Thread by @hmsnofun

if you give me a "compliment sandwich" i'm going to punch you directly in the mouth

i know i'm perilously close to the realm of "participation trophies made a generation of snowflakes" here but holy shit dude it's astonishing to me that such a thing as a "compliment sandwich" ever needed to exist. just tell what's not working so i can fucking fix it dude, yeesh

like i can't imagine the kind of cushy insulated baby-tier environment you came up in creatively that you need to hear twice as many compliments as criticisms in order to not have a fucking meltdown. use what's useful and let the rest die mad!

i'm not saying writing on a fanfic forum in the early 2000s was, like, the BEST thing for my longterm mental health, but it sure as hell taught me how to not be precious. by the time i took college writing classes no one ever told me anything i didn't already know wasn't working

idk, a few people were critical of how long the first risk/dare chapter in godfeels was, and that stung some because i'd convinced myself it needed to be one whole unit of story... but on reflection i realized, yeah, you know what, 40k words was a bit excessive for ao3 lmao

there's always criticism that sticks in your craw and makes you mad. i definitely get that urge to throw a fit! and you know, sometimes people spectacularly miss the point and you just gotta scream a little. but sometimes people don't like your stuff, and you can't change that

what a lot of folks are missing i think is that "taking criticism" does not mean taking ALL criticism. it is, in fact, a very good thing to have an opinion about your own work. again: take what's useful to you and throw the rest in the trash.

i just don't think it's that hard to have a sense of humor about your stuff and acknowledge that literally nothing humans do is perfect. the pursuit of perfection is a mug's game. make something you love, improve where you can, and just keep moving. that's all you need imo

and for the love of god never dunk on your critics in public unless your post has been cosigned by at least three other terminally online weirdos. if you can't kill em in one shot, there's no getting around looking like a complete ass and deserving every ounce of ridicule you get

i should say, this thread is specifically about creative criticism among adults online. and i'm by no means advocating that you ever be *mean* about it! context matters a lot here. folks have self-esteem issues, i get it. but also... you gotta learn to take the hits, ya know?

the flipside to this is that quite often, especially if you're marginalized, criticism is just a mask bigots use to launder their bigotry. that's one of the big benefits of not taking criticism personally, it helps you get a lot more literate in what people are ACTUALLY saying