Yeah, and ff.n used to SPECIFICALLY encourage criticism in the review box before you start typing. I forget the exact language, but it was something like, “As well as telling the author how much you enjoyed their work, you could also give some advice on how to improve their writing.” I’m sure they were trying to build a sense of community and discussion amongst writers and readers, but what it ended up being was a lot of entitled children telling the writers on the site what they wanted to see and how to do it. It definitely contributed to the culture on the site back about ten years ago when ff.n was huge, where a lot of writers would ask for input and specifically follow it, kinda like Homestuck before it became Homestuck.
I’m glad they changed it. Now it just says “Type your review in this box.”
In my experience this is also partially indicative of a culture change in fandom too? I feel like people are a lot more accepting these days of “fic for fic’s sake” and there’s been an evolution in fandom culture where criticism is only given if specifically requested, because it’s understood that many writers are just writing for fun and not out of a desire to improve or expand on writing skills. The default these days seems to be “say something nice or say nothing at all,” and sometimes it even dips into “giving unasked for criticism is downright rude.” You even see this these days for little things: plenty of friend-writers of mine have gotten asks recently that are specifically checking if it’s okay to even point out things like a typo or a spelling error that got missed.
Back in the day, the comment format of “point out something good, and something that could be fixed” was a lot more commonplace. Or the ‘critique sandwich’ — something well handled, something to work on, finish with something well handled. Feedback was an expectation, and the opposite actually occurred: not wanting critiques or suggestions for how to do better was considered lazy, or only wanting good comments was considered attention seeking or ego-stoking. Sometimes people took it too far with their criticisms, but just as often they didn’t. I know I sure got some upsetting reviews back in the day, but I also got a lot of people pointing out little bits and pieces that I could fix and improve on. Even if I didn’t agree, it still made me think about why I made some of the writing choices that I did.
It’s a fascinating bit of cultural evolution and culture clash, actually. One of those things where language and communication evolved somewhere along the way and caught us off guard. Because I actually do see some older people in fandoms expressing shock when even a (well meant, not mean, or well written) critique is taken poorly by a writer or an artist. For example, I had a friend recently who offered some (legitimate) constructive criticism to an artist and was shocked when the artist was furious and offended with that. And on the flip-side, I know I’m always baffled when readers (hesitantly, shyly) point out a typo or a mixed up word that I missed in my editing, like it’s some great breach of etiquette and highly offensive to me to point out that I made a mistake. (It’s not, for the record).
And I feel like AO3 happened to roll along at the time that shift happened, but I don’t think it’s solely responsible. In fact, my guess is that it’s the opposite, and the culture change strongly influenced AO3.
Of course, sometimes people use “criticism” to be an asshole. And those guys should just knock it right off already.
This reflects on what I’ve experienced, and I know that really works out for a lot of people who write fic. Personally it kinda bums me out, because I like hearing about reasonable critiques (and typos, fuck knows I make a ton of those).
I would actually suggest that AO3s timing wasn’t coincidental. The ‘have a deep discussion about the fic and discussing the craft’ was a huge part of Livejournal culture. That was back in the days when you could scroll past a fic and find a mount of large comments discussing particular elements or characterizations between readers and the authors.
Then Strikethrough happened and AO3 followed after, but the culture of LJ fandom has died out. Tumblr is indicative of that cultural change, I think – you wouldn’t get the popularity on LJ that you can get on Tumblr, or at least not as much as quickly. Back in the day, having a friends list of 100 or so people was a huge deal, and bonefide BNF status.
Nowadays, we’re much less isolated and much less centralized, which also makes fanworks much more public. It opens you up to a lot more undue criticism and vitriol for the same works, and makes it so it’s harder to narrow what you consume, even if accidentally. (IE you have to follow very specific curated tumblrs to completely avoid content you don’t care about, and even then it’s iffy).
Combined with how much more populous and mainstream (ish) fandom/fanfic has become, it’s not a surprise the culture has changed. Not only have we lost LJ’s culture and community/discussion designed formatting, but you can’t be sure the people seeing your writing are people who have chosen to/enjoy that specific content, so you don’t know the mentality they’re coming from. That’s also FF.net’s problem, since it was so huge and so centralized. History repeats itself.
Petition to start calling Tumblr the Pit of Voles 2.0
Excellent thoughts, both of you, and completely accurate. The problem with ff.n culture was that it was far too focused on the consumer. The writers couldn’t respond to reviews individually, but had to make long, rambling author’s notes. (Sometimes entire chapters were author’s notes, gah I hated that.) It wasn’t a conversation on the story itself. Though there was give and take, it was very much about keeping your readers happy so you would keep getting those sweet, sweet reviews.
Of all the fandom cultures I’ve experienced, LJ was by far my favorite. The nesting comments meant that you COULD have conversations on fics, and you did. Lots of people did! It was an amazing way to form relationships and have discussions. And the nested comments were on every post, not just fics like in AO3, so you could write an episode reaction or a meta, then discuss it in the comments with your friends. AO3 tried to bring that over by making the comment system similar to LJ, and I have had AWESOME conversations in the comments on fics (it’s how I got to write for the Dream, Seam ‘verse), but by and large it didn’t quite translate.
If I could put it in a nutshell, I would say ff.n culture was about serving the readers, AO3 culture is about protecting the writers, and LJ culture was about having discussions about everything and anything with everyone you came in contact with. Heck, LJ had huge anon communities where you could go anonymous and just bitch about the fandom and things without revealing who you were. It was like anon hate on tumblr, except not sent directly to your inbox, so you could avoid it if you wanted.
And tumblr culture is about gaining as many followers as possible and trying to keep your fandom “pure.” Very fame and morality driven.
i'll apple your turnover 