interests, everything feels hyper-commercialized and self-referential. It’s like people are writing with algorithmic instincts and trying to hit trend checkboxes instead of actually developing tone, atmosphere, pacing or even thinking about their own story on a deeper level. Smh I knew it was only a matter of time until the Booktok girlies made their way into the IF community

And yeah, this also brings me to my next point lol: I’ve def noticed how many of these authors are literally like 18 and fresh out of high school And that this is the reason the writing is so flawed for a lot of these newer IFs, bc they haven't even had that chance to evolve and grow yet since they're so young. Which is fine ig because some of them do have great ideas and mature writing. For example The Exile by Pheo, like I'm pretty sure he was quite young when he started it, but that one actually had strong writing and mood, shame it seems like it's never gonna get finished. But as a general rule, as someone in my mid-20s, I just can’t connect with stories that read like brainrot Booktok fanfic dressed up as IF, especially when romance is front and center, it just feels weird famLike I'm not even that old lmfao but sometimes I feel like the "old man yells at cloud" meme.

This whole rant prob sounds like gatekeeping younger writers which isn't my intent, it’s more that the overall vibe of the medium has shifted. I miss when IFs felt weirder, more distinct, more experimental. Now so many of them sound like they were written by the same person with the same handful of internet references and the same character archetypes, and it just feels creatively stagnant, that's why I've been sticking with a few older IFs I fell in love with a few years ago and patiently supporting them and waiting for updates haha.

And also lmao yes to your last point, I have pretty severe ADHD myself and even my writing feels less scattered than so many of these demos bro

TLDR: Something something Booktok slop and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

Adding my two cents here, but that's because they aren't authors at all. Not even casual writers, but they just like to read and have thought how cool and aesthetically it would be to be a writer, and yeah, you can't expect much from that.
It's the dark academia dream, and once they find out that it does not look like that, they dip. And the reason why it is scattered, and why they jump from topic to topic is because of some robotic writing, or sticking to the script. In chapter one, this this and this needs to happen, and that's why. Bad planning, is all

 

[Serpent]

Some IF that make mc useless with no skills, for example if a character of the same class or position as mc is good at fighting or politics or business and had training because of that background but the mc with the same background doesn't know how, or does have training but gets beat up on it half to death and only somehow holds on till another character arrives to help.
Like an if i read a while ago, the premise was about mc being a trained fighter to be on par with the very best... Got their **** beat up with punches because their mentor didn't teach them how to fight like that
And i know most character creation are just for being a word on the stats screen, but how does my very tall muscular mc get thrown to the ground by a short thin as a reed npc?

Ah, the usual wet blanket MC trope. Yeah, I don't know why writers do this. Hell, I think in that one IF, I think it's Dawn of Heroes, if you "cheat" and upgrade yourself to all hell, the game literally tells you that you're the strongest on the team, and yet you can't seem to be able to do ****, and instead your team does everything, while you're there just to somewhat help out. And don't even get me started on Unsupervised.
But my hot take would also be something that I've seen mentioned here, about choices not mattering for ****. Don't effect anything, and are just there to be there, so one could call it an IF instead of a novel. I think the games need details, and choices need to have consequences. It's the whole point of interactive fiction in the first place, to create a unique story of your own, and not just go through a linear thing from start to finish, where you can't deviate even a centimeter off to the side

 

[Serpent]

Oh, I got another one.
I saw this meme, and aside from it showing jjk in a very simplistic way I think it shows perfectly how many of the IFs are made. At least the ones where you can have powers, and such fantasy ones.
Like yeah, I get having cool characters. But do try to make the MC cool too, especially if they're supposed to be cool in the first place

 

[Zeus]

The Sword Of Rhivenia rewrite isn't that good, the way people talk about it you'd think it's one of the best IFs out there

 

[Gone_Dead]

The Sword Of Rhivenia rewrite isn't that good the way people talk about it you'd think it's one of the best IFs out there

Its not the best, but its good enough for me and thats plenty enough. It does get on my nerves sometime tho. Like when i have an MC with high combat, yet he loses to the lady knight during a spar. It was even worse in the old version, but atleast the author managed to fix stuff. Mostly.

 

[Zeus]

I like it but it's not nearly as good as people make it out to be, the writing is all over the place and the mc's choices and personality barely affect anything. And the relationships with the ros are done poorly, you choose what kind of route you want very early and then can't change it like with Clara