DB: Do you really want me to go into how your C&C messed up?
You didn't help the author in any way, shape, or form. You just wanted
to put the beat-down on a story you didn't like. Let's take a look at
this criticism:
***
My god, this was like someone tried to dig up every single tired, old,
poorly written and completely OOC cliche in Ranma/SM xovers and jam
them all
together. HAd this been an attempt at parody of comedy, or the writer
was
trying to make a point in how awful the Ranma/SM genre could be, that
would
be one thing. However, this appears to have been a serious attempt at a
fic,
which makes it doubly sad since the writer thought
A: Marching out these tired ideas that were bad even before they became
cliches was a good idea and
B: He's helping to reenforce these tired old cliches by perpetuating
them.
This isn't a completely bad fic though in the sense that it highlights
what
one shouldn't do when writing a fic. One can learn as much from
mistakes as
they can from successes. I would recommend people looking this over
just to
see how horribly things can go wrong and learning on what not to do in a
fic. I'd like to have said somethig more helpful about this thing, but
others have already gone over it line by line, and I would only be
repeating
what they said. This is one of those rare instances where I recommend
abandoning a fic as in its current state, it's unsalvagable.
DB Sommer
***
Let me get this straight. Your idea of 'being constructive' (and
Chris' idea of 'being civil') with the work is to hold it up and say,
"This sucks! Don't do this!" That's about as constructive as a barge
of burning ammonium nitrate. You don't help the author; you don't even
try. It's a flame, only carefully worded to try to get away from the
censors.
Beyond that, your critique was inappropriate. You can't be
DB-the-reader one minute and DB-the-admin the next. As an
administrator on this list, your critiques run the risk of generating
conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest are always fun because
they skew judgment. (Just ask the former employees and shareholders of
Arthur Andersen.) To claim that your work as a critic has no bearing
on your work as an admin is a false defense. (BTW, Chris? If you give
me that "We're three admins so this doesn't happen" argument, I will
laugh at you - one team can have conflicts just as easily as one
person.)
Yes, I did read the story. And... I had fun with it. It's not Bitter
End or Hearts of Ice, but it's just a nice little piece that was fun to
read. Which is pretty much the point, isn't it? We write, we read for
our own reasons. Some of us write for fun, some of us because of the
demons inside, and some of us because of the dreams that need to come
out. If Peter plans on getting published one day, he's got a way to
go. But, then again, so do all of us. On the other hand, if he just
wants to write a story that he can have fun with, shouldn't he be
allowed to do that without harassment or ridicule from the admins?
(And Gary? If you pull out that "practice for commercial writing" BS
you usually do, may I point out that DB's critique didn't help Peter's
writing skills one iota. If you REALLY want to help the kid, stop the
beat-down and show him how he can improve.)
-- Nick
On Mar 22, 2005, at 8:07 AM, DB Sommer wrote:
Gun-Knight
Geez DB, some tact please? If you can't say anything nice, don't say
anything at all. I expect this kind of post from Lurker, not an
admin.
The comments were from me as a member of the list, and not in any
administration type capacity. Ditto when my C+C is more, shall we say,
positive in nature, that too is as a member.
DB Sommer
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