coaltide | Offseason #5

Sure, sometimes you had assholes or "flamers" in your inbox, but I think I liked it more when people earnestly tried to give concrit to the best of their often limited ability than this "if you can't say something nice, say nothing at all" neurotic BS

Because back then, I felt like I could trust the positive feedback better. It's easier to believe someone genuinely likes the things they say they like when they also point out what they don't like, you know?

And it's no wonder that people (arguably) comment less now, and are sometimes downright neurotic or paralyzingly anxious about not commenting in the perfect way, because you can see how this attitude works out in places where commenting still IS part of expected etiqutte, like Yuletide. I'm pretty confident about my writing skills, but goddamn, seeing exchange recips leave gushing comments on their mediocre, deeply flawed, or even downright bad gift fic because they don't want to be rude can really give you trust issues.

I know I'd hate to get a comment like that. A few years ago I started clearly opting into concrit in my author notes but people don't actually take you up on it, and finding good betas who don't have a conflict of interest with you (otherwise known as "you write their rarepair") is often impossible in small fandoms.

(Muphry's Law states the above comment will have at least one egregious typo or SPAG error.... eh I'm not gonna stress about it)

no. i don't want to know what a bunch of plebs think i could improve about my fic because they are always wrong, my shit is genius and their shit sucks.

CYRT

That used to be my attitude but now I'd say that it averages out across commenters and the kernel of actual valuable feedback can be discerned. If enough people comment.

There are a few betas who can give you straight-shooting feedback while fandom blind and they're worth their weight in gold. They sometimes get something wrong because of canon-blindness but you can usually tell why.

CYRT

I'll probably give that a try at some point if I decide to get more serious about getting feedback. Right now I'm more in the space where things keep staying in the WIP pile because of overthinking and perfectionism procrastination. Not sure I want to add a beta to that mess just yet.

But my worry is always that they won't help me be a better writer as much as try to turn my style into their style. (Certainly it's what I worry I'm doing when I beta.) I once had a popular BNF writer tear a writing excerpt of mine to shreds unsolicited and it was pretty infuriating because of the assumption that I would want to write more like they do. I don't.

"Muphry's Law" kek

spotted the channer

that's so unpoggers of you

CRYT

> Muphry's law is an adage that states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." The name is a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law".

*CYRT. gdi

if you want concrit maybe do that concrit x exchange or whatever it's called?

personally if i leave a gushing comment it's because i genuinely liked my gift. it may not be perfect but someone made an effort to make something *for me* and i am thankful. most of what i get is actually pretty decent and the one time i got a dnw violation i put on my big girl pants and went to the mod for an eph. a lot of troubles in exchanges would be solved if ppl went to the mods about bad faith actors and weren't all "oh i don't want to bother the mod and be ~perceived~."

not everybody is lying when they leave a positive comment on something that isn't literary genius. they may actually really like it.

a lot of troubles in exchanges would be solved if ppl went to the mods about bad faith actors

I don’t think pantless people of this kind putting on their big girl panties would make much difference because situations of this kind are infrequent.

Now, if all the noncommenters learned how to say thank you…

NC

The trouble with the noncommenters is a lot of them don't see their gifts as gifts, not like a physical gift is a gift. To them, it's a prompt fill, and even if the creator's working to the recipient's requests, it's the author or artist who still owns the work and can even delete it from AO3 if they choose. They see the whole exchange thing as transactional; they make a fanwork and get a fanwork in return and that's it. To them, it's not a social event and they don't consider themselves part of an exchange community.

I don't like noncommenters. I think they're rude. But I can sort of see their line of thinking even though I believe they're wrong. Especially if they are the likes of Flipflop Diva who know better and choose to keep on not commenting and pissing everyone else deliberately.

CYRT

I completely agree there must be people who think that way, but we have no way of knowing if that's any particular person's thought process because we can't read their minds.

Plus, if we're talking about someone who's been doing exchanges for any length of time - they'll have been getting gift notification from AO3 that say "Please comment on your gift" and mod announcements on their exchange comms that say "Please comment on your gift" for literal years. Of course someone can come into the scene with a different assumption. But it's wild to me that anyone could stay unaware of this norm.

