Remember the "DVD commentaries" that fanfic writers used to do? They were often fun and I wonder why they've almost died out. Maybe as DVDs are very nearly a thing of the past?

If you haven't seen one, it's where a fanfic author, a while after posting a fic, posts a version of the fic with their comments interleaved - about why they wrote particular lines that way or what they wanted to convey about the characters or situation, or what inspired a particular section. Kind of like a self-meta discussion interwoven with their story. It's interesting, and useful to see the writer's process or thoughts with concrete examples. Here's an excerpt from Synecdochic's commentary on Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose (SGA), to show what they're like.
Here's another entertaining example: Gozer's DVD commentary on LtLJ's Raiders of the Seven Systems - also SGA. This one was written and posted with LtLJ's permission - doing these commentaries on other peoples' stories was encouraged by specific challenges at the time, but it was a bit more common overall for authors to do a DVD commentary on their own work, sharing their internal processes while writing, and their reactions. In the comments of this example by minxy on a Janet Fraiser-centric SG1 story there are links to other DVD commentaries, and to this list - it's old though, so many of the LJs with these commentaries have gone.

One thing I noticed was in a DVD commentary on Hindsight, where Rageprufrock mentions having gotten critical comments after posting the fic - about characterisation or other details - and sometimes explains these choices. That brought home how much fandom etiquette's progressed in the last 20 years (in fan-spaces where I play, anyway) so it's now not OK to criticise a writer's posted work unless they specifically request it - and mostly not then. A DVD commentary done by someone not the author these days would need to be reactions to the story, speculations about where it's going, and positive comments - which is what they generally were, back in the day. I think I've only ever seen an actual author comment negatively on their writing in retrospect, but I haven't read a lot of them.

Actually, there's one place where this style of commentary still happens - in podfic. It's not uncommon for podficcers to make a podfic with their readers notes and chatty reactions to the fic interwoven through the recording - and it's often part of the annual Voiceteam challenge. Kisahawklin both recorded and transcribed an Untamed RPF story containing a lot of commentary and chat. There's quite a history of this - e.g. general_jinjur's DVD commentary on their reading of Your Cowboy Days Are Over by M. - although this is an interleaved written commentary, not a podfic recording that includes commentary. Here's a sample:


Returning to fic again, I guess the fanfic DVD commentary was a thing of its time as there haven't been any posted to AO3 since 2011 - the recent ones are all podfic commentaries, and a few works tagged as commentary because of an author's start or end-note. Here, I'm talking about the older style of (almost) line-by-line, interwoven fic and commentary. I find these old commentaries interesting when they're in one of my fandoms. It's especially fascinating to see the thoughts, inspirations and processes that happened for the author, as they react to their own fic.

Have you ever made a DVD commentary of your own or someone else's fic? Know one that you like, and can link to? Do you think we could revisit the DVD commentary as a way to reflect on our writing, or would it be seen as too self-indulgent and a thing of the past?