fanfiction
There's a twitter discussion going on right now about favoriting versus reviewing stories and since 140 characters isn't nearly enough for me I'm posting my full-blown thoughts here.
( oh FFN, your evil only grows )
( oh FFN, your evil only grows )
PHM has become a second family to me in a way. I worry about all of the writers and pray for you. So often I wish that I could make everyone’s lives easier or help you all more. And in my desire to be supportive and loving, I think I let you all down.
Sometimes it is easiest and most comfortable to sit back and watch things unfold without commenting or taking a stand. I tried to gently give my opinion today on the review discussion, but after mulling it over and reading an e-mail that was sent to me, I feel like I did not take a firm enough stance. I would like to blame the fact that the conversation happened in Twitter, but it is also partially due to a desire not to offend anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings.
Social media and the internet make it very easy to say things that are hurtful or inappropriate with a veil of anonymity and a distance from reality. And it allows us to send our immediate knee-jerk reaction out to people; often things that with a little thought we might have chosen to keep to ourselves or just share with our friends. And once it is out there, it is difficult to take back. It is totally understandable that people do this - often times regretting it later. I get that. But I have to be honest that the general conversation that has taken place over the past week or so (NOT just today) on reviews and favoriting has brought me to the point that I considered stopping using my fanfiction twitter account and stepping back from PHM.
It baffles me that any of you are actually willing to speak badly of a person you have never met who has done nothing more that let you know that she enjoys a story you have written. She is giving you a compliment, and you are insulting her. I don’t care if she has done it once or 1,000 times - there is nothing on the site that tells her that she can’t do that. If that bothers you, turn off the favorite story alert. That is not her problem, ladies - it is yours. There is absolutely nothing you can say that will justify the way she was spoken about or to. Period. It is supposed to be a fun hobby - people can review, favorite, alert however they wish as long as they do not verbally abuse others. She favorited my stories, and I just deleted the notices and went on with life, glad that someone enjoyed my writing.
I was surprised that as a group, people encouraged the bashing. I feel like I should have spoke louder or earlier to say that I was uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going and that I could have done something to prevent it. I really, really hope that girl didn’t read any of the things said about her or the positive responses given to the comments. In my mind, I picture my daughter sitting there reading it, and it makes me very, very sad. You know that I really care about all the people involved in the discussion, and I would never want to hurt any of them. I also know that some of you may not want to hear from me after this, but I had to say something in hopes that it won’t happen again.
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Sometimes I'll be reading articles on newspaper websites or magazines and such and I'll be utterly shocked at the things people say (the knee-jerk reaction you describe)--grown adults bickering over semantics. What's wonderful about the PHM community is that everyone is respected, no matter who they 'ship or what they like/don't like. That's really an accomplishment. There's fandoms that fall apart because of fan-factions fighting over nonsense. But that doesn't happen here and I love that!
But in this case, it's less a matter of whether not reviewing when you favorite is wrong, and more an issue of how to deal with each other when we're frustrated. What's a healthy responses and what's not. One thing that might help is to remember a lot of the fandom is made up of kids. Like, real kids (14 and younger). Kids will do silly things, but you don't take it personally because... their kids. If we engage them, it's unfair because as the more mature people--we automatically have the upper hand.
I think I stopped making sense towards the end there. Ok, I definitely did. I'll come back and respond properly tomorrow when I can think straight. But One thing I'm sure of: worry not! I'm positive we can all be friends, even after openly discussing all this.
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I only disagree with you on one point: this has been going on much longer than a week. Every month or so someone will bring up favoriting. The frequency (and attitude) with which it is done make it clear that the problem does not lie with the favoriter, but the authors. (How many times has someone said favorite alert can be turned off and been ignored?)
When we discuss this with each other people begin feeding on one another's bad feelings and anyone who tries to be reasonable and take a step back gets pushed aside in the hubbub.
That being said, I don't think there's anything you could have done. I think overall yes, one or two people might have realized they were getting out of line but those weren't the people who would have done anything public. But anyone who was going to say or do anything was always going to. (It's like anti-drug programs. The kids who listen are the kids who wouldn't have done drugs anyway.)
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