Desiderius Price

Technically, I just passed my first year on AFFnet at the moment.

I believe I had an account before that, but I didn’t use it or post anything. At least that I can remember anyway.

I stumbled into this, and realized… come April 5th, it’ll be a decade for me.  (Yes, I found the registration confirmation email in my inbox.)

I stumbled into this, and realized… come April 5th, it’ll be a decade for me.  (Yes, I found the registration confirmation email in my inbox.)

The forums won’t let me attach anything bigger than 7kB, insufficient for a screenshot.
When I go to my profile, before I click on anything else, middle right is a long list of my activity, that’s where I see the box with “Write a public message on your own feed...”.

I made 14 years as of October 2023.  

It turned to 13 years for me, in January.   And some five or six years that I’ve been serving as your inept forum moderator  

I stumbled into this, and realized… come April 5th, it’ll be a decade for me.  (Yes, I found the registration confirmation email in my inbox.)

While I see @BronxWench’s directions above, normally I go to my profile and do it there.   A prompt at the top of my activity feed reads “Write a public message on your own feed...”  Click there and it becomes an edit box where I can put in...whatever, hit “Submit Status” when done.  Now, it’s javascript making the change (prompt → edit window), so maybe that’s disabled?  I’m guessing a script/ad-blocker is fouling this up.   @Deadman, do you have something like U-block or no-script installed?
 
 

I stumbled into this, and realized… come April 5th, it’ll be a decade for me.  (Yes, I found the registration confirmation email in my inbox.)

43334

Dragons lay here because some authors are pretty fragile.  So, remember to butter it up if you start tossing in negatives, keeping those to one or two.

As an author that gets almost no reviews… an “Atta boy Love this!” would be GREAT.  Mentioning points you like, wonderful.  If there’s something you don’t… butter it up on both sides with what did work/loved, sandwich in the bad, so it doesn’t come off utterly negative.

Dragons lay here because some authors are pretty fragile.  So, remember to butter it up if you start tossing in negatives, keeping those to one or two.

Hi, @Desiderius Price and all.
To the all the above, I would add, “First, read the story.”  There are some readers “out there,” in multiple meanings of the phrase, who will pan a story over points that were covered in the story with crystal clarity had they only bothered to read it.
Otherwise, @WarrenTheConey’s key points are a very good start.  Keeping in mind that beta readers are scarcer than hen’s teeth, most fanfiction writers are having to figure out everything all on their own.  Any advice sincerely and honestly given will help the writer in posting a better story.
The “great story, keep posting” reviews are also nice, especially for longer stories.  While I don’t write for reviews, I also don’t turn my nose up at good reviews that only tell me that the reader is enjoying the story.
Cheers!

As an author that gets almost no reviews… an “Atta boy Love this!” would be GREAT.  Mentioning points you like, wonderful.  If there’s something you don’t… butter it up on both sides with what did work/loved, sandwich in the bad, so it doesn’t come off utterly negative.

I have a sneaking suspicion, that people aren't leaving reviews, because they don't know what they should say in them.
It's something that I asked myself about, when I wanted to leave a review on a story I enjoyed.
I didn't want to just say 'good job', and I also wanted to avoid saying 'this is bad' or 'good', without being as objective as I could be.
So, I sat down and thought about what things a reader and writer of fan-fiction, might want to know or should know, about a fan-fic.
With this in mind, I wrote down a list of things that I may or may not put in a review, depending on whether or not I think it should be said.
This is the list that I now use, when writing a review.
---
Was this story good or bad overall? Could you recommend the story? Give at least a vague reason or example as to why, it was good or bad for you.
Do the characters have, for the most part, 'clear' and 'reasonable' motivations that drive them to do what they are doing? If motives are in doubt, can you offer improvements to the motives of their characters?
Is the story too, out of place, to be believable in the 'cannon' of that 'universe'? If it does feel out of place, can you offer an improvement, so the story doesn't feel out of line with the 'cannon' of that 'universe'?
How is the wording and spelling? Is it difficult or easy to read through? If it is difficult to read through, can you offer a suggestion as to how the writer can improve on those?
Does the story's title, description and tags, give the reader a clear idea of what the story may be about, without, spoiling the story? Can you offer advice on how to make these more clear, without, spoiling the story?
What else, if anything, do you want the readers and/or the writer to know, about this story?
---
These are of course, things that I felt would be important in a review, for both a reader and writer.
I think this would be a good template for those who are looking to give an 'objective' review, but don't know where to start.
Of course I'm always eager to hear other's thoughts and perspectives on the matter, and on the template I now use.

To me, gender bending would be a step toward the characterization skills needed for original characters.  I’d suspect that an older abbreviation “OOC” (out-of-character or out-of-canon) would definitely fit this scenario, as gender bending is a specific modification of that canon character, but it’s still based on a canon character.  Some canon characters are...like a name only, so lots of fanfic writers take one of those and fill in the details.  Obviously, if I hit the random name generator, create all new details, and insert that, it’s an original character (and I’ve done that repeatedly with my fanfic where I need characters).

Readers reading the tags?  How quaint.

Readers reading the tags?  How quaint.

