[ SECRET POST #2998 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2998 ⌋

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

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27. http://i.imgur.com/1PIv5hG.jpg
[Archer, linked for cartoon nudity/sex]


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30. [ SPOILERS for Kingsman ]



























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #428.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

That was the exact premise of the assignment: Go read these fics (whether or not you're familiar with a) the original canon or b)fanfic conventions) and leave reviews for them as critique practice.

So yes, they were explicitly asked to go and watch people play who had no idea they were being watched.

[(Anonymous)]

The fics still were published on an archive, instead of a closed community. It's pretty obvious they're there to be read by whoever wants to and the fact there's a way to comment invites people to *gasp* comment.

The class was a bad idea, sure, but the stories weren't private and comments were welcome from the start.

[(Anonymous)]

When I signed up on AO3, I didn't sign up for students learning to write critiques. By being forced to read my kink fic by their prof.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes they were.

But they were published on a fanfic site, one that allows work to be categorized by the source material its based on. It's not bizarre to imagine that writers would find it strange that people with zero interest in the source would be reading fanfic for that source, and leaving critiques for it.

I don't read and crit fics in fandoms I don't know, do you?

People post all sorts of things online. Should people who post about knitting techniques be completely unsurprised and unaffected if painters came in and said "Hmm, that sweater's made all wrong." Should people who post recipies not wonder what's going on if a bunch of math students came in and started criticizing the way they're using measurements?

[(Anonymous)]

(ayrt)

I already said the class was a bad idea, so your point is...?

Oh, this is the old "only people in fandom can read fics!!!1!!!"
I'm not gonna waste my time again on that.

[(Anonymous)]

Here we go again, more people making arguments and then getting snotty with the people who answer them as though they're the ones going on about it. Protip, if you don't want a response, then don't keep leaving comments.

And on the same note, no that's not my point because that would be stupid and facetious. My point is that when you're posting something as specific as a fanfic for a specific fandom on a dedicated fic archive, then you sort of expect that the people who find that work is doing so because they're LOOKING for it, equally specifically. You're not posting it on the front page of Google for every single person who opens up their browser. So when someone who has no interest in the thing you write comes along and decides to tear it up, it's valid to think that's a pretty odd thing to do.

[(Anonymous)]

To be honest, I don't get that argument. One of the main things I've gleaned about Teen Wolf through fandom osmosis, for example, is that a good chunk of Sterek fandom got into the ship without having so much as seen an actual episode of the show, simply through reading the fic. This is the way I've been introduced to a number of my own favourite shows. Reading fic for fandoms or canons they're not fans of is something people do all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

No, they knew they were being watched, they just didn't know they were being watched by those particular people.

I liked someone's rebuttal to this analogy -- it's like putting a small local play on youTube. You expect maybe a dozen people to watch the video, because no one else gives a damn about your play. Then someone random stumbles on it...

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn't random stumbling. It was a professor assigning her students some homework.

[(Anonymous)]

Posting to YouTube is kind of different to posting to a dedicated fanfic archive though.

All sorts of people who are interested in all sorts of things visit YouTube for a million different reasons.

People go into a specific fandom tag on AO3 looking to read fanfic for that sorce material. So the expectation of the people watching becomes much more specific. Of course anyone who wants to can go to AO3, but why would they? And even fanfic readers don't scour tags for fandoms they don't know a thing about.

The understanding when you post on a site like AO3 is that the people who will seek out and find your fics have already pre-selected and narrowed down their own interests to the point where yes, by that point, you ARE writing for an 'intended' audience.

[(Anonymous)]

You have never searched for something just to end stumbling on fanfics?

That's pretty much how *I* got into fandom. Better yet, I was searching reviews about a movie I was considering seeing and instead I found fics of it and read them before seeing it.
Now I know I shouldn't have because I wasn't THE INTENDED AUDIENCE.

Can't I blame the authors for not locking their fics so only selected people can read them? Or the archives for being googleables?

[(Anonymous)]

So you weren't a student sent to critique kink fics, but stumbled across fanfics by chance. (And you didn't even mention whether you left any comments to them or not that first time.)

How is that even remotely comparable.

