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fanficrants which is dedicated to ranting about fanfic. Once upon a time, it was about a variety of topics, including your own fics when they were giving you trouble, recs of good fic, and plain old ranting about Mary Sues. Nowadays it's mostly fodder for Fandom Wank, and contains lots of people bitching about rape!fics and feedback.
No, they don't bitch about the lack of feedback. They bitch because they aren't getting feedback that's good enough.
Maybe I missed the memo God handed out that said "Thou must leave deep involved concrit for every fanfic you ever read, bitches!" because I thought feedback was something that the reader left you if they felt like it. And I was certainly not aware that leaving a comment on ff.net or a writer's LJ comments that said "This is great! I love it!" was considered in poor taste.
I personally find nothing wrong with people leaving me comments like that. You loved it? Yay! Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate hearing that. If you want to write me three pages of thoughtful commentary on why I wrote Hiei out of character in Chapter Three of Variation? Yay! Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it under consideration. I love comments, reviews, feedback - all of it. I'm a whore, yes I am.
I cannot understand the people who write posts full of anger and condescension toward their readers because the feedback wasn't "good" enough.
Perhaps part of the problem is the tendency to use feedback, review and comment as if they were interchangeable terms, when they mean slightly different things. Review does imply a more thoughtful, in-depth look at the material than just a comment, which doesn't imply anything but.
One writer I asked said that her problem was that so little effort went into writing "this is good!" that she doesn't really value them. I suppose I can see that. If we're rating feeback on a scale of 1-10, "This is good" is probably going to be around a 3 or 4 (with "Why did you make Hiei GAY?!? EW!" and "Can you put my character, Mairi Soo in your story? Puh-leeeeze?" being toward the bottom). "This is good" isn't going to provide you with anything insightful or world-shattering.
That's well and good. Concrit = good and helpful and necessary for growth as a writer. That's why God gave us beta-readers.
If you post something, and people tell you "Hey, this is good!" they're not trying to insult or belittle you. They're not trying to waste your time. They're taking two seconds out of their lives to let you know that you did something that they liked.
If you're too full of yourself to say "That's nice" and get over it than maybe feedback isn't your biggest problem.
fanficrants which is dedicated to ranting about fanfic. Once upon a time, it was about a variety of topics, including your own fics when they were giving you trouble, recs of good fic, and plain old ranting about Mary Sues. Nowadays it's mostly fodder for Fandom Wank, and contains lots of people bitching about rape!fics and feedback.No, they don't bitch about the lack of feedback. They bitch because they aren't getting feedback that's good enough.
Maybe I missed the memo God handed out that said "Thou must leave deep involved concrit for every fanfic you ever read, bitches!" because I thought feedback was something that the reader left you if they felt like it. And I was certainly not aware that leaving a comment on ff.net or a writer's LJ comments that said "This is great! I love it!" was considered in poor taste.
I personally find nothing wrong with people leaving me comments like that. You loved it? Yay! Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate hearing that. If you want to write me three pages of thoughtful commentary on why I wrote Hiei out of character in Chapter Three of Variation? Yay! Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it under consideration. I love comments, reviews, feedback - all of it. I'm a whore, yes I am.
I cannot understand the people who write posts full of anger and condescension toward their readers because the feedback wasn't "good" enough.
Perhaps part of the problem is the tendency to use feedback, review and comment as if they were interchangeable terms, when they mean slightly different things. Review does imply a more thoughtful, in-depth look at the material than just a comment, which doesn't imply anything but.
One writer I asked said that her problem was that so little effort went into writing "this is good!" that she doesn't really value them. I suppose I can see that. If we're rating feeback on a scale of 1-10, "This is good" is probably going to be around a 3 or 4 (with "Why did you make Hiei GAY?!? EW!" and "Can you put my character, Mairi Soo in your story? Puh-leeeeze?" being toward the bottom). "This is good" isn't going to provide you with anything insightful or world-shattering.
That's well and good. Concrit = good and helpful and necessary for growth as a writer. That's why God gave us beta-readers.
If you post something, and people tell you "Hey, this is good!" they're not trying to insult or belittle you. They're not trying to waste your time. They're taking two seconds out of their lives to let you know that you did something that they liked.
If you're too full of yourself to say "That's nice" and get over it than maybe feedback isn't your biggest problem.
