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

[seshat1.livejournal.com]

Normally, I wouldn't, but I did leave one comment this year along those lines. However, it was a really good fic except for the (incredibly jarring) beta comments left in and it was sometimes hard to tell which was the correction. So I commented saying how much I liked the fic (it really was very good) and that they should take out the edits. I felt bad, but I thought the author should know - they might have forgotten or sent in the wrong version or something. *shrugs*

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Was that from a Harry Holidays story a few days ago? What I did was emailed the mods, pointed out the comments, and suggested that the wrong file might have been uploaded. The corrections were made almost immediately.