I'd quote you but, well, just pretend I'm quoting that entire first paragraph. Since it's a little long.
And, um. Yes? [confused] I want all of that. I enjoy all of that. I love people correcting my typos, I'm probably not smart enough to undestand the veiled insult so I'll just cheerfully accept the praise, I don't care if "I really enjoyed this" is C&Ped into fifteen stories in a row because hey I'm perfectly willing to take them at their literal stated word every single time (if the Kudos button said "I really enjoyed this!" or "I read this!" or "This sucked!" at least 93% of my issues with it would go away, since that's a rather clear-cut statement of feedback right there--which is also why it'll never change because it's quite clear that people use that Kudos button for way more than a clear-cut statement of feedback and would object to making it more specific). And if someone actually decided to write free verse as a feedback to my story I would read the SHIT out of that. Feedback is feedback. I enjoy feedback. Praise is awesome, obviously, but feedback is why I post rather than just declaiming my stories to my mice in dramatic reenactments accompanied by interpretive dance and periodic heavy breathing. I like writing, I like being good at it even more. I like people noticing my writing, and I like to see their reactions to it. I'm not exactly sure how this makes me unusual.
[whole second paragraph quoted here]
...um, you really do take a legalistic approach to this, don't you? I need to have people sign a waiver, or no wait, I sign a waiver by posting, and people need to sign off on it, or there's this contract that I've put out there with expectations that you have to meet, and you can only read if...or maybe it's I can't post if you don't agree, and there's gotta be a formal signing a contract with me--okay, no, I don't get it.
I mean. Seriously, this is fandom. This is what we DO. We post stories. We post reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to reactions to stories (which I think is where you and I are up to). I am one hundred percent positive that I am not the only writer in fandom who wants to know what their readers have said about their work, who checks email and LJ/DW obsessively in the hours and days after posting a story to see what people have said, who looks hopefully at their friends so they can get pre-reads and betas and suggestions of what works and what doesn't, who eagerly offers pre-reads and betas to their friends and types up all of their suggestions and satisfactions in email and chat and twitter. I'll grant you that I'm possibly one of the stupidest writers in fandom for actually, you know, coming right out and saying it. Especially I'm starting to get the impression from all of this discussion (not just with you, I mean more from reading the reams of comments that these couple of posts have generated) that a lot of people feel that...I'm not sure, maybe writers are doing it for A Love Of The Craft/Fandom/whatever and feedback is really more about the feedbacker than the writer and even could be just one of those incidental things that doesn't enter the picture except on special occasions? As I said, I don't get it. And maybe I'm beating a dead horse, and, well, being stupid. But I gotta be me. [wry]
So. In case this was honestly ambiguous for you before, please let me state that regarding the fics you're reading, and based on 15 years of writing and knowing writers and talking to writers about writing in my various little corners of fandom, I can say with complete confidence that writers--take your pick of some, most, all, any--want feedback. That's why they post to places that have comment options like LJ and DW and AO3. That's why no one that I've ever seen disables comments on a fic post. I can think of a few people who do specifically state that they're only interested in positive feedback, since this is a hobby that they do for fun, and no writer likes being told that they suck, but basically every writer knows that it could happen and, yes, accepts it. Fen can be rather blunt, and I suspect many writers get comments that make them blush and want to hide under the bed.
You can have every single reason in the world not to give that feedback, and they're all valid because the world is a sucky place and people have lives (me) and distractions (me) and hero worship (also me) shitty brain chemistry (SO me) and comment performance anxiety (...actually, not so much me, but this seems to be pretty common), but the one thing I've yet to see is someone posting "I don't comment." Full stop. Period.
People give a reason because, in a way, people feel they NEED to give a reason. So far as I have ever experienced, and I've got 15 years of history informing this statement, giving feedback--at least sometimes, at least a little bit, at least WANTING TO even if the world doesn't let you for any of a number of utterly valid reasons--is the expectation and even the norm in fandom. It's an ideal to aspire to, and like most ideals the vast majority fail at achieving it in true form. But in my opinion, my expectation that if you have something to say about my fic then you're going to say it is not quite the dramatic departure from the norm that you seem to assume. And as I've said before, and will continue to say again, although with less and less hope that anyone actually cares to understand what I mean, my problem with the Kudo button is not that someone gave me feedback I didn't like. It's that someone gave me feedback I didn't UNDERSTAND. Did I win brownie points for courage for posting that ridiculous zombie parasitic wasp larva MCR fic? Did I write a decently spelled and plotted story that didn't make any major errors? Did I write the best story that person's ever read in their entire lives and they're going to fannishly follow me wherever I go? It's the equivalent of a gift of a live goldfish. It's nice to look at, and if you get a bunch of them in a row it feels kinda nice, and it's also nice to think someone cared enough to give me a pet goldfish, but ultimately it doesn't really FEED BACK any information about what I wrote, not even really that they liked it. It's a button used to say everything, and hence (for me) ends up saying...well, nothing.
