Ari is not happy.

[hackthis_archive]

The other day I got what I originally thought was a flame, except upon a second third fifth read I realized it was just an opinion. The person liked the story, and found it well-written (go team hackthis!) but didn't like the gay aspect. Or didn't like the porn part.

Now considering that the disclaimer on my profile says "writer writes SLASH!" I was a little befuddled... but you know, the person thought the story was really good except for the slash part. To which I eventually just said, 'Uh... okay, opinions are like assholes. I can respect that.' And yet, all I've heard this morning is that people think there's only one asshole to go around. There is only one point of view and if you don't agree well then you are evol and should be fed for the Minotaur! For the sanitary sake of all, I hope there's truly more than one asshole opinion to go around, but one more time for the people in the back who have the craptastic acoustics:

Dissent is not disloyalty

Disagreeing with someone's views, whatever the fuck they are, does not automatically make them a bad person. We can all wish it did, but it doesn't. Dissent doesn't make you a good person either. Slinging hash and saying that someone is a horrible no-good very bad person behind locked posts, because you're not going to step up and say it to their faces? Weak. So weak.

What really tears it though, is that it's really just one or two people that piss in the pool* and then everybody has to get out and wash off, and parents are upset and threatening litigation, and you know, that's just not the spirit we came here in. I thought the whole point of this social experiment called fandom was to bring the people who disagree and the people who agree and the people who don't give a fuck (normally, that would be me) together, so we can all hug it out and talk about the porn and give ponies and have a good time.

Can't we just kick it old skool, or what?


*If you want someone to piss on you, I have a friend that knows this ace dominatrix who can do it for a very reasonable price.


+ I dun forgot, I posted music the other day for the September Frankenstein Mix, in case anybody's feeling the need for some tunes.

++ I found this posting by amezri on fandom and forums and acting like you have brain which I enjoyed reading. *gacked from voleuse

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree that we're just speculating since we don't have the actual text of the review or reviews that Aphelant and Hackthis are talking about. But my interpretation of what they said is pretty clearly not the same as yours. [wry smile]

I'm not getting that the commenter said, "I don't usually read slash but I liked this." I agree with you that this sort of comment is a compliment and a rather rare one -- I've left comments like this myself. "I don't usually like femslash but I enjoyed this," or "I'm not really into this fandom but I liked this story," or "I don't really think Joe Celeb is very attractive, but the way you wrote this it was pretty hot and I liked him." Yeah, that's a compliment and I always mean it to be and I appreciate it when readers leave this sort of comment to one of my stories.

But what they're talking about was different. They said, "This is really good, too bad it's slash," and "I liked the story, it's just a shame about the characters." And Aphelant has seen a comment where the person asked the writer to rewrite a slash story with a het pairing. These are backhanded compliments at best, and pretty damn self-centered. If someone says, "This is really good, too bad it's slash," they're not saying the story was good enough to make them like the slash factor. They're saying they liked, say, the plot, maybe the dialogue, the writers' craftsmanship -- which yeah, is a compliment -- but the slash, the m/m romance which I have to assume was a major component of the story, still turned them off. What possible purpose could such a comment serve?

If I say in a comment, "I enjoyed the story and liked what you did with the characters, even though you have some craftsmanship issues," I mean that as a reasonably subtle way of telling the writer that although I enjoyed the story, 1) they need to work on a few things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, word usage, etc., and 2) that if they express some interest in their response to my comment I'm willing to help them with it. If someone is misspelling things, or hasn't figured out what commas are for, or doesn't know the difference between the past tense and the past participle, or is using words they pretty clearly don't know the meaning of, those are objective faults -- not just my opinion but errors which anyone knowledgeable would agree are errors -- and a writer who's interested in the quality of his or her work and who wants to improve as a writer would be eager to fix them.

If someone says, "I liked the story, it's just a shame about the characters" then what's the point of that? Using the "wrong" characters isn't a mistake; this is purely a matter of opinion on the part of the person leaving the comment, whether they object to the genders of the characters or to the specific characters as individuals. Saying a writer used the "wrong" characters is expressing a personal opinion, not pointing out an objective fault. It'd be as though someone who didn't like cowboy stories had read a cowboy story and then said, "Liked the characters, interesting plot, good writing, but I didn't like that it was a cowboy story." :/ You might as well say, "Good story, too bad it was fanfiction." Or read a romance and say, "I liked the writing and the characters but it would've been better without all the mushy stuff." Or go into Taco Bell and then complain that it's too bad all they have is Mexican food. You know?

It's one thing if you think you can help a writer correct a problem -- something which is objectively a problem, like not knowing how to use semicolons -- but complaining about something which is a matter of your own personal taste is completely pointless. It does nothing to help the writer and because of that, it's by definition not constructive. Constructive criticism is gold -- I love it and I wish I got more of it. But "I don't like the genre you're writing" is not constructive because it's not something the writer will or should "fix."

Angie

[jerico-cacaw.livejournal.com]

"I liked the writing and the characters but it would've been better without all the mushy stuff."

The 'it would've been better' part, yeah. Sadly, some people don't seem to understand that phrases like 'I believe', 'I think' and 'in my opinion', to name a few, are needed when giving, well, personal opinions.

And maybe I did the same mistake. Probably the line should had been 'I think it can be seen, under certain circumstances, as a compliment to the author's skills'.

I understand what you say and completely agree with it; because, in fact, the scenario you work with is the opposite to the one I used. Both kind of readers -and reviewers- exist, and it is important not to confuse them. But I'm not sure I share your opinion regarding subjective complains.

Okay, sure, pointless they are. But completely? From what hackthis said, it could be seen as an opinion. Opinions can be shared without a war developing: 'you think this, I think the opposite; now we both know, so shrug and lets move to the next thing'.

Annoying and time consuming yet not completely pointless.

Now, just let me clarify I do not equal subjective complains with flames. The last ones are, without a doubt, a waste of resources and brain cells. The problem, I think, is that the review that started this positively looks like a flame, so much that many reads were needed to discover it apparently isn't.

But you know what? Every writer, reader and reviewer is different to the next. I know a girl who stopped writing because the first review she received pointed certain grammatical problems in her story. And then there was this author who had a fit because other authors commented in a forum that they didn't liked the way she used a pairing. It was an opinion, polite, clean, clear and not linked to her story, yet she saw a flame in it.

Fortunately, things worked fine after people talked, as the reviewer and forum users promptly made the writers know it was not a personal attack and it was not their intention to hurt their feelings, (it is a small fandom, so it feels like a family sometimes).

I just shake my head and click my tongue, but that's because I list myself under that 'those who not give a fuck' category earlier mentioned [another wry smile].