Do we have to be nice?

[beccaelizabeth]

Are anti-recs fair? Or writing a little review that says 'this fic was really, really, bad.' Or 'I disliked this fic intensely because'.

Or would it be better to say the things I dislike intensely, ie writing Giles as insane enough to need medication and having him do terrible things to Ethan because he wasnt taking his meds and then posting it to a Giles/Ethan archive? That one being fairly specific. But if I make it more general then every author I don't mean will also be sitting there wondering if I mean them.

Thing is, while recs are useful, sometimes stuff doesn't get recs just because it hasnt been found yet, so lack of rec is insufficient warning. And while warnings on stories cover quite a lot of stuff, some very different things can be hiding under a 'Character Death' or 'Child Abuse' label. And some of them I'd rather be warned away from in advance.


Edit: okay, what I'm now thinking of isnt so much the hypothetical low quality fics as some I have read with really inadequate warnings. Not so much 'it isn't to my taste' as 'it says orange and tastes strawberry, and I'm allergic to strawberry'. In which case keeping quiet perpetuates the problem for the next reader. Like, in the example above, reading something on a G/E archive where G is unrecogniseably insane and tortures E to death. Note- on a G/E archive. I have problems with that kind of story at all, but when it is posted on an archive meant to be about Ethan/Giles ie Giles & Ethan in love, I think it is a problem others need warning of.

Comments

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

be,

You know I struggle with this, and am frustrated by the general atmosphere in the fandom and especially on LJ that it's not possible to make a criticism of a fic or a theme in fiction, or a particular writer's handle on a character or storyline, without such criticism being construed as a personal attack.

A lot of fic writing is a kind of destructive testing of character: how far can Giles' arguable psychological and emotional damage be stretched without making an entirely different character with his name? The answer is different for different readers, and the point can be made that writing Giles/Ethan slash already violates that principle for a good portion of the fandom. I have different lines than others: it's not a problem to me to slash Giles with Ethan, Oz, or Xander, if the writer deals with issues of betrayal, in the first case and age, in the second and third, honestly or with Wesley or Spike if well written, but Giles/Angel just makes me feel as if the writer missed the point of their interactions in canon. I can love Giles in a het relationship with Anya, or Olivia, or Joyce, or even Willow, although that one is tricky, but feel that Giles/Buffy should require an incest warning and Giles/Dawn is just too perverse to contemplate.

So... yeah, a difficult line to draw. I draw it, when making recs, by qualifying things with "Not to my taste." and trying to specify reasons. I find it impossible to give negative feedback to most writers, although I'm very spotty about fb on fics I read and like, some days, so me not writing comments isn't significant of anything. There are people writing in pairings and situations which I actively seek out, and the worst I do is the lazy and underhanded cutting and pasting of bad lines to the main thread at the S'cubie Board or making fun of characteristic failures to communicate.

So, well, THAT wandered far enough from your question to give up on trying to answer it directly, don't you think?

Julia, not a naturally nice person

[beccaelizabeth]

I'm nodding a lot. I get it about destruct testing.
to ask another question closer to what was bugging me- if the warnings seem inadequate, is writing your own version of warnings okay? For instance the story is on a G/E archive but involves rather extreme betrayal, as Giles tortures Ethan to death. That to me would seem to require a bit of warning. Because the / doesn't usually mean that. And neither does 'Character Death', which on the same archive is also used for some answers to the Dead Letter challenge which are brilliant stories that happen to include someone dying.

'Not to my taste', yeah, really very. And labelled as if it would be. Is the part that annoyed me.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

When I write recs on the S'cubie board I usually include my own warnings and ratings, as I find the self-assigned ratings of writers inconsistent, not just one writer to the other but also between fics by the same writer. If there's something which I know people are sensitive to, like extreme BDSM, I mention it but also mention how it's key to the story. I don't often rec PWP or fics that have extreme BDSM as their entire content because I don't like to read them, am bored by them, and don't feel as if I can judge them fairly as stories.

"Not to my taste" is a comment I'm more likely to append to a story I'm mentioning because it's by an author who I repect, is technically well written and objectively well-told, but which I do not like because of my own subjective reaction to it- for instance, I'm pretty fed up with stories where Wesley is crazy, depressed and/or infantilized beyond the extreme degree he was at the end of Angel s5, and some very good writers have produced stories lately where that is the case.

