Being an active participant in fandom requires a certain level of self-regulating in order to be a healthy activity. It requires the ability to say “Not for me,” or “Not today,” and walk away.
We can have conversations about patterns we see in fanworks. We can discuss how we portray characters and relationships, how to effectively convey what we want to in writing, how to sensitively approach representations of marginalized characters. But having those conversations productively requires that we approach each other in good faith, and it requires the ability to self-regulate–including recognizing that often there is no hard line, no black and white answer, and we won’t always come to the same conclusions.
It requires an understanding up front that eliminating all fanworks we don’t care for is not the end goal of these conversations.
I’ll give a personal example. There is a ship that deeply, viscerally upsets me in like 95% of its iterations. I can explain why I don’t like it if asked. I’ve written about why I don’t think it’s handled well in canon.
And if I wanted to–if I wanted to–I could make a very convincing-sounding argument for why that ship is objectively bad and wrong and no one should ship it. Not because that’s objectively right, mind you, but because I’m good at arguing. I could slap that together in like… ten minutes, probably.
I don’t do that. If I vent about it on my own blog, it’s as infrequently as I can manage, because I do my best to avoid the content that upsets me. I don’t seek it out to get riled up about it. I don’t seek out content that upsets me, read it in its entirety, and then leave angry comments and send my friends to harass the author. I don’t choose a high-profile writer for the content I don’t like and engage in a targeted campaign of harassment against them all while claiming to be addressing a general problem.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself. You are not engaging in healthy behavior or productive coping mechanisms. You are not keeping yourself safe, and you are not helping to make fandom safer for others. You are not engaging in good faith.
If you find that you do this and you can’t seem to stop, you may need to take some kind of further steps up to and including taking a break from fandom. I’m serious. I’ve taken breaks myself for that exact reason. There’s no shame in it.
Please monitor your own ability to self-regulate. Please actively evaluate whether or not you are engaging in healthy and productive behavior, for yourself and for others.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself.
Tag: be kind to writers
“Getting” yourself to write
Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.
Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.
But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.
Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.
We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.
The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.
So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.
Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.
Daniel José Older, in my favorite article on writing ever, has this to say to the people who admonish writers to write every day:
Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.
The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:
For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns its being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.
Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we want to do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!
Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.
Next post: freewriting
Ask me a question or send me feedback! Podcast recommendations welcome…
I need to read this again and again and again
A Small Suggestion
Hey guys, an AO3 tag wrangler here with a small suggestion for making the lives of wranglers and the Abuse volunteers and all your fellow users a little easier. You know that impulse to post a “PROMPT ME, I WILL TAKE ANY OF THESE 50 SHIPS IN 30 FANDOMS” work?
Please don’t. These make everyone cry.
Look at all those fandoms and ship tags… that this work doesn’t apply to! Look at the fact that this isn’t even a work yet! Look at all those tags you’re asking wranglers to wrangle, usually not the existing canonicals, that appear in the bins of 30 different wrangling teams, flooding the smaller teams and annoying the big ones! Look at the Abuse volunteers getting 3 reports for your work in the first day and having to talk to you and reply to each of those people!
I have a better suggestion: personal prompt meme.
Aw yeah, AO3 has prompt memes and allows personal collections! Imagine your personal prompt collection:
- Control when it’s open and closed!
- Post a link in the notes of all your works!
- Post a link on your blog and your AO3 profile!
- Post the things you’ll accept in the Rules/FAQ section of the collection!
- Use claims or gifts to notify the prompter when you’ve posted a work for their prompt!
- Easily delete prompts that don’t follow your rules!
- Post each work separately and gift each one to the prompter to build relationships and encourage interest from new fans who just noticed your work!
So much control, so much useful organization, so many fewer frustrated users finding a work with two chapters, neither of which applies to most of the relationships or fandoms tags. Why burn your bridges with some users when you’re trying for positive attention for your works?
Just imagine it: “[YourName]′s Personal Prompt Meme*”. Your name on a collection on AO3. All for you.
Let’s make this a thing, yeah?
I have no idea what a Tag Wrangler is or what they do, but this seems like a good thing!
