#anyway i'm pro the debate but also the world is exhausting and the show is shiny with pretty people and flowers

[kimikotsuki]

Fandom discourse and culture has changed a lot over the years and I always try to err on the side of caution whenever possible.

The reasons writers create and share their work are varied and diverse: maybe they're trying to improve their writing and welcome advice, sometimes it's all about the ~ S Q U E E ~ because you loved the show/character and wants them in more situations, sometimes the reason is the ~ R A G E ~ about the direction canon took and you plan to murder it and use it's blood to re-write the story; this is more an illustrative than exhaustive list and sometimes there'll even be multiple reasons at once of course.

And sometimes, those reasons do not match or go well with any type of criticism, even well intentioned, constructive ones.

I saw an post on Tumblr that ilustrated very well another reason why one shouldn't simply assume that con-crit is welcome: if you go watch an amateur performance (in the most literal sense of the word of non-remunarated, regardless of quality of performance), one won't immediately presume afterwards to go to the artist and start critiquing it.

At the same time, I wholeheartedly think that one of the most wonderful, unique possibilities of fandom is the capacity for collaborative work between the authors of a story that is being posted as it's written and it's readers, culminating in an end product with quality that ends up being more refined than otherwise it would've been.

That type of interaction is even sometimes one of the main reasons people write fics, to not only create something, but also to share the act of that creation.

That works almost like making all the readers of a fic into beta-readers and can be a wonderful thing, but the post argued that the work done by betas is analogous to editing in published works, and that such a relationship is based on built trust, so while yeah, that dynamic between writer and all their readers could work, assuming and simply barging in is generally more harmful than productive.

When I adopted that new reasoning, I debated whether or not I should then mark all my bookmarks on AO3 as Private and make them inaccessible to anyone else, but in the end opted not to, mainly because even though I mainly write them for my future self, I also feel other readers can benefit a lot from knowing how the experience of someone who liked a work enough to rec it went, specially if while reading that fic they stumbled upon things they didn't like.

If there's one thing I learned from over 15 years of reading fics is that my tastes change over the years, and sometimes it's not even about the quality of the writing itself or even the progression of how polemic subjects are treated at any given time, but rather the moment that I am in changes how I receive the same work, such that tagging a certain work as one worth reading again later with no contextual information on the vibe I was riding when I did that will inevitably lead to a disappointment that is frankly an overreaction on my part.

That happened somewhat recently with a Frostiron fic I read a long time ago, in a moment where I was squeeing like crazy over the pairing (and it was a work of squee, so we matched really well) and it got on my list, but years later, when I was feeling nostalgic over the pairing and went to read my list of besties, the expectation I had was so great that the dichotomy between my experience back then and the one in the re-read were terribly big, even though it was a well written fic, squee and all, and the only real difference was that *I* wasn't squeeing over the pairing anymore.

And at the same time, I found that, in a way, this managing of expectations I do primarily for myself when I create a rec with the bad points of a fic that I loved can also be helpful for others, because even if it doesn't fit 100% since we're different people, I always thought the best recs I've always found were the ones that stated what were the cons of any given story, because those cons might not be something that bothered me like it bothered them or it even might end up being somewhat bothersome to me, but the pros outweigh them and, because I went in expecting to find those things, there's no disappointment in it, so they end up bothering me a lot less then it could've.

The other reason I eventually settled on not making my bookmarks private was actually because of those authors that seek improvement and welcome constructive criticism from all the readers who are invested in their story and value their thoughts and experiences while reading their work, because while yes, better to err on the side of caution and not go offering advice and opinions were those are not wanted, if we let that completely rule everything we do in fandom there will be a lot of loss in regards of this constructive, dynamic and interactive aspect so characteristic and wonderful to this type of media.

I know authors can have access to the bookmarks made of their fics, but unlike comments, it's not quite a space exclusively dedicated to them or even for interactions between reader/author.

In a lot of aspects, I'd even go as far as saying it's a space primarily for readers: it's not something that will culminate in a email sent to the author's mailbox, it serves mostly for filtering and ordering purposes (like when you're looking for fics to read and apply a filter to show only fics with a certain number of bookmarks or to order the fics shown from the greater to the least number of bookmarks) and also so readers can, reading these bookmarks, have a better idea on what's to expect from a work from different readers with different personalities and world views and ways to pereceive what was written.

And since it's a space the author *can* have access to *if* they want, it's possible for them to look at that place to see that con-crit while, at the same time, not being a place where that con-crit will get shoved in their faces if they *don't want it* and as such it seemed to me to be an overall respectfull and good compromise between those two points that seemed very important to me, and one of the only way I've found of making it known if that type of interaction is welcome, I'd be happy to head over to their comments and talk there.

If I'm marking it as a rec and commenting, I'm doing it because I think that fic absolutely is one of the best stories that I had the pleasure to read; however, the number of characters allowed in a bookmark rec are limited, so if I end up putting into it anything besides an incoherent keyboard smash, those things are going to be whatever points I feel are very important to keep in mind whenever starting to read it so that reading experience is the most enjoyable possible both for my future self who's going to look at that besties list and decide on what to read again as well as first time readers who might have seen the rec and will go in knowing somethings that, by their nature, don't tend to be things we tag for; they will have mostly what amounts to con-crit, so if you welcome this type of interaction or if the rec I made is bothering you in anyway, I urge you to get in contact with me through the fic mail I linked in my AO3 profile.

This post is getting linked there because the profile section doesn't allow enough characters for everything that I had to say about the subject.

As soon as I see the email, I'll either be happy to either tag the bookmark as Private so it won't be visible to anyone but myself if it bothered you or head over to your comments section so we can talk better about the points I raised if this type of interaction is something you welcome.

#fandom discourse #ao3 stuff #fandom culture #bookmarks