#this is what happens when ao3 is down | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shivasdarknight · 8 months

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[Image ID: A screenshot of user redwinterroses (from Jan 27, 2022) tinted yellow to indicate that it is a screenshot and not a post on the dashboard. The screenshot reads: All I'm saying is, if a fic refers to characters by their physical attributes instead of their names or pronouns ("he smiled at the older" "the blonde laughed") when we know who the character is, and ESPECIALLY if the descriptions include "ravenette" or "cyanette" or other ridiculous words--

I'm clicking out of that fic so fast my Ao3 history won't even register I've been there. /.EndID]

I'm gonna use this as a launching point for something that really bugs me with regards to how people - especially folks on tumblr - talk about fanfiction and if something isn't "up to snuff" or to their tastes. This ranges anywhere from grammar and punctuation, to even judgement towards someone for their skill in writing and how they frame it on tumblr - such as word choice or dialogue tags (said and its variants). Plenty of other things that get torn into (like POV type like first, second, or third (usually its first getting dunked on, second if you're not a Homestuck); or even tropes) but that's a different discussion, and I'm focusing more on how people talk about things that are "subpar". There are many posts like this, but I want to use this one to talk more about it as it's the one I most recently found. We're going to talk about this attitude, critique vs criticism vs what tumblr thinks is good critique with regards to writers (regardless of skill level, but mostly beginner ones), so this will get a bit lengthy.

Let's get definitions out of the way so everyone is clear here. When I say critique, this is in reference to feedback given towards a thing (writing, art, etc.) with the intention of improving upon it. Critique has a narrow scope, but it often addresses subject, form, technical aspects (in writing, form and technicality are grammar/punctuation, style, and prose - the latter of which is what OP is digging into), and execution. Critique includes both negative and positive aspects because it's important for good critique. Critique isn't tearing into someone for the sake of it, because the point of critique is to improve upon these aspects and become more comfortable in your craft. To take critiques is a skill in its own, but so is giving critiques - the best advice is usually a "critique sandwich" in which you say something positive, point out something that can be improved upon (importantly: not saying negatively charged things), and then summarize in a positive tone. Critique is not an excuse to bully, and critique should always be consensual. Critique appears in classes, in the form of beta readers, asking others for advice, and so on and so forth. The person who made the thing must be open to critique for critique to be effective. If they are not looking for critique and you give it anyways, you're just an ass.

On the other hand, criticism - especially in this context - is broader than critique. It tends to have a more negative connotation of it, but to be critical of something isn't inherently to be negative to it. This is where you see your media criticism, dissection of trends, etc. This doesn't usually engage directly with the source of the criticism most often, it's usually supplementary. Again: broader than critique, but its space does not often overlap with the original thing. Important to note that criticism does not inherently mean that the critic hates the thing being criticized. Criticism is just being critical of a thing. To be critical is not inherently negative; it's just talking about something to a finer degree than casual consumption. It's not admonishment, it's often a way to start a discussion.

This is where people tend to balk at the idea of criticizing fan media because they conflate the two, but critique =/= criticism. Critique is more based in the craft itself (art, writing, etc.) while criticism is more about the broader impact of the thing made by the craft. While critiques do exist in criticisms, and critique can draw from criticism, they are not the same thing.

Examples:

Critique:

Your inking wasn't consistent, so the final print is splotchy. You need to improve on inking your block if you want your final image to look the way you intend it to

You added too much ink to the block and caused a lot of spillage, you need to find a balance between the two in order to get what you want

I like the gestural nature of your drawing, but I think that you would get a stronger composition if you pushed it further and focus on line weight

The alliteration is a really nice touch in your prose, but you fall back on it a lot. I think that the alliteration would be more effective in this moment if you limit it to that moment and change up how you write prose leading into it - maybe slowly increasing the repetition until you get to the three-beats?

Your prose is really strong, and I like what you've developed so far. What I think you need to work on is learning how you can control your technical flow with better punctuation usage, such as a better understanding of when to use commas or em-dashes.

You're using periods at the end of your dialogue that is followed by a tag. Unless there's nothing like "he said", then periods in dialogue must be a comma. Not "'Alright.' He responded.", but: "'Alright,' he responded.".

