#austen fanwank

For no particular reason, I’ve been navel-gazing about obnoxious comments I’ve gotten on fic over the years.

Of course, “obnoxious comments” aren’t created equal. I basically divide the ones I’ve personally received into three types: 1) breaches of etiquette, 2) trivial shit, and 3) wtf?

#1 is stuff like leaving a comment on a new fic to ask when I’m going to update an older fic for a completely different fandom. Please don’t do this! But it’s not a huge deal. Or just saying “update soon” and nothing else like I’m some sort of fic-writing machine. Or trash-talking the genre or ship that I’m writing to emphasize that my fic is good even though my taste in ships/tropes is shit or something. I don’t like any of these things, but they’re essentially just different ideas of courtesy.

#2 are things like … correcting me for making up a title for the blank Fitzwilliam earldom in P&P instead of going with “Earl of Matlock” (an invention of the 1995 P&P—I’ve gotten multiple complaints about not using it). Or the occasional complaint about calling my genderbent Luke Skywalker “Lucy” instead of something more obscure and space-y (as opposed to the obscure sci-fi name Luke, I guess). Or my physical descriptions of the characters not matching the casting in someone’s preferred adaptation (again, P&P 1995 fandom is particularly prone to this—one person felt the need to inform me that they always imagined my Darcy as Colin Firth, despite knowing of my dislike for the 1995 and the descriptions in the fics not matching him, in response to a fic where Darcy is a woman). Or there’s “well actuallyin the novelization/Expanded Universe/film/whatever…”

#3 is easily the least common. The most objectionable of the “wtf” genre of comment was undoubtedly the person who thought I was implying that Elizabeth Bennet is a WOC in Season of Courtship, and went on a screed about it. The weirdestwas the person who asked if leaving Subsequent Connections unfinished made me feel desirable. I was also pretty “wtf” at the person who urged me to stop writing screenplay-format fic because it reminded them of a different fic writer who they disliked. And there was someone (at AO3, of all places) who told me that my fic was great but I was personally shitty.

There have also been some kind of peculiar edge cases, like someone responding to my Ivriniel fic with a pseudo-above-it-all comment about how hilarious they found the idea of anybody in Gondor ever resenting Aragorn (i.e. the premise of the fic). There was also some person who was indignant that the other comments on First Impressions were positive despite Henry not being manly (there actually were plenty of other people who had criticisms of First Impressions, but most were clustered at different sites than this commenter’s). Obviously not anywhere near as bad as the straight-up racism or homophobia, but those still struck me as weird and wanky beyond just fannish obsessing over minutia.

Ihavegotten criticisms that I don’t think of as obnoxious—some were (non-adaptation-based) corrections of genuine mistakes, like Americanisms and getting Italian phrases wrong and continuity errors and things. Some people have noted where longer fics meandered off track and the pacing got uneven or seemed directionless (fair!). Some people don’t like my readiness to give substantial roles to OCs/near-OCs. Others don’t like specific decisions I made, like the Rebellion’s limited roles for women in the Lucyverse or the justification for Catherine’s proposal in First Impressions. Okay!

Also, while obviously I’ve seen and remembered the obnoxious comments, they make up a small proportion of the overall comments I’ve received over the years. Most people are nice. I’ve very rarely received reallynasty direct comments, despite writing sketchy things at times, deliberately rejecting popular fanons, etc.

And … I mean, my two biggest fandoms by a mile are P&P and SW (in terms of what I’ve written fic for). And Austen fandom has always been the odd one out for me, fandom-wise. If I excluded the responses to Austen fic specifically, my experience of fic comments would be even more overwhelmingly pleasant (and the comments on Austen fic are mostly pleasant, but it is definitely the wankiest fandom I’ve ever been: both very particular about conformity to its norms and very Cult of Nice about addressing pretty much anything). I know that SW fandom does have awful people in it who leave worse comments than anything I’ve ever received—that’s just what my personal experience has been.

So, yeah, the occasional obnoxiousness I’ve encountered seems like … not nothing, by any means, but given how much I’ve written, what I’ve chosen to write, and the basic contrariness of my nature, I’ve probably come out pretty lucky as far as fandom goes.

I was thinking about P&P (for LP&D purposes—it was on hold while my best friend was visiting) and specifically about Darcy’s insult at the assembly.

It’s awful, but there’s also a small part of me that finds it kind of funny that he’s pitching this fit about how Bingley is dancing with the only sufficiently attractive woman in the room (Jane) but also, Darcy makes zero attempt whatsoever to actually dance with Jane himself at any point. Later, he tells another man that he never dances with anyone if he can find some way of avoiding it, and an even longer time after that, insists that he’s uncomfortable around strangers. So it’s like … nesting dolls of motives for one asshole remark at a party.