http://erebones.tumblr.com/post/177666664080/feedback-culture-has-rly-died-on-here-for-content
But some people do get mad at postive comments, if they’re not the “right kind”. Yes, people should leave comments/kudos in appreciation, but there’s been enough wank about comments that I understand why people sometimes don’t.
Kudos to fanfiction writers for writing about all the trauma and emotional and mental turmoil that the original content creators dont acknowledge when putting characters through hell
This has evolved to one of fanfiction’s major assets in my eyes. To every author that cares enough about the characters in their stories to examine trauma, but also the slow, tedious processes of healing and recovery: your stories mean so much to me and other persons with mental health problems. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Not to harsh on anyone, but there is original fiction out there that deals with trauma. Or are you just talking about tv shows? Because yeah, those don’t do long, drawn out trauma story-lines much at all. But that’s not all of original fiction.
Spoiler alert: I firmly belong to the not camp.
A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.
The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!
Hold up, what?
I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.
Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm.
Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it.
Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.
The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button.
Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.
Don’t ruin a stranger’s day or week or hobby because you “know better” and somehow think you need to prove it. You don’t.
A friend and I were scowling over that same post last night, and this is a much kinder response than the one that I started writing. I love and agree with 100% of what you’ve said here, but I’d like to go a step farther, because I think that fandom’s general evolution away from negative feedback is about more than just our amateur status. I always see the assumption in the pro-unsolicited-criticism camp that negative criticism is somehow the only thing that can ever help a writer improve, and I’ve always found that idea to be absolute horseshit. Hearing things that people liked about my work isn’t some kind of newfangled emotional safety feature that’s keeping my fandom babyhood intact, it’s genuinely helpful to me as a writer. Not only in the sense that it feels nice and makes me motivated to write more, but in the sense that it gives me specific information about how a reader responded to my work which I can then use to do an even more enjoyable job of engaging my fellow fans for fun the next time I write something. Friendly positive comments ARE constructive criticism!!
Also (and I’d love to get your perspective on this as an editor?) I’ve found that negative criticism tends to be very work-specific. It’s stuff like “don’t do this particular thing at this particular time,” or “I didn’t like that this specific character said this specific thing,” etc. That can be incredibly useful during the editing phase because it helps me polish a specific piece of writing. I can’t say enough good stuff about literally every editor and beta reader I’ve ever worked with, because each one of them made the stories they worked on stronger and more enjoyable, and they certainly didn’t limit themselves to unquestioning praise in their feedback.
Once I’ve posted (or published) a story, though, I am done editing it. I’m done fixing it, I’m done adjusting it, I’m probably done even thinking about it for at least a week. I mean, sure, if you spot a giant typo, fine, let me know, but someone telling me they didn’t like the pacing or that the characterization was all wrong or that my sentence structure didn’t fit the genre or whatever is absolutely useless, both to that particular work and to my writing as a whole. The thing is done. It’s built. Unless I have unwittingly perpetuated some kind of miserable bigotry or whatever, I am moving on to the next thing, which is very likely to be an entirely different thing. I’m genuinely sorry if a reader didn’t enjoy it, but for the love of the little baby jesus in the hay, why are they still wasting time on something they didn’t like when there’s an entire internet of other things out there for them to discover???
For whatever reason, positive notes about things I did right in a story are much easier for me to carry forward and apply to whatever I might work on next. Knowing that someone liked a scene or an idea or even a particular line tells me that all the various technical things I did to make that part of the story happen were successfully deployed. Knowing what I did right for readers lets me do it again, lets me build on it, lets me ponder new directions that I might go with whatever the thing was, even if I’m doing that in a completely different story or piece of writing.
So yeah, negative feedback on completed fic or published work that’s disguised as “constructive criticism” isn’t just kind of asshole-ish and antithetical to everything that fandom means to most of us, it also tends to be genuinely unhelpful in … basically every way. Especially when you compare it to how helpful a positive comment of the same duration and detail would have been, both to the writer’s relationship with their hobby and to their growth as an artist.
