Welcome To The Cheap Seats

To that end:

- ‘Reviews’ on AO3/ tumblr that exist only to complain that the story hasn’t gone in the direction they wanted it to/ X character is OOC/ isn’t in it enough etc etc. This isn’t constructive criticism. You’re not helping. Even if you stick in some nice comments as well. You’re. Not. Helping.

- Vague comments about stories that really aren’t that vague, posted in spaces that others can see.

- Anon comms which dissect stories or their authors (or both) often under a heading like 'what have you read recently that’s disappointed you?’

The truth is we see these comments. You might think we don’t, but we do.

You might think it doesn’t matter, or that you never actually talked about that fic or that author by name, or that you’ve made the comments in a private space, but if others can see them, or find them, or be linked to them by someone else, then they’re still public and still contain the power to affect what happens next with an author and their stories.

We brush off the comments with varying success, but ultimately it can chip away at a writer’s confidence and a desire to keep on putting out stories.

Whatever the reasons for making these comments, it spoils it for everyone else who is reading and enjoying and is sad at seeing a chapter update or a new story get further and further away because the author has lost motivation.

And it spoils it for the writers themselves who love the characters but lose that desire to write about them when their hard work is met by criticism and complaint.

This blogger remembers when we didn’t have AO3.

This blogger remembers when we had to put disclaimers at the head of our fics and pray that someone didn’t take it into their heads to sue us for what we created.

This blogger remembers brilliant artists and writers getting decades of work obliterated on LJ because someone who wanted to tell people what they were allowed to create went running to someone who wanted a profit, and told them the artists and writers had been naughty.

This blogger remembers just how hard the creators of AO3 worked to build the thing we all seem to take for granted now.

This blogger watched friends dive into the creation process so heartily and determinedly that they all but disappeared from the writing/gaming/artistic side of their fandom for YEARS while they worked to make the archive happen.

This blogger remembers the sense of giddy wonder that there would possibly be LAWYERS involved, willing to defend our right to create these works, and not leave us hanging at the mercy of corporate legal teams.

This blogger is aware that she reads between twenty to fifty books’ worth of material every year on AO3, and is never REQUIRED to pay a penny for the privilege of getting access.

This blogger is aware that she will not ever see advertisements on AO3, and that her personal data and reading preferences won’t be sold to advertisers in order to raise the money that AO3 needs to pay for the services they provide.

This blogger is aware that AO3 is, and has always been, a labor of love; by fans, for fans, and not for profiting off fans – and this is what makes it unique in the whole of the media universe.