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I get that people desperately want comments and desperately want to do nothing to discourage anybody, ever, from leaving them on fanfic, but I keep seeing posts going around saying things like "You won't EVER annoy the author!" or "Trust me, literally everybody loves literally all comments!"
And this is just not true. Not to get all 'the lurkers support me in email', but I have a hard time thinking of a single fanfic writer with whom I've discussed it who hasn't got at least one annoying comment anecdote. These are usually comments that manage to come off as tactless or rude in some way, but the writers of the comments didn't think they were being mean or rude, so 'don't be mean' is obviously not a universal formula for success here. (That doesn't constitute an argument that people in general shouldn't leave comments, but (a) lying helps nobody and (b) it should be up to them, without all these intense pressuring and guilting screeds floating around. Let them leave kudos in peace if composing a comment makes them anxious, for fuck's sake.)
I mean, writing a comment is not a complicated and difficult process (whereas it can be an imposing process, not because it's complex but because people are socially anxious), and "don't be rude or mean" is still the general rule of thumb probably, but there are always social considerations in fandom and denying their existence to someone who is anxious precisely because of them is only insulting their intelligence.
We can all easily find out just from reading authors' notes that authors' taste varies and some of them actively ask for criticism (a concept whose definition is debatable), and more will ask to have typos or factual errors pointed out, while others find comments of this type so insulting that they withdraw from fandom or from writing or publish angry essays on the subject. And this doesn't even touch on the relatively common comment genre of "I love your fic even though I usually hate this fandom/character/thing [that you love]", which is considered flattering by some and insulting by others; or the equally common request for sequel or "more", considered flattering by some and entitled by others.
And a fear of accidentally insulting someone is not even the main reason people don't leave comments (although not knowing what to say is admittedly a much simpler problem to solve if you really want to, though again, I'd rather not have a comment someone composed following a comment-composing tutorial because they didn't have anything they spontaneously wanted to say but they feel guilty).
And this is just not true. Not to get all 'the lurkers support me in email', but I have a hard time thinking of a single fanfic writer with whom I've discussed it who hasn't got at least one annoying comment anecdote. These are usually comments that manage to come off as tactless or rude in some way, but the writers of the comments didn't think they were being mean or rude, so 'don't be mean' is obviously not a universal formula for success here. (That doesn't constitute an argument that people in general shouldn't leave comments, but (a) lying helps nobody and (b) it should be up to them, without all these intense pressuring and guilting screeds floating around. Let them leave kudos in peace if composing a comment makes them anxious, for fuck's sake.)
I mean, writing a comment is not a complicated and difficult process (whereas it can be an imposing process, not because it's complex but because people are socially anxious), and "don't be rude or mean" is still the general rule of thumb probably, but there are always social considerations in fandom and denying their existence to someone who is anxious precisely because of them is only insulting their intelligence.
We can all easily find out just from reading authors' notes that authors' taste varies and some of them actively ask for criticism (a concept whose definition is debatable), and more will ask to have typos or factual errors pointed out, while others find comments of this type so insulting that they withdraw from fandom or from writing or publish angry essays on the subject. And this doesn't even touch on the relatively common comment genre of "I love your fic even though I usually hate this fandom/character/thing [that you love]", which is considered flattering by some and insulting by others; or the equally common request for sequel or "more", considered flattering by some and entitled by others.
And a fear of accidentally insulting someone is not even the main reason people don't leave comments (although not knowing what to say is admittedly a much simpler problem to solve if you really want to, though again, I'd rather not have a comment someone composed following a comment-composing tutorial because they didn't have anything they spontaneously wanted to say but they feel guilty).
