[ SECRET POST #2949 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2949 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[Persona 4]


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02.


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03.
[Howl's Moving Castle]


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04.
[True Detective]


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05.
[Homestuck]


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06.
[Jane the Virgin]


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07.


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08.
(Transformers Armada)


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09.


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10.


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11.


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12.
[Hannibal - Richard Armitage/Lee Pace]


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13.


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14.


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15. [ SPOILERS for Into the Woods ]



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16. [ SPOILERS for Dragon Age ]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #421.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[nanslice]

What's the weirdest constructive criticism you've ever received? Either from your beta or a random reviewer?

I think I just got mine; someone liked this Steve/ Bucky piece I wrote and also told me it was really sweet and that she hoped for a sequel. Maybe an hour later she sent me a PM with the constructive criticism that Steve was "OOC and an asshole" and how to fix that. It just seemed like she did a complete 180 between PMs when I would have taken the second comment all on it's own (I begged for constructive criticism in the tags!).

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Is it possible they didn't want to embarrass you by publicly pointing out such a big problem in your fic? Also, sending a PM reduces the risk of the commenter being dogpiled by the writer's fans or by passerby with white knight syndrome.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[nanslice]

Oh, they were both sent through PMs! Just one was sent around an hour later than the other. I think I privately responded to both of them but I definitely responded privately to the crit one, since I didn't want to inadvertently start a dogpile (even though I'm pretty unknown so it was unlikely to happen).

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Um...link to said fic? Please. :)

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[nanslice]

Right here. It was very much a speed piece and I'd never written them before so aaaahhh, nerve-wracking. I appreciate the person's concrit, I absolutely do! It was just weird how it happened. |D

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I once wrote a spoof fic and had someone genuinely enjoy it without getting the "spoof" part (another told me I was absolute trash and should never write again, also missing the point).

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[nanslice]

Oh no, hahaha. Which point misser amused you more?

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think AO3 does PMs (does it? Haven't used it for a while...) so I'm guessing this person contacted you via Tumblr?

I wonder if it's possible they meant for one to be anonymous and the other signed in? I've seen a few instances where the same person -- for whatever wanky reasons known only to themselves -- send completely contradictory messages, only they screw up and end up sending both from the same URL.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[nanslice]

Yeah, I'd posted on tumblr.

Haha, that might be it. Either way, she was helpful in making me want to be more careful writing characters that have an inherit power imbalance (at least in the point of time that I was writing them) so if she was just trying to be wanky, it didn't work. |D

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

They probably just weren't sure whether to give crits or not when they sent the first message, and then decided to send it anyway (or hadn't noticed the crit request at first).

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if it's weird or just par for the course with some readers, but I've had a couple of baffling comments that make me think the person commenting either mistook my fic for another they read, or just got it so horribly wrong that it may as well have been.

I don't mean in the "omg you just don't get my genius!!!" way, I mean people who have commented on fic-events that literally didn't happen, or quite obviously happened in a different way.

There was one commenter who hated my top/bottom choice in one scene to the point I thought they'd pass out they sounded so angry. It just left me bewildered because a) the scene that made them angry wasn't even a penetrative sex scene so there were no traditional tops/bottoms (in fact it was a virtually non-contact scene, and if you squinted hard at how it might lean towards one of the characters dominating psychologically it was STILL the top/bottom dynamic this person wanted and claimed I was denying them), and b) the crux of the entire fic (that every other person who's read it ever has understood, because it's not exactly complicated) relied on their preferred topping order but they'd sort of missed that part.

I'm all for concrit, but even the best writer in the world can't fix something that never actually happened in their story.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

One of the first fics I wrote was an LOTR fic. I wrote it at least 10 years ago and haven't heard anything in years. Randomly, I recently got new crit from someone who lectured me on the fact that Elrond still treats Celebrian like his wife and is affectionate towards her in my fic even though he's got a new husband now -- like he can't still care about her now or something.

It wouldn't be quite so weird except that the fic is so very old.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[lb_lee]

Enh, it wasn't weird, but one of my most insightful readers gave me con-crit that boiled down to, "I liked the concept, but I am disappointed, and think you can do better."

I actually rather appreciated that she had the guts to say it to my face, and although I'm still generally okay with how I chose to write that, I'm taking it into account to try and learn for the next time. When someone is really willing to take me to task like that, in a non-trolly way, I find it kinda reassuring.

--Rogan

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Man, someone on my flist got a real gem of a crappy concrit comment. I should go find it, lol. I mean, it was posted as a public review. Something about to be careful about what words she used, particularly long syllable ones, because each word brought its own tone and connotations to the paragraph.