Criticism:

There is a common trend within fandom to take a female love interest from canon and find a way to shove her off to the side for the sake of m/m shipping. It's come in a variety of forms, but the most notable ones include villainizing, killing her off, or the modern lesbian best friend/wingman which overlaps with the other modern form, the mean lesbian adjacent to the m/m ship.

Despite all the advancements that have been made in terms of accessibility within video games, it almost seems like some games are more inaccessible than ever due to developers prioritizing a key experience rather than making sure it's playable for everyone. A good example of this would be the MMO, Final Fantasy XIV, and its late game raiding that features many fights with non-toggleable flashes that have induced seizures in players, or their lack of color contrast options for color blind players - forcing both groups to either suffer through the content, not raid, or seek out illegal mods if they play on pc. Console raiders have no such options, as the in game effects toggle doesn't apply to the worst offenders.

With these examples out of the way, look back at OP and how they've framed their "advice" (which they say is advice further down this thread - as with all others who jump in on the post with "advice") - does this look like critique or criticism?

This style of post - and how everyone jumped on it - are part of a really frustrating trend online, but especially on tumblr, where people make vague complaints about a kind of writer and use their vague posting to tear into them. At this point, most people understand that unwanted critique is bad, so they instead channel that need to critique in stuff like this. From here on, I'm going to call it ""advice"" - quotations and all.

This is not advice. It's not even good critique. This ""advice"" is taking a common mistake or habit of fanfic writers - most of whom are new to writing, are teenagers, or haven't been professionally trained in writing because so few people have that opportunity - and then tearing it to shreds. This is looking at a habit that fanfic authors learning how to write picked up from other authors learning how to write, and then declaring that if a writer uses it you will not engage with them whatsoever.

That's not advice. It's a vague threat through shaming people for doing stuff. The thread goes on to list actual advice, but most of it is the most bare bones writing tips that doesn't account for people experimenting with style. It's shame through nitpicking and expecting everything to be perfection.

Fanfiction is held to a really awful standard in which it must meet every single one of your needs as a reader, otherwise it's not worth your time. Between the lack of support on platforms like AO3 or FFNet, and then these mass shaming posts that tear into writers for having the audacity of making a mistake, is it any surprise a lot of fanfic writers give up? Why so many fanfics you like just go unfinished with no word from the author?

Tumblr is too comfortable with this idea that they get to sit here and tear into authors who may not be using perfect syntax or use goofy words like silverette. You are looking at someone stumbling their way through a hobby that is admittedly very hard and tearing into them behind their back. When people see these posts, their fist reaction isn't go go "oh thank you for the advice," it's to get self conscious about their own writing and if they do fit the bill, they're not likely to take your advice. They may just stop writing altogether.

What gets to me is that this ""advice"" - this shaming framed as tips from people who "Actually Know how to write" - is it's considered a more widely acceptable way of talking about fanfiction and fanfiction authors than actually supporting authors you like. It's more acceptable than passing around resources. It's more acceptable than actual criticism of harmful things in fandom (see: colonizer lan wangji, op of this thread has talked about it a fair amount) that the criticism of would then make spaces safer for the people impacted (in that case, address the anti-indigenous writing of a horrific fic in the MDZS fandom that was trying to romanticize the tactics used in the genocide of indigenous americans).

Tumblr users seem to know to not take unwanted critique to the comments of the author in question, yet they can't seem to keep their mouths shut; instead, they curate hundreds of posts with thousands of notes to shame authors who have committed the grave sin of using goofy words or having awkward prose - which I'm so sure that no of the people making these posts have ever made mistakes like these in their own writing </sarcasm>