Something > Nothing
When I first arrived in fandom on AO3, I puttered around for a good long while, enjoying fic and figuring out where my niche was. I spent a couple years as a reader before posting anything new (I’d moved over old fanfic from another site, because it was going to go under, but that’s not quite the same thing). And, while I was there, getting the lay of the land and figuring out that holy shit, the Steter ship is where I wanna be!, I wound up a recognized name.
Specifically, for my commenting practises. Because I would sit down and devour a story, and then go full-on English major in the comment section, talking about metaphors and characterization and symbolism, about what I felt and character technique. To be clear, I wasn’t dumping unsolicited concrit on people who didn’t want it, I was genuinely positive and gushy about all the things I loved in the story I’d just read. I’d write whole paragraphs.
But, well. There was an issue with that–namely, that writing that sort of mini-essay takes a lot of time, and effort, and intellectual engagement. And that’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but I didn’t always have that kind of time or the energy it required, especially if I was comfort-reading as self-care on Bad Brain Days. And, since I didn’t want to give a writer less than my best, I tended not to comment.
But after being on Tumblr and hearing about how the AO3 comment culture is so hard to struggle through for so many people, with a dearth of comments and a loss of the sense of community that fandom is for, I realized my approach needed to change. I decided that, even if I couldn’t go on at length, something was better than nothing. Telling an author one (1) thing I loved about their story, or how it made me feel, or that their story was exactly what I needed today, or that I was back for a re-read because I just love this story so damn much, was better than silence. So I started trying to leave comments on at least 75% of what I read, even if it’s short.
I do still leave long, flaily, gushy comments, but I don’t put pressure on myself anymore. If I have the energy that day, or if someone wrote a fic and gifted it to me, or if I’m having a lot of thoughts about what I just read, or if a fan author has indicated that they’re unsure about this fic or their writing (or even having a really hard time of things) then I will go on a ramble in the comment section. But I’m trying to make this a positive place for everyone, and since comments are love, leaving more of them–spreading them around to more people, doing my best to encourage creators and appreciate the gifts they give us–feels like the best way to have a positive impact, while still being kind to myself, too.
Fandom Etiquette
I’ve been around for a really long time in various fandoms, and no one ever writes this stuff down. I’ll start. Please add to the list. We can’t expect people to follow “rules” they don’t know exist.
written with the help of @unbreakablejemmasimmons
Fanart
- if you like something, reblog it. Help the artist get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.
- if you want more of it, support it. This can be via commissions, reblogs, recommending the artist to other people, shouting in the tags, or sending the artist asks/messages.
- if you hate it, keep scrolling. Keep the hate in a message window with a friend, not in the artist’s notes.
- if you want to use it, ask permission. Artwork is beautiful and you want to show it off. But please ask the artist before you throw it into your header or your icon.
- if you use it, give credit. And not just a post where you say “Do you like my new icon? X made it!”. Put it in your blog description, that way when someone rolls around your blog three months from now, they also know where your icon/header came from.
Fanfic
- if you like something, reblog it. Help the author get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.
- if you want more of it, support it. Kudos are fine, but if you want more of the thing you like, you should comment. Subscribe to the story or the author. Send them a message about how much you like what they wrote.
- if you read it, kudos it. Or give it a thumbs up. And this is just if you managed to get all the way to the end. If you finished the story and you actually liked it? Comment and reblog.
- don’t demand content. Be patient. Stories take time. You can encourage without being demanding. Show your love for what’s there without telling them to post more often.
- be gentle with criticism. Some people want it and some people run away from it. If you don’t know what type of person the author is, it’s best not to go there. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”
Fandom
- ship and let ship. You love your ship and other people love theirs. No one needs to “win” when we’re all going to end up in tears anyway.
- if you hate it, stay out of the tag. This has two meanings: 1) don’t deliberately put hateful commentary in a tag and 2) if you hate a tag, don’t go and read through that tag just to make yourself angry
- if someone makes you something, appreciate it. Read and comment the fic. Like and reblog the artwork. Pimp it out and tell them how much you loved it. It’s a gift, treat it like one.
- if it’s a gift, put some effort into it. You signed up for that exchange three months ago and now it’s a week before you have to send the gift and you don’t have the time or the inclination to do the thing. Well too bad. Someone out there has been working hard in your gift, so you should do the same for them.
