On Fanlore, users with accounts can edit pages including user pages, can create pages, and more. Any information you publish on a page or an edit summary will be accessible by the public and to Fanlore personnel. Because Fanlore is a wiki, information published on Fanlore will be publicly available forever, even if edited later. Be mindful when sharing personal information, including your religious or political views, health, racial background, country of origin, sexual identity and/or personal relationships. To learn more, check out our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Select "dismiss" to agree to these terms.
Fanfic Discussion is for the Readers. Deal.
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Fanfic Discussion is for the Readers. Deal. |
| Creator: | Arduinna |
| Date(s): | written July 6, 2003, posted September 2005 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | multi |
| Topic: | fic discussion, fic readers |
| External Links: | online here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Fanfic Discussion is for the Readers. Deal. is an essay by Arduinna. It makes the point that fic discussion is different from feedback or concrit.
The essay was posted to Essays: Rants and Rambles.
"Written after a few too many authors chimed in on discussions of their story -- to bitch about how their stories were being discussed."
For additional context, see Timeline of Concrit & Feedback Meta.
Excerpt
I'm on several mailing lists that actively encourage discussion of fanfiction. They all have different rules, of course, but the ones I tend to stick around on are the ones that allow people to say whatever they want about a story. That is, there are no requirements about "niceness" or "helpfulness".At some point during one of the fic discussions, the inevitable happens: an author pops up, irate for one of two reasons. The first is that her story is being discussed at all -- to which all I can say is, read the Welcome message, you're in the wrong place. The second is that people aren't being constructive and helpful and telling her specifically where she went wrong.
On the one hand, I understand that. An author hears that her story is being discussed, and thinks to herself that this is a great way to find out what worked and what didn't -- then goes to the mailing list to discover that the sum total of the discussion was a bunch of people agreeing that it sucked, and had wasted their time. Her preparedness to deal with criticism didn't quite prepare her for that.
On the other hand -- tough shit. Really. A fiction discussion list is not about the authors, it's about the stories. It's about the readers, and how they reacted to the stories. If that reaction is nothing more than "Wow, that totally bit. Don't waste your time," that's perfectly acceptable. It's as acceptable as "Wow, that was really great. Everyone go read it!" (which, oddly, never seems to generate public authorial irateness for its equal lack of specific constructive helpfulness. Go figure.).