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My first entry on Dreamwidth! Super exciting. I used to lurk a lot before I had a tumblr, but I never actually commented or made an account. Now that my tumblr has been flagged NSFW and tumblr won't even let me download my blog (...that might also be my computer, to be fair, but I don't really feel like being fair), I'll be setting up home here for the foreseeable future! I also have a Twitter, but I'm bad at shortform stuff, as this post is about to demonstrate.
This past year, I've seen an increase in discussion about comment culture on AO3. Anecdotally (and I believe some people have actually looked at the numbers, too), fics posted on AO3 receive fewer comments than those posted elsewhere, such as on ff.net, LJ, or DW. One supposed reason is that kudos is a low-effort, low-pressure way to let the author know their fic was enjoyable. I also think, though, that the general disconnect from direct person-to-person interaction where you can like anything on Twitter, tumblr, Facebook definitely encourages kudos over commenting. We like clicking those buttons. A glut of easy-to-access content from strangers might be helping that as well. I know that I, for one, am much more inclined to comment on the fic of a friend or even someone I'm familiar with than the fic of a stranger.
Why do kudos matter over comments for some authors? Well, for me, kudos always says "that was good, but not exceptional enough that I have anything to say about it." A comment is so much more affirming. It tells me what a reader liked about my story, how it touched them. I receive kudos emails every day. With the 52 fics I have on AO3, I generally see a spread of one or two kudos over two to five fics. I get a comment like...maybe once every two or three weeks, sometimes with occasional clusters of two or three during holidays. I'm also, however, not a popular writer and not one who sticks with one ship long enough to amass any kind of reader base that I can expect to return to my next fic.
The vast majority of my works in my most recent active period of fanfic writing--late 2016 to perhaps summer 2018--have been for DC Comics. DC fandom is not so much one fandom as a bunch of fandoms stuck together. You have your Batfam stans, your Flash and Lantern geeks, your occasional passionate Aquaman enthusiast, your comics snobs, your people just here for the movies or TV shows, lesbians into any female character that kicks ass regardless of sub-property, that single brave soul who writes photo-essays on that one character from that one comic from 1989...So of course the popularity of ships, fics, writers, and artists is similarly fractured. Still, there are some strong contingents: your TV Supergirl femslash shippers, your Superman/Batman slashers, your Batkid gen writers are three big ones. DC fandom is swarming with antis and self-insert het stuff (you do you, girl, but I'm not reading that) and crazy amounts of discourse and while I've made friends, I wouldn't consider my experience an overall positive one. I've also been in DC fandom for four years now, where my previous monofandoms have had two to three years of staying power, so I might just be at the tail end of my fannish energy for it and maybe all of this is just coming from that. I've also been saying this for a while, however, so...lol.
My problem re: fic, though, is that except for a few fics in that third category (my most popular fics, actually!), I don't write the popular stuff. I've had to create tags for not only ships, but /characters/ that haven't yet been written on AO3. Because what I like the most is tough, complicated women of color fucking each other, perhaps inadvisably but certainly passionately. And I have had to DIG for those characters and those ships and sometimes produce them out of thin air. I'm drawn to something so niche--the corner of fandom I always find myself in is white boy obsessed even in 2018 (with the notable exception, of course, of the male characters of color in two recent megaslash fandoms, YOI and VLD).
And yet I don't necessarily like being part of a small fandom! I want to write things that more than me and 1 other person on AO3 appreciate. I'm hungry for feedback, for validation, to be part of a community that produces tropes and memes and challenges, that has a Discord with more than five people in it. But I don't know where to go. I've made some efforts towards moving to other fandoms. I've tried Star Trek: Discovery and The Bold Type, I've made forays into tags for fandoms I know to have female characters of color. Those fandoms, though, are always a subset of a subset of a fandom, maybe clearing 500 fics at the most. I wrote Ghostbusters fic back in 2016, and where I immediately saw Holtzmann/Tolan, everyone went crazy for Holtzmann/Gilbert. Because white ladies, I guess. Just like--where is my big active fandom with women of color I can ship together! I feel like I'm going to be waiting a long time.
Until then...I honestly don't know if I want to keep going. I can bite my tongue and write dudes or white women, but I'm at the point in my life where I'm like, you know what, fuck writing those perspectives that feel so constraining and alien and aloof. In my roleplaying with OCs, every single one of them is a woman of color now, and that's so freeing that I just don't want to go back. I can keep on the way I have been, but it's honestly draining to write a 7k fic and receive three comments and immediately disappear back into obscurity. I convinced myself for so long that creation was its own merit, but art can't exist in a vacuum, you know? I might as well enjoy my ideas in my own head instead of working to put them out there. With the courseload I have and the emotional stuff I've been going through, I just don't have the energy for fic anymore. I also honestly suspect that some of the things I used to channel into fic I've now channeled into cooking? The process, the time it takes, the separation from my normal homework and studying and other responsibilities, the creativity, making something consumable, and the elements of uncertainty.