THIS IS SUCH A GREAT ADDITION TO MY POST! MAX KUDOS. I agree with (and love) everything you’ve said 100%.
I think something most people don’t realize is that an editor’s (and beta’s) job isn’t to tear a work to shreds; it shouldn’t revolve around negativity at all. Ideally, an editor works with an author to yes, fix errors, but mostly to read, observe, analyze, and ask questions the author (who is so close to the work) might not have thought about. The editor is trying to preemptively ask the questions a confused reader might ask, so the reader never has to ask them. Those answers then help the author clarify, polish, and further build their work into something even better. Absolutely work-specific.
“Once I’ve posted (or published) a story, though, I am done editing it. I’m done fixing it, I’m done adjusting it, I’m probably done even thinking about it for at least a week.”
This is probably why I am consistently baffled by the “concrit on fanfic is by its nature just mean” camp, honestly. The time when I post a story is the time when I’m most likely to be staring at it and therefore finding things to fix.
Hell, every time I publish a novel it’s eerie. “Shit. This is IN PRINT NOW. I can’t go back and rephrase that? Weird.”
…I mean I gather for other people this is weird and intimidating, and that’s totally okay, but for myself I like it. “This doesn’t have to Be Finished. I can tinker with it if I want. I don’t have to try to make it perfect and say ‘this is as close as I got’ the way I do with origfic. It’s mine and I can play with it forever.”
This. Also, for me, there’s the fact that critique can be used to make future works better. If several people point out a plot hole I created, for example, I know to be careful of those in the future.
I feel like 90% of what gets called “allyship” is just, like, being a loving person and listening to people’s needs
like, my boyfriend is unequivocally not the type of person to reblog “10 ways to support autistics” types of posts. he would probably make fun of that, actually. but he sure did get me out of that restaurant in five seconds flat when I went into sensory overload. and held me in a compression hug as we walked. I am still nonverbal and he is just lying here next to me and texting me that he loves me.
and it all makes me think of that one Mel Baggs post – how sometimes the people who save your life are the same people purity-minded activists would have you discard. my boyfriend is Problematic as fuck and he is also so loving and caring and gentle I could weep. this is not a contradiction because he is a person and people are allowed to contain multitudes
Upon further reflection, I think this is one of the reasons – possibly the main reason – so many disabled and neurodivergent people have Issues with social justice dictums. Our advocacy needs tend to be more personal than political. There’s an intimacy there that doesn’t necessarily translate to lists of ways to support X. As such, we are often in a better position to engage with our allies as *human beings* rather than as avatars of social change. If you trust someone enough to ask them to lie on top of you when you go nonverbal, or to help you into your wheelchair, or to change your catheter, there’s an inherent engagement with shared humanity there.
At that point, I can’t bring myself to care if they’re “challenging media portrayals of disabled people” or any of the other things such lists contain. They are caring for me in a far more direct and personally salient way. And I think a lot of nondisabled activists, having never relied on other people for such care, underestimate the importance of that. Their idea of advocacy is more abstract.
You know, this may be why I have such trouble with “don’t kill the gay characters in the tv show you’re writing.” Because… my experience is similar to yours, that these dictums don’t really lead to much in terms of creating or maintaining trust and hope. Like, I never see “well I’m disappointed in Voltron but here are my shows where the gays lived and why they’re precious to me.” I just… I don’t see progress, I guess.
Whereas I feel like… when i let people know about disability rights issues that are currently going on, I feel like I’m giving them an awareness. I get the sense that they’re generally appreciative, not scared, and I haven’t stopped them from expressing themselves even if the way they write about disabled people changes from reading my blog.
It’s just… weird. It feels so removed from real life, like this weird game of pool where if we change media it will ricochet just the right way into peoples brains and end homophobia and… i am bad at geometry but I am not sure that works. And I don’t think I should have to be good at geometry to fight for a better world.
Ok, but the fact that there aren’t a ton of shows where queer people live and have happy lives is maybe the point for them. I mean, yeah, there’s more shows with queer characters now than there used to be. And some of the people against the characters dying in a very Social Justice way. But a lot of people are just sick of watching characters they like and who are like them die. That’s why I got tired of the trend, anyway.
