Feedback, Critique, and That Entitlement Thing

Meta
Title:	The Scenic Route
Creator:	Melissa "Merlin Missy" Wilson
Date(s):	August 31, 2005
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	Feedback, Critique, and That Entitlement Thing; archive link
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Feedback, Critique, and That Entitlement Thing is a 2002 essay by Merlin Missy.

Some Topics Discussed

• references to a then-recent series of discourses about feedback
• differing expectations from both writers and readers about feedback for fanfiction
• being nice, as opposed to being truthful
• fan entitlement
• gone are the days where there was one big archive for each fandom
• balkanization has changed fandom
• writers should write for purely the joy of it, BUT they do have feelings, limited time, and if they don't get enough feedback by posting their fic in a certain place, they will likely stop doing the work of posting there
• is the comment "write more!" acceptable feedback? better than nothing? just plain rude?

Excerpts

As a fanfic writer, you are not entitled to get comments on your story. No matter how long it took to write, no matter how deep and insightful it is, no matter how funny or angsty it is, no matter if it features this week's hot OTP, you are not entitled to a single comment from anyone saying "OMG, plz write more." You are not entitled to better feedback than "OMG, plz write more." You are not entitled to receive only feedback that you consider "acceptable" or "intelligent." You are not entitled to deep critique of the themes and motifs you use in your work, to having the best beta in your fandom look over your masterpiece, to getting a certain number of hits or responses to your stories or chapters. You are not entitled to post anywhere where your story violates the TOS of the website, and while you can whine all you want about it violating your First Amendment rights (or other applicable rights for the many non-Yanks out there), you're still wrong. People are providing you a place to post, and they don't want to get sued over your story. You are not entitled to get paid for your work, because it breaks copyright laws and screws over the rest of us.)

As a fanfic writer, you are entitled to write. Write everything. Write anything. Write your darkest fantasies. Write your silliest daydreams. Write long, complex works full of imagery and post-modern thought. Write drabbles and haiku and limericks. Write Mary Sues and mpregs. You can write. Whether or not you can post it online depends on the laws in your area, and if you don't know what those laws are, you may want to find out. But no one can stop you from writing it.

As a fanfic reader, you are not entitled to a single story in your favorite genre, fandom, or pairing. You are not entitled to read good fiction, spell-checked fiction, well-crafted fiction, short fiction, long fiction, poetry, or novels that feature anything that you necessarily want to be reading. Ignoring the "fanfiction is a gift" notion, fanfic is someone's hobby, something that she or he has taken hir own time to think of, write down, and post (usually paying somehow for the latter, via ISP or student fees or whatever). There is no payment exchanged by you to them. You do not get to dictate what someone else writes (except in the case of ficathons, and that's a bit different regardless). You are not entitled to the next chapter of your favorite author's WIP, or her next story. If she's gone onto the next fandom, you can't make her come back to yours.

As a fanfic reader, you are entitled to read. If you can get online (and that's a big issue too -- see the recent dicussions about how class dictates who sees what) you can look for any story that floats your fancy, and if it's fanfic, it's free. You are entitled to read as much as you want or as little. You can read only second-person fics featuring romantic interludes between Remus Lupin and Teen Wolf if you want. You are entitled to use your "delete" button and your backspace. You are entitled to take one look at the summary of: "A misterious new grrl comes to Hogwart from America,is it Harry;s sister?Plz R&R!!" and not even bother opening it (or diving right in, if that's your cuppa). You are not obligated to leave a single word of praise, criticism, or even acknowledgement that you clicked; the writers have already written, and as so many people like to point out, if one is a writer, one does it for the love of the subject, not the love of the reviews.

But here's the thing.

Everyone who has ever posted a story to the internet has a little counter, either on the site or in her head, and it tallies up the number of comments received for a particular piece. There's "Enough," for personal values of "enough," and there's "WTF? Am I chopped liver?" Writers will write, because writers do write. But if enough stories posted to a particular site land in the "chopped liver" category, writers will stop posting there, in favor of archives with better comment ratios. It's not entitlement, although for some people it might look the same. It's common sense. For example, if I regularly post to LJ, ff.net, and some nameless archive number three, and my stories regularly get "enough" hits on LJ and ff.net, and "chopped liver" on #3, it's not worth my time to format my stories for that archive. I could be spending the extra time writing more, reading what was posted while I was in writing mode, or *gasp* doing something in my real life. Gone are the days of Gossamer, when there was one big archive per fandom. The culture has changed, and posting behaviour has changed with it.

