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obstinatecondolementTo preface this with the disclaimers that:
Often, people, who do not kudos or comment on things I post to AO3, who I know have accounts (and the works aren't archive locked anyway), will either privately DM me or @ me on Tumblr or in channels of Discord servers we're both in to say they really loved my newest fanwork. Often giving me really generous praise and thoughtful insights they had when they read/saw/listened to it when they do so! I talked to a friend about this and she said that she's had people draw fanart for her of fics that they didn't kudos or comment on. And that's like... obviously that's not sinister or something they are doing wrong that they should feel obliged to correct, in favour of some alternative that's more in line with what I personally prefer/find less surprising, but... it feels pretty self evident to me that it's nice for creators to have comments to look back on, all in one non-ephemeral place, which is also ideally on AO3/wherever they posted the work itself? And that Discord servers move quickly and the nice things you say there will be quickly be buried and hard to find again, which makes it unlikely for creators to be able to easily do that, unless they screenshot and archive every nice thing someone says to them about their work there, which few people would think to do in the moment, I think, except maybe in the context of a group vid-watching party or something. Also, kudos and comments bring the work further up the page when people sort by number of kudos or comments and that is helpful for the creator because it makes it more likely that more people will see it and say further nice things to them about it if they like it too.
I don't think this trend, as I have experienced it, is a "I do not want to be seen publicly liking this" thing, which, in fairness, I do think also happens a lot in this moral panic era of fandom we're in where people get call-out posts written about how they commented on or kudosed Reprehensible Fic that the call-out post author specifically sought out so they could read the comments and see who kudosed it with the intention of smearing them as a bigot and/or sexual predator on social media platforms that their AO3 profile was linked to.
Instead, I think that, when this has happened when I posted fanworks in the past, it's just because it does not occur to the people saying the nice things to me that the I would maybe also like to have the exact same nice things written in a comment on AO3. Or similar things! I'm really not saying that you can only comment on AO3 to say something to someone that they thing they made was good. Or that squeeing about it elsewhere Does Nothing to Boost Engagement™ and is therefore useless at best and Greedy Exploitation of My Fandom Labour™ at worst, as I have seen some people arguing.
Again, you can enjoy my stuff and never say a goddamn thing about it to me, or to anyone, and I will defend to the death your right to do so, no matter what your reasons are or how often you return to these works! You do not have to pay for your enjoyment of my work by Engaging Meaningfully with it in the way that I most prefer: I am not your grandparent passive aggressively asking if you forgot to send me a thank you note about the birthday present I sent you and do you need new stationery to send thank you notes? Should I send you that for your next present?
But... Idk, exactly. I guess, to me, it's kind of emblematic of this move to considering only new fanworks and fandoms of recently released/currently airing properties to matter? So if the nice things you say about them are ephemeral and hard to archive, who cares, because the creator will obviously only ever want to hear nice things about their newest work and anything else is a waste of time, and maybe even invasive and creepy à la fans of celebrities who stalk and/or harass them because they "love" them so much. Also, that fanworks and fannish interactions are disposable and trivial, and preserving them is not ever a priority or even a consideration.
Something I was surprised about when I started posting fanworks in multifandom comms on Dreamwidth was that people commented on them at all. Often when they don't even know the fandom! The culture here seems to be much more old school in that way than what I have become accustomed to post-LJ, which has been a nice thing to discover.
I do think that this bemusement I am having is not, like, something that I should fashion into a call to action or anything, in large part because I am extremely put off by the people who scold lurkers—or sometimes even people who don't comment effusively enough, or leave long enough comments, or who comment and then don't also kudos (the nerve! 🙄)—for "taking the gift of their work and giving them nothing back in return as thanks" because fuck that bullshit. That is not what is meant by the phrase "fandom is a gift economy" you ignorant, entitled dicks. Is commenting on AO3 a nice thing to do? Yes. But it's not obligatory and nor should it be. At least be honest about what you expect from people and start a fucking private Discord server where you link people to your Google Docs, in return for what you consider to be good feedback if you think you should be to be compensated for your fanworks—kick them off your private island if they fail to live up to your standards, for all I care! But do not put words in my mouth by saying this fucking shit on behalf of all creators who post things to AO3.
