fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3058 ]

[ SECRET POST #3058 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3058 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #437.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

people are welcome to critique you're creepy ass fantasies.

Not in the way you're doing? Critiques are generally supposed to help you write better. They're not supposed to be a critique of the type of content. Complaining about genres or subject matter isn't going to help someone write better. You're just telling them not to write what they like to write.

Eh, I think OP has a legitimate point. If the story contains shit like this:

"who just so happened to have curves in all the right places, a bunch of guys hitting on her all the time (but she turns them down, naturally), and she's super sweet and kind and blah blah blah. "

Then it's basically poor writing. You're writing a Mary Sue girlfriend basically, instead of a three dimensional female character.

So say "this is bad writing and full of cliches and unrealistic" then, don't say "this is your creepy fap fodder and you are a creepy old man, you creepy fapper you". In a critique, you're supposed to judge the writing, not the person's character.

You can judge the character of the author however you like in private, but it doesn't belong on a critical response.

Because the writing comes across as creepy?

It's the whole fantasy girlfriend thing. It's like Twilight -- it's horribly written because it comes across as a wet dream. And super creepy.

Robert Pattinson hit the nail on the head with that one.

It's creepy to me too but I would not put "you are creepy and this is creepy" on a response, like I said. I would say this sounds like an author fantasy and sounds as though it was written more for the benefit of the author than the audience and needs to keep the audience more in mind, technical things like that which are all true. Not character judgments

Honestly, I think it's a fair critique to say that something comes across as creepy if it feels like you're reading someone's wet dream and it makes you super uncomfortable.

Maybe it's not right to say that the dude himself is creepy but I think it's fair to say that the writing can make him come across that way to a lot of readers.

The problem is that "its creepy" is not constructive. It's a personal ethical objection to which the only response can be "okay, I will not do it at all then since its always creepy" or to ignore it

If you say something like "it sounds like it was written for the author instead of the audience" it gives them something to *work* on, being more audience aware and aware of how others might might take things where "YOUR STORY IS CREEPY" does not

I don't necessarily think it's an ethical judgement to be honest.

If I say something is creepy, that means it doesn't sit well with me, it makes me uncomfortable/embarrassed, and I think it's important for an author to realize that their writing is coming across this way to the reader.

Like, the whole reason this is creepy is because it's blatantly obvious that this is the writer's sexual fantasy and I do think the author should be made aware.

I understand that, trust me, I find it creepy as well

But the way you phrased it made it sound like you objected to his fantasy or writing about the topic at all, not the *way* he went about it obviously and embarrassingly

If he was allowed to write *about* anything he wanted, it's not your call to object to the content. How the content is delivered is up for critique, and creepy doesn't do anything to address the how

It's like if you asked someone to crit your outfit and someone told you "it's disgusting". Well how constructive is that bit of information on its own? Barely

So do you object to the entire romance genre then? I imagine you don't differentiate at all between sexual fantasies written by men and women of any age group?

Re: Ughhhhh

(Anonymous) - 2015-05-19 23:42 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-19 23:46 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-19 23:50 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-19 23:53 (UTC) - Expand

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kallanda_lee - 2015-05-20 00:08 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 00:15 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 00:31 (UTC) - Expand

Yes, this exactly. Not that I think OP put it that way, but that was probably what came across.

You can judge the character of the author however you like in private, but it doesn't belong on a critical response.

Precisely.

But the anon didn't say "this is your creepy fap fodder and you are a creepy old man, you creepy fapper you". That only happened in your hypothetical example, but you appear not to grasp that distinction. Calling a relationship between two fictional characters creepy isn't at all a judgement on the person who wrote them. It is a judgment about the writing, because it's a judgement about the characters.

I feel like there's a reason you've overreacted to this and that's your problem to deal with, but make no mistake, you are definitely overreacting.

It's called hyperbole, but that's a nice armchair you have there. Do you do psychology from it often?

I didn't offer an diagnosis, and it hardly requires psychology of any kind to tell that someone is overreacting when they're making up the other side's arguments. It also doesn't require psychology to tell when someone has poor reading comprehension and a big ol' chip on their shoulder when someone points it out.

Disagree. If the action or behavior of a character comes off to a reader as creepy and it's not supposed to be, then that's something the author needs to hear. Nowhere did the OP say "don't write this stuff". Pointing out how a person's writing can be interpreted in ways the author might not intend is completely valid in a workshop setting. It's not that different from pointing out an issue of improper word choice.

Well, but there's even ways to word it as opposed to "creepy."

discomforting or discomfiting might be a better word

Sure, there's lots of ways to say lots of things. I don't see any reason to avoid the word "creepy" if the anon believes it accurately describes how the scenario made them feel.

Your feels about a piece aren't an appropriate critique though. Mysteries make me feel hella bored--is that a critique? Nope. That's just me projecting my personal preferences onto the rest of the world, as if it's the author's responsibility to write things that appeal to me.

As if my feelings about mysteries are somehow going to help that person become a better writer.

Well, no. How a reader feels and reacts to a written work is entirely relevant. If the author is writing this relationship as a sweet, loving relationship, then it would be useful to know that it's not being read as such by his intended audience. It would also be useful to understand why. Objecting to a specific relationship between two characters as portrayed in the work is not the same as disliking an entire genre, so your analogy doesn't work very well, I'm afraid.

Objecting to a specific relationship between two characters as portrayed in the work is not the same as disliking an entire genre, so your analogy doesn't work very well, I'm afraid.

Care to elaborate on that? Whether you're objecting to an entire genre, or to an entire trope (student/teacher relationship, age difference) if it's because that genre or trope doesn't appeal to your personal tastes, then it's not an appropriate critique.

You don't like dogfucking? Okay! That doesn't make this dogfucking novel badly written. And it doesn't mean your dislike is the same as a critique.

It's not clear to me that the anon is objecting to all relationships between older men and younger women the way you're assuming. It seems to me that they were critiquing a specific relationship, in a specific work, which is entirely valid and correct.

Re: Ughhhhh

blitzwing - 2015-05-20 00:28 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 00:34 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 00:45 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 03:08 (UTC) - Expand

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blitzwing - 2015-05-20 03:10 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2015-05-20 03:18 (UTC) - Expand

is "creepy" a bad word now?

It doesn't matter if Jim the mailman in the critique class finds the content creepy, if he's not in the intended audience.

If you take a family gangbang fic to a critique class, you won't expect them all to find it hot--but they can still critique your writing so that the incest fetishists you're marketing it to can find it even more hot and compelling.

Most people are familiar with the objections to their genre or subject. Whether it's "Westerns are dead, you'll never get it published" or "writing about fucking a dog is disgusting, this is trash and you're creepy" it's not exactly a mystery what those objections are.

I think "this whole thing reads like a personal masturbatory fantasy, which explains why the female character is about as interesting as a cardboard cutout" is a legitimate critique, tbh. Certainly it affects whether anyone but the author will care to read the story, and the object of a writing workshop isn't usually to produce stories that only the author wants to read.

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