even with the risk of sounding elitist, I have to get this off my chest

[pez]

My god. I wonder what's wrong with people these days. It seems like as long as a fic has a high word count it automatically means it's awesome. I just read a long piece of crap that could've been written by five different people and then meshed together into one fic and apparently it's supposed to be amazing. Or so the comments say.

And I do mean it when I say it's crap. You know I don't publically bash fics often, because I think it's usually a matter of taste. But this one, it's got characterisation inconsistencies, more than a handful of typos, skippy passages (which aren't stylish or clever), unexplained character traits that are really important... the whole lot.

But take santa_smex for example. I haven't read a lot of it yet, but almost every fic that's too long for LJ and therefore has to get a webpage? Gets lots of comments. Not saying that long = crap (I love a good, long story), but do people feel obliged to say nice things even when it's crap because it's long and therefore the author must have made huge effort? Or does longness drown minds out and make them not see that something sucks? I can verbal diahoerra, too, you know. Would fandom bow at my feet for it?

The sad thing is, a lot of those who commented positively are people who leave feedback to me, too. Some are even from my own flist. So probably the standards of my own writing are just about the same. Well, shit.

Shit, I'm supposed to be asleep since an hour ago. Maybe that's why I'm bitching. Haven't been having a very good night (thanks, Hana, for talking to me). Now I have 4 hours to sleep before work.

Comments

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

I think you misunderstand, there are fics out there that are truly dire and there are fics that are wondrous and amazing and we don't take the time to encourage the good writers, but we do encourage the bad ones because we know with a little coaxing and a lot of love they'll become great too
it's frustrating when you've worked hard on something and bared your soul for all to see and it gets ....nothing. Fandom sucks it into a black hole
but then you see something that frustrates you because it could be better, or it should be better, or it would be better and no one has the heart to say anything that might improve it, or might discourage them.
Personally I encourage concrit, and you have to pretty much be incredibly offensive for me to consider it a flame, but not everyone does and some writers can take good concrit and run off crying thinking their shit and so we don't say anything

you're talking about ignoring the bad, but if we do we'll never be good, if we encourage the writers who write badly with no instruction we're not going to improve the fandom, we'll drive people away with "you don't want to read there."
I can think of pairings I have no issue with in canon that turn my stomach because of the way that they've been written, but at the same time, I'll forgive a writer a million typos for one beautiful sentence
and I like yuki_scorpio's writing, and worry that if a talented author like her doesn't get feedback where do the rest of us stand
perhaps we too should be writing bad pron where the rules of physics do not apply and spelling is more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.