Upon checking out her profile, my flister discovered she was in middle school.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[kamino_neko]

I once had someone 'correct' me on the gender of a character because I'd done a fanvid implying she was in a same-gender romantic relationship. v_v

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[hwc]

Not concrit, but my very first flame had apparently never heard of an unreliable narrator. It was from the POV of an original character who was fixated on a canon character, thinking they were best friends. At the end the OC realises that she can't compete with the canon relationships and that the canon character won't return her feelings.

It wasn't stated outright, because unreliable narrator, but I thought it was pretty obvious what was going on. And every other commenter got the point just fine, but that first reviewer just went off on me about how dare I insult the characters (the OC didn't like most of them because she perceived them as a threat to her), and started to list why I got everything wrong. And I was like: 'The point. You missed it.' I think I hit a nerve because the OC calls a canon character an idiot, which seemed to be the reviewers favourite character. But still.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I once wrote a fic where the pairing in question end up having sex shortly after a fight scene that took place in the same room. Needless to say they were injured and there was some minor bleeding going on.

One reviewer said they really should have changed the sheets first before having sex, seeing as their wounds had probably bled slightly onto the sheets and that was just "Ewww."

Probably the weirdest one. It's stayed with me for years.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[herpymcderp]

One time a person contacted me on a COD fic to say that it couldn't be set in a particular house because that house gets destroyed in the beginning of the game.

...No shit. I never actually said it was set there. I couldn't figure out where that person was even getting this from in a 700 word ficlet.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[anonymous4]

I wrote:

They have lunch in a tiny Muggle restaurant, which serves—Draco assures her—the best Soup au Pistou in the whole of France...

She wrote:

in whole France sounds more correct :) it's just a tip ... I really liked this one very much even though it really needs a beta to correct some parts :p

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Not really weird, but when I started writing for a new fandom I had someone comment on one of the new fics I was really happy with, saying "This sucks compared to your fics for Other Fandom. You suck in this fandom, go back to writing Other Fandom. I preferred reading your fics in Other Fandom. Do what I want otherwise I'll keep telling you you suck." Okay not literally that last part, but it was very much the implication throughout the comment: you suck now that you're not doing something I like so you'd better go back to doing what I want you to do.

I get that they were pissed off I'd switched fandoms, but telling me I suck now is really not going to get me to write more for the old fandom. Being that entitled even less so, although that was partly the reason I moved fandoms in the first place so that part wasn't surprising.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[asecretchord]

I wrote an eighth-year fic (HP) where the Slytherins weren't defeated enough, I guess. The comment said it was like being a rape apologist with a twist. I felt bad for a long time. Then again, it's one comment out of 200 threads, so... *shrugs*

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Someone left a concrit on my very fic for a fandom about five or six years after I had written it. They told me that I made the characters OOC, that it was riddled with yaoi tropes, and even though they realized that the fic was old, they still felt the need to criticize me for it. I just laughed and deleted the comment. I mean, I'm not going to go back and 'fix' something for a fandom that I'm not in anymore. Plus the tone of the whole comment sounded like they were anti-slash anyway, so I'm not going to cater to that bullshit.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I once used a particular character in a small role to advance the plot of a story-- the character shows up a couple of times in early chapters and that's pretty much it. Less than a thousand words all told in a 200,000 word fic. One reviewer on FFnet went on for literally hundreds of words in comments about all the details I should have included about the character and the character's life and the character's servants and the character's home. I admit I got most of the information about the character from a fandom wiki and just used the bits I needed, but it was a minor role, and this person went on and on like he was the main character. It was dull and irrelevant, and eventually in a PM the reviewer explained that getting this character right was "where I draw the line" and I cheerfully replied that I was pretty sure I was going to continue to use characters the way I want to in my stories, but thanks for reading!

The person still comments on my stuff occasionally, generally stream-of-consciousness irrelevancies they seem to think are very clever, mixed in with oddly personal digs at me. On their profile they offer to beta stories, but warn that they tend to fixate on what they think you *should* be writing and go on and on about that. I wonder how many requests they get??

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

Someone once commented on an ancient fic of mine to say they didn't see the point of the fic, they didn't like slash anyway, and then proceeded to spend the rest of their barely-intelligible comment trying to psychoanalyze why teenage me might have written a short, fluffy PG-13 pre-slash fic in the first place. Eventually they decided that I clearly must have once given up a friend or a boyfriend to a gay relationship and I was somehow repressed and bitter because of that, and maybe I should write stories about that instead of fanfic.

...yeah, I got nothing.

Re: Weirdest con crit you've ever gotten?

[(Anonymous)]

I probably left someone's weirdest concrit. They'd written a story that used a popular rhyme from the UK 'one for sorrow, two for joy...' etc. It's a rhyme used for Magpies, but they were American and had gotten it wrong and used it for Ravens. If you've ever seen a Raven, you'll know that they're really, really not interchangeable. Those f*ckers are huge. It really detracted from the story, especially as the birds went on to be part of the narrative.

But yeah, it was pretty weird concrit to give.