FYI, the H key on my keyboard is a bit dodgy, I think I caught all the skipped Hs but if I missed one I apologize. And if you want to continue this discussion in my LJ I'd be happy to, I don't want to keep spamming LittleMouseling's LJ so this'll pretty much be my last comment here.
no subject
And, um. Yes? [confused] I want all of that. I enjoy all of that. I love people correcting my typos, I'm probably not smart enough to undestand the veiled insult so I'll just cheerfully accept the praise, I don't care if "I really enjoyed this" is C&Ped into fifteen stories in a row because hey I'm perfectly willing to take them at their literal stated word every single time (if the Kudos button said "I really enjoyed this!" or "I read this!" or "This sucked!" at least 93% of my issues with it would go away, since that's a rather clear-cut statement of feedback right there--which is also why it'll never change because it's quite clear that people use that Kudos button for way more than a clear-cut statement of feedback and would object to making it more specific). And if someone actually decided to write free verse as a feedback to my story I would read the SHIT out of that. Feedback is feedback. I enjoy feedback. Praise is awesome, obviously, but feedback is why I post rather than just declaiming my stories to my mice in dramatic reenactments accompanied by interpretive dance and periodic heavy breathing. I like writing, I like being good at it even more. I like people noticing my writing, and I like to see their reactions to it. I'm not exactly sure how this makes me unusual.
[whole second paragraph quoted here]
...um, you really do take a legalistic approach to this, don't you? I need to have people sign a waiver, or no wait, I sign a waiver by posting, and people need to sign off on it, or there's this contract that I've put out there with expectations that you have to meet, and you can only read if...or maybe it's I can't post if you don't agree, and there's gotta be a formal signing a contract with me--okay, no, I don't get it.
I mean. Seriously, this is fandom. This is what we DO. We post stories. We post reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to reactions to stories (which I think is where you and I are up to). I am one hundred percent positive that I am not the only writer in fandom who wants to know what their readers have said about their work, who checks email and LJ/DW obsessively in the hours and days after posting a story to see what people have said, who looks hopefully at their friends so they can get pre-reads and betas and suggestions of what works and what doesn't, who eagerly offers pre-reads and betas to their friends and types up all of their suggestions and satisfactions in email and chat and twitter. I'll grant you that I'm possibly one of the stupidest writers in fandom for actually, you know, coming right out and saying it. Especially I'm starting to get the impression from all of this discussion (not just with you, I mean more from reading the reams of comments that these couple of posts have generated) that a lot of people feel that...I'm not sure, maybe writers are doing it for A Love Of The Craft/Fandom/whatever and feedback is really more about the feedbacker than the writer and even could be just one of those incidental things that doesn't enter the picture except on special occasions? As I said, I don't get it. And maybe I'm beating a dead horse, and, well, being stupid. But I gotta be me. [wry]
So. In case this was honestly ambiguous for you before, please let me state that regarding the fics you're reading, and based on 15 years of writing and knowing writers and talking to writers about writing in my various little corners of fandom, I can say with complete confidence that writers--take your pick of some, most, all, any--want feedback. That's why they post to places that have comment options like LJ and DW and AO3. That's why no one that I've ever seen disables comments on a fic post. I can think of a few people who do specifically state that they're only interested in positive feedback, since this is a hobby that they do for fun, and no writer likes being told that they suck, but basically every writer knows that it could happen and, yes, accepts it. Fen can be rather blunt, and I suspect many writers get comments that make them blush and want to hide under the bed.
You can have every single reason in the world not to give that feedback, and they're all valid because the world is a sucky place and people have lives (me) and distractions (me) and hero worship (also me) shitty brain chemistry (SO me) and comment performance anxiety (...actually, not so much me, but this seems to be pretty common), but the one thing I've yet to see is someone posting "I don't comment." Full stop. Period.
People give a reason because, in a way, people feel they NEED to give a reason. So far as I have ever experienced, and I've got 15 years of history informing this statement, giving feedback--at least sometimes, at least a little bit, at least WANTING TO even if the world doesn't let you for any of a number of utterly valid reasons--is the expectation and even the norm in fandom. It's an ideal to aspire to, and like most ideals the vast majority fail at achieving it in true form. But in my opinion, my expectation that if you have something to say about my fic then you're going to say it is not quite the dramatic departure from the norm that you seem to assume. And as I've said before, and will continue to say again, although with less and less hope that anyone actually cares to understand what I mean, my problem with the Kudo button is not that someone gave me feedback I didn't like. It's that someone gave me feedback I didn't UNDERSTAND. Did I win brownie points for courage for posting that ridiculous zombie parasitic wasp larva MCR fic? Did I write a decently spelled and plotted story that didn't make any major errors? Did I write the best story that person's ever read in their entire lives and they're going to fannishly follow me wherever I go? It's the equivalent of a gift of a live goldfish. It's nice to look at, and if you get a bunch of them in a row it feels kinda nice, and it's also nice to think someone cared enough to give me a pet goldfish, but ultimately it doesn't really FEED BACK any information about what I wrote, not even really that they liked it. It's a button used to say everything, and hence (for me) ends up saying...well, nothing.
FYI, the H key on my keyboard is a bit dodgy, I think I caught all the skipped Hs but if I missed one I apologize. And if you want to continue this discussion in my LJ I'd be happy to, I don't want to keep spamming LittleMouseling's LJ so this'll pretty much be my last comment here.