A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.
The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!
Hold up, what?
I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.
Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts a is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm.
Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it.
Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.
The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button.
Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.
Don’t ruin a stranger’s day or week or hobby because you “know better” and somehow think you need to prove it. You don’t.
Another real-life editor here to agree with all of this. If concrit isn’t asked for, don’t leave it. Remember that you are consuming FREE media.
Also, on a pressional note, unstructured feedback, ESPECIALLY if it’s unkind, does not actually help most writers. Effective editing is unemotional and definitely cannot he distilled into an AO3 comment. It takes multiple readthroughs, at least some familiarity with the author’s style, awareness of their goals, and many other nuances.
I’m not saying you have to be a professional editor to be helpful, but for your criticism to be effective, you do have to put in more effort than casually reading a story.
You are not providing a service, you are not helping someone grow a thicker skin. You are most certainly not improving their writing. You are in fact achieving the exact opposite by breaking them down.
You notice how Trump demolished the food safety laws and now, in the past month, we haven’t been able to eat lettuce, eggs, Tyson chicken, and watermelon because there are huge bacteria outbreaks?
I’ve only seen this post in screenshots on pinterest. I love it.
I think you missed the other fanboy…
Love this
Everybody says Seb isn’t like Bucky… but he IS. He’s Bucky without a mask on. Bucky’s always wearing some sort of mask. Even around Steve. Seb is what Bucky would be like if he’d had the chance to just ~be~.
UH THIS
Um we’re forgetting someone…
ITS FINALLY ON MY DASH YESSS
Not to forget our “Wizard”:
Aldjaksnana
I’ve found it. I’ve found the perfect post.
it’s on my dash jdnckdmd
these dorks lmaoo
I love everyone omg they’re all so amazing???
YES
Don’t forget
Chris looks so hot in that first gif set
Omg I found THE original post! Holy shit I’ve only ever seen screenshots of this!
This post pops up on my dash every few months and I will never not reblog it.
This is too good to not reblog
Everybody see this, this is the quality trash I came to Tumblr in the first place.
Also
This post is ALMOST perfect, but we’re forgetting someone:
Jeez, this is beautiful.
i’m not even in the marvel fandom and i love this (or whatever its called ( dont call me out ( im sorry)))
Pillowfort.io is a new closed beta social media site, which is, as far as I can tell, a fusion between LiveJournal and tumblr in set-up but run by fans like Ao3.
There’s more of a focus on function and community building rather than… whatever tumblr is (not just knocking tumblr – it was never intended to host fandom and it shows). Unfortunately, I dawdled on signing-up for the free beta, so I’m not on the site and can’t give first-hand information.
Here’s aDEMOaccount if you want to check out the site.
It does have a KickStarter HEREwhere you can purchase account keys for $5 each (which you can purchase for yourself and/or give them away as gifts). That seems like a good deal to me, if you spend a lot of time on social media, given it is a one-time donation.
If you want to wait and see, I’m sure they’ll open free registration at some point in the future. I’ve found sites that open registration with restrictions tend to fair better than ones that do it as a free-for-all, so I’m pleased they seem to be going into this endeavor with eyes open rather than jumping off a cliff.
I’ve been in since the very first beta keys were handed out, which means I threw PF $5 and I haven’t regretted it at all. I backed the NEW kickstarter with another $5 (it’s all I can currently afford) because I believe in the site and I’ve been watching it grow and continue to improve. The staff is undoubtedly busy, but they did get back to me with an issue I had, and then it was even fixed. Like… they FIXED it.
That’s not a thing that SHOULD be a big deal, but to those of us who’ve been stuck n tumblr hell for so long, it IS. If you can afford the $5 or 10 or whatever to back them, and want to, I rec it. The ONLY downside to PF for me right now is how quiet it is there still, but that does improve with each beta wave as well.
AO3 offer a comfortable, no payment, ad-free service in exchange for donations specifically to KEEP THE WEBPAGE UP AND RUNNING and people still complain?!
You pay people for the time you require them to do things. This is the law. This has been the law since at least the great depression. This is nothing more than an affirmation of the law that already existed, and that employers were already violating.
If there’s billions at stake here, then, the correct statement about this ruling with regards to labor costs is, “Employers have been illegally padding their bottom lines with billions in unpaid labor.”
paying people for their labour is the fundamental bedrock of the employer/employee relationship, and anyone who doesn’t understand that isn’t an employer at all, just a conman.
this is fucking baffling. my employer isn’t perfect, but we are paid for every *minute* that we are clocked in. If I’m scheduled 12-8, but I clock in at 11:55 (we are typically expected to clock in a bit early for change-over), and out at 8:15 because customers take too long to leave, I am paid for 8.34 hrs. If I clock out at 8:01, I am paid for that minute. This isn’t “you get paid for an extra hour” or whatever weirdness I’ve seen in the notes, but we are paid for each minute that we work.
