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

Late in the day...

[auctasinistra.livejournal.com]

... but I found this post interesting. It wouldn't have occurred to me that a gift or challenge fic, publicly posted and accessible, has different rules than any other public fic (which, to me, means fair game). See, the thing is, when a person signs up for a fest or fic exchange, they do it willingly and knowing full well their story is going to go out in public. You know? It's not really private, is it? That said, the point about criticizing a fic written to specifications is valid - but I was thinking it's kind of stupid, anyway, to say "Harry would never bottom!" (whether the fic was a fest fic written to that prompt or not), you know? But things like flow, grammar, plot holes ... well, those are whoopsies regardless of whether the fic was written to prompts or not, yes? An as for waiting for the author reveal ... well, the story's out there. People are reading it. That's when they want to respond, with squees and other things. Seems to me courteous critical comment is as appropriate then as it ever is with publicly posted fic.