Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2012

[tinturtle]

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It's 2012, and people are talking a variety of nonsense about the Mayan calendar. Psy is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is The Avengers. New terms coined include: escape room, generative AI, hot take, JOMO, and reaction GIF

Comments

[sc_fossil]

Oh good list this time. I enjoyed reading your thoughts. Thanks. Look forward to the next one.

[tinturtle]

Thanks for reading. It was a good crop of fics this year.

[gilda_elise]

This is an amazing project. Kudos to you for keeping it going.

[tinturtle]

I'm glad you enjoy following the project. It's taking longer than I thought it would, but I am determined to finish.

[dancingpony]

On your question: I understand the hesitation to write much detail about a story you didn’t particularly like - especially when, in many cases, the writer won’t see the comment and have an opportunity to respond. However, I’d prefer to at least see a brief description of what the story was about, in the same way you give a brief description of a story you do like.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying why you didn’t like a story, though. As long as you do it nicely and, if possible, either objectively or subjectively in a way that’s clear you understand it’s okay for opinions to differ. To me, “I read XXX and I didn’t like it” isn’t a lot better than “I read XXX and the writing sucks,” from a critique standpoint. Far better to say “I read XXX but I don’t care much for stories where Character is portrayed in this particular way.”

Just my opinion, of course.

[tinturtle]

Thanks for your thoughts. I don't know if you saw the thread where I started this discussion, but essentially, a lot of people in the fanfic communities on Reddit seem to think that it is wrong to write negative reviews of fanfic at all. I don't know what to think about it. I don't want to break community norms and I don't want to make authors sad, but I also feel as if readers should be able to share frank opinions among themselves. So it's something I've been worrying about.

[dancingpony]

I’ll look through the thread … but my first impression is that it’s kind of sad that some people would be opposed to seeing constructive criticism of fanfic. I mean, as a (hobby) writer, it’s nice to see someone say “Good job” after they read one of my stories, but it’s much nicer to see something specific they liked. And it’s most helpful to see something specific and constructive that I could have done better. Not that I’d always agree with criticism, especially subjective criticism, but it can be educationsl.

[dancingpony]

Just an addendum: That particular thread was posted while I was traveling to my father’s funeral, so I didn’t see it. But my opinion is still basically the same as what I wrote above, ie, that it’s sad if fanfic writers want only generalized gushing and get upset over constructive criticism