So maybe I don't go back to fanfiction? Maybe I think about pursuing original fiction? Maybe I go back to embarrassingly confessional poetry? Maybe I accept myself as a frequent reader and a very occasional writer?
Or maybe I just wait until I fall in love with some other fandom and get sucked back in so thoroughly that I forget about all of this.
This past year, I've seen an increase in discussion about comment culture on AO3. Anecdotally (and I believe some people have actually looked at the numbers, too), fics posted on AO3 receive fewer comments than those posted elsewhere, such as on ff.net, LJ, or DW. One supposed reason is that kudos is a low-effort, low-pressure way to let the author know their fic was enjoyable. I also think, though, that the general disconnect from direct person-to-person interaction where you can like anything on Twitter, tumblr, Facebook definitely encourages kudos over commenting. We like clicking those buttons. A glut of easy-to-access content from strangers might be helping that as well. I know that I, for one, am much more inclined to comment on the fic of a friend or even someone I'm familiar with than the fic of a stranger.
Why do kudos matter over comments for some authors? Well, for me, kudos always says "that was good, but not exceptional enough that I have anything to say about it." A comment is so much more affirming. It tells me what a reader liked about my story, how it touched them. I receive kudos emails every day. With the 52 fics I have on AO3, I generally see a spread of one or two kudos over two to five fics. I get a comment like...maybe once every two or three weeks, sometimes with occasional clusters of two or three during holidays. I'm also, however, not a popular writer and not one who sticks with one ship long enough to amass any kind of reader base that I can expect to return to my next fic.
The vast majority of my works in my most recent active period of fanfic writing--late 2016 to perhaps summer 2018--have been for DC Comics. DC fandom is not so much one fandom as a bunch of fandoms stuck together. You have your Batfam stans, your Flash and Lantern geeks, your occasional passionate Aquaman enthusiast, your comics snobs, your people just here for the movies or TV shows, lesbians into any female character that kicks ass regardless of sub-property, that single brave soul who writes photo-essays on that one character from that one comic from 1989...So of course the popularity of ships, fics, writers, and artists is similarly fractured. Still, there are some strong contingents: your TV Supergirl femslash shippers, your Superman/Batman slashers, your Batkid gen writers are three big ones. DC fandom is swarming with antis and self-insert het stuff (you do you, girl, but I'm not reading that) and crazy amounts of discourse and while I've made friends, I wouldn't consider my experience an overall positive one. I've also been in DC fandom for four years now, where my previous monofandoms have had two to three years of staying power, so I might just be at the tail end of my fannish energy for it and maybe all of this is just coming from that. I've also been saying this for a while, however, so...lol.
My problem re: fic, though, is that except for a few fics in that third category (my most popular fics, actually!), I don't write the popular stuff. I've had to create tags for not only ships, but /characters/ that haven't yet been written on AO3. Because what I like the most is tough, complicated women of color fucking each other, perhaps inadvisably but certainly passionately. And I have had to DIG for those characters and those ships and sometimes produce them out of thin air. I'm drawn to something so niche--the corner of fandom I always find myself in is white boy obsessed even in 2018 (with the notable exception, of course, of the male characters of color in two recent megaslash fandoms, YOI and VLD).
And yet I don't necessarily like being part of a small fandom! I want to write things that more than me and 1 other person on AO3 appreciate. I'm hungry for feedback, for validation, to be part of a community that produces tropes and memes and challenges, that has a Discord with more than five people in it. But I don't know where to go. I've made some efforts towards moving to other fandoms. I've tried Star Trek: Discovery and The Bold Type, I've made forays into tags for fandoms I know to have female characters of color. Those fandoms, though, are always a subset of a subset of a fandom, maybe clearing 500 fics at the most. I wrote Ghostbusters fic back in 2016, and where I immediately saw Holtzmann/Tolan, everyone went crazy for Holtzmann/Gilbert. Because white ladies, I guess. Just like--where is my big active fandom with women of color I can ship together! I feel like I'm going to be waiting a long time.
Until then...I honestly don't know if I want to keep going. I can bite my tongue and write dudes or white women, but I'm at the point in my life where I'm like, you know what, fuck writing those perspectives that feel so constraining and alien and aloof. In my roleplaying with OCs, every single one of them is a woman of color now, and that's so freeing that I just don't want to go back. I can keep on the way I have been, but it's honestly draining to write a 7k fic and receive three comments and immediately disappear back into obscurity. I convinced myself for so long that creation was its own merit, but art can't exist in a vacuum, you know? I might as well enjoy my ideas in my own head instead of working to put them out there. With the courseload I have and the emotional stuff I've been going through, I just don't have the energy for fic anymore. I also honestly suspect that some of the things I used to channel into fic I've now channeled into cooking? The process, the time it takes, the separation from my normal homework and studying and other responsibilities, the creativity, making something consumable, and the elements of uncertainty.
