mandalorianbrainweasel

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Proposal for new fandom etiquette:

If you read a fic because it was linked/recced somewhere, you leave a comment saying "came from XXX" and that comment doesn't need to include anything else.

Because when all of a sudden there's a lot of activity on one particular fic I WANNA KNOW WHY!!!!!

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Mixed media (Watercolor, alcohol marker, gel pen, and colored pencil) Kanan and Hera J.C. Leyendecker study original under the cut

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

I'm predictable. Multi paragraph comments that go into extraneous detailed analysis of the fic and the characters will always be the key to my heart and my self-motivation 😂

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Your honor, they were watering down my favorite character and not letting them be a jerk.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Mace Windu can do whatever he likes with whatever attitude he wants actually cause he's in charge of wrangling a group of superpowered, psychic adreneline junkies who like to have heated academic debates using laser swords in their spare time. and then. AND THEN!! he has to regularly talk with politicians too??? disgusting. awful. my man is so tired.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

hi, are you paxduane on ao3? Just stopping by to say you're one of my favorite star wars writers (and favorite kotor writer)! I absolutely love how you write jango, cassus, and ultimate, and you always manage to fit so much thought and character study into your writing that it feels like reading a perfectly paced 100k epic no matter the actual length!

for the director's cut ask game if you're still doing those, I'm curious about cassus and jaster in Developing Wings on the Way Down, or really any of your thoughts about ulticass :D

Hello! I am indeed PaxDuane on Ao3. Thanks so much for the compliment. I really love digging into characters. If you ever want to chat you should DM me :) I love talking about my fics and ideas.

I’m kind of always up for director’s cut. I don’t remember a lot about prepping for Developing Wings on the Way Down except that it came from chatting with a friend about Cassus. I really love the idea of Cassus and the neo crusaders being even more ruthless than “modern” Mandalorians and just not thinking much about “modern” Mandalorian issues like the civil wars. Cassus especially, Mr. Orbital Bombardment that he is. Cassus having A Type is always fun, too, and I feel like Jaster can fit well with it. Then letting baby Jango get raised by someone deeply invested in the Fett family as a whole over just him out of guilt etc. (I don’t think Jaster takes him in entirely because of guilt but it is a Factor™️). It was a really fun fic to write.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

yeah sorry we took your canon male character and made him a butch dyke. no yeah it didnt change his appearance hes just a butch dyke now. sorry. hes infinitely cooler now if that makes u feel better

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

a change of fate

what if luminara had been w/ yoda during order 66 instead of w/ her troops.. makes u think huh

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

i love mace windu with my whole heart

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Hi Sinister, I dont know if this is true or not, but I dont thinka o3 is for fanart, i think they explicity put out a thing recently saying they were cracking down on art in stuff because it wasnt plain writing. I could be wrong though

Hey pal! <3 I'm excited to tell you that you've been misinformed!

AO3 is not a fanfiction site, it's a fan works site. All non "ephemeral" fanworks are explicitly allowed, including fanfiction, fanart, animations, amvs, and fanish non-fiction of all kinds.

What they're cracking down on is *non fanworks* that is, posts that aren't fanworks, such as placeholder fics, lists of prompts, etc.

here's an excerpt from the news post they put up recently about the crackdown:

-

AO3 is an archive for fanworks, not other kinds of content.

AO3 has a very specific purpose: to host fanworks, and only fanworks. Our definition of "fanwork" is broad: fanworks can take many shapes and forms, including fanfiction, fanart, podfics, fanvids, fancrafts, fannish non-fiction, original works, and more.

What are some examples of non-fanworks?

Works that are not fanworks should not be posted to AO3. These include (but are not limited to):

Fic searches or requests for recommendations

Advertisements for roleplay partners or servers

Personal messages to other users

Updates, polls, or announcements

Reaction, blog, or vent posts

Spam, shitposts, or memes

Reposted novels or other published works

Placeholders and other empty works

Links to or lists of works you've read or created

Ideas or prompts for fanworks

Requests for other users to provide you with ideas or prompts for fanworks

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Polycule but it’s just two people in a romantic relationship with each other and their third who’s pretty obviously aroace but also somehow so deeply intertwined in their lives that it’d just be wrong to not count them as involved. Is this anything.

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

some fandom disagreements are like "I see your point but I think this other aspect of the narrative is more significant," and some are like "I don't think you can read."

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

i know what this situation needs…explicit fanfiction

[mandalorianbrainweasel]

Arguments about what's canon and what's not in SW fandom are kinda pointless, I know for a fact that every fan has their personal frankensteined version of canon based on what's best for their own blorbos. I love picking up a random licensed book to sneer at half of its ideas and then steal the rest. Some shows and books and comics and whole movies are simply not incorporated into my belief system. That's how we roll