Comment Etiquette 101

[themorninglark]

First things first, commenting isn’t rocket science. Most of us have left comments on some piece of fanwork at one point or another, and when I say “left comments”, I don’t just mean typing a remark into the AO3 comment box and hitting post, or sending the author a message on Tumblr or Twitter. I also mean the tags you put in reblogs. The tweets you make about it. Anything that’s on some social, publicly accessible platform.

With that in mind, I respectfully ask all commenters to consider the following before typing and posting whatever it is you want to say.

1. Not all creators want critique on their work

The majority of fanartists and writers pour an enormous amount of love and labour into what they do, and they do it and share it for fun. Not everyone does it with the intent of hearing someone else tell them what they can do better. Unless a creator explicitly says they would like concrit, I strongly believe it is not the place of the reader to leave it.

It’s not that creative types are special snowflakes you need to handle with kid gloves. It’s simply that fanwork creators are not professionals. They are baking cookies for you for free. If they do not want critique it is entirely their prerogative.

We, as readers, do not know anything about the real human being on the other side of the screen or why they are writing this fic. Maybe they’ve had a bad day and pouring their heart out in writing about characters they love was the only thing that made it better. Maybe they just need to get a silly headcanon out of their head and want to share it with others who might find it fun. Maybe they do want to improve and welcome feedback. But unless they say so you have no way of knowing, and if you make the wrong assumption about a person’s motivations for writing, you can end up being that one commenter who completely shuts down someone’s motivation to keep creating new work. It is a terrible thing to do. You don’t want to be that person.

Most creators already have an inner critic that engulfs them. We pore over our own work looking for flaws. For many of us, it takes enormous courage to overcome that inner voice and even put something out there. Receiving critical feedback will stick with someone even if you cushion it in 1,000 positive comments. If you genuinely want to help someone improve, tell them what they did well that you liked. Period. You don’t have to pick at what you disliked. If over time, no one tells them they liked a thing, they might not do it again, but even if they keep doing it, so what? It obviously brings them joy to do it. There's nothing more important in creative work than that.

If you are a creator and love receiving unsolicited concrit, this is also absolutely fine. But you don’t get to decide for other people what’s good for them and their creative process, you just do not.

2. You are NEVER obliged to read or look at anything

If your favourite writer/artist writes/draws a ship you don’t like, you don’t have to look at it.

If you see a fic for a ship you love but with tags/warning you don’t love, you don’t have to read it.

If you see fanart that depicts something you don’t like, just scroll past it.

No one is ever forcing you to look at anything.

It is therefore very baffling for us writers to get comments about how they didn’t like this ship, or they liked the story but wish we wrote it with a different ship, or that they devoted 100 hours of their life to reading this fic and are “disappointed by the ending”, or feel that they are owed answers and explanations. Equally, I am sure that it is deeply frustrating for fanartists to see reblogs of their work with tags like “why do people ship this” or “k this art is cool but X ship still my otp” or even “i hate this ship wtf”.

Please consider how hurtfully such remarks come across to the creator. They are writing/drawing something they love, not to please everyone, and you might just fall out of their target audience. It happens. You always have the choice to close the tab and look for another fic or piece of fanart that you like better. Muting tags and ship names on Twitter is very easy. If you love an author but don’t like the ship they are writing, then commission them to write something you do like. There are so many ways to curate your experience in fandom now. Be proactive.
 

3. There is a VERY HIGH CHANCE the OP WILL find your comment

Unless you have put your comment behind a locked account, in which case, it’s your space and yes feel free to say whatever you like, please consider that a writer’s handle, fic title, URL of their work, and any related hashtags (ship tags, fandom tags etc) are easily and publicly searchable and it is likely that the OP will stumble across your comment at some point, even if you didn’t directly put it into AO3. Most writers also always check the tags on AO3 bookmarks.

So unless it is something you are okay saying to the OP’s face, I encourage you to reconsider saying something negative about their work in a public space, because the chances of them finding it are high and it is deeply upsetting to come across this kind of feedback in the wild. If you must put a personal remark in your AO3 bookmark tag that might reflect negatively on the fic (e.g. you have a rating system—which personally I dislike seeing in tags, I do not like to see that someone has rated my fic 6/10 or “just okay”), you can make your bookmark private.

And even if you don’t mention the fic by name, if you’re vaguing negatively about a fic in public, it’s just a bad look. Someone took time to bake you cookies for free and shared them out of love for the thing. Do you really think it makes you look more critically intelligent to find fault with them in a space where anyone can see your nitpicking?
 

4. We don’t want you to put down anyone else in order to uplift us, and especially not yourself

I have never known a single writer who feels comfortable with comments like “your fic is so good it honestly made me want to give up writing”, or an artist who likes hearing things like “your work is god-tier mine is so bad”. It’s actually really dismaying to hear that you are the cause of making someone else feel disheartened about their own work.

I recognise that many comments like this are well-intentioned and are meant as compliments. What does make creators happy is to know that we have inspired someone to try something new, to work harder, to go back to their work with renewed motivation. So say that instead, if you want to tell someone that their work is great and makes you feel that you have a long way to go. It’s a valid emotion. Just say “your work inspires me to work harder and I really admire xxx about it”.

While we are here, other things I would strongly encourage you not to put down while complimenting a work are: other works (“your fic is so good most of the other fics in this tag are shit but YOURS IS GOOD”), other characters/ships (“thank god a fic for this ship/char instead of that other much more popular and overdone ship/char”), and other creators in general. It’s just not a nice feeling at all. You really don’t have to shit on anything to tell a creator something good.

5. If someone bakes you free cookies and says there will be more sometime when they’re free, it’s not nice to go and demand more when you want them

Or, please don’t leave comments on fics going “update plz” or guilt trip the writer by demanding the next chapter.

People have lives. They are doing this, once again, for free and gaining nothing in return but the joy and affirmation of sharing something they love with others. I guarantee you no one feels worse than the writer that they haven’t updated their WIP in three years. Let it go. If you really hope to see an update, you can leave a nice comment saying you reread the last chapter and really loved it and hope they’re doing well, just something to let the writer know their work is appreciated. That will go so, so much further than just making demands.

Fandom is a labour of love. I think it is in all our interests to do our best to keep fandom going, and make it a welcoming, positive place that will encourage the constant creation of new works. Thank you ♥