how do you deal with dumb reviews on ffnet? and how do you deal with the ones that don't like your story and demand their own perception of characters be used instead? i posted my story on ff and ao3. ao3 and some ff gave positive reviews, i haven't had any negatives about my story so far on ao3 (it's a WIP). but ff seems to generate quite a few negative reviews that aren't constructive.
Welcome to the Pit of Voles. I know of at least one writer I adore who refuses to post on FFN because of the asshole factor.
I forward the really awful ones to friends and mock. (So, yes, if you told me I’m going to hell for writing a chess-playing mouse, I have laughed at you. You deserved it.) It helps a lot to have someone email you back and say, “OMG what an asshole, who says that? Fuckhead. I hope wild goats eat all her flowers and she realizes she’s out of chocolate on a PMS night.”
It’s easy to tell you to brush these things off but the truth is they sting. They sting a LOT. They sting when they’re eyeroll inducing ship hate (”Dramione is all bad and even though I clicked on a fic clearly marked as Dramione I feel the need to tell you how much I hate the pairing and make some suppositions about your character based on the fact that you write it.”) and they sting when they’re idiot trolls (”You’re a fucking loser who only wishes she could write, and, by the way, I have only a passing familiarity with grammar but a bit of a fetish for capital letters.”) and they sting when they might have been intended to be concrit but came out very badly (”Your work is filled with cringe inducing failures, though I won’t bother to actually tell you what any of them are.”) And, unfortunately, the answer I have is “get a lot of them and they start to sting less.” Get enough abuse and you stop caring quite so much.
Still, the best answer I have is to forward them to friends, get support that way, and remind yourself that FFN isn’t a creative writing class and the twerps who send whiny “that’s not the way it should go” feedback probably aren’t exactly qualified to teach such anyway. You are writing for you, a love letter to yourself, and if that’s how you want the characters to go, that’s how they will go. If the reviewers prefer a different interpretation they are welcome to find a story that better fits their expectations or try writing one themselves.