You also see a lot of people like calenlily and blueyeti who'll be chatting happily in namespace and talking up how excited they are for the next event while sitting on a page or more of unacknowledged gifts. I can't stand those people.

nc

+1 on calenlily and blueyeti. annoying af.

no way of knowing if noncommenters really see exchanges as purely transactional like cyrt said, but some ppl in the bfe thread have actually stated this opinion that they only see exchanges as "give a fic and get a fic" and don't see any further social obligations.

Re: Anyone else really miss candid comment culture?

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-02 21:59 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Anyone else really miss candid comment culture?

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-03 01:33 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Anyone else really miss candid comment culture?

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-05 04:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Anyone else really miss candid comment culture?

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-07 10:26 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Anyone else really miss candid comment culture?

(Anonymous) - 2024-02-07 11:49 (UTC) - Expand

CRYT

not everybody is lying when they leave a positive comment on something that isn't literary genius. they may actually really like it.

I was thinking about people who (understandably, but still) left nice comments on bad gift fics and then went on to complain elsewhere, as dutifully documented by the coalie brigade.

I didn't know concrit exchange was a thing, thank you

Did that “back then” culture really exist though?

CYRT

It's hard to say. Some fandom olds always go "no you're just being nostalgic, it was always this way that people very rarely commented". But then I go look at my old FFN account and most fics there got more comments within a year or so than some of my newer fic on AO3 that's been up for years, even in similarly tiny fandoms. And yes, some of it was kinda stream of consciousness commenting on things they liked but also things that didn't work so well or were confusing. I absolutely get the impression people didn't overthink it as much back then. I fully expect that the overthinking just by itself has had a chilling effect.

But it's not that I miss the engagement (although who doesn't). I really think it was easier to keep a pulse on the effect your writing was having on people like that.

I think that was a ffn specific thing, where a lot of stuff on ffn was stream of consciousness and not thought through. I was mostly on forums and mailing lists in the ffn-dominant period and the ethos was definitely already not to give un-requested concrit. Some of the mailing lists iirc did have an option as to specify if you wanted concrit or not. And some of the fora had specific "give me concrit on this" subforums. But unrequested concrit was still controversial at best, and there's many reasons ffn was The Pit.

I think there have always been parts of fandom where it wasn't immediately quashed, but usually that's either places like ff.net where there's not really a wider fandom culture beyond posting and commenting and a lot of people interacting as complete strangers, or specific small corners of people who all know each other already and know everybody likes it.

No. The average person is crappy at concrit, and I don't want it.

Completely agreed. The only “critique” I get is anti-esque bullshit (“this fic is problematic because the trans character acts like a person and not a perfect angel!” Or dragging me, a trans, for my “insensitive” and “ignorant” handling of trans issues. Lol)

The pressure to only say nice things does put me off commenting, and that sucks. I think if critique was more accepted I’d be so much less worried about being misinterpreted, and would comment more on fics that I just liked, not loved. It’s that walking on eggshells feeling, you know? Which never has much effect on the “flamers”, but scares away the people most worried about being nice.

Original coalie and yes exactly. That's the feeling I was trying to convey.

I mean, I’ve been in fandom for over twenty years and maybe the period of good concrit comments came before me, but in my experience, I rarely got good concrit when I did get concrit. And honestly, I don’t remember receiving much of it. If I had someone who knew what they were doing giving me concrit, I would 100% have loved that and would still love it. But, most of my concrit were things like “you made [character] too [unflattering adjective].” Or very subjective and not helpful comments.

The only time I remember receiving good concrit is when I did S2B2 and got concrit through that writing process.

I think there was a period in the early fandom era when most fanfic came through SF zine culture where honest mixed opinion reviews were the norm but a) that was a period where you were often paying money for zines sight unseen through mail-order, and the reviews were being published in different zines, so they were not serving primarily as concrit, and b) once modern fanfic culture started taking shape as distinctly separate from SF zines there was a pretty quick backlash/controversy over that anyway.

Original coalie and I think those of us who agree with this sentiment are talking less about "Some rando's idea on how to best improve(TM) your writing" and more about feedback that just has less of a filter on it, or rather, candid, like in the post title. Sorry, my mentions of concrit ended up a bit misleading.