Fan Comments

[queenitsy]:Hi, I'm here from metafandom, and would just like to say that you read my mind. I've had this rant brewing for quite awhile, but you pretty much said everything I would have.

[joanne c]: Hi, I'm here from metafandom.

I agree with everything you've said, but I do have one slight disagreement.

In ficathons/challenges *where someone writes a story for you* I do think it's only polite to comment, even if it's only a "thanks for writing for me". I just think it's rude not to, and though I don't feel the author is at all entitled to comments in any other situation, I do think a five word acknowledgement of the time taken by the writer - whether or not you cared for the story - is implied in the exchange nature of the challenge. But that's the only circumstance I think it's even okay to think "gee, it would be nice if the person who I wrote for would just acknowledge that I did".

[Merlin Missy]: I most certainly agree that politeness dictates a response in the case of ficathons, which is why I listed those as a special case. Otoh, the only actual obligation someone has in the ficathon is to write one's assigned story. Therefore if I get a story in a ficathon that I don't like, and I comment how much it sucked (or don't comment at all) then while I am indeed a bitch, as long as I subbed a story for my own recipient, I've still fulfilled my obligations in the matter. Which sucks, because even if one doesn't agree with the Culture of Nice, it'd do amazing things for online interactions if we occasionally remembered the Culture of Polite.

[starry diadem]: A-men!

Thank you for putting so eloquently the rant that's been building in me over the last couple of weeks since the comment-wank started.

[liviapenn]: No matter how long it took to write, no matter how deep and insightful it is, no matter how funny or angsty it is, no matter if it features this week's hot OTP, you are not entitled to a single comment from anyone saying "OMG, plz write more." You are not entitled to better feedback than "OMG, plz write more."

Your post is full of common sense (or things that ought to be common sense, anyway) and I agree with absolutely everything else you said... except that part.

At the risk of getting raked over the coals for it *again*, I still hold the opinion that feedback that consists of nothing but a demand for more is rude. And I think a writer *is* entitled to be a bit disgruntled when she recieves rude feedback, whether it's "This would be a great story if it weren't disgusting slash!" or "More!" (not that the two things are equally rude, it's just an example.)

I mean, personally, I'm very very bad at leaving feedback, myself, so I'm not going to *demand* that people feedback *me*. If someone says something like "have you considered exploring this other character's reaction to what happened?" or "that was great, but I wasn't clear why she did that thing, maybe a sequel would clear it up?" that's fine. So is "blah blah you're awesome and the best writer ever and please continue to write great awesome fic!" That's not rude, and in fact I like feedback like that (or I would, if anyone left me feedback like that. *G*)

But honestly, I am always annoyed by someone who gives me one word of praise and then "write more, write more, write more!" "More" is not feedback, because it does not comment on the story I just wrote, it doesn't say "that was nice" or "that was confusing" or "I liked it all except the part with the jackals." All "more!" does is imply that what I just wrote *wasn't good enough to satisfy that person,* that they basically swallowed it in one bite and didn't even pay attention to it. They want the next thing, they want more. Well, why should I write more for someone who doesn't even appreciate the stories I write now? I'm not saying they have to leave nine paragraphs of fawning over my incredible metaphors-- they can leave nothing at all if they want to. But the very least they can do is refrain from *demanding* things from me. A demand is not a compliment, and it makes me feel really taken for granted.

People always say, "You're too sensitive-- 'more' *really* just means 'I liked it.'" Well, maybe to some people, "Give me more right now!!" equals "That was very nice and I liked it," but you wouldn't get very far with that argument if you tried it on my mother, and it doesn't go too far with me, either.

