Braindump

[ionlylurkhere]

Things I was tempted to spam you about in the last week or so, all in one handy post.

1. I know it's deeply tedious to LJ about having trouble getting onto LJ, but the servers are significantly less robust since the move, y/y?
   
2. I liked the remake of Terry Nation's One Other Good Idea Survivors, myself.

Comments

Re: On Fics and Fandoms

[fourzoas]

OK--back in the saddle with a fresh cup of (very strong--my heart is thumping!) tea...

I can't really speak to the HP fandom issue, since I haven't really read much, if any, fic in that fandom yet. I referenced it as exemplar of a place where some group of people bound themselves to a particular set of rules which would govern the archiving of stories at a particular site, which is, I think, one answer to the other of your interests.

Getting Consistent Good Fic (patent pending, I presume? ;-D) would be the result of

a)determining what constitutes "Good Fic," then
b)???, leading to
c)Profit (in this case, an abundance of Good Fic).

Step b is the trickier part--once you've determined what qualifies as "good" (which in and of itself might be difficult to do), you have to figure out how to entice those who can produce it back to (or just to) the fandom in question and/or how to help those producing fic in the fandom to want to improve (thereby overcoming the Cult of Nice, which is a tough nut to crack).

The HP community I mentioned seems to have created a desire among some (my student, at least, although I'm sure there are many others like her) to be considered "good enough" to meet their high standards (whatever those may be). I had hoped that Teaspoon would do something similar for the Who/Torchwood fandom, but that's not the case (and I'm really OK with that). I could see generating some way of letting people know that they ARE producing really high quality fic, as well as pointing out to readers what fic in a fandom is really worth reading. calufrax does the latter nicely, although I haven't really sorted out the criteria used for recs there. I always enjoy what I read from that comm, though.

And then there's the Cult of Nice, which I must admit I'm likely a part of. I tend to leave a positive comment or none at all; if the author has specifically asked for the kind of comments I might give as a beta (questioning critique of character/plotting/pacing, etc.), then I'll give that in comments, but most of the time, it's not been asked for. Writing is really personal for many people and until you've been through enough workshop situations where you have to take critique from people saying icky stuff about your carefully chosen words to your face, it can be really hard to want, much less take, criticism from total strangers.

There's also something almost like "publishing" when you post something publicly. To me, as soon as I link a story to a comm or post it on Teaspoon, it's done--I've already had the beta on it, if I'm going to have one, and I won't be making any changes outside of the undiscovered odd spelling/grammar error. Perhaps the reluctance to actually critique in comments/reviews stems from a feeling that this is all the author is going to do with it, so why bother? Not sure what the answer is.

OK--enough nattering from me! I'm curious to see what, if any, conversation this sparks--I've enjoyed thinking about this issue and thank you for giving me a reason to do so!