#rude comments

“Too many words, I give up.”

this was left on chapter 9 of my novel-length fanfiction.

I want to walk you through the ao3 experience, just so we’re all on the same page.

when you search by tag, ao3 shows you the word count. right there. in the browsing results. before you click anything.

when you click on the story, ao3 shows you the word count again. on the main page. listed clearly under the title.

when you open a chapter, ao3 shows you the word count again. at the top of the chapter. in plain text.

this person saw the word count a minimum of three times, opened the story anyway, read through to chapter 9 — which, for the mathematically curious, is not chapter 1 — and then left a comment to let me know that there were, in their view, too many words.

in a novel.

that they had navigated to deliberately.

using a website that told them repeatedly how many words were in it.

I genuinely do not know what was expected here. a novel-length fic that is also somehow very short? a different kind of novel? fewer words, arranged more sparsely, in a larger font perhaps?

the premise is good though, apparently. so that’s nice. I’ll be over here, using words, at novel-length, as advertised, as signposted, as clearly indicated by a website that tried its absolute level best to prepare you for this moment.

Fanfiction authors write because they want to. Because it's fun. They post so that they can share their writing with other people. In the end, though, the writing is for the author. If you like it, great. If it's the fic of your dreams, perfect. If you don't, read something else. If you love the fic, and can't wait to read more, do NOTTTTTT start harassing the author and begging them to post another chapter.

Authors have a life outside of the fic they write. We have jobs, school, families, friends, significant others, etc. Shit to do. Real life stuff. Authors are not getting paid to write fanfiction for you! You are not entitled to another chapter. If you get one, consider it a fucking blessing and a gift, not your god-given right.

This is coming from a place of a lot of anger (everyone who comments on my own fics is really sweet- this isnt about you guys) but over the last few months I have seen dozens of authors complain that they are being pressured and harassed into writing more and more, despite repeatedly telling their readers that they are going through difficulties irl (which they shouldn't have to tell you, but. whatever)

So it is not fair to say that merely being an author means someone is purely victim or is incapable of doing something wrong.

An author is capable of saying "don't like, don't read," and twist it at the same time as there are enough ways to harrass another author "without reading."

That's the definition of "twisting".

When mere readers who are not authors see this behavior from authors, then they, too, will follow the same behavior.

I know an author on my favorite fandom who was discouraged from writing for months because of insults she received from a certain artist from the same fandom.

She restarted writing again now, but she was feeling discouraged for a while.

This post is only and only in response to certain AO3 tag posts that are requesting new rules for AO3. And it is not directed at anyone.

I don't want stricter rules for AO3. Stricter rules will heavily discourage people who are writing as hobbies or passions without being paid for from "writing.""

But if certain behaviors continue, then people will keep requesting AO3 to put those "rules".

I’ve been doing this for a while and I want to know if anyone else does this.

I call it the ‘Hurry Up’ tax on my fanfics.

It’s not just on my new public one but the secret one I have been writing on since my highschool days. (it’s full of old cringy fics full of stuff like self inserts and mary-sues that’s slowly morphed into fluffy found family type fics over the years.)

Whenever I get a comment telling me to ‘hurry up’ and update my fic faster. I invoke the Update Delay Tax on my fic. Whenever I see a ‘hurry up’ comment I add 3 days to whenever I planned to update my fic. And I add the tax for Each comment that I get to ‘hurry up’.

Don’t get me wrong, I love comments. I love people asking about my fic. Making theories about the plot. guesses, headcanons, critics, compliments, etc. But when I get plain ‘I hate how slow this is’ or ‘write faster.’ or ‘Update update update!’ demands. I feel just a bit testy.

Like, I’m writing for fun. Fanfiction writers aren’t getting paid to do this. You don’t have to pay money to read this. It feels rude to be bombarded by comments demanding that I supply free content faster for them.

So I add the Update Delay Tax just to be a little bit petty. I still want to update. I want to write fanfics. But I don’t like being bullied into giving free content faster.