Re: Oh look, it's a drive by comment...draycevixenMarch 25 2012, 17:35:29 UTC
When I stopped writing for one of my oldest LJ based fandoms I received a bunch of e-mails and PMs from fen asking me to start writing for it again because they loved my stuff so much and yes, I'm sure you can guess where this is going, from fen who'd never left a single comment on any of my stories.
I honestly don't expect anyone to do anything -- fandom truly is like herding cats -- but I do feel strongly that you at the very least lose the right to bitch about it if you don't take part/promote the behaviour you wish to see.
Writers often have fragile egos so when they see hundreds of reader hits but hardly any comments they don't tend to think "people are just lazy about leaving comments" but rather "fuck, my story sucked so badly hundreds of people decided they had nothing good to say about it." Sad, but true.
At the same time, the entitlement level appears to be soaring in many quarters. I have a mate who posted a story in another fandom where one of the comments amounted to being upset that my friend hadn't warned for the reader's favourite character bottoming. Erm... I've never even seen that suggested as a warning before.
Hope neither you nor Angstbunny mind me butting inredfiona99March 25 2012, 19:57:24 UTC
Re: your last paragraph - I've seen people complain about that before (in particular fandoms, I am looking at you Gundam Wing and TRC) but never people upset.
It's a conversation, right? :DdraycevixenMarch 25 2012, 20:03:22 UTC
I understand people wanting warnings for things like non-canonical character death, rape, BDSM and incest but in a story where the pairing is clearly marked as a slash pairing and the story is rated as explicit I really can't understand thinking the story has to have a warning about who bottoms... it implies to me at least too much of an assumption that certain characters will always top and also completely ignores things like the dynamic of topping from the bottom. But then I have another mate who wrote an SPN RPS Big Bang story, over 50,000 words, and got a comment that said "I would have only liked this story if you'd reversed Jarod and Jensen's roles." This is my "HUH?" face, let me show it to you.
Re: Oh look, it's a drive by comment...angstbunnyMarch 25 2012, 22:43:09 UTC
I do feel strongly that you at the very least lose the right to bitch about it if you don't take part/promote the behaviour you wish to see.
Yes. Exactly. That is the very thing I'm annoyed about. Every person has the right to participate as much as they wish, and nobody is owed anything. But damn, you don't get to bitch about how there's nothing for you to read out there when you're not doing jackshit to encourage people.
-____________________- Yeah, entitlement ruins legit complaints. With that said, I do generally hesitate to go "kids these days" because I think I whined about "kids these days" ten years ago, and I'm sure I was a "kids these days" when I was a newbie, too, haha.
When I stopped writing for one of my oldest LJ based fandoms I received a bunch of e-mails and PMs from fen asking me to start writing for it again because they loved my stuff so much and yes, I'm sure you can guess where this is going, from fen who'd never left a single comment on any of my stories.
I honestly don't expect anyone to do anything -- fandom truly is like herding cats -- but I do feel strongly that you at the very least lose the right to bitch about it if you don't take part/promote the behaviour you wish to see.
Writers often have fragile egos so when they see hundreds of reader hits but hardly any comments they don't tend to think "people are just lazy about leaving comments" but rather "fuck, my story sucked so badly hundreds of people decided they had nothing good to say about it." Sad, but true.
At the same time, the entitlement level appears to be soaring in many quarters. I have a mate who posted a story in another fandom where one of the comments amounted to being upset that my friend hadn't warned for the reader's favourite character bottoming. Erm... I've never even seen that suggested as a warning before.
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I understand people wanting warnings for things like non-canonical character death, rape, BDSM and incest but in a story where the pairing is clearly marked as a slash pairing and the story is rated as explicit I really can't understand thinking the story has to have a warning about who bottoms... it implies to me at least too much of an assumption that certain characters will always top and also completely ignores things like the dynamic of topping from the bottom. But then I have another mate who wrote an SPN RPS Big Bang story, over 50,000 words, and got a comment that said "I would have only liked this story if you'd reversed Jarod and Jensen's roles." This is my "HUH?" face, let me show it to you.
Reply
Yes. Exactly. That is the very thing I'm annoyed about. Every person has the right to participate as much as they wish, and nobody is owed anything. But damn, you don't get to bitch about how there's nothing for you to read out there when you're not doing jackshit to encourage people.
-____________________- Yeah, entitlement ruins legit complaints. With that said, I do generally hesitate to go "kids these days" because I think I whined about "kids these days" ten years ago, and I'm sure I was a "kids these days" when I was a newbie, too, haha.
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I can't say "kids these days" as two of the worst offenders I know have been in fandom for over 20 years.
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