So I did some research on this, bc I am in HR and in California so…yeah I needed to know wtf actually happened here if it actually changed anything, so we could keep in compliance. And this is not precisely about “paying for off the clock work” so much as it is about pinning down the definition of “de minimis” work as set forth in the FLSA, and whether or how that applies to CA labor law (since we are very, very special snowflakes about that stuff, and I say that with affection and pride but seriously CA labor law is so unique there’s a separate HR certification for California practitioners, and if you take the general one instead the advice everyone gives you is “TAKE OFF THE CALIFORNIA GOGGLES BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE QUESTIONS”.)
Anywho! So the FLSA, the Fair Labor Standards Act, is a piece of federal law that’s been in place for 80 years. It’s what governs federal minimum wage, sets forth overtime pay requirements, defines hourly/exempt distinctions, and a bunch of other stuff.
In the section of the FLSA that outlines what counts as working time that must be paid for by the employer (for example, that your boss doesn’t have to pay you for time spent commuting to and from work, which was an actual fight they had in the early days of establishing modern American labor law – look up the Portal to Portal Act sometime), there is a “de minimis” exception clause. If the time worked is in addition to regular working hours, and is so small and infrequent that it cannot be easily recorded for timekeeping purposes, then it does not have to be paid.
This is meant to cover truly little and insignificant stuff, like the 30 seconds it takes your computer to load the timesheet app. It doesn’t make sense to require an employer to try to keep track of and adjust timesheets for 30 seconds worth of time, therefore it falls under de minimis exception. Or for something really infrequent, like your boss saying as you’re leaving for the day, “hey can you help Bob take that box out to his car on your way to the parking lot?” because Bob is transporting event materials to an off-site location after work or something. It’s not a regular thing, and it takes you an extra 90 seconds to pick up the box and then stop at Bob’s car in your walk out to your own car, so it’s considered de minimis and your employer doesn’t have to tack 2 minutes onto your timesheet to cover a single occurrence of something so brief. De minimis is basically about finding a reasonable compromise between “pay for every single second of work” and “okay but timekeeping systems are limited in terms of just how perfect they can be, so, at what point does it become an unreasonable burden to require ultra-specific time tracking?”
(And before anyone says anything about paying people being part of the employers obligation so there’s no such thing as it being an unreasonable burden, let me ask you – have you ever been responsible for managing timekeeping and payroll for a few hundred or thousand employees? It’s more involved than you think, so there very much is a point at which the burden becomes unreasonable. Sincerely, the systems specialist who manages my employer’s timekeeping and payroll system.)
This case in particular was about answering a question of whether clocking out at the end of the day, then having to set the alarm and lock the door when you leave, is de minimis or should count as working time. The California Supreme Court came down on the side of it not being de minimis, because it was both regular/predictable, and took enough time on a regular enough basis to add up to not-insignificant amounts of unpaid time. They calculated it out, and over the course of a year it would short that particular employee about $120. So the ruling wasn’t a general “you have to pay for all time worked”, it was “this specific time worked was consistent, predictable, and had a non-negligent impact on the employee’s compensation, so classifying it as de minimis time was inappropriate, and California law doesn’t even recognize de minimis the same way federal law does anyway.”
I get that that’s not as satisfying as being able to smugly roll your eyes and joke about employers trying not to pay their staff, and generally speaking you’re not wrong re employers and wage theft – but this is a misapplication of that general principle, and the headline was overly reductionist in describing what was actually being decided (not to mention whiny in that special way that employers/business interests have when they’re playing the victim over labor laws), which didn’t help.
I realize I’m 2 years late to this, but I’m just now digging in and trying to understand the full effects of Brexit, and it’s truly astonishing. I knew it would have the usual protectionist effects like higher prices and whatnot, but there’s a not improbable chance Britain runs out of food. They’re scrambling to make sure planes will still have access to the country. Important scientific research is stalling because British scientists can’t secure funding. And I’m still not sure what the argument for it is except something about regulations and telling your Polish maid she’s not wanted.
“When Anna said she was raped by two on-duty cops, she thought it would be a simple case. She had no idea she lived in one of 35 states where officers can claim a detainee consented.“
Frankenuff’s Castle 