The Etiquette of Holiday fics

[geoviki]

Like all the rest of you, I'm delighting in the reams and reams of new stories and art (and this year's art is especially terrific!). There's the granddaddy, merry_smutmas, and then others like harry_holidays, hd_holidays, smutty_claus, lupin_snape.... an embarrassment of riches!

As we are encouraging each other as writers and artists, I'm trying to leave feedback as well. One thing that caught my notice, though, has left me feeling uneasy, and I wondered what your views are: In your opinion, is it uncouth to leave concrit that's negative on a fest fic? (Disclosure: this is not anything that's happened regarding my own fic, just other folk's.)

I don't see the author requesting any, for one thing. Personally, I won't do it, but then I never leave anything less than praise unless I'm asked specifically and privately. If I don't like something, I just pass it by. Which unfortunately is the same response to something I've not yet read, so the writer is never sure if I'm unhappy or just behind (if the writer even cares what I think), but there you go.

But IMHO, these stories are gifts. And I can't see criticising a gift. Am I over-sensitive? What do you authors and artists think?

Comments

[aliciajd]

I just read an excellent mystery H/D fic and was quite stunned by other's concrit. Much of the criticism addressed a small amount of het and bottom!Harry. Neither complaint felt at all valid to me, especially since this was a gift fic and the author was trying to meet the giftee's requests. I felt very uncomfortable reading many of the comments. It seemed like a feeding frenzy was started with the first negative remarks and things just snowballed.

These anonymous fest fics ought to be allowed to experiment a bit and to break out of people's preconceived molds without garnering so much negativity.

If nothing else, if I watched a person opened a gift that I didn't like, I would never say anything negative about it.

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

Much of the criticism addressed a small amount of het and bottom!Harry.

These can't be concrit by definition. They are just the expression of the reader/shipper's preferences, nothing else. Concrit has to do with the execution: pacing, flow, characterisation, canon-compliance, etc. Who fucks whom? Nope. :)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what triggered this post of mine. And I came to the same conclusion: for it to be the first comment set a trend for others to do the same. It horrified me, because I thought it was the best thing I'd read in ages.

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

If nothing else, if I watched a person opened a gift that I didn't like, I would never say anything negative about it.

This comment says it all as far as I'm concerned.