Hi, all.
To answer the original post first, I believe that you aren’t quite creating an original character from a “canon” character with a gender change, a change in “satisfaction” with the character’s birth gender, a change in the character’s sexual orientation, or a change in the character’s “sex drive” for lack of a better way to phrase it.  But, you are coming very close.
Unless you’re writing your fanfiction work entirely within the canon confines of a “serial” original work, you are of necessity writing an alternate universe.  So, there will be “changes” rolling about.  But some changes are far more significant, or potentially jarring than others.  So, as an author you need to alert the reader somehow that you’re making very major changes to the status quo from the very beginning, and that they might not necessarily like the changes that you’ve made.
Whether real human beings or fictional characters, we are far more than the sum of our gender, gender satisfaction, conventionality of expressing those, or the degree to which we seek to “perform” sexually.  However, all of those do shape us noticably as people, absent serious conscious effort to go contrary to our “natural” tendencies.  Thus, while you can portray Group Captain Jack Harkness as a genuine and absolute vow-following Catholic Priest, or Father Brown as an open and notorious cross-dressing sexual libertine, both characterizations would be far out-of-character when compared to their “original” counterparts, even if they would be “close enough” to get you sued by their “owners” if you tried to write about them for profit.  Even giving Father Brown a first name would be “Alternate Universe,” since G. K. Chesterton avoided ever giving his most profitable character a first name.  So, a story with either character would desperately need “content flags,” or whatever other means your publishing site(s) allow to not upset potential readers.  Some readers won’t like you out-of-character protagonists.  Others will adore them, and will read everything you write about them, provided that it is written well. 
Everyone else here has also made wonderful points.  Whether you’re placing an actual character behind what was in canon “just a name,” or whether you are changing a “near-core” trait of a major character, or even an actual core trait, you are having to (re)create that character, and sometimes out of whole cloth.  So long as you inform the reader up-front that you’re doing so, no harm is done.  And, if you do it well, then your readers will be pleased and entertained.  Even turning up a character’s sex drive to eleven or down to three-quarters is a noticeable change.
Fleshing out “just a name” characters can be more satisfying to the reader than completely inventing a new character.  But this still depends on fleshing out the character well.  Taking “mid-background” characters and fleshing them out without changing their (limited) appearance from canon can be even better.  And sometimes, the original content creator just wrote a character whose existence in canon is bat-shit insane; and “retconning” that character is actually a benefit to the reader.  An example of this that comes to mind is the “Fat Friar” from the Rowlingverse.
As far as that goes, if you weren’t changing anything in your story, then it wouldn’t be fanfiction – it would be plagiarism.  So, “laissez le bon temps rouler” and write away, changes and all.  If you make Petunia and Vernon Dursley so totally accepting of Harry Potter that Petunia magically receives and gives birth to Harry’s full-blooded younger sibling and five or six additional children with Vernon, and the blood wards make the entire Little Whinging housing estate extraordinarily fecund, then go ahead.  There is exactly such a story on “St. Elsewhere,” and it’s actually very good.
As a reader, I don’t like to be “surprised” by unexplained or “unadvertised” changes.  If I know about the “changes” going in, I might read (and possibly enjoy) the story anyway, or I might avoid it without feeling resentful, “cheated” or misled.  Of course, even being “advertised” up front, the changes still have to make some kind of sense, both in canon and in life itself.  So, odds are that I’m not going to read your gender-changed gender dysphoric full-Subcontinental Indian Harry Potter who grew up in rural South Carolina as an accordion and banjo prodigy who started Hogwarts at the age of sixteen, no matter how well you’ve written it.  But, there are plenty of readers who will read it if you’re up-front and honest about your changes.
As a writer, I try to make every effort to “warn” the reader if there are major changes to “canon” characters beforehand.  Even so, some readers are only marginally capable of reading, period; and on some occasions will leave reviews telling you just that.  Those readers will never be satisfied, no matter how well you’ve written your story.  However, I can in good conscience ignore those readers, since if they were actually capable of reading, they were warned.
Cheers!

That’s me adding an extra layer of complexity to a story

That’s me adding an extra layer of complexity to a story

Yeah, I wasn’t necessarily saying you shouldn’t. Just putting forward my view of the issue. For me, I write a lot in the Buffy fandom. It wouldn’t make sense to have the main character be a male character.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the gender bending as a plot point where a character was one gender and become another as part of the story. Mainly introducing a character from canon as a different gender.

Some people want to do the thought experiment, the “what if” the original author penned the character differently.  We all do this to some degree, there’s an innate amount that’s subconscious as we write a fanfiction.  It’s most definitely out-of-canon, however, I certainly won’t berate anybody for doing it.  Heck, even in canon, might be a genderless name that can go either direction (Zabini Blaise comes to mind from the potter universe).  And a “gender bender” could add in some serious considerations…like what if the Dursleys abused Harry bad enough (some accident) that they forcibly “transitioned” Harry to hide it?  Or, maybe after Cedric Diggory’s death (or Sirius’), Harry shows up to Hogwarts demanding to use the girls bathroom while wearing dresses (to cope)?

Some people want to do the thought experiment, the “what if” the original author penned the character differently.  We all do this to some degree, there’s an innate amount that’s subconscious as we write a fanfiction.  It’s most definitely out-of-canon, however, I certainly won’t berate anybody for doing it.  Heck, even in canon, might be a genderless name that can go either direction (Zabini Blaise comes to mind from the potter universe).  And a “gender bender” could add in some serious considerations…like what if the Dursleys abused Harry bad enough (some accident) that they forcibly “transitioned” Harry to hide it?  Or, maybe after Cedric Diggory’s death (or Sirius’), Harry shows up to Hogwarts demanding to use the girls bathroom while wearing dresses (to cope)?