What is this thing for?

Happy Pride month, y’all! This page has been awfully quiet the first half of the year, but your mods have been plotting behind the scenes (masterminding, some might say), and we’re back with a few announcements about the future of Leverage Fan Events. 

First, We Provide… Fanworks will be running again this year! There’s currently a poll on our page (you can find it here) where we’d love to get your insights on what month would be best for everyone. (December was a little tricky for all of us last year.) Once a month has been decided, the form will open for prompt requests.

Second, our community prompts are changing. While everyone is still welcome to pop into our asks and present their own community prompts for the fandom to reblog with their own answers, we won’t be putting them out as often on our own. Rather, each month, we’ll present a broad prompt which will be intended to inspire fic, art, or meta of any kind. As always, we look forward to seeing what you’ll create! (See June's here!)

its too decadent? mac n cheese should be decadent and gratuitous in its cheesy glory

Send me asks for my birthday (May 30)

Yes, I am a passionate eavesdropper and I love listening to other people talk, especially if they’re talking about me.

I don’t regularly check GoodReads or TheStoryGraph particularly, but I do irregularly go and have a look at newer reviews – especially because on GR particularly, I see readers’ reviews who aren’t the sort of readers I’d meet at events or be on the same socials with, like older female readers who are into queer romance but aren’t big on Bluesky or Tumblr. What’s interesting when I read perspectives on my work from say, a cishet woman in her 50s who comes across me whilst normally being into more commonly tropey M/M stuff is that she often finds a lot of stuff I’d consider basic in my work very surprising – I don’t even just mean like, the inclusion of trans characters, but how autistic a lot of my casts are, how I write about disability, etc.

I search my name on Reddit and YouTube here and there – it’s always lovely when I see myself recommended in videos on YT.

I don’t comment on or publicly share reviews or comments that people make about my work unless they tag me and basically invite me to come and reply. Reviews are generally for readers talking to one another rather than feedback for the author, and while I absolutely can glean valuable feedback from them, I never want to make readers feel called out or something just for giving their honest perspective on something they read.

For the same reason, I do occasionally read someone saying something I think is absolutely insane about my work or about me as a person when I name-search, but I mostly then complain about it to people IRL, or if I do complain or comment about it on my own socials, I make sure not to include exact quotes or be specific about where I saw the comment to ensure the person in question isn’t going to be like, found and potentially harassed by anybody on my behalf.

I think that most authors should not read reviews of their work, or should work up to being exposed to honest discussion of their work bit by bit whilst, you know, doing the psychological work to distance themselves from their work a bit. Many authors get extremely oversensitive about commentary on their work and about the sense of rejection or personal attack from others, or they get very insecure about writing in the aftermath – and I’ve seen many a meltdown from a creator who just was not ready to be reading reviews of their work, and then well-meaning fans and followers basically feeding into the incorrect sense that bad reviews or dislikes of their creative style are personal attacks on them or that they are somehow being victimised, when neither of these things are true.

I think that unfortunately, many creators now are thinner-skinned about criticism of their work than was standard pre-internet, and especially prior to the AIDS crisis and how many skilled and incisive experts in creative fields we lost, and their commentary and analysis on mediocre and subpar work.

TL;DR: it can actually be a good sign when someone hates your work and hates you based on that work. It means that it made them feel very strongly about it. It means that your work presented a point of view that this person, for whatever reason, actually wants to oppose.

People despising you is far more valuable creative feedback than people feeling nothing about your work, or considering it milquetoast, bland, anodyne, inoffensive; but also, people hating your work, even if they phrase it as hatred for you, doesn’t actually have anything to do with you as a person.

It has to do with the version of you that that person has interacted with, the spectre of you cast by your work, death of the author style. You should not take someone commenting on the Plato’s Cave version of you as a personal rejection or attack on you.

I think as someone who came from a very neglectful background and later worked as a sex worker, I have a lot of the necessary compartmentalisation in place to do this sort of work and understand that none of this shit is personal, and that none of it is important, but that’s because I have done a lot of the work to make myself capable of those separations and to digest feelings of rejection in healthy and safe ways.

Do that foundational personal work, read good and bad reviews of your work, AND THEN DO NOT COMMENT ON THEM PUBLICLY, EVEN OBLIQUELY, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. Never screenshot a bad review or comment on your work to your followers or fans. Keep that shit for your friends and loved ones IRL, who know you as a person and won’t parasocially come to your defence or feed into a potential victimhood mindset.

Comments on your work and replies directly, and emails from people?

Sure, reply to them if you feel like and you have the space and energy. I sometimes delete negative comments if they’re just vague harass shit, but I generally take them in good faith, and I like to interact with readers whether they like my work or not.

Dr. Nazely really deserves more appreciation.

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

Welcome to the fourth annual summer fic reading challenge! Sign ups will open the week before, on June 14.