Why I don't leave con crit

[pez]

[Skin Deep] 5, now with random Yanagi Renji appearance. Thank you to those who have been prodding for more of this cheesy little story. It continues to be cheesy and crap, so please continue to support it. XD;;;

Did a bit of drawing yesterday and... let's just say I should stick to writing. But maybe after I lol-ified it nobody'll notice the crappy artwork! >:].

Trail Hunter fic directory is here. I've only skimmed very quickly and haven't read anything properly yet, but in general it seems like people can write better there than at the PoT one^#. Oh, I still shudder at the memory of some of the words and phrases that were used in the most recent round. (Though, to be fair, there was just one especially..... special fic and that really stuck in my memory of that round.)

I suck because I complain about quality but I usually don't leave con-crit. "Not like she actively asks for it anyway," and "it's an exchange, I shouldn't be criticising people's gifts," and "I know this particular person has a huge ego and will defend her writing and ignore all crits and likely mock me in a locked post too," and "she's wibbly about her writing enough as it is," and "the last two times I did bother, one didn't reply at all and the other literally went *shrug*^##" are usually my reasons. But I'm also lazy. And I know I can be really harsh. And I suck at it in the way that I might say I find something really boring or the pace wrong but I can't give a specific reason why.

## I did discuss the problem I found with her other readers, who actually have had the same feelings as I did, but nobody else said anything before me and nobody else said anything to agree with me either when the author missed my point and glossed it over with "oh, thanks, but that's my style." So, fneh. Fine, if "unnatural" is your style. Maybe it's not just me or the authors, it's the general attitude of people.

Also, one thing I realised is that these days I start noticing problems with paragraph structure and overall pace that other people - usually those who don't use English in their everyday lives or those who don't write regularly - don't notice. They might also be those who have a narrow reading list, either fanfic being their main read or fanfic plus a very limited number of authors/sources. (But I might discuss the problems I felt with Liz and she might say yeah, the structure and pace is all wrong.) And if I do comment on those things, all these people might start thinking I'm picking on problems that don't exist. orz And maybe they are right, it might just me preferring a certain type of structure over others? Some people have written that way for so many years they'd probably also go *shrug* when I say I find it uncomfortable to read, anyway. And you know, it's not like not enough people think I'm a big bad meanie and my writing sucks and have no right to criticise other people and I'm an elitist and a show-off and I run a clique and all that already.

But - at least I comment, and I don't leave comment like "I have no idea what this team is all about and you might just have spoiled me and your fic totally makes that other fic by the other author make sense, finally!" which I probably shouldn't bring up because that's something really rather old, maybe last year, but it still amuses me so I'll bring it up anyway. Maybe the old tards are not tards anymore, but they're inevitably replaced by new ones so I bet this sort of thing still happens, just done by different people.

Now, having said all of the above... if anyone feels like throwing their fics at me (ZukaFuji, Troika pairings, Niou with any of Troika, and D1 only please) I'd be happy to give you my honest opinion. It might take some time though because I often get distracted by shiny things like the 360, so if it's a fic with a deadline please don't ask.

Hungry. Hot cross bun time, I say.

# but at least in the PoT one people do as they promise and have chats etc. Trail Hunter has a separate comm too, apparently for discussions and others, but all I've ever seen was ONE "we're online now come chat!" in the main comm rather than the discussion comm, and there seemed to be no consideration for people at different time zones etc. Rather disappointing since there are THREE mods. Surely someone could've organised something or at least left a note to ask if anyone wants to organise one. Or just start a discussion on the side comm, even, since it's a completely new comm and the mod should usually start things off, no? When I first asked "why is this being run at precisely the same time as NaNoWriMo?" I was told that was the only good time window for the mods, so I was expecting, you know, there being a bit more effort.

[edit] *reads entry* Wow, what a big jumble of words. Sorry about that!

Comments

[dshae47.livejournal.com]

I think it's only natural that you won't go out of your way to tell people why you're complaining about quality, especially if you don't know if people will want to know what you think... People's reasons for writing fic can be very unrelated to writing sometimes, so you might be wasting your time, and/or have your attitude tagged as "patronizing," etc.

Me, I'd love to know your honest opinion about my D1 Exchange fic! *waves hand in the air* Maybe after the reveals, if and when you feel like it? I think what you said up there about paragraph pace must apply to me... I struggled a lot with my English. A LOT. Even though I'm used to reading in English, I also read in Spanish and I'm too used to the logic of pacing paragraphs and sentences and dialogue in Spanish, which is... different. I noticed that when it was too late and got into MUST EDIT MUST EDIT mode for a while, hahah.

Even though I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish in the end, I couldn't help feeling out of my comfort zone almost all the time, and I'm sure it showed in the finished product. However, I'm very interested in what you could say about it! Especially about structure and content, which is what would translate into my writing in Spanish :D;... Because I don't think I'll be writing in English again until my English improves significantly, lol. At my current level, it wouldn't make sense.

*longish comment, sorry XD;;*

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And it seems like every time I actually bother, the best response I'd get is a nonchalent shrug. Nobody ever comes back to say "hey, what you said was pretty useful" or anything like that.

Sure. 8D After the review!

I understand the language thing. That's like me and Chinese. If I had to translate one of my fics into Chinese the structure would probably end up very different. Sometimes words and phrases and ideas just don't translate well, the sentence becomes all weird and the whole pace of the story gets thrown off. DX

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

XD When I read stuff for exchanges, apparently I lower my standards, because really, some of the fics for subrosa that I just thought were mediocre are actually worse. :|

I think the Trail Hunter mods were actually pretty busy? I thought the timing was just because of all the other fests

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

The timing, I was told, was because of the main mod's other committments. I don't know about the other fests, but it's not a PoT thing and afaik HxH hasn't got much (if anything) going on at the moment.

[fromastudio]

The chat in fact ran through all time zones; I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear in my post. It in fact stayed open all of my Saturday (including) until Liz showed up to continue the chat during the UK morning. None of the actual participants showed up in that twelve-hour zone.

/wry/ And in fact the prime reason we ran trail_hunter at this time was to avoid clashes with other exchanges. Believe me, if I could have timed the deadline to be at some time other than ten days after med school finals, I totally would have.

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

None of the actual participants showed up in that twelve-hour zone.

I can't speak for anyone else, but not knowing how long the chat was up for, I wouldn't go to see if it's still there if I see the post many hours after it was posted.

oh btw when I said that I've been told the fest was running in Nanowrimo month because of mod's availability, that's what Liz told me when I asked why this was being done at the same time as Nanowrimo and lots of people have signed up to exchanges already. Just saying what I was told.

[fromastudio]

...there were a lot of factors that went into the timing discussion; timeline was probably the longest debate we had, and yeah, Tenipuri and Hikago exchanges played a strong rule, which is probably justified given how many of the current writers are in either of these two fandoms.

Okay, I just realised I posted the post asking people to comment to the trail_hunter comm, instead of readerofasaph as I had intended, and it is fairly indicative of my state of mind that I ONLY JUST NOTICED THIS, and staying up till 5AM trying to finish exchange fics does not put one in a good state for doing comm admin. I won't deleted or retract the post because it would look dicky now to do that, but uh yeah, it was not my original intention to nag the writers themelves, and I do apologise for that.

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Hikago, but I had asked Liz about it because it was around the same due date as Nanowrimo, santa_smex and willow_lotus.

...................orz.