[Merlin Missy]: I understand exactly what you mean about it being rude. As part of my new "kinder, gentler, trying to beat fewer people over the head with a clue-by-four" approach to fandom, I try to view the "plz write more" responses the way (I hope) the commenter intended, which is as encouragement to continue in the same vein. (And I generally respond to it by pointing out the things I've already written in the same subject/theme because I am my own pimp.) It's not useful critique, and if you want to read Yet More Fannish Entitlement into it, there's plenty to be had. I'd prefer collecting a handful of "plz write more" comments than getting nothing at all on a particular story, especially on a site where I can track hits. With "plz write more," I know someone has read it and enjoyed what they read enough to want me to "do it again" whereas with complete silence, I can only assume no one cared at all. Your mileage obviously varies on the matter, and hey, you're entitled to disagree. ;)

However, I stand by the main claim of the statement. As fanfic writers, we're not entitled to better feedback than that. Some people might not like getting "plz write more" (again, I'll take it over cold silence any day) but none of us gets to choose what kind of comments we get except possibly from our betas (but interacting with betas is a different topic). You may prefer people don't comment rather than leave "plz write more," and you can even tack on a note at the bottom of your stories to say you'd prefer not to receive "plz write more" (possibly phrased "constructive feedback only, please") but you can't force readers to comment with anything more constructive than "plz write more." It's just not physically possible.

[...]

All feedback is gravy, even the feedback that makes us roll our eyes and pound our heads into our keyboards. Once, I got a comment from someone whose only feedback, for a story written nine years before, was that I'd gotten the character's eye color wrong. And I hadn't. (Fandom is crazy-onna-stick with a bow around it, sometimes.) But I won't dictate to my readers "No stupid details comments," because a) that's often how I get my last few typos pointed out, and b) it might scare off other people from commenting because they think their feedback "isn't good enough" (wrt to the original poster in this particular discussion who said she didn't comment on stories she liked for exactly that reason). You are free to try, and I'd be curious to see what the results are, but again, I don't believe we as fanfic writers are entitled to The Good Feedback simply by virtue of posting (or by virtue of "being us," a trap I've seen a number of people fall into when they hit BNF status early in their fannish "careers" --- not at all implying you have, simply noting what I've observed).

[...]

[liviapenn]: Oh, I wouldn't ever go so far as to actually put labels on my stories directing what type of comments I do or don't want. That would be demanding things of people who don't owe me *anything*. And as we've established, I think being demanding of people who don't owe you anything? Is rude. ;)

And yes, it's all about attitude and how one chooses to interpret what people say-- I mean, if someone comments on my latest story and says "Very well written, but I think het is icky, you should go back to writing slash, 'cause your slash is great." Then yes, I have the choice to ignore the rude part of it and interpret it in a 100% positive light-- "Oh, the person thinks the story was nicely written, and she likes my slash, that's nice" but that doesn't change the fact that at the base of it? It's a thoughtless comment. It's not polite. I don't have to be grateful for it.

I think we both agree that any polite feedback, regardless of length or "quality," is better than none. I think we probably also agree that rude feedback is *not* better than none. The only point of disagreement here is whether "Write more!" is rude or not.

And most of the time it's not, *really*. Most of the time people actually do leave an actual comment on the story and follow it up with "Write more!" and that's okay with me. Or if they tell me I should write a sequel, they give me some idea *why* they said that, and that's cool too. 99% of the people who leave "write more!" comments don't *mean* to be demanding. They really do mean to be complimentary, and they see everyone else doing it, so it must be fine, right? And most of the time I'm able to see it that way. It's a very, very small percentage of people who don't leave anything but a command to "hurry it up and write more now!!!!!"

But this is what I think: "Tell me where to find the next chapter NOW or I'll shoot myself in the head" (and yes, I have recieved that feedback) is *demanding*. If I don't get "enough" feedback on a story, I don't post it again with a huge header that says "More feedback now, please!" Because I'm not entitled to that. Just as you say: I *don't* actually "deserve" however much feedback I would consider to be "enough." I get what I get, and I am *really am* grateful for it.

But it comes down to this: if I am not entitled to demand more feedback from other people (which I'm *not*) then other people are not entitled to demand more stories from me.

[alexandralynch]: BEAUTIFUL rant, first off.

Regarding the "MORE plz!" people, I generally assume it means one of several things: 1) I was enjoying this so much that I felt sorry when I hit the bottom of the page and I hope you explore this more later.

2)I loved this story and want to see more of your writing.

What vaguely annoys me, however, is when I write in the commentary, "I don't know where this came from, and this is all there is; I don't normally write this," and get "OMG rite mor plz!"

And then I just shake my head and think, well, at least someone READ it....