lunabee34

I've been following the latest wank, and normally when Wank Happens, I don't comment (usually because I know people on both sides of the issue and don't agree in a clear cut manner with either side and the thirteen year old girl in my heart gets sad when excellent writers whose work she admires argue with each other and also because I'd rather be reading about Chad Michael Murray boning Jay-Red) but I think that this time I will, if only to you guys.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle of this issue. For instance, I do believe that fandom is a community, or perhaps better said, a collection of communities. I enjoy the friends and acquaintances I've met. I enjoy that I have a built-in audience for the stories that I want to write via various newsletters and fic comms. I like knowing that if I just randomly wanted something--someone to tell me a good place for Spike to eat in London, or a black and white icon of Michael Rosenbaum *cough cough totally a request*, or advice on which DC comic I should start with as a newbie--these are all things I could find from someone through fandom.

I don't think that there are overarching rules for how to behave in fandom, although I think "Treat people how you'd like to be treated" is a pretty good one. We are a collection of communities, each with different standards and expectations; each of us comes to fandom for different reasons and those reasons dictate how we participate.

I also believe very strongly in concrit. I want people to offer it to me and I enjoy beta-ing because it is a situation in which I can really delve into something someone is writing. It makes me sad that as mod of

sga_talk, I can never offer up my own work for critique because boy do I think I could benefit from that. I think

sga_talk is a very good example of my middle of the road stance on this issue;

sga_talk is a comm devoted to concrit but as a concession to what I feel is the very important communal nature of fandom, author permission must be given for a piece of fanfic to be discussed.

I believe concrit is important, not only for the author of the piece, but for other authors. I learn more about how to make my writing effective by discussing yours. As I dissect what you have written, as I discover what you do that works and what you do that doesn't, my own writing improves.

However, concrit and reviews are two different things and I think they're being conflated in this latest kerfluffle. Reviews are also not feedback. Posting a negative review in your own journal and posting a negative feedback comment to a fic are two different things as well.

I think that it is an acceptable practice in fandom to write negative reviews. I don't think it's acceptable to conflate a person with her writing (It's not okay to trash Author A's character because you think her McShep is cheesy, for example) and I think there are ways of registering dissatisfaction with a piece without being overly rude, but a negative review does not have to do either of those things.

I personally do not give negative reviews. This is because my recs serve a very clear cut function for me. I do not rec anything that I don't want to read/see again. My recs are a way for me to keep track of material that I would like to look at again in the future. I am glad that other people benefit from them and use them, but on the whole, they are for me. Sometimes I will make a qualified rec (as in, I want to read this again, but I think X story element was not so hot), but I don't review stuff that I'm never going to look at again. The stories I enjoy for the moment but forget about the second they're done, the stories I start that I don't like at all--these never make it to my journal because I am never going to be set with the burning desire to read them again. Other people rec/review for other reasons, and the content of their reviews will reflect that.

If I read a negative review of my work (which I have before; in fact, someone has delicioused one of my fics and in the notes has commented that I really didn't do enough with the story, which is SO TRUE) it might make me angry or hurt my feelings or it might make me go, "Yeah. That sucked," or "Okay, *that's* how I fix that," depending on what was said and the tone of it. But I still think that person has the right to evaluate what I've put out for public consumption.

I feel like I had more to say but I can't remember what it is and I'm not sure this is all that coherent anyway, so um. The end.

ETA Also, to be clear, I am linking to Grace's post here, not because she is the instigator of wank but because she is on my flist and it is through her post that I originally found the matter. In retrospect, I should have also linked to