Thanks for this thoughtful post! You chose a thorny (but important) topic indeed. I feel this so much, because I both can be negative about things and also feel very bad when other people are negative about things I love. :) I do have to catch myself sometimes, and it is hard. But I also know how bothered I can be when I see certain Opinions, so I try to be mindful (and I do fail). My default mode and preference is squee, however. I just don't have the energy after RL stuff to engage in too many thinky thoughts. (Even this is a lot!) I come to fandom to unwind and look at the pretty and roll around in feels, so that's my happy place and what I'm looking for here. But I do understand that there are many different ways to engage fandom and people are seeking different things, and for good or ill critique is definitely one of those things.
Part of the difficulty is that we're talking about different types of commentary when we say "negative" and imo they are not all the same thing.
I don't mind critique when it is part of thoughtful meta, but I wonder if sometimes after a fandom has been having a convo for a while, some meta loses its nuance for shorthand purposes and can become a bit flippant, simplified, scornful, or monolithic, and that's when it can start to hurt feelings. Likewise, once fandom gets to a place where we have the same conversation about something over and over, and some people feel like x and others feel like y, it can start to seem like you're beating a dead horse.
It's also different when you criticize out of love vs. out of derision. If someone in Guardian gently pokes fun at production value, that doesn't really bother me and can usually make me laugh in affection. But if someone not in the fandom dismisses the show for having bad special effects, then I can get defensive.
As you noted above, critiques for misogyny, racism, etc. are important conversations to have even if they make us uncomfortable or unhappy.
I think the type of negativity that bothers me most is around individual fanworks, styles, tropes, etc. This is in a slightly different category to me because it pertains to something that fandom creates and because negativity around it is so often rooted in individual preferences that aren't always rational (and hence not conducive to debate). Again, with exceptions for convos about racism or meta conversations about things like how we can be a safer space for everyone, I really don't GAF about all the things you personally don't like in fanworks or the fics you personally thought weren't that great. All that does is make me feel like if I create or enjoy those things there must be something wrong with me or that if I create things other people won't like them. It leaves me self-conscious rather than energized. Especially where so much of fanfic is just hitting the id (whether people want to own that or not), sometimes it's hard to be more intellectual about it other than "that trope makes me squee" or "that trope makes me cringe."
One of the things I most treasure about fandom is its gift economy, where we are all building this thing together, and also that it's a space for amateurs. You don't have to be GOOD to create in fandom. You're not getting paid. Some people may be "practicing" for professional publication, but a lot of us have absolutely no aspirations for that. We are creating because we enjoy creation for its own sake and we love something about the verse or the characters. We're having fun. As a result, the expectations I have of both myself and others are much more relaxed. It's not about meeting some standard but about contributing. It honestly really bothers me when people approach fanworks from a "consumer" perspective and become evaluative. Read what you enjoy, and don't bother with what you don't enjoy. Before disparaging tropes, styles, genres in public (for example the number of times I have had to listen to people act like SFF is an intellectually or artistically superior genre to romance...), consider if you are enriching the world of what creators might play with or shutting people down.
no subject
Part of the difficulty is that we're talking about different types of commentary when we say "negative" and imo they are not all the same thing.
I don't mind critique when it is part of thoughtful meta, but I wonder if sometimes after a fandom has been having a convo for a while, some meta loses its nuance for shorthand purposes and can become a bit flippant, simplified, scornful, or monolithic, and that's when it can start to hurt feelings. Likewise, once fandom gets to a place where we have the same conversation about something over and over, and some people feel like x and others feel like y, it can start to seem like you're beating a dead horse.
It's also different when you criticize out of love vs. out of derision. If someone in Guardian gently pokes fun at production value, that doesn't really bother me and can usually make me laugh in affection. But if someone not in the fandom dismisses the show for having bad special effects, then I can get defensive.
As you noted above, critiques for misogyny, racism, etc. are important conversations to have even if they make us uncomfortable or unhappy.
I think the type of negativity that bothers me most is around individual fanworks, styles, tropes, etc. This is in a slightly different category to me because it pertains to something that fandom creates and because negativity around it is so often rooted in individual preferences that aren't always rational (and hence not conducive to debate). Again, with exceptions for convos about racism or meta conversations about things like how we can be a safer space for everyone, I really don't GAF about all the things you personally don't like in fanworks or the fics you personally thought weren't that great. All that does is make me feel like if I create or enjoy those things there must be something wrong with me or that if I create things other people won't like them. It leaves me self-conscious rather than energized. Especially where so much of fanfic is just hitting the id (whether people want to own that or not), sometimes it's hard to be more intellectual about it other than "that trope makes me squee" or "that trope makes me cringe."
One of the things I most treasure about fandom is its gift economy, where we are all building this thing together, and also that it's a space for amateurs. You don't have to be GOOD to create in fandom. You're not getting paid. Some people may be "practicing" for professional publication, but a lot of us have absolutely no aspirations for that. We are creating because we enjoy creation for its own sake and we love something about the verse or the characters. We're having fun. As a result, the expectations I have of both myself and others are much more relaxed. It's not about meeting some standard but about contributing. It honestly really bothers me when people approach fanworks from a "consumer" perspective and become evaluative. Read what you enjoy, and don't bother with what you don't enjoy. Before disparaging tropes, styles, genres in public (for example the number of times I have had to listen to people act like SFF is an intellectually or artistically superior genre to romance...), consider if you are enriching the world of what creators might play with or shutting people down.