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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.
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