Really, I'm not sure what my point is here, exactly. I am having thoughts and feelings and these are what they are, I suppose? Or, I guess, if you find yourself wanting to reach out and say nice things to a fanwork creator anyway, it's potentially a nice gesture to do it on AO3/where they posted it, in addition to saying it on Discord or other ephemeral fandom platorms. Copying and pasting exactly what you said is absolutely fine by me, if you find it a struggle to re-phrase the same sentiment. I suspect it would be by other fanwork creators too, although, per what I said earlier, I can only speak confidentally for myself, because other fanwork creators' expectations and preferences vary considerably. You can add something like "C&P-ing from Discord for posterity" at the start of the comment if you feel shy about saying literally the exact same thing twice.
- No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them no matter how much they liked it or how many times they have revisited them
- No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them just because they mentioned to me somewhere other than AO3 that they really liked them
- No one is obligated to even tell me if they discussed and enthused vocally about my fanworks in Discord servers, or elsewhere, whether I'm in them or not
That being said,
I am, however, completely bewildered with the Tumblr-moving-into-Discord-era of transformative fandom and how its culture is evolving with regards talking about fanworks, both with the creator specifically and in general.Often, people, who do not kudos or comment on things I post to AO3, who I know have accounts (and the works aren't archive locked anyway), will either privately DM me or @ me on Tumblr or in channels of Discord servers we're both in to say they really loved my newest fanwork. Often giving me really generous praise and thoughtful insights they had when they read/saw/listened to it when they do so! I talked to a friend about this and she said that she's had people draw fanart for her of fics that they didn't kudos or comment on. And that's like... obviously that's not sinister or something they are doing wrong that they should feel obliged to correct, in favour of some alternative that's more in line with what I personally prefer/find less surprising, but... it feels pretty self evident to me that it's nice for creators to have comments to look back on, all in one non-ephemeral place, which is also ideally on AO3/wherever they posted the work itself? And that Discord servers move quickly and the nice things you say there will be quickly be buried and hard to find again, which makes it unlikely for creators to be able to easily do that, unless they screenshot and archive every nice thing someone says to them about their work there, which few people would think to do in the moment, I think, except maybe in the context of a group vid-watching party or something. Also, kudos and comments bring the work further up the page when people sort by number of kudos or comments and that is helpful for the creator because it makes it more likely that more people will see it and say further nice things to them about it if they like it too.
I don't think this trend, as I have experienced it, is a "I do not want to be seen publicly liking this" thing, which, in fairness, I do think also happens a lot in this moral panic era of fandom we're in where people get call-out posts written about how they commented on or kudosed Reprehensible Fic that the call-out post author specifically sought out so they could read the comments and see who kudosed it with the intention of smearing them as a bigot and/or sexual predator on social media platforms that their AO3 profile was linked to.
Instead, I think that, when this has happened when I posted fanworks in the past, it's just because it does not occur to the people saying the nice things to me that the I would maybe also like to have the exact same nice things written in a comment on AO3. Or similar things! I'm really not saying that you can only comment on AO3 to say something to someone that they thing they made was good. Or that squeeing about it elsewhere Does Nothing to Boost Engagement™ and is therefore useless at best and Greedy Exploitation of My Fandom Labour™ at worst, as I have seen some people arguing.
Again, you can enjoy my stuff and never say a goddamn thing about it to me, or to anyone, and I will defend to the death your right to do so, no matter what your reasons are or how often you return to these works! You do not have to pay for your enjoyment of my work by Engaging Meaningfully with it in the way that I most prefer: I am not your grandparent passive aggressively asking if you forgot to send me a thank you note about the birthday present I sent you and do you need new stationery to send thank you notes? Should I send you that for your next present?
But... Idk, exactly. I guess, to me, it's kind of emblematic of this move to considering only new fanworks and fandoms of recently released/currently airing properties to matter? So if the nice things you say about them are ephemeral and hard to archive, who cares, because the creator will obviously only ever want to hear nice things about their newest work and anything else is a waste of time, and maybe even invasive and creepy à la fans of celebrities who stalk and/or harass them because they "love" them so much. Also, that fanworks and fannish interactions are disposable and trivial, and preserving them is not ever a priority or even a consideration.