This collective shaming of writing characteristic of people learning how to write or who aren't super familiar with English doesn't sit right with me. Especially since so much of it feels like a reflexive cringe for things that the person grew out of. Maybe something isn't your style, but maybe it works for someone else. Everyone complains about the repetition of "said", but there are some hard hitting stories that weaponize the repetition of "said" for effect. Consider OP: a very specific one that I use still is bluenette, in part because I am a brunette who dies his hair blue very frequently - thus, bluenette (brunette+his is not incorrect in usage for myself, check my pinned; brunet+she would also not be incorrect - so do not come nitpicking me). Bluenette sounds so much like brunette that it comes off as a pun, and in this case it is used intentionally for said pun and often as a joke somewhere in my writing or even just conversation. Is OP going to also apply this logic to people who refer to women as brunets or blonds, or men as brunettes or blondes? Sometimes stuff like this is someone trying to work out their style. Sometimes it's a genuine mistake. Sometimes it's someone doing this with the utmost intention of calling a character by their hair color as a sign of disrespect through denying them their name - you do not know why it's used, and to publicly shame people for a common mistake is not how you're going to get them to improve.

The way ""advice"" is delivered feels like reflexive cringe, like I said, but also like a gross misrepresentation of what criticism is. Criticism's goal is discussion and improvement. Posts like these are just a way to shame people who aren't as skilled as you expect them to be. Let me make this clear: you are reading fanfiction. Many people use fanfiction to learn how to write, and may not have the most polished style. You are reading this for free. It's frankly really shitty to nitpick at someone's writing style and skill and then put it on blast for thousands of people on tumblr to jump in on this dogpile. Even when you give advice - such as in this post down beyond this screen - it's still framed negatively and in a "do this or you're bad" kind of critique. This is not framed to actually help people with their writing; this is shaming them into the style that you like and find engaging. And every following post beyond the advice from OP in this example further dogpiles the original point.

If you are shaming someone through a vague post because you don't like the fact that they're not a skilled writer, then it's clear you do not actually care about these people improving. You would rather mass shame writers who don't fit your view of what technically flawless prose looks like - be it because they're a teenager, they learned writing from online spaces and are still learning, or English isn't their first language - than actually teach them in a way that would be conducive to learning. You would rather have people jump in on this mass shaming as a sense of self importance because none of you write that way, thus everyone else who does is bad.

This is not critique. This is not criticism.

This is shaming writers - specifically writers who are still learning - for the fact that they do not match your expectations, and then gloating about how you never want to touch their work ever again.

The example above is shaming a common writing habit of teenagers and new writers who learned independently, and then following that shame with a threat to never engage with their stuff again, and then some tips sprinkled in with more "if you do this, shame on you" language.

You know, the exact stuff that makes people quit writing as a hobby or trying to learn it because they want to join in when it concerns this aspect of fandom.

This kind of ""advice"" is just vague blogging a writer to shame them. They may not ever see it, but Tumblr sure does a good job of keeping people from ever attempting to write because of the unreasonably high standards for a new/inexperienced writer putting stuff on the internet.

#ao3 #fanfiction #writing #fandom critical #writing advice #lbr its more like writing advice critical #but i loath to call something like that advice #original #long post #ive got a lot of feelings about this because of how rocky my start was with writing #most of my improvement was done offline due to the flack i was getting on deviantArt for frankly anything that I made #didn't matter if it was writing or drawing or mmd stuff. people took their opinions directly to you #add on tumblr's brand of ''''advice'''' and you get a nervous wreck who's struggling to post fanfiction #i'm only where i'm at because of how much i wrote away from people which is also why posts like the one above dont get me down about writin #but thats because i'm at where i'm at. i'm not a new writer ive been doing this for over a decade #i also know that my younger sister raced to ''get good'' at writing because of the shit that i'd gotten #i had a rocky phase with my writing that she didn't because she was actively trying to avoid the vulnerable phase that OP is dunking on #yeah when you're still getting on your feet with writing you do pick up stuff like that from other awkward people #they're all looking to each other for examples and it's not helpful to fucking shame people for it #what happened to cringe is dead oh wait. that only applies to what you like. and not what affects you.#when people go ''why do my favorite fics die'' and ''why arent there many writers'' its because of shit like this #shaming people for growing pains is embarrassing behavior #especially when you follow up that shame with a threat to never engage with them #im glad i got batshit about my writing and stopped caring about other people's opinions. new writers can't say the same.#also i hate the gendering of brunet/brunette blond/blonde its so fucking DUMB

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