- none of us are “better” than anyone else. We’re all trash for our particular show/film/book/ship/artist/what-have-you. My fave is no better than yours and yours is no better than mine.
- actors are not their characters. They are people. Treat them like people.
*gently slams the reblog button*
Not on my own account, but writers I know have been on the receiving end of more unwarranted and plain rude crap than usual lately…
To Tired Writers. To the people out there whose hearts very, very much want to write and work on WIPs, but who are just mentally and physically exhausted right now. It’s okay. It is okay to rest sometimes. Allow yourself time to rest.
Rules of a Happy, Healthy Fandom
Rule 1, Don’t like, Don’t read
Pretty simple and straight forward. It doesn’t matter if it’s tagged as a ship you dislike or you’re 10 chapters in, if you don’t like it or it disturbs you too much, stop. The back button is your friend.
Rule 2, Properly Tag
If your fic contains anything possibly triggering or squicky, tag it. If your fic is an AU, tag it. If your fic is about a ship, tag it. Vice versa, do not overtag or improperly tag. If your fic is based around Stucky, don’t tag Stony.
Rule 3, Filters are your friend
If the app or website has an option to filter tags, use it. If you need to download an extension, download it. If someone has missed an important tag, you can politely message them requesting to add it.
Rule 4, Don’t harass people for shipping your NoTp
We all have that one ship we absolutely positively hate with every fibre of our being. And chances are, someone hates your Otp with the same ferocity. Don’t harass people over shipping your NoTp.
Rule 5, Do your research
If you’re writing a fic and a plot point or character is introduced you’re not sure how to write, research it! Google is your friend! There are also blogs dedicated to assisting people with certain topics such as @writingwithcolor
Rule 6, Your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay
Chances are, someone gets off to something you hate. And, that’s okay! We all have different and varying tastes!
Rule 7, Feedback keeps content creators creating
Likes, comments, reblogs, and recomendations keep your fanfic writers writing. Where would writers be if no one read their works? Where would artists be if no one bought their art?
Rule 8, If you want it, write it
It’s bound to happen to everyone, you just can’t find a specific fic for a specific ship or it’s that one rare pair no one appreciates like you do. What do you do in this situation? You write it yourself! It may not be the best-written or most poetic or maybe it’s just a pure crackfic, but that’s okay!
Rule 9, Fanon is not Canon
Likewise, headcanons are not canon. And if someone has a different headcanon, that’s okay! Sure, we may ignore canon for fics but headcanons and fanfiction and fanart are not canon!
Rule 10, Fiction is not reality
And the most important of all, fiction is not reality. Writing abuse fics does not mean you support abuse in real life. Writing suicidal characters does not mean the writer is suicidal. Writing glorified murder fics does not mean the writer supports murder in real life.
If you have more positive rules, feel free to add! These are just 10 little rules I find to be very important for a happy healthy fandom. Remember, fandoms are supposed to be for fun! You write that shameless self-insert Mary Sue OC, you write that rarepair smut, you write that 250k slow burn Coffee Shop AU! You make fandom as fun as you want it to be!
THIS
What are your thoughts on writing through a family tragedy? On the one hand, it feels so trivial, to make up stuff while I should be mourning. On the other, he was a practical man and had encouraged this dream of mine in his way. Do you think the answer is different for a newbie wannabe writer than an established author? Thanks.
When my father died, I wrote on the plane back to the US from the funeral, because I needed to not be in my head. A month or so later, I was ready to look at what I’d written, and found basically all the dialogue for The Doctor’s Wife written and waiting for me. Sometimes we write to save our own lives.
“Sometimes we write to save our own lives.”
This is so true.
dedicated to anon
To all the dear creators out there! You are making my heart sing and dance – making art is sharing love and happiness!!!💝
Endless thanks for all the hard work 😘
To all the fic writers out there that are not currently writing. Either it’s because of RL, health, writer’s block or something has happened that have disheartened you. Thank you for what you’ve written, and don’t ever feel pressured or stressed – fanfic should be something good for all of us; both reader and writer. You’re more important than what you do, but thank you for what you’ve done!
Thank you for this 🙂
Queer Fiction Writer 