things you should NOT say to a fan writer: a thread because apparently some people don’t know this

rating fics with “6/10” and “8/10” etc

stop it. literally stop. no one asked you to do that so why are you doing that? fanfics aren’t netflix movies. how would you like it if someone took your hard work and gave it a stupid arbitrary rating? it’s rude and uncalled for! stop

(btw on AO3 we can see your bookmarks lol when you rate our fics or make comments when bookmarking a story, we see it. we read it. we know and you’re not being sneaky so stop doing that there)

asking “who bottoms in this? i only read __ bottom”

first of all writers decided whether or not they want to tag the fic with this information. second of all if you’re commenting this on a 50k word fic with a 500-1k word smut scene lol... how about find another fic to read?

“i skipped the smut” you dont have to read the smut if you’re not into that, it’s ok to read stories for plots and character development, but please dont tell this to the writer... personally, i find writing smut to be difficult! and weird. but when i pull it off i feel proud

so i would rather not know that you decided to skip over all my effort and whatnot lol you can skip it without telling me, i promise i won’t know

ALTERNATIVELY: “i skipped to the smut”

i shouldnt have to explain this one but tbh if all you want is smut then read a pwp fic? they exist... they’re out there... in every single fandom i promise you will find them

asking writers for the next update

maybe this depends on the person but it puts a lot of pressure & stress when, say, someone updated their fic and the next day they get a “whens the next update?” when you could instead comment nice things, like what you enjoy so far and why!!

“someone should write this” or worse, “IM GONNA WRITE THIS”

noooo stop right there! this goes for twitter and i see a Lot of ppl doing this but please its cool that you liked an AU tweet but stealing ideas is not ok, and asking other people to steal it is... not ok

if the original poster wants to write it then they will; if they want someone else to write it then i’m sure they’ll say so! alternatively, you could always ask their permission to write it yourself if they haven’t mentioned that they’re gonna write it! never hurts to ask

giving critique when it wasn’t asked for

i havent dealt with this but if you don’t like someone’s writing, if you don’t like where a story is going, etc.... just smash that back button and leave the fic. don’t be mean in the comment section, that’s a real person ur talking to

anyway im sure there are more things but these are some common behaviors i see sometimes, even from people who aren’t trolling :/ writers if there’s anything u wanna add feel free to reply