Something I was surprised about when I started posting fanworks in multifandom comms on Dreamwidth was that people commented on them at all. Often when they don't even know the fandom! The culture here seems to be much more old school in that way than what I have become accustomed to post-LJ, which has been a nice thing to discover.
I do think that this bemusement I am having is not, like, something that I should fashion into a call to action or anything, in large part because I am extremely put off by the people who scold lurkers—or sometimes even people who don't comment effusively enough, or leave long enough comments, or who comment and then don't also kudos (the nerve! 🙄)—for "taking the gift of their work and giving them nothing back in return as thanks" because fuck that bullshit. That is not what is meant by the phrase "fandom is a gift economy" you ignorant, entitled dicks. Is commenting on AO3 a nice thing to do? Yes. But it's not obligatory and nor should it be. At least be honest about what you expect from people and start a fucking private Discord server where you link people to your Google Docs, in return for what you consider to be good feedback if you think you should be to be compensated for your fanworks—kick them off your private island if they fail to live up to your standards, for all I care! But do not put words in my mouth by saying this fucking shit on behalf of all creators who post things to AO3.
Really, I'm not sure what my point is here, exactly. I am having thoughts and feelings and these are what they are, I suppose? Or, I guess, if you find yourself wanting to reach out and say nice things to a fanwork creator anyway, it's potentially a nice gesture to do it on AO3/where they posted it, in addition to saying it on Discord or other ephemeral fandom platorms. Copying and pasting exactly what you said is absolutely fine by me, if you find it a struggle to re-phrase the same sentiment. I suspect it would be by other fanwork creators too, although, per what I said earlier, I can only speak confidentally for myself, because other fanwork creators' expectations and preferences vary considerably. You can add something like "C&P-ing from Discord for posterity" at the start of the comment if you feel shy about saying literally the exact same thing twice.
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Date: 2023-03-12 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 09:31 pm (UTC)I actually do screenshot that kind of things, I have a "folder of nice things" I like to look at when I'm feeling down :D But yeah, it's still different than having it all in one place in what feels like the "proper" place, together with the story and easy to re-read when I look at the story again. Things like that. Differing expectations.
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Date: 2023-03-13 12:10 am (UTC)Re: your folder of nice things, that's a great idea! I also think that archiving non-AO3 fandom stuff is a really good thing to do, even if it's just to look at when you're a bit down, or to relive the glorious highs of people telling you that you are good at Thing, because so much gets lost over time and digital erosion is incredibly real and exacerbates this effect.
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Date: 2023-03-17 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 09:43 pm (UTC)They invited me to the only Discord server in existence for that subfandom at the time, and when I searched my name, I was really shocked -- they'd all been reading my fics ever since my first one, and talking about how much they liked them, how refreshing they were, in-character, etc. Really nice stuff that would have been extremely encouraging to hear during that lonely first year. But none of them ever said that stuff to ME, or left kudos!! It didn't hurt me, but it was definitely baffling. So many conversations about my work, but no comments or kudos on AO3, until I finally joined the discord server myself. Then the dam broke, and I got comments/kudos from all of them, on every fic!
Is it just a club mentality -- i.e., "we enjoy non-members' work, but we only comment on members of our club!" I really don't think so. I'm leaning more toward, just ... for some reason, even though they were writers too, it didn't occur to them that I wasn't a member and couldn't see their comments -- that it might be nice to leave those comments on AO3. I don't know why or how that blind spot developed for so many people. It's hard to suss out.
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Date: 2023-03-13 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 03:30 pm (UTC)I did know a lot of writers who tended to shut down any commenters who tried to have a conversation or make friends. Their reasoning was: "This person writes OOC fic" "This guy ships a cringey pairing" "This one never spellchecks her work" -- all boiling down to, "I WANT fandom friends, but they have to be extremely polished, with all the same kinks and ships as me, and they can't EVER write this character with long hair or this character with his canonical accent or this one smiling or this one as a bad cook--"
Just a really long unreasonable laundry list that excluded most of the fandom from possible friendship. And then they'd complain for days that they couldn't make friends.