Queer characters not dying won’t end real life homophobia. I know this. I can still get tired of them dying a lot.
Bex is a fucking icon 🙏🏼
R E A L T E A ☕ ☕☕
okay you know what god help me I’m gonna wade into this discourse
if the show wasn’t dark and raw and real until a queer character got killed offscreen with no fanfare, then that’s not realism or rawness, it’s using a cheap and hurtful shortcut to make the show seem deep.
“not the queer content you wanted” would be far less of a problem if “the queer content you wanted” (i.e. queer characters in visual media who are openly identified as queer and either do not die or die at the same rate and with the same narrative seriousness as straight characters) was actually available elsewhere. right now it isn’t. show writers know this, if they’re doing their job right. it’s been publicly discussed. they don’t get to say “well, we have a dark and serious story to tell so we get a pass on criticism for killing a queer character” when every other writer called out for ‘burying their gays’ has used that exact excuse verbatim.
(i cannot emphasize enough that this IS NOT a personal criticism of bex taylor-klaus. just because i disagree with her statement does not mean i think she’s acting in bad faith or whatever. and frankly this show’s fans already have such a bad reputation for entitlement and having no boundaries that in that context I can understand why she’d react the way she is here. but fans in this instance aren’t wrong to be hurt, disappointed, and angry either. we’ve all been here before. we’ve all been here before several times a year.)
I don’t watch the show and hadn’t heard anyone died, just that Shiro had an exboyfriend and left that relationship. Voltron fans are notorious for feeling like their ship has to be endgame, so I figured it was about who he dated or something. (And I gather he has clones? So there’s another gay even if it was him that died?)
The whole thing about gay characters dying is weird to me. As a gay person and a writer, I’m troubled by an idea that reads sometimes to me like “we don’t die” or “we have to be happy.”
I get that there was, not all that long ago, an unwritten rule that said that in order to so much as get published, you had to write tragic queer stories. I get that many of us grew up seeing and knowing that, hell queer presses exist that forbid unhappy endings!
But for me, as a person who’s experienced trauma, I feel like Invincible Gays is selling me something. You’ll be happy because you’re bi. Wlw have great lives.
And yeah, I… my experiences with the community haven’t really been like that. Most people are cool. But there’s a very large group of people, very often kids, who are so angry that they… shame you if you don’t be like them. It’s not all sunshine.
So… yes, more gay happy endings. But… sometimes I wish the people who need them would go find them instead of yelling at the Improper Gays who let straights (is everyone on that writers room het? Do we know this?) tell Wrong stories about us, like that we sometimes die.
you have a point. But the problem here seems to be that the writers went full in with the “Shiro had a boy friend this whole time” thing. And then killed the boyfriend off just after introducing him.
Witch is just bad. Like, if they had introduced him one season earlier, gave him more screen time, and killed him off alongside OTHER characters that were important to the main cast. It would be ok.
But the way it seems to have played out is almost textbook “queer baiting” with a side of “bury your gays”.
I’m not even gay, or a shipper at all, and this still pisses me off.What were the writers even thinking when they wrote something like that.
I have no love for the Voltron fandom. But his time i think they are right to be mad.
Ah, what I’d absorbed by osmosis was that Shiro had broken up with someone before joining the paladins, and that flashback showed us he’s gay.
So I thought it was his ex, and I’m just like… if even people’s exes have to be immortal I don’t know any more.
If that’s not what the plot was though, it’s entirely possible I’m missing something.
You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but why do you keep saying that the alternative of killing one of one or two queer characters in a show or introducing a queer character only to kill them off right after is immortality? There seems to be a trend of tv shows in the past 4 or 5 years of killing off queer characters and I can see why people would get sick of that. link to an article about it (https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/7/11/62-lesbian-bisexual-female-characters-killed-over-past-two-television-seasons) though it’s a bit old so maybe the trend has slowed/stopped.
