victory is an elusive whore

[amand_r]

The thing is, given any current time you are bound to feel certain ways, and even though you feel that way now, you won't feel that way forever. So when I say all of these things, I already know that I might feel differently later. I'm always surprised at the number of people who feel the need to tell you that you won't feel a certain way forever

Comments

[milkshake_b]

See, now I'm sitting here with some of my own thoughts on unsolicited concrit, because I've got problems with the way fandom does it myself, but instead I'm going "Does that mean when she posts something like this she doesn't want responses? *flail*" I think concealed insecurity is probably a fandom staple.

I just want to sleep all the time. I'm not really interested in anything.

You been checked for CFS*? I feel like I've known just a stupid number of people who either were misdiagnosed with depression and turned out to have it, or just were puttering along not knowing they had it, and who discovered they had it after I met them and went "Hey, have you been checked for...?" so now I get this sort of red flag that pops up in my brain whenever I read a description like that. (Honestly I'd be paranoid that I was catching, except I'd have to be catching across the internets.)

* Err, or do you have it? That stupidly high number means I've just completely lost track of who does and doesn't. Maybe I should make myself a chart, or a

[amand_r]

SECOND EDIT BECAUSE I SUCK, MILKSHAKE. TALK ABOUT TUNNEL VISION TONIGHT

[milkshake_b]

(Don't worry: LJ has not seen fit to give me a copy of your original comment.)

Honestly, my biggest problem with the way most of fandom does concrit is that if you don't want it--and worse, if you dare to say so--you are automatically written off as a bad writer, or a whiner, or 'weak' or something. There makes an implicit assumption that there is a 'correct' way to go about writing (not writing for publication, either, just writing), and that fandom has found it--and anyone who deviates from this one true way is going to be inherently a bad writer. And that is just so full of shit. The only valid answer to "What's the best way to write?" is "Whatever manner gets the story done to your satisfaction" and there really shouldn't be any intense stigma attached to adding "No Unsolicited Concrit, please" to your author's notes*. (The personal decision to avoid such stories yourself is something different; but the sort of social shunning that happens is just bizarre.) If your personal satisfaction is not to edit, than that's not any more '

[milkshake_b]

Also, I have a real dislike of concrit that sums up as "your entire story concept just doesn't work," because what is the point of that? "This part could be better" or "I don't think the character would say that" you can use, but I don't think anyone who leaves a comment like "I tried to read this but the entire first half was just too slow and pointless" or "Sorry, this premise just doesn't work" or even your example of "this feels like fanfic, not like the real show" is actually leaving concrit, because there's nothing constructive there. Call it a negative review and stop hiding behind the more attractive-sounding word.

Although you're right about that being just a magnificently weird 'critique'. I've never seen someone apply that to actual fanfic before. It's really useful for professional things as a way to say "this feels subtly off-kilter with everything we have previously seen from this show/series/universe before this"; my best summation of why I disliked Babylon 5's Lost Tales was that it felt like a fanfic. An entertaining

[amand_r]

Haahahah I was thinking about the stigma that comes with refusing crit, and I look at some of the people with whom I am familiar in fandoms, and really? sometimes I think they just want a license to bitch or prove how knowledgeable they are. I know one writer who is adamant to the poit of anger that unsolicited concrit should be allowed, but she blasts anyone who crits her work on a personal level.

I don't know anyone well enough to make accusations based on personal things. I really don't.