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Date: 2023-03-13 04:59 pm (UTC)Oh my godddd they sound absolutely insufferable. Not the way to encourage feedback or win friends and influence people! I mean, I have given, like, a tiny non-zero amount of people no reply l, or a polite but bland reply, because I thought they were actively bigoted or nasty people based on other things I knew of them, but trivial shit like this...
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Date: 2023-03-13 04:12 am (UTC)my best guess of the culture thing is you read a new fic you are really excited about, you run to go talk to your friends about it on discord, and now you're over in a different app and it's an additional step to remember to go back to the webpage and leave a comment to the author too. and it is known any time people have to take a new step for click over to a new thing online, you lose a high percent of people.
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Date: 2023-03-13 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 06:25 pm (UTC)Obviously, all that being said, I still find it very confusing that people are enthusing about things at length outside AO3, but don't necessarily twig that creators might like to see that/might like for it to be archived with the work on AO3.
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Date: 2023-03-13 04:15 am (UTC)this is wild what kind of culture shift is this
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Date: 2023-03-13 03:21 pm (UTC)Generationally, I've noticed that younger readers tend to leave downright derogatory or at least disheartening comments -- like, I'll work hard on a long angsty hurt/comfort chapter, and the only comment I'll get will be from a 19-year-old saying "lol" and making fun of some small element. Crushing! But then that same kid will send me fanart they made of that fic, so clearly they like it. It's just ... mmm, maybe partially a generational difference in how we communicate that we liked something, and partially the normal social awkwardness of teenagers, where they don't have enough life experience yet to realize how rude they're being.
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Date: 2023-03-13 06:41 pm (UTC)Oh god, same! In my experience it's not necessarily young people exclusively, but it is typically people who (I would consider) newer to fandom. I often get comments that I find incredibly rude, either because they're insulting or like... damning with faint praise?? Like "Oh, huh, I don't get why he kissed him. I don't ship this :( But I guess maybe it makes sense with what happens later on in this story..." Not a word for word quote, but something almost identical to something somebody said to me on a multi chapter where the thing they didn't ship was tagged.
Again, I think people are increasingly seeing fanworks as Content™ and comments as being similar to reviews or even live reactions, as opposed to something that somebody they share a community with created and might be insulted by. Like being given a scratchy sweater that's too tight around the neck, with lumpy stitches and a horrible colour, and yelling the person who made it "Huh, not really my thing. Thanks though :(" They see it more like... buying a shitty sweater on ASOS and giving it a one star review on the site, because it wasn't what you wanted and you thought it was an Inferior Product. Which, honestly, is part of the reason I roll my eyes so much at the "You have to comment! It is very rude not to!" crowd, because I think not commenting is neutral, but leaving comments like that is actively rude.
And then, of course, there's the people who express enthusiasm for your work by hyperbolic pretend-anger and insulting language, which... often just reads as insulting, because a) the person reading it can't always guess the intended tone and b) the person reading it has no preexisting relationship with them and this kind of joking is, at best, an overstep in familiarity when communicating with strangers
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Date: 2023-03-15 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-15 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 03:24 pm (UTC)So 1) I'd like to work on that XD Transfer, copy/paste some of that love over to AO3
2) Maybe for some people, that "it's a private recommendation" headspace carries over into public discord servers, whereas for me, it just doesn't. If I rec a fic, or say something nice about it in a discord server, it goes without saying that I'm putting that sentiment in the comments too... probably in more depth and detail. IDK! I'm not sure what my point was here XD
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Date: 2023-03-13 08:08 pm (UTC)Also, like, I am not immune to squeeing at length somewhere the author can't see and then forgetting to comment! I have a huge tag on my Tumblr where I was liveblogging my reaction to a fic and then I forgot to comment on it until years down the line, even after the author had been linked to the posts and reblogged to say they were really happy seeing that I loved it so much and what I had to say about it. Like... complete brain fart there, and I do not know why I didn't comment at the time. But, I guess, I was genuinely mortified when I went back to reread it and saw that I had never commented? Which, I think, might not always be a universal reaction from what I am gathering about the current commenting/reacting culture.
