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

[mayflo.livejournal.com]

Welp, I woudln't mind getting concrit myself. Just because it's a gif art, doesn't mean it's perfect. I myself see flaws and wonkiness in my own art :P Plus art is so much easier to detect who the artist is (very hard to conceal one's style, darnit) so the person might be saying that because they recognised you.

On the other hand, whenever you get a negative FB, that's gotta hurt no matter what *ouch* That'll make me all sukly and mopy but I'll get over it :P

Personally though, I would never leave a con-crit (unless there's something like an obvious error like a misspelling as in Hairry ot something *lol* That, I may point out) but never a negative comment. I never leave negative comments. I'm following a great advise from my flist that if you don't have something nice to say, then say nothing at all...!