fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #599 ]

⌈ Secret Post #599 ⌋

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

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[boggarts, so pic is related, I've been told?]

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[resized]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 13 pages, 306 secrets from Secret Submission Post #086.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - posted twice ], [ 1 - personal attack ], [ 1 - what? that's robin williams ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What is writing without an audience and its honest feedback?

I don't know, fun? Feedback isn't the be-all end-all of writing. And no, knowing what style/content/structure/grammar is is not a good enough reason. No, it's not ballsy, because she's always anonymous. Yes, she does have a superiority complex, or did you miss the part where she never does this to help people, only to laugh at them when they reply, understandably upset? She's not trying to help anybody. She's just sniping at a bunch of kids and somehow manages to feel better because she's, gasp, a better writer than a 14 year old. Yeah, GG on that one.

Sheesh, I'm getting flamed more than she is. I will reply to the only part of this that will not spark (even more) heated debate:

I fully believe that writing, by its very nature, is a community exercise in personal isolation. To write (and this qualifies even for fanfiction - although not necessarily for the fluffy kind; that is just fun) is to place a slice of what you perceive to be truth on the table and what to see how people react when they take a bite. It is impossible to impart exactly what you, the writer, believe, or at the very least it is impossible to know exactly what you have imparted, but for some it is also impossible not to try. Writing, even novels, without an audience is just keeping a diary. And I didn't mean to imply that criticism is the only viable form of "honest feedback". Not at all. It is simply one form, and it is a helpful one.

Ah. There is another point to which I can offer riposte: And no, knowing what style/content/structure/grammar is is not a good enough reason. True, but based on the style/content/structure/grammar of the OP's post, I feel convinced that she knows what she's talking about and what she's doing when it comes to the (multiply) aforementioned aspects of writing. I realize it's a small sample of writing to base such a conviction on, but I'm willing to bet that she wrote and edited that little secret specifically to contribute to her point (I would have), and I think she did as good a job as can be done in such a small space. At demonstrating technical proficiency, I mean.

Let me just rephrase my point, then.

Maybe she's a competent editor, but she's still getting her jollies by ripping into 14 year olds, most of whom are probably just putting themselves out there and learning to write and share their ideas.

How is that in any way a service?

Hrm. I think perhaps we both need to reread the secret. *reads* I don't believe she's getting her jollies from ripping into 14 year olds. She enjoys rewriting bad (or at least mediocre) fiction (presumably for the challenge), and then she sometimes reposts it, and usually emails her feedback to the original author. She says she is sometimes nice and sometimes not. I assume this to mean that she sometimes offers a kindly, if perhaps painfully thorough critique of the fic, and that she sometimes decides the story's just too much bollocks to bother with being nice about and just sort of says whatever she wants, and that other times she just keeps her little remix entirely to herself.

I think she's probably doing a pretty good service some of the time, and giving the writer an interesting story to whine to their friends about the rest of the time (assuming she hasn't crushed their little spirit, and if they can fight back about how their story was perfect in the first place, I doubt any spirits have been crushed).

I agree. Offering editing and concrit is one thing, but playing the annon. bully and laughing at a bunch of kids because they're not as talents as she is is just plain tasteless, borderline bitchy.

I must have missed the part where it's possible to write for fun without mangling canon, characterization, spelling, grammar, etc, beyond all recognition. Isn't writing even more fun if you actually put some effort into it, rather than just spewing out some horrid crap that you're too lazy to even run through a spellcheck?

How does that tie into what I was saying at all? I never suggested that it's only fun if it's horrible. My point was that it's written for fun and should be treated as such. Starting a witch hunt over bad spelling/grammar/characterization is not treating it as such.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I see your point. Are you saying that fanfiction is only fun if you give up on keeping to the characters? I personally see that as the most fun part: it's the only real challenge. Fanfiction is playing in somebody else's world, which means you don't have to go to all the trouble of making up your own, but it also means that you have to dive very deeply into a world that isn't native to your imagination and play by its rules. To use a rather bloated comparison, it's like writing in another language. You have to adopt attitudes (of character, of setting) that aren't those that exude naturally from your mouth when you first set out to explain things, and the challenge and the fun is to do it well.

Forgive me if that isn't what you were saying. Frankly, I'm not quite sure whom you are disagreeing with. :\

S/he thought I was setting up a false dichotomy in which a fanfic can be either good or fun and was responding to that.

Basically, you just said what s/he just said.

Wait, what? I actually kinda thought anon up there was disagreeing with me and posted under your reply through negligence or something. And I'm not espousing any false dichotomy in which fanfic can either be good or fun. Far from it. I've clearly failed at something if that's the point you gathered from what I wrote. Quite to the contrary, I think fanfic is at its most fun when it's good, although that is admittedly a general trait of mine (I don't really have fun at something unless I'm not sucking - it limits me from playing a lot of video games :\). But either way, I am staunchly against the idea that fun fanfic must by virtue of the genre fail at something (originality, character faithfulness, etc).

Anon was disagreeing with what s/he thought I was saying. Don't worry about it, I agree with you and so does anon.

Well okay then. I don't mind a healthy disagreement, but I would like all parties to be understood. =)

[ SECRET POST #599 ]

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