On 1/1/99 at 6:55 AM, Motoko Chan <motoko_section9@yahoo.com> wrote:

I would agree that this would be included in the revised FAQ. And it
would benefit alot for those people out there. Its so sad to think
that people would use C&C as medium to attack out right an author.

There are more was to do that than just C&C you know:)

But seriously Even though its called Comments and Criticism it does
not mean that its a free pass to some of you out there to go ahead
and shoot some one in the back of the head.

You've got a point -- but I've seen enough examples of honest negative
criticism that was taken as a personal attack to be leery of any
blanket assertion like yours. Sometimes there's just very little, or at
lest not much positive, that can be said about a fanfic. Take the C&C
Gary did a week or so ago, where there were so many spelling errors
that he gave up partway through. Was it honest, real C&C? Dunno what
you think, but I think so. Could it be viewed as a personal attack by
the author? Hard to say, but I've seen milder C&C's that have been
taken as a personal attack.

Maybe it's time to repeat something I wrote last year, in response to a
similar thread:

This is why I haven't bothered posting any of the fanfics I have
bothered to write.  What's the point when 9 out of 10 C & C you're
going to get are from people who are so anally retentive about things
they can't accept what you're writing cos you're not the series
original creator.  Either that or they're going to say "this sucks"
just cos they feel like it.

While I hate to sound cold-hearted... tough. Writing is often a cruel
vocation, and a writer has to learn to take criticism. It hurts,
especially when it's idiot flaming and not useful critique... but it
*is* a fact of life in the writing world, and if you want to write and
communicate -- share your works with others, instead of leaving them
sit in a directory on your hard disk -- then you're going to have to
deal with it. If it's flaming, then you need to learn to let it roll
off your back (unless, like I said, the majority of your comments are
negative; in that case, it's time for you to take a reality check on
what you're doing)*. If it's serious, then *you* need to take it
seriously. Even if you don't agree with what they say, you need to
think about it instead of just dismissing it.

*And along those lines... there is a certain obligation on the readers'
part to make positive comments when they enjoyed something. I do often
find it harder to make specific positive comments; if I really liked an
entire scene, it's a lot harder for me to say something useful about
how all the little good bits came together into a pleasing whole, than
it is to say something useful but negative about the one little bit
that felt wrong or out-of-place. If a story is very good overall, it
just makes the remaining problems in it stand out that much more
clearly... leaving a C&C filled with a few positive statements about
the work as a whole, followed by a lot of nitpicks about the problems
left over. Both writers and critiquers need to be aware of this, and
adjust accordingly.

As far as being anal-retentive goes... well, again, that's life, and
you'd better learn to live with it.

Grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, and other technical issues
*are* real and important, and at least as important here as in
professional writing. We're all doing this for fun, after all, and
anything that interferes with that fun is a problem. I admit that if
the first screen of a story contains enough technical problems to make
it an effort to read, I'll skip it and move on; I'm doing this for fun,
and I'm not going to work to decipher something that a good writer
should make legible to begin with.

And let's face it... "people who are so anally retentive about things
they can't accept what you're writing cos you're not the series
original creator" also come with the territory. If you have a fan
that's *so* entranced with a series that he'll go and read fanfics
because the original series wasn't enough for him... then there's a
good chance that:

* He's going to care more about the series than the average fan
* He's going to care about the characters and how they're portrayed
* He's usually going to have strong ideas of his own about the series... 
and 
* He's going to notice when any of these things conflicts with your 
story, as often as not.

Not all fanfic readers fit this profile... but I'd bet a large
proportion of them do.

Travis Butler
tbutler@tfs.net

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.