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

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

If I don't like the fic, I don't comment. So the opposite is true too: if I commented, one can be sure I liked the fic. So I usually comment and say what I liked.

And have another side to what everybody's saying here: I think I don't do concrit on anon fests 'cos who am I speaking to? I value my time and words to be wasting them speaking to I-don't-know-who.

OTOH, I don't do much concrit in non-fest time either.

On the mysterious third hand, if there are many typos, I'll probably say something about them in my comments, like, "Loved your fic but there are lots of typos, so you might want to fix them." 'Cos you know, typos just indicate the author's carelessness.

And on the forth hand (spider? or what?), when posting a rec of a fic I liked, I'll mention caveats which I didn't point out in my feedback -- 'cos this? Are for the readers, not for the writer, and the readers deserve to know what I thought to be less stellar in the fic.