To readers and writers of fanfiction who think because we are not professionals, there is no need to be so serious. Sorry Joker, but even if we aren't paid for giving reviews and we aren't paid for posting stories, there is still a need for criticism. The reasons behind these needs are different, but they go together. 

What is the purpose for criticizing fanfics? Obviously because when someone at writing they need to know about it and cry themselves to sleep for a week. God, no, that is not why. That is what some people think about reviewers but that is not the case.

Criticism is not to make people feel bad and deter them from writing, it is to help people improve. Anyone can write fanfiction. You write it, keep it in a secret journal, and never post it to the world because your dirty delusions are embarrassing. Or you post it to a fanfiction website because you want people to read it and support your ideas with subscribes and comments and hope to have a lot because you worked pretty ing hard on that chapter and someone needs to appreciate it, god damn it. So if you post to AFF, you automatically desire all of the before stated. People might claim that fanfictions aren’t professional so there is no need for all these harsh views on quality, but they don’t understand that AFF is one of the most competitive fanfiction websites out there.

Nichi made an announcement not too long ago about reaching the 100,000 users mark [back in 2012]. That means there are at least 100,000 potential readers and 100,000 potential fanfics to compete with. While not every single user writes or subscribes to fics, the majority do write at least one (usually more) and subscribe to almost all the fics they enjoy. This means if you want your story to be read, you have to compete with 100,000 fanfics that a potential reader might read over yours. [I don't know, multiply all these numbers by like 10 or something for whatever year this is]

From an author’s perspective, if I know there is someone out there willing to read my fic to the end and tell me why it is as popular as it is, I want them to! Analyze it to the last punctuation make me pull out my hair as I wonder why I made the stupid choices I made. How else are writers going to get subscribers when there are already other fics that can satisfy these hungry readers? We have to get better! The AFF environment demands it.

There are several things that make AFF so prone to competition.

1)     All the updated stories are seen on the front page until other stories take its place. This drives people to update quickly just so someone looking for a recently updated fic sees theirs. It should be different in the tags section where all updated fics are of that fandom, but the tags have a different competitive side to them.

2)      Tags are misleading.  Because the tags don’t mean that the main focus of the fic is whatever it is, there will be people that ignore a fic because they find that the fic does not focus on their fandom, or there will be people that don’t read the fic because even if the focus is on their fandom they don’t want to read anything about that other tag. I won’t read SHINee fics willingly. If I see shinee, or any of the shinee members, or any of the couples tagged in a fic I was interested in reading, I won’t read it.

3)      Fics can be promoted through friends, walls, private messages, comments, the chat, blogs, and much more.  This is a huge factor in this competitive drive. If one person has 500 friends and promotes to them or tells them to inform their friends, their fic will gain a lot of subs. It’s spawns from a general, “What is this –my interest is peaked –oh, it’s not that bad.” There are over 100,000 users on AFF, you have to somehow get people to read your story. If you gain enough readers and you start a new fic, you can tell all your readers to read that one as well. If you happen to have, I don’t know, a featured fic with over 1000 subscribers and you believe your story is part of the .01% of good fanfics out there because it has 1% of AFF readers subscribed, you can tell those 1000 readers to read your new story and get 200 subscribers by the first chapter. This is how authors get more than one story featured when their first stories weren’t even good.

4)      People write to get their stories featured. No longer do people write because they were and wanted to create some great for nighttime reading. People post it because they want comments and people see that the featured stories get 1000 ‘congrats’ and 500 new subs when they are featured. This is the equivalency to getting on the New York Times best seller list. Authors often ask me for reviews because they want to get featured. I always respond that it is an unrealistic idea but I will try to help them. While we might not all deeply desire to get featured, if it did happen, we would all feel proud and accomplished. If I could get any of my stories featured I’d be incredibly happy, even though I want to chop off my fingers over past fics I’ve written.

You can’t deny the truth in these words because you’ve probably seen it too, the unfairness of the feature system and disadvantage to being shy or updating slowly. With all these factors working against the English as a second language/too good to write / the clichés/a completed story is ten chapters/realistic is the way to go writer, how are they supposed to get readers? There is only one other way to get people to read your story. Write well. If you write well, even without you telling them, people are most likely going to demand that their friends read the fic as well. My friend and I do this all the time. She’ll tell me about a fic and I’ll want the link or I’ll tell her about a fic and she’ll say she loved it and will reread it again.

We read stories on Livejournal so there is no shortage of good fics to read. We read updated fics in communities then go into the archives once those are finished or just go through our friendlist because all updates from friends and communities go onto your friend list (and why would you friend someone who can’t write well when they can promote their fic through the community?). On AFF most people at writing because they lust for readers and we have to rely on the updated fics in a certain tag or random comments on our walls or sifting through the most popular fics.  

So if the only answer is to write well and you at writing, you’re doomed! No! This is where betas, reviews and helpful critiques come in. There is someone out there that can translate your Norwegian to English and along the way they can tell you “hey~ this is a little iffy.” When a review gives you a low score in a certain area you obviously need to improve! Criticism pinpoints the areas that an author is good and bad at. “I loved your fic because the was hot—I hated your fics because there was no need for them to have .” Critiquing is the ultimate way for a writer to get better. The other ways are to learn by example or to go to school.

If you think that if you just continue to complain about not having readers and subscribers without doing anything and just hope for them to come, you are mistaken. If you think that a low score in a review means nothing and the reviewer was simply crude, you are mistaken. Feel satisfied as a writer, act on the criticism instead of rejecting it.

Of course, if you can write well, you need to write about things people want to read about. Nobody really wants to read a story about an old married guy working a 9-5 job and living with his mother-in-law. Bah to the people who say that AFF is not a professional world, this place is just as marketable as the real world. Readers on AFF have a tendency to read romantic fics with some or mass amounts of y time. "You" fics are as popular as ever and cliché is definitely a necessity for features. So if you can write well, go ahead with SHINee (EXO). If you can write well, make him a vampire! If you can write well, give that a purpose. AFF is a market, so if you want subscribers and comments you will write what people want to read. Screw creativity; go for what want they want! This is why so many plots are overused and people still read them.

Above all, criticism is given because a lot of people are tired of seeing fics and the improvement of one story is like the improvement to a hundred. The people who tell others they at writing most likely know they at writing too, that is not an excuse to reject their help. You either continue or take someone's adivice and get better. 

And hey, most review blogs/fics/sites put up the link to fics they review or add it to a recommendations list. That is a huge way to get your story promoted. A lot of the review fics on AFF do this. I don't recommend, but I do post up the link to every story I review at my blog site, which you can find by venturing to my profile.

Now those of you who say that we should write because we want to write, that is also what I believe. I write because I have an idea and I want to write, I post it because I want the opinions of others and I worked so ing hard someone needs to appreciate it. However, if someone does not comment, I don’t throw a fit, I write the next chapter when I want to write again and I update then too. I won’t be as motivated to write but I love to write so I will. As much as I love to write, I love to read. Whenever I don’t get a comment that is five seconds of my life where my dreams are crushed before I search for another fic. So if you write because you like to write, you can just stop posting and leave this aggressive battle to other people that are willing to make an effort or have the talent to do so.

We can keep updating our dozen fics and creating new ones, but if we want that sense of accomplishment we will need those comments and critiques so we can improve and satisfy our lust for appreciation. Honestly though, if writing is a hobby, don't you want to get better at it? It's not like school where you hate math and hate learning new methods of working with numbers. Everyone claims they like to write so they should also wish to improve. It can be fun at the same time and really fulfilling.