Stuff I passive-aggressively dis in the main thread... I'm sorry, I'm a bitch, but if something has major technical problems, I will never rec it. Bad sentence structure, meaningless strings of indefinate pronouns, glaringly bad word choice- these things I object to.

If I were writing a commentary on the contents of an archive, and one of the fics was glaringly bad (thinking here of an example from this years Secret Slasha that violated everything I understand about Oz's character, for instance) I would probably say something about it, just because people need to know these things.

Julia, spent two ours today working on what I'm writing, mostly pushing words around and getting rid of vagueness

[makd.livejournal.com]

1. If you can't say something nice/good about it? Don't say anything at all.

2. Julia's "It's not to my taste." is always good. I've done that, myself. I've also used: I've never read/saw/heard/tasted anything like it!! (Just let your mind wander over that last bit! ;-P

3. Very, very few writers can get away with panning well. Moi? Tend to avoid it. I don't have "the gift".

[beccaelizabeth]

1. but then the next reader lacks the data I just discovered
2. I think I'm going to use that phrase. But I'd also want to say why. If I stick to facts (ie torture partner to death, not to my taste) then does it qualify as being not nice?

[makd.livejournal.com]

I think you're safe with your option 2, provided you DON'T mention anything at all personal about the writer, including her/his name. Never, ever, the name.

[beccaelizabeth]

*puzzled* so I'd put the title and link but not the name?
or is that not what you mean.
because, really *puzzled*

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

I have to go with Makd on this.
Silence is golden, but since I sometimes have the irrepressable need to say something nasty about a fic that I read, I find myself a sympathetic audience of one or two - I take it to chat. It does not happen often, but sometimes the ability to honestly say what you think, is balm for the soul.

I am prepared to write lukewarm feedback for fic that I enjoyed on some level but felt wanting in some respect, because it is not my job to police force and quality control fandom.

If I find something icky, revolting or utterly out of character, then I will usually ignore it and say nothing, but if someone recs a story that I find seriously lacking in quality (or even moral responsibility), then I may speak up in that thread. I have occasionally nay-ed a fic recommended at Better Buffyfic and at Better Buffyslash.
that in itself is risky enough. A lot of bad writers have a very vocal following who will jump to their defense. Honestly, just don't bother.

Do the opposite, rec the good stuff. That makes the rec'd writers insanely happy, and the ones you omit may wonder why, but they can't really complain. :-)

Unless we're talking Jimmy Orthanc. I doubt you'll find many people defending him. Ick ick ick. (He writes very very nasty rape fics in which Buffy gets raped by just every conceivable monstrosity... *shudder*)

I think if a fic is being discussed publicly, it's ok to pipe in respectfully and voice a different opinion (like that time when we differed about Isabeau's True Love), but like I said, it usually just causes bad blood.
There was a community a while back, where people could anonymously spew hate about authors and their stories. I think it was therapeutic for some, and stressful for others.

[beccaelizabeth]

If I find something icky, revolting or utterly out of character, then I will usually ignore it and say nothing,

But if the icky came without warnings on an archive where it was really out of place?
(See edit above)

Unless we're talking Jimmy Orthanc. I doubt you'll find many people defending him. Ick ick ick. (He writes very very nasty rape fics in which Buffy gets raped by just every conceivable monstrosity... *shudder*)

Thankfully I've never heard of that. But... hypothetical, if there were a similar author writing about Giles as a serial rapist and then posting it under the warning 'violence', to me that would be something that needs telling. Otherwise ever new reader is going to find out for themselves what kind of ick is in a story, rather than finding out in advance it will not be something they want to read.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, maybe you could send feedback to the author and ask politely that the warning /rating gets updated accordingly?

I can't really say anything useful, since I don't know the story that prompted your post.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, the story is icky. It also sucks dead toads through a bendy straw and it has no business being in that archive.
So. Write feedback to that effect. :-)

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

I once had an archive for G/E happyfic, or happyend fic, or at least bittersweet in flavour. Not all the angst and woe and pain.

I took it off because right now RL won't allow me to do it, but. There was a whole lot of dark G/E and not a lot of hopeful fics.


Personally if someone had a problem with my fic I'd appreciate if they took it up with me and talked about it, rather than post about it in public where I might not see, but everyone else on the planet will. But that's just me.