Tacky

[tinturtle]

I sometimes visit the r/FanFiction subreddit. Today I brought up my practice of reviewing fanfic there, and another user said that, in their opinion, writing unsolicited negative reviews is "tacky" because fic writers are not professional authors.

What do you all think of this? I suppose that people who follow the journal of a person who writes such reviews might be a biased sample, but I'm still curious.

Personally, I see it as one of the things engaged fans do. I know there is plenty of precedent for it in fandom, and the reviews of the past, as quoted on Fanlore, are often much less gentle than I try to be.

Comments

[timemidae]

IMO there’s a difference between writing a negative review in the comments of someone’s fic and what you do. I’m biased because I also review fic, so clearly I’m not going to tell you it’s wrong, but I think that if we take fic seriously as a form of artistic expression, even if it’s not a profit seeking one, it makes sense to analyze it and think about it critically. In the same sense, I think critical writing about visual art is interesting, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go to a gallery opening and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of an artists’ work to their face.

[tinturtle]

This is how I feel, too, but there seems to be a clash of cultures here between that represented by me, you, and most of the people who have expressed opinions on LJ, and that of the commenters on Reddit. I'm not sure what to do about it.

I may attempt a compromise (which, of course, may satisfy no one). I don't think I have been doing anything wrong, and I'm not going to change existing posts. Going forward, though, I may stop writing up the fics that I don't like at all while continuing to write mixed reviews in addition to the wholly positive ones. Primarily negative reviews are the least fun to write, anyway. (It won't represent that big a change. I don't actually finish most fics I don't like, and I don't generally write up fics that I don't finish.)