[(Anonymous)]

But you've just said yourself you were looking for the source material, hence you were self-selecting.

Did you leave immediate critiques for those fics you read when you hadn't seen the movie yet? Would you think it was acceptable for you to do that (yes, yes, we all know you're allowed to) when you had no context in which to place that work or compare it to?

Because that's what was going on here.

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't self-selecting since I didn't know the canon at that point.

I didn't comment, because that was back when fic archives weren't a thing. The only way to comment was sending a mail to the author and not all authors posted their mail address for that.

But still, why, exactly (other than those supposed unwritten rules of fandom) would had it be wrong to say "I think ___ was great, but the pacing was weird/there were some typos" or something similar?

Because the comments by those students (even the most "brutal" one) were along those lines and no one mentioned anything that required knowledge of the canon.

Please note that I'm not saying authors should welcome concrit or that all concrit is good (because many times is not).

Also, I know well what is going and I just hate (and disagree with) both trends ("concrit is evil" and "fandom is a private space only for people in fandom") that everyone supports because REASONS.

[(Anonymous)]

Please tell me where I support either of those things. I'm just saying that there was nothing at all whiny or over-reactionary about people thinking that people who didn't know the canon they were writing about posting crit for it was weird. Because it is. You can call it unspoken rules if you want, but those things still frame the community.

Ignoring the fact that yes you're allowed/entitled to, would you leave that sort of concrit on a fic you read in a fandom you had zero interest in? If you wouldn't, then you need to unpack the reasons why you wouldn't. If you would, then I ask what you'd expect the writer to think? What would YOU think if someone left concrit on a fic you wrote who had just stumbled randomly on your work from Google (or as in this case, was told to do it by their college professor)? How much weight would you assign to their opinion?

And as judgemental, hateful and sometimes downright dangerous as people are over fannish things (especially when fannish things become entangled with RL identities), are you really shocked that some people want to preserve that safe space? Some of the reactions may be extreme, but the motivation behind it isn't particularly hard to understand.

[(Anonymous)]

I still don't think seeing something that is intended for an audience and giving concrit is wrong. In this case, as long as the concrit isn't linked to something that is canon related.

Now, I won't do it, but it's just because I don't see the point in commenting about something I'm not invested on.
If someone else wants to do so? That's ok IMO, as long as they aren't rude (no one was in this case) and don't look down on fans or something similar.


"What would YOU think if someone left concrit on a fic you wrote who had just stumbled randomly on your work from Google (or as in this case, was told to do it by their college professor)? How much weight would you assign to their opinion?"

The funny part it's that there's no "would" for me, since I have got concrit from people outside fandom. It would take to long to explain the circumstances that lead to that, but let's just say it wasn't anything as public as in this case.

Anyway, IMO the weight of concrit doesn't comes from the person giving it but by its contents and how it's given.

If something doesn't make sense/is subjective, it's bad concrit and it's pointless to care about it.
If someone is rude, they probably aren't sending concrit but a flame.

If they aren't rude and have a point in there? It doesn't matter if they're BNF, NNF or "outsiders" and in the end I can still choose to ignore that (good) concrit for any reason (like not caring about improving, because that's perfectly ok) or not.

(I do have an emotional reaction to concrit that is not always this calm, but I learned a long time ago to get away from the keyboard at those moments, because after awhile it's obvious is not that big of a deal.

Also, fandom is not and has never been a safe space. Pretending it is, is more damaging that concrit can ever be)


"I'm just saying that there was nothing at all whiny or over-reactionary about people thinking that people who didn't know the canon they were writing about posting crit for it was weird."

And I'm saying it wasn't. We'll probably just have to agree to disagree.

[(Anonymous)]

/looks for the Like button

[(Anonymous)]

Fans are the intended audience. You became a fan through reading it.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I enjoyed the fic but didn't not became a fan thanks to it (and in fact I didn't like the movie when I finally saw it).

It was just my gateway for fandom, so I really wasn't the "intended audience" for that one.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, well right on. While you may not have been a fan or liked the movie, you had at least saw the movie, and had some basic premise when you went in reading and while you weren't the intended audience, that's still a good basis for an informed critique.

[(Anonymous)]

Still no, since I read the fic before watching the movie.