For me, it doesn’t mean queer characters can’t suffer, just either have several on your show or don’t kill them.
I know it’s kind of gauche to answer a question with a question, but how do you want writers to decide who lives and who dies? Because picking by identity still seems story-warpingly random to me.
That question is a good answer. I don’t want people to decide who dies by identity so much as I want more queer characters so it doesn’t matter so much when one dies when it’s plot appropriate. Heck, when Eleanor on Black Sails died, I didn’t have as much of a problem with it since there were several other queer characters still alive on the show.
That being said, my issue is more with the fact that, at least a couple of years ago, it seemed like every time you turned around, another queer character was being killed. That may have stopped, and I hope it has, but I understand why people don’t like that trend happening.
Bex is a fucking icon 🙏🏼
R E A L T E A ☕ ☕☕
okay you know what god help me I’m gonna wade into this discourse
if the show wasn’t dark and raw and real until a queer character got killed offscreen with no fanfare, then that’s not realism or rawness, it’s using a cheap and hurtful shortcut to make the show seem deep.
“not the queer content you wanted” would be far less of a problem if “the queer content you wanted” (i.e. queer characters in visual media who are openly identified as queer and either do not die or die at the same rate and with the same narrative seriousness as straight characters) was actually available elsewhere. right now it isn’t. show writers know this, if they’re doing their job right. it’s been publicly discussed. they don’t get to say “well, we have a dark and serious story to tell so we get a pass on criticism for killing a queer character” when every other writer called out for ‘burying their gays’ has used that exact excuse verbatim.
(i cannot emphasize enough that this IS NOT a personal criticism of bex taylor-klaus. just because i disagree with her statement does not mean i think she’s acting in bad faith or whatever. and frankly this show’s fans already have such a bad reputation for entitlement and having no boundaries that in that context I can understand why she’d react the way she is here. but fans in this instance aren’t wrong to be hurt, disappointed, and angry either. we’ve all been here before. we’ve all been here before several times a year.)
I don’t watch the show and hadn’t heard anyone died, just that Shiro had an exboyfriend and left that relationship. Voltron fans are notorious for feeling like their ship has to be endgame, so I figured it was about who he dated or something. (And I gather he has clones? So there’s another gay even if it was him that died?)
The whole thing about gay characters dying is weird to me. As a gay person and a writer, I’m troubled by an idea that reads sometimes to me like “we don’t die” or “we have to be happy.”
I get that there was, not all that long ago, an unwritten rule that said that in order to so much as get published, you had to write tragic queer stories. I get that many of us grew up seeing and knowing that, hell queer presses exist that forbid unhappy endings!
But for me, as a person who’s experienced trauma, I feel like Invincible Gays is selling me something. You’ll be happy because you’re bi. Wlw have great lives.
And yeah, I… my experiences with the community haven’t really been like that. Most people are cool. But there’s a very large group of people, very often kids, who are so angry that they… shame you if you don’t be like them. It’s not all sunshine.
So… yes, more gay happy endings. But… sometimes I wish the people who need them would go find them instead of yelling at the Improper Gays who let straights (is everyone on that writers room het? Do we know this?) tell Wrong stories about us, like that we sometimes die.
you have a point. But the problem here seems to be that the writers went full in with the “Shiro had a boy friend this whole time” thing. And then killed the boyfriend off just after introducing him.
Witch is just bad. Like, if they had introduced him one season earlier, gave him more screen time, and killed him off alongside OTHER characters that were important to the main cast. It would be ok.
But the way it seems to have played out is almost textbook “queer baiting” with a side of “bury your gays”.
I’m not even gay, or a shipper at all, and this still pisses me off.What were the writers even thinking when they wrote something like that.
I have no love for the Voltron fandom. But his time i think they are right to be mad.
Ah, what I’d absorbed by osmosis was that Shiro had broken up with someone before joining the paladins, and that flashback showed us he’s gay.
So I thought it was his ex, and I’m just like… if even people’s exes have to be immortal I don’t know any more.
If that’s not what the plot was though, it’s entirely possible I’m missing something.