So maybe I don't go back to fanfiction? Maybe I think about pursuing original fiction? Maybe I go back to embarrassingly confessional poetry? Maybe I accept myself as a frequent reader and a very occasional writer?
Or maybe I just wait until I fall in love with some other fandom and get sucked back in so thoroughly that I forget about all of this.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 03:22 am (UTC)And then fandom is like, "Oh, they're too perfect to be shipped!" Just like, put them on a pedestal and get rid of any self-examination you might have to do otherwise, I guess.
Oof, this gets me heated.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 10:30 am (UTC)I understand what you mean about comments though. A lot of social media nowadays is shockingly solitary. If you don't go in with a clique or don't write things that are popular (and POC are rarely that popular), you're out. So comments, at least, serve as feedback and a voice to reassure us that real actual people have thoughts about what we created.
On the other hand, I can appreciate the kudos/like buttons. Sometimes, you just run out of spoons to say anything. For me, I've found myself writing and rewriting a comment that just don't come out right and end up deleting everything to kudos. So that's also part of the dilemma that's hard to solve.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 10:28 pm (UTC)I guess like--fandom used to be full of all these little corners, and you knew people in your corner and all of you supported one another. But now fandom is this huge crazy horde and more about generating clicks maybe? Just like most of the internet.
I don't disagree that kudos have a purpose! I'm very glad that it's there as an option for people, and I agree it can sometimes be really hard to figure out what to say. But the kudos: comments ratios I see on fic are miserable. My friend once had a fic with sixty kudos and one comment! I guess I should assume the best intentions of people, but it's still sometimes like...damn. As a writer myself, I really came to understand the value of comments and I do try to leave them more often.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 07:08 am (UTC)I think it was Facebook and its "Like" button that really changed the face of the internet. Before, you either commented or you didn't (you usually did if you knew that person). Post-Facebook, you could click like and move on.
Which is not useful with fic because you really want to know what people thought about it. Writing is a lot of work! So you do want a way to know if it's appreciated.
I admit, I am a contributor to the uneven kudos:comments ratio. There's something about the review box that pings my social anxiety for some reason. I've left like... a handful(optimistically) of reviews on things I reread a few dozen times because guilt was speaking. Funnily enough, it's not so difficult to comment to someone's Dreamwidth post for me. Maybe that's a new year's resolution to work on.
Also, Happy New Year! May it bring you good and better things!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 07:29 am (UTC)You know what, you're probably right. I'm also happy to blame anything on Zuck.
I know even short comments are really appreciated, and they don't have to be beautifully composed or even totally coherent, really. A keysmash is a compliment! And saying "I've read this a dozen times" would be a huge, huge confidence boost.
Commenting is a fraught thing for authors and readers, so I understand when people are hesitant about it. I'm commenting more on a general trend, since I really think those interactions help glue together a more positive fandom culture.
ETA: Happy New Year to you as well!
The Zuck is the Origin of Everything You Hated About the Internet? It's More Likely than You Thought
Date: 2019-01-01 08:39 am (UTC)Increasingly, I think the solution to encouraging comments is to just... get rid of the option for likes. Just phase it out in the design process. Give them no choice.
Re: The Zuck is the Origin of Everything You Hated About the Internet? It's More Likely than You Tho
Date: 2019-01-01 03:30 pm (UTC)Okay, agreed, haha. We wouldn't have Ghostbusters (2016) if they hadn't all decided to date one another (Ghostbusters poly is also underrated).
That's actually a movement now--some people wanna get rid of the kudos button. I don't think AO3 would ever do it, but it's an interesting idea. Still, it leaves out those people who are too shy, who are reading in their second language, or who just don't have the time to read a long comment (me reading fics on my way to class) from showing the author some appreciation. It's definitely a complicated topic.
Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame The Zuck
Date: 2019-01-01 04:20 pm (UTC)Poly is the way to go for everything! Sadly, we're never going to get Ghostbusters' fic about it. It lives in our hearts though and is the origin of the film.
So I guess we're just stuck with encouraging people to comment when they can. Oh well, uphill battle it is.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 09:28 pm (UTC)Gah, I can relate to this so much! In the past I wrote a lot of m/m slash fic, and it's so much more popular than anything I write now. It sometimes frustrates me that my own mediocre fics get so much more recognition than the fic I write now, which I feel is better. I don't usually write women of colour, but I'm sure that WOC pairings get ignored even more than white femslash pairings. Fandom is really fucked up. I try not to focus too much on fic any more, and put more energy / time into other kinds of writing, because I think it's more personally satisfying. The fic I do write is incredibly self-indulgent, it's really just to make me happy, so it's become something relaxing. I miss when fic felt so exciting and vibrant to me.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 10:21 pm (UTC)