fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2988 ]

[ SECRET POST #2988 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2988 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 050 secrets from Secret Submission Post #427.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I have a problem with how the class told people to review, but I have not a problem with them reviewing fic. If you put fic out there on the 'net, it can be reviewed by anyone. ANYONE. That's the risk that you take.

Yeah but surely any professor worth their salt would know that analyzing a community's story without understanding said community is bad practice? I'm not even talking about how they hurt the poor fanwriters feeliiiiings~~~ (Grow a thicker skin), but it's such a rookie mistake from a literary criticism point of view.

From what I understand, it's student taught, not professor taught

What the hell was the professor doing during that then. I hate this recent trend of professors not doing their work with the excuse of "delegating". When I was getting my master's none of my professors even read their own syllabus, they just assigned each student some random paper from pubmed and sat back as each student gave a presentation.

I have not actually done research to see if this is the case, but I know that Cal does a thing where they occasionally have short (like, 1 or 2 week seminars) organized, led, and taught by students on a variety of topics that wouldn't necessarily be considered for full classes. For fun and to learn about weird stuff, basically, so you could have classes on a ton of niche topics. And I'm comfortable assuming that this was one of those.

It was

Berkeley has a whole subset of classes like this that are student taught. Professors are not involved.

And people are paying tutation for something they could basically get from meeting together with a bunch of uneducated strangers and chatting with them about the internet?

Yep. And from what I know of the people that go to that school (because I've been out of school for many a year and have never been further west than Detroit) is that they love these classes (on a wide variety of subjects) and were afraid that this would cause the university to shut them down.

I had heard the quality of university classes had gone down, but this is just ridiculous. How does the university even justify making them pay hundreds of dollars for these classes?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-11 00:20 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-11 00:36 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know, one of the best classes I took in college was put together by a graduate student. Sexual revolutions of the 1920s, 1960s, and 1990s. Brilliant class, great readings. (Mae West rocked!)

Thing is, it wasn't a professor. It was a student. The whole thing was basically a glorified club for minimal credit.

Right, so the lack of academic validity was intended. The bullshit you'll get uni credits for these days smh

I have no problem with the authors being upset by what was written (I read a few and they were kind of brutal). I do have a problem with this idea that only certain people can read and comment on a fic that is placed in a public forum.

Can you point me to these reviews? The posts I found about this didn't lead me to the stories reviewed.

I will see if I can track down the post on Tumblr...

http://archiveofourown.org/works/839637?page=2&show_comments=true#comments

DA

All else aside, that comment is only barely helpful. I always feel like if your con/crit is so vague that it could have been copied from a Writing 101 website, you shouldn't bother posting it unsolicited.

In retrospect, you can really tell that they had to leave that comment for an assignment lol.

That's the thing. If you put your fic out there, you expect some nasty reviews. Someone doesn't like the pairing, doesn't like the fact there was explicit sex, the fact that there wasn't enough explicit sex, and so on.

Which fanfic writer expects that their fic will be reviewed by a student who has to leave a public criticism of it just to pass their class? It's just bizarre.

So some uninterested student flames your fic in response for having to do crazy assignment for school. That's not really on.

What next, students following amateur birdwatchers around at the weekend and telling them they're holding their binoculars wrong, just so they can get extra credit for biology?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-11 00:56 (UTC) - Expand

That's supposed to be brutal? Really? The cult of nice has really pampered fandom.

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised. I was expecting a review that tore it to pieces. This basically says "you've got typos" (which is true) and "maybe try setting up your scenes more". It's kind of blunt, but seriously. Not that bad.

DA

I agree that posting a fic on a public forum involves the understanding that anyone can read and review. That's a given.

However, you don't normally expect someone who has no clue about fanfic to end up on niche fanfic sites to begin with, let alone to read and review things that are of no interest to them whatsoever. A writer expects the people who visit that site and find their work to at least be vaguely familiar with the concepts, and will be reading on the understanding themselves that they're not reading pro-fic that's been edited to within and inch of its life.

And that's why the writers involved with this should at the very least have been given fair warning that it would be happening, and given the option to opt-out if they weren't comfortable with that.

With the except of one troll I don't think was even in the class, just piggybacking on the mess, none of the ones I saw were brutal. Some of them were tone-deaf and socially awkward, but they were all at least attempting to be polite.

The backlash comments from the authors were far more brutal and less polite.

To be honest, the original concrit wasn't even that bad at all and actually quite helpful and polite. I don't know how it could be seen as rude at all, but then I've gotten really harsh critques in the past and even when they hurt my feelings I didn't piss my pants over it and took what they said on board. The author sounds like a complete fucking loser.

When this thing first went down and I was debating with someone, they told me it was wrong because "fandom is a safe space". I think my brain broke a little. Really? All of fandom? Everywhere? Tumblr, LJ/DW, AO3, Twitter, DeviantArt, every fandom-specific website and message board ever is now a declared safe space? Holy hell and hallejuah, we have achieved the impossible, everyone can go home now!

No community open to any member of the public is ever going to be 100% safe space. There's always one asshole. If you want to write and share fic in a safe space, there are private and semi-private spaces to use.

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