They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but neither can match up to the tongue of an angry fangirl...
Fanfiction is like Marmite. You either love it or you hate it. You applaud the writers or you want us to stop messing with your characters and get our deluded ideas off the internet. But love it or hate it, it's only growing in popularity and those of us who write it aren't about to stop anytime soon.
However, this isn't a rant about the haters, it's not a rant about the quality of fic or anything like that as the opening paragraph might suggest. This is a rant about a certain sect of readers. The fandom will remain nameless, as will the pairings and the title of the particular story I'm discussing as I'm pretty certain this isn't an isolated situation. (However I will say - as we get a bad enough name already - that it is not Supernatural).
I'm currently following a wonderful fic on LiveJournal which is hitting all my buttons. There's my OTP and then the most popular pairing in this fandom - which, yes, are two seperate entities with one member crossing over. Now I admit, I did start reading the fic due to the mention of my OTP but have actually become quite interested in the story itself. It's written well - unlike a lot in this fandom, there's real characterization in the people feature and you actually do care about the people involved. After I finish reading each chapter, I always have a quick look through peoples comments, to see if they've spotted anything I've missed in it. Normally there's a lot of praise, maybe a few things I've missed in my readthrough. But today, I've seen a number of comments which have really angered me and they all go a little something like this.
"Wait, are 'popular pairing' not going to be together in the end? I don't think I want to read if that's the case."
Cue the author spoiling the end for this person, which, much to my delight, shows that my OTP are going to end up together. However, we're only a third of the way through the fic and thus far, there was no real sign that this secondary pairing was going to turn into the primary by the end of the fic. So really, I'd have quite liked this to be left as a surprise.
The fact I've been spoiled isn't what bothers me, as I mentioned before, I'm an English Supernatural fan, I'm used to it by now. What had bothered me was the way this person decided to drop what is one of the best stories in the fandom right now - the only WIP I'm reading - because it isn't going to end the way they want it to. It'd be fine if it was just this one person but unfortunately, this fandom has a big bandwagon, and a number of people have hopped aboard, essentially boycotting this fic because it's not going to have a happy ending for their OTP.
Now, fair enough, you can't please everyone. However, if someone has gone to the trouble to create this fic, to create an alternate universe which has more depth than most of those set in the 'real' universe these characters are from, to write a geniunely great fic, you could at least have a bit more respect and stop throwing your toys out of the pram because they want to write an original idea for a change.
If you don't like where they're going, don't write them a review which picks at this one 'flaw' and completely ignores the works merits. You want your pairing? You have literally thousands of other fic to choose from. Leave this one to those of us who are fans of the other pairing as well or the more mature fans who can appreciate a good shaking up of the norm.
On the topic of completely unhelpful and pointless comments that a fic can recieve, I bring you a short list of things that we as writers don't want. (Or rather, comments which I don't want).
- "MORE MORE MORE!", we will post more when we're ready, if we're even going to carry on. Not every piece of work needs a sequel/prequel. Some of these one shots are just that, one shots.
- "HOT!", I do write a fair bit of erotic fiction and I'm aware that this is a standard response but just the one word is really frustrating. I'm not a big fan of writing smut but sometimes the bunnies bite. Let me know why it's hot, tell me what you liked about it.
- "Could you write such and such a pairing?", I've got this a lot recently. I've crossed over from a bandom into the Supernatural fandom and I've found a couple of my old readers haven't read my new fic and instead have just asked me if I can write for the old bandom in 'reviews/comments' for my new work. Do I really need to explain why this is annoying?
There are a number of others but these are the most frustrating ones of the lot.
Don't get me wrong, as writers we all enjoy feedback. We'd just like to get some which isn't whining or single words.
And when it comes down to it, we're not writing to cater to your whims, we're writing for ourselves. You're just lucky enough to see the product of our madness.
