The Quartz Alchemist Cafe

I post stories online, and sometimes they are fanfiction. I mention this only because I want to make a very important larger point about posting writing and artwork in general on the Internet. For anyone thinking of doing it, there is one thing I wish someone had told me going in several years ago.

More particularly, there is one thing I wish someone had warned me about.

The actual writing isn’t the hard part. Even the actual bravery of posting isn’t the hard. The hard part, in posting stories online and even more especially in posting fanfiction online, is actually the reviews.

On all story writing websites, readers can post reviews, and on most of the major ones, they don’t even have to put a username to the review they’re leaving. This is the part I wish people had warned me about. First, there is no filter between author and reader. This is one of the best parts — no editors! writers getting to do what they want! — but it’s also one of the most terrible parts. Because all those barriers that usually filter nasty reviews out for professional, published authors no longer exist. And no reviewer has to put a face, a name, or even a link to what they’re reviewing.

It’s directly and anonymously from the reader’s computer to the writer’s.

Now, this does create a predictable problem: Reviewers posting mindless, nasty, hateful comments. On a fanfiction website, where people already have a lot of emotion invested into what a particular character is supposed to look like, this is especially problematic. Reviewers with nothing better to do with their lives will go on long crusades, purposefully leaving reviews on perfectly innocent stories with pairings or characterizations they don’t care for. They will write and send to the author, directly, things like “Kill yourself virgin” or “This piece of garbage is a repulsive bastardization of the characters for your own creepy fantasies.”

Those are two real and separate reviews I have gotten, both anonymously. What was my crime? I wrote a fanfic in which some of the characters went through positive character growth, and two canon couples were broken up so that two other completely socially appropriate, heterosexual couples could get together instead. Why do I emphasize “socially appropriate” and “heterosexual”? It’s not because I have any problem with homosexual love stories — some of my most beloved fanfics are homosexual love stories. I emphasize “heterosexual” specifically to emphasize that this is not merely a problem of homophobia, for example. Homosexual love stories will get more nasty, hateful comments because of homophobia, but love stories that supposedly support the basic social “status quo” will still get their fair share of comments like this.

But that is not the biggest problem, and it’s not what I wanted to write about. Those reviewers become surprisingly easy to tune out. Usually what I do is imagine an incel with a tiny dick sitting in his parents’ basement sending random hate-generated comments to fanfics going against his favorite pairing on the Internet, and then I move on with my life. Brutal, but true. The biggest problem with posting stories on the Internet is one I haven’t even mentioned yet, and it is more insidious, even manipulative.

Some of the reviews that sound like long, intelligent, critical essays are just as hateful.

Let me explain. In constructive critiquing for writing and artwork, there are two types of criticism. They can be boiled down to “I don’t like this” and “Here’s how the author could have written this better.” The first is useless. Liking something is subjective, and the author isn’t going to change one of their central creative ideas because a reader happens not to like it anyway. Saying that something is badly written, politely, and suggesting ways of improvement, however, is totally different. And it is helpful.

The second is a valid way of critiquing. The first is not.

So an author will get a long, complicated review that sounds intelligent and well written. But it will still make them feel awful. Here is what I wish someone had told me years ago: If a long and intelligent-sounding review makes you feel awful, don’t automatically it’s because you’re bad at taking constructive criticism. Often, a review makes you feel awful because it is a long, complicated, and highly pretentious way of saying “I don’t like this.” They’re not really giving points of valid improvement for your writing process itself at all.

The person is still critiquing central creative ideas for the story. They’re not actually suggesting something like better syntax, which will make the actual, decided-on story idea better-written.

This can take very manipulative forms. For example, someone could write that the pacing in a story is terrible. Sometimes they mean that the chapters feel rushed. But just as many times, they mean that they don’t like the plot layout the author has for the story, and they wish the plot layout worked differently. The first is valid and helpful. The second is realistically not going to change.

So how to tell one kind of long, “constructive” review from the other? Try to summarize or paraphrase the author’s main point in your head, if you’re the author receiving the review. Which are they saying? Are they saying, “This foundational idea that is still yours could be better written, and here’s how”?

Or are they just doing the long, complicated way of saying “Your central story idea is shit because I don’t like it”?

In the end, if you as the author can boil their central argument down to something that’s not much better than “This is a piece of garbage” then you still received a toxic review. The biggest problem? Because most people don’t know how to validly critique, in my experience most bad reviews are toxic. Either readers will say they love it or readers will say they hate it, and there’s really no in-between. No one should post stories online hoping for valid feedback, especially not fanfiction. That’s not really how the process works.

So do I still post? Yes. Because I enjoy it for other reasons. Reasons of personal self-pride, of wanting to participate in fandom, and of enjoying sharing my ideas with the readers who do enjoy my story — and even with the occasional reviewer who gives me actual, thoughtful ideas for better writing quality.

Having said all this, I don’t know if I think the long kind of bad reviewer is usually being manipulative on purpose. As I said, a lot of readers don’t know how to validly critique. So someone will read a story and think “This story set wrong with me, and I don’t know why, so I’m going to write an essay explaining why and send it to the author.” Very rarely do readers try to tease apart their own bad feelings, or even their own critical essays, before submitting them for some poor sucker of a blossoming writer to read. Sometimes, reviewers don’t even realize their long, proud essay can be boiled down to “I didn’t like your idea.” In other words, they don’t actually know they’re doing this.

I still post online stories, but I had to build up strong defense mechanisms and walls around my heart defending my writing ideas in order to get to this point. I had to find techniques like these and tease out the people who were just trying to make me feel awful about my creative ideas. That’s the flip side to posting stories and especially fanfiction online.

Most of the experience is wonderful. That part never will be.

And this is what I wish someone had written me going into that subculture and that online world several years ago.

For anyone interested, I hope this helped.