You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but why do you keep saying that the alternative of killing one of one or two queer characters in a show or introducing a queer character only to kill them off right after is immortality? There seems to be a trend of tv shows in the past 4 or 5 years of killing off queer characters and I can see why people would get sick of that. link to an article about it (https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/7/11/62-lesbian-bisexual-female-characters-killed-over-past-two-television-seasons) though it’s a bit old so maybe the trend has slowed/stopped.
For me, it doesn’t mean queer characters can’t suffer, just either have several on your show or don’t kill them.
Waking up to find this fandom once more shredding itself, right. What else is new. And tbh., this is why I’m not going and actively calling myself a member of the anti-anti or pro-shipper ‘community’, because look what’s happening the moment you cross the line that the big names there find unacceptable. It’s all not quite as deranged as in the anti community, but I’m not all that surprised either. It’s simply that their line isn’t fic about rape, but fic about another trauma.
Like, maybe I’m just not getting it, in which case do point it out to me, but:
a) XYZ historical event shouldn’t be written about (like this) in fanfic because it’s in poor taste and there were so many victims, they and their descendants are rightfully upset if you do this and you should listen to them.
b) Rape shouldn’t be written about (like this) in fanfic because it’s in poor taste and there are so many victims, they are rightfully upset if you do this and you should listen to them.
One is valid, the other is not. One is ‘this is so insensitive to real trauma and real people!’ and the other is ‘well it’s just fiction, they didn’t write about you personally, let people write in peace, don’t like don’t read, blacklist the content and move on, curate your fandom experience!’
???
I’m just confused about the inconsistency. I’ll gladly have it explained to me.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for anyone of the fandom popo to come up with an explanation that is in any way valid.
I’ve actually wondered about this for a long time.
Historical fiction isn’t one of my favorite genres, so you don’t have to worry about me writing it, but I’ve always been puzzled because
Famous dystopian novels like 1984 are basically “so this isn’t *exactly* The Soviets Won AU, it’s England Went Sovietish”
And like… why would it be acceptable to write about the horrors of life under Ingsoc, it being TOTALLY OBVIOUS what Ingsoc is, but not to set your novel in “the USSR won the Cold War and everyone was oppressed and it sucked balls?”
It seems to me that the people who want to write fic, fannish or original, about “the Axis/Confederacy/horror of the moment won” can just get around your taboo by saying “no, this is spec fic, his name’s not Mao, it’s… uh… Oam. Yeah.”
I don’t object to fic about historical events, especially since I do like historical fiction and non-fiction, but I think the problem that comes up is that some people can write about delicate situations both badly and offensively.
I can’t find a link to it, but I remember hearing about a Supernatural Beauty and the Beast AU that had the beastly character be a slave owner in his past and some of his slaves dying was what presaged his transformation. It was, from what I recall, not well handled at all and way too blithe about the slavery aspect.
Again, I don’t think people should just not write about historical events, it just takes more effort to avoid things like that.
http://fierceawakening.tumblr.com/post/176234186280/is-queerbaiting-a-real-thing-before-the-klanti
Oh my God, it’s not that bisexuality renders people immortal, it’s that it’s annoying that all the queer characters die! In fiction! It’s a trend and it sucks!
i just Cannot deal w/ gritty edgy Ultimately There Is No Hope And Everything Is Shit type of plots like my mood and morale are already low as is in real life and i don’t.. need the fiction i consume often to cope to be that disheartening? idk like. i just can’t do it anymore. i can’t put myself through it. i know it’s Not That Deep but also i just love.. corny cliché Hope Wins types of stories? it’s not even corny or cliché to me? it’s just. cathartic.
http://fierceawakening.tumblr.com/post/175383479140/i-get-the-impression-that-stereotypical-male
Completely uncharitable thought: And because you managed to not see it, it doesn’t exist! Problem over!
Seriously, I don’t read a lot of litfic, but I’ve seen enough examples on the web to be aware that straight, male writers writing about women and focusing unduly on their boobs is a trend.
lookashiny 