Unpopular Opinion - Reflections on a culture of nice in ficdom
AO3 has âcommentsâ and ff.net has 'reviewsâ. They serve the same surface function but this distinction is powerful in its consequences, especially once bulk fandoms started posting more on ao3 and less on ff.net.
Everyone is terrified to give criticism on AO3 lest they be called a monster or a bully. And the reasons to discourage it are grounded in empathy and a culture of positivity that on the surface, seems like it canât be argued with. Who can dispute the idea that âif you canât say something nice to you shouldnât say anything at allâ? FWIW, I think this is part of a bigger system of fear-based cultural trends in fandom social platforms as a whole, but Iâll contain my opinion to AO3 for a moment.
Hereâs the truth: getting negative feedback of any kind is hard. It stays with you. It sucks. Sometimes itâs not about your story at all, itâs just harassment about fandom drama. Or sometimes it is about your story and itâs just really mean. And if youâre an active fan or prolific writer, youâll see more of the grossness bc people like to target someone who stands out. Sometimes itâs not huge or evil itâs just something that didnât work for the reader and theyâre letting you know.
Hereâs another truth: when you develop a group culture where all critical/negative feedback is treated like an insult or attack, no matter how mild, you eventually eliminate the spaces for people to provide useful, informative, or sincere criticism. Instead of a space where itâs understood that this is a working community and everyone is here to grow and be better, itâs just about the author posting their art and closing their eyes to any type of response that isnât reassuring.
In years past on ff.net, in fandoms like BtVs, anime, Harry Potter, AtLA⌠I would give detailed feedback on chapters, the things I loved, the things that confused me, the things I thought didnât make sense, the typos they might have missed, where I thought it was true to characters or not. I also received a lot of reviews to this effect. These could be a page long. It was common. If I read a fic that had parts that didnât sit well with me, I said so, very openly, in a review. I also got messages that did the same.
Because it wasnât a comment, it was a review. And that difference is huge.
So whatâs upshot? From the conversations Iâve had and read, many authors prefer the AO3 culture. They donât want to be reviewed, they want only supportive comments. And emotionally, I get that. I really do. Iâve been writing since 2001 in over 20 fandoms and Iâve received pretty much any kind of good or bad response that one can get for a story.
But doing it this way, we have lost something. Weâve lost a community that fosters writing and, by extension, internet communication, in a way that teaches you to accept the slings and arrows of public discourse gracefully. Weâve lost a culture that trains you to realize that you can get a flaming horrendous response to art that you posted and itâs not the end of the world. You donât have to quit fandom and you donât have to cry for an hour over it. You learn to treat it like noise and you learn to pull the critical value from it that you can. Having a culture that fosters criticism doesnât just make you hardened against petty bullshit, but it also means someone can feel comfortable saying âI didnât dig this part of the story and hereâs whyâ and theyâll know itâs not about you and you know itâs not about you, so it doesnât feel like your heart is getting carved out. Thereâs a space for talking about the work as a work.
I know that Iâm a pretty good writer. Iâm not the most consistent or the most creative or the most impactful, and I definitely donât have the artistic discipline to write a novel sized story. Thereâs things I need to learn and ways I can improve. But Iâm pretty fair at putting a sentence together. While most of that is from practice, I think no small amount is that I learned to write at a point in online fandom culture where I got all forms of feedback, not just approval. I whined a lot at the time, but the criticisms (and my responses to them) shaped me as much as the approvals.
It made me a stronger writer, and even more importantly, it gave me the tools to know when to let something affect me and when to let it slide down my back. It taught me to draw a line between my emotional self and internet drama.
That is a line that is badly, badly needed in fandom right now. We need the ability to talk about things without giving and taking personal offense. We need to respect that there are things we donât like out there but still cannot and should not change, because our right to exist freely depends on theirs.
By eliminating any small negativities of any kind from our fanfic writing experience (in the name of protection and politeness), writers are growing up weaker. Their writing is weaker, their ability to handle criticism is weaker, their ability to give criticism is basically non-existent, and the subsequent drive toward conformity means everything is a lot more vanilla. Thereâs less weirdness, less wildness, less original characters and less of anything that isnât default pleasant or familiar.
I canât change this, I know that. Many people donât think these problems Iâm describing are happening at all bc it doesnât match their fandom experience. They wouldnât change it at all, to them itâs progress. At different times in the past Iâve contributed to the same stuff Iâm now calling a problem. Itâs taken a while (years) to accept that the community has shifted and that Iâm part of that. Because it seemed to make sense and thereâs some very moving discussions about keeping things positive to protect the authorâs delicate self.
Iâm not delicate though. And spending my formative teen fanfic years in a world where feedback was open is one of the reasons why. It made me a better writer and a tougher writer. And I know, from personal conversations, that Iâm not at all alone in citing this.
End of the day, this is just reflection. I too conform to the culture of stifling-nice on AO3 comments bc I know that if I did start leaving critical feedback (even wrapped in a nice compliment sandwich), many writers would not know how to react to it. To them, Iâd be an interfering bullying jerk who didnât stay in my lane of being a passive, blindly supportive consumer. And that⌠well that state of affairs is a real pity, I think. Itâs also a pity because fear of saying the wrong thing or an insufficient thing is one of the most commonly cited reasons that people say they donât leave comments. Iâd rather have more comments and accept some critical ones in the mix than to be living in the feedback drought that that is so prevalent. So yeah, Iâm sorry this has happened and Iâm sorry I contributed to it. As much as I love AO3, and will continue to support it, champion it, part of me also resents that they led us to this.
I think in the dream of making things kinder, weâve fundamentally made fandom weaker, inside and out. And that weakness leads to people who, when they are faced with challenges, act out of fear, not out of reflection or respect.
Good intentions, y'all. Good intentions. We treated each other like babies, and now weâre vulnerable like them.