I don't think people have to alter what they're doing if they really don't want to, but my (perhaps misguided) belief is that most people would want to know if there was a way they could make people happier and enrich their fandom experience without going to much additional trouble beyond stuff they were already doing, and the only reason they aren't doing the thing I believe to be common sense is because it's less commonly understood than I imagined, so hopefully it is received in that spirit.
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Date: 2023-03-13 04:32 am (UTC)i agree i would rather have comments collected all one place on ao3, then i can look at them from anywhere without aditional work on my part, whereas any way i try to archive comments from discord or tumblr, im gonna end up losing them.
its so strange to think about people who are "growing up" in fandom now as "discord native" which i personally think is terrible, because the entire thing is 100% ephemeral. i already thought tumblr was too ephemeral and it's much more lasting than discords are.
i don't care how old man yells at cloud it makes me, i honestly think the speed of the internet these days, not just social media but news sites and streaming platforms etc and how the algorithem has been specifically designed to squeeze as much of our attention as physically possible, which means needing to keep everything moving so fast, so you keep scrolling because otherwise you're going to miss things! i fucking wish fandoms lasted longer than a month or two before the next tumblr beloved season or movie dropped and everyone ran to binge that instead. there is obviously all the other more serious problems this money driven algorithm creates, like the speed of spreading missinformation/conspiracy theories/radicalization, but it all ultimately comes from the same root, from the way i understand things.
idk im gonna keep yelling about this forever ig. i keep telling amado i wanna make a knives out comm here on dw, a la the old fandom comms on lj. since we know there will be a knives out 3, and they wil probably keep going for as long as daniel is willing to do them, and there's probably the best chance these days of having a lasting community if it's a franchise. if i build it, they may not come, but otoh, if no one builds it, no one will come.
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Date: 2023-03-13 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 08:24 pm (UTC)I really feel this... Even though I have been on Tumblr for more than twice the time I was on LJ, I never really stopped thinking of it as an imperfect upstart that had serious flaws. But I didn't know how good I had it! And, like, I do like fandom on Discord and I have made some lovely friends there, but it's just... it's terrible for archiving converations, etc., to the point of it being almost impossible. And it moves so fast and even if you're on there every day it's easy to miss things. Also, some servers are... very weird and bad. I'm thinking specifically of one run by a friend of a friend that was fully a cult, imo, based on the approximately three days I spend on there before I noped out. Like, per the rules you had to say a specific phrase whenever to announce the admin whenever they joined a conversation in a voice channel, for instance. Also, it was both strictly 18+ and strictly SFW in a very sex negative and judgemental way that implied that if you wrote/drew/etc. NSFW fanworks you were a filthmonger who was befouling the source material with your vile pornography and you would be immediately banned and then anyone who talked about you there afterwards would be banned. And... okay, yeah. Nah. I'll be over there writing fic about fisting, thanks. Have fun genuflecting to canon's representative on earth over here, though, guys, it seems like an extremely normal and not at all controlling place where artificial hierarchies are being created and abused...
EDIT: pressed send prematurely, whoops!
i fucking wish fandoms lasted longer than a month or two before the next tumblr beloved season or movie dropped and everyone ran to binge that instead
Oh my god, this!!! It is so exhausting to never get to bed down in anything before everyone loses interest and to be expected to be fannish about whatever the hip new thing is because that's what's currently airing/was recently released, whether you thought it was that good, or it felt inspiring to you as a fan creator or not. Also, like, this idea that if a show is cancelled that everyone has to pack up and move out of the fandom, because what's the point? Huh??? I feel like fandom has been commodofied as free publicity for a lot of shows and because various people have leveraged fan petitions/campaigns, etc. to try and save their shows, and it has been successful or semi-successful enough that it's worth doing, a lot of people kind of feel like... that's what fandom is for? To boost the profile of canon. When, uh, no? I'm not saying it's not never that, but it's certainly not only that and I would never think of that as being my primary motivation for wanting to be in a fandom.
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Date: 2023-03-13 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 01:47 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, I've been gathering some notes on my experience building a dreamwidth comm over the last year, maybe you'll find something interesting or helpful in there! But if you already have at least one other person interested, I think you're well set up to have a good time so I hope you give it a shot :D I loved the first movie but I'm still waiting on my library to get the second one. I didn't realise it was going to become a longer franchise, that is super cool to hear!!