I feel like one of my fics ended up on a "rec" list or something, thought I'm using the word "rec" there very loosely because whatever list it's on definitely isn't recommending anything. In the past few days, I've just been getting negative comment after negative comment.
And fandom, I gotta ask. Why would people bother to go through a story that was finished eight years ago and leave their stale, unnecessary two cents? Honestly, this is baffling, and kind of funny. It raises so many questions. Namely, what do they expect me to do about the fact that they hate my characterization? Am I mean to go back and change things? Should I rewrite the plot of this entire fic to fix the fact that it allegedly doesn't make sense? Should I even be caring about the opinions of somebody who doesn't seem know how to spell the word "series"? Do I owe them a refund of the zero dollars they paid to read this? Did they accidentally hit "comment" instead of "close tab"? Did they accidentally do that multiple times??? (Wow that's embarrassing.)
Anyway, bottom line is: I don't care. I'm an adult, and I write for a primary audience of myself. If other people like it, that's a bonus, but I have to be honest here. 100% of everything I inflict upon AO3 is because I wanted to write it, I found the idea entertaining, and I decided to type it all out for my own personal satisfaction. I don't expect readers to enjoy every single choice I make. Hell, sometimes I'm not thrilled with what I do, but I do it anyway because I want to move past X roadblock and get on to Y scene. This is the great thing about writing fanfic on the internet. It doesn't have to be perfect. I can write absolute dreck if I want, and nobody can stop me. š
But the big, glaring problem I see here is with the comfort level some people have with leaving these comments in the first place. See, I can take it. I get that email notification, I read their silly little opinion, and I dismiss it with a hearty guffaw. I am a confident person. The words of somebody I don't know and don't respect on the internet are about as important to me as bird crap on my car. It's a minor annoyance that I wipe up and delete if it's particularly bad and then don't think about again. Is bird crap going to stop me from parking on that side of the street? Nope. Are mean comments going to make me change my writing? (See answer to previous.)
Now what if I were a much younger person just starting out, posting a piece of writing for the first time? One I was incredibly proud of, and nervous to share with the fandom community?
Because I'm currently a contrary asshole, there are two things a negative comment will do to me. 1) Nothing. 2) Make me double down on my bullshit. Scenario 2 is way more likely, FYI. At a younger age, though, I would have been devastated. It took me a lot of years, a lot of practice, and a lot of determination to get to where I am now in my confidence level. As a teenager, and even in college, I didn't have that. I have literally been writing fanfic since before I knew fanfic was a thing other people did, but for years I never shared it because I was nervous about how it would be received. Other people's opinions mattered a lot more to me back then.
If I had received these kinds of comments on something I had written when I was 20, flat out, I would have stopped writing.
So that brings me back around to my original question of why people bother leaving negative comments and unsolicited criticism. Are you REALLY trying to help the author improve? Do you REALLY think your comments will have a net positive impact down the road? Is it REALLY necessary to go to the trouble of typing out your soggy opinion on a gay superhero story you read for free on the internet? For real, my dudes, I always find it easier to just nope out of something that's not to my tastes. Reading the whole story and then commenting about how much I hate it seems. Uh. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah. Pointless.
People who do this aren't trying to improve anything. They're not leaving criticism that's constructive in any way. They're just dicks with petty grievances. How cringe.
Now to go delete some more shit because I don't need this kind of negativity in my life. ā°(*Ā°ā½Ā°*)āÆ
