#blorbology: fanfiction subreddit

[blorbology]

It's not as if I think r/fanfiction is complete trash or I wouldn't be there, but honestly...some of the posts on that subreddit have the unfortunate side effect of causing brain cells to fall out of my head. It's like ticking psychic damage.

Almost all the posts about feedback are whining about the exact feedback received or are complaining about the lack of feedback in general. Like I don't know what to tell these people except that the former leads to the latter and almost everyone who gets no feedback is doing something wrong or has set their expectations too high.

There's a post on there today by a perfectly nice person who doesn't know how to deal with the lack of engagement on their fics and there's just not a kind way of saying "you're writing for a 30+ year old fandom and you're not writing what people want to see there" so I had to pretty much just tell them that.

A lot of the metrics for engagement are in your control (the fandom and characters you write about, the tropes you use). If I wrote 100k word long fics for a popular ship in a popular fandom I'd have more engagement than I knew what to do with.

I'm the one who chose to write about a 20 year old fandom. I'm the one who chose to write about an unpopular ship. I'm the one who chose to write about babies and children and pregnancy TWICE IN A ROW (two of the biggest squicks in fandom). I did this to me. I knew going in it might be rough. I feel blessed to have readers at all to be honest.

Like I fully understand that low engagement sucks. My spouse gets on me about "wasting my time writing stuff two people will read" (when I could be doing other things). But I started writing the 'fic knowing damn well there was a good chance I wouldn't have an audience at all.

The person from today's post had someone comment on every chapter of their story and better stats than I can manage in the ToS fandom. I don't think it's just a comparative "they're doing pretty well" situation either. I honestly believe that their stats are pretty good for an old fandom. Why did they expect more, this being their first set of works published?

Again, I understand feeling disappointment, but to go and post on Reddit about it... I just can't. And this isn't even getting into the people who whine about the comments they do receive. I might rant about that later though.

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In today's episode of "r/ao3 and r/fanfiction are full of entitled people" I was sent a post where someone was trying to tell authors it was okay to delete their works. I swear 99% of the comments on the damn post are people saying things like, "Well yeah it's like...legal sure, but that doesn't mean they should do it. It's [mean/rude/cruel] to delete! Orphaning is superior. Authors should orphan instead. Don't be an asshole, orphan your works if you're embarrassed by them!" Oh, and my favorite, "It's fundamentally wrong to take art out of the world."

SHUT UP.

It's my hard work and if I want to exercise control over my own property then I will. I am not orphaning or abandoning my creation. It's mine. If I decide a fanfic needs to get deleted, then I will delete it. This does not make me a mean, cruel, rude, or otherwise bad person. Period.

I understand that people don't want to see their favorite stories deleted but the entitlement is out of control. The story isn't yours: it's the author's to use as they see fit.

And I can't believe I have to say this, but no, you're not entitled to the reason for deletion: that's the author's business, end of story. Imagine thinking your judgment of their particular reasoning should mean anything to anyone. You don't get to decide if the reason was good enough. Ugh.

If authors want to delete their fanfics they should be allowed to do so without being looked down on for it.

(This isn't even touching the weird camp of entitled people who refuse to engage in fandom yet cry when fics are deleted by an author due to zero engagement. If you liked the fucking story so much you should have taken the time to tell the author so. This is just common sense. But God knows you can't find that on Reddit lmao.)

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While we're at it, maybe we authors can do more to encourage commenters. But to do that, I have to address what I feel is a very concerning trend in fandom lately.

I cannot even begin to understand what the entitled assholes on r/fanfiction are thinking when they complain about the comments they get. Like, what is going through their head when they bitch on Twitter because someone said something about their fic that wasn't glowing praise? Take this entitled holier-than-thou attitude and dispose of it immediately in the nearest waste receptacle.

Please.

I'm begging you.

You can't have lots of engagement without being open to different interpretations of your work. Sometimes that means someone will leave a comment that isn't to your taste. I see so many people on that damn subreddit whining that someone commented something just slightly "off-kilter." "Wahhhh they said they love my story but didn't care for the way I ended it!! HOW DARE THEY!!" "I'm so angry I had to vent because someone left a comment saying I rated my story wrong!" "It's so rude that commenters ask for more writing from me wTF!!!"

I personally don't care if people criticize the hell out of my fic. It's posted publicly and I love it when people engage with my work to such a degree that they can tell me what they didn't like about it (and sometimes how to even fix it). To me, this is the holy grail of fanfic writing, when someone is just completely honest about my work. I don't take every criticism into account (sometimes commenters are wrong or I just like to do things my way), but I value the commenter's "take" for what it is: knowledge about my work and how a real person reacted to it.

That said, the current trend seems to be "don't criticize unless the author asks you to." I think this is fine; it's better to be safe than sorry, it's better to not hurt someone's feelings if you can avoid it. I no longer critique 'fics unless asked because of this.

That said, everyone's line in the sand is drawn in a different place. Some people can't even stand receiving a comment pointing out a typo while other people would be upset if you didn't point out a typo you noticed.

And in a world where none of us are mind-readers, if you really want feedback on your fanfiction, you do sometimes have to accept that sometimes you'll receive the kind of comment that you don't like. Maybe it's just not to your taste, the commenter wasn't nice enough or didn't word things well—whatever the case may be.

Getting bent out of shape over it and crying on a fanfiction subreddit is just embarrassing. Delete hateful comments that are not constructive, don't reply to something that upsets you, and consider just saying, "Thank you for reading!" or even, "I appreciate the feedback!" if it's somewhere in the middle. It really is that easy.

Because when you start getting picky about what kinds of comments others are "allowed" to leave on your work, you'll find nobody wants to leave one at all. (And r/fanfiction has enough posts crying about lack of feedback, lmao.)