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Mildly strange experience of the day: receiving a review for a fic I wrote... five years ago? six? in a fandom I have since basically abandoned, in which the reviewer ignores the story at large in order to nitpick a minor issue, and in the process restates one of the themes of the story as if triumphantly proving to me that I have somehow missed this truth of human nature instead of, you know, writing a fic about it. O_o
I always wonder what people's motives are in leaving such responses. I mean, do they think an author will rewrite a story years after the fact? Do they just want to feel superior at a writer's expense? (I suspect the latter option is more likely to be correct.)
I sometimes also wonder if such reviews mean I've been too oblique in my writing, but I went back and reread the story in question (since it's been five or six years and I'd forgotten almost all the details) and no, it's pretty clear that the relationship in question was problematic before it broke off entirely and that things don't "suddenly 'get better'" -- instead, Character A explicitly chooses to forgive Character B despite their troubled past, and it's all but explicitly stated that Character B continues to backslide into old, bad patterns for a while thereafter. I just didn't dwell on that because it wasn't the main arc of the story. Horror of horrors, I occasionally try to maintain narrative focus!
Ah well, at least that kind of review is a sign that the fic hasn't completely sunk into the vast obscurity of the internet.
And on that note, I will return to editing my latest fic... which will go anonymously live tomorrow afternoon with the rest of the Ouroboros Mix fics, yay! I can't wait to see what my remixer did with one of my submitted stories. (And I really hope my remixee doesn't think I butchered her fic... *bites nails, twitches in nervous anticipation*)
I always wonder what people's motives are in leaving such responses. I mean, do they think an author will rewrite a story years after the fact? Do they just want to feel superior at a writer's expense? (I suspect the latter option is more likely to be correct.)
I sometimes also wonder if such reviews mean I've been too oblique in my writing, but I went back and reread the story in question (since it's been five or six years and I'd forgotten almost all the details) and no, it's pretty clear that the relationship in question was problematic before it broke off entirely and that things don't "suddenly 'get better'" -- instead, Character A explicitly chooses to forgive Character B despite their troubled past, and it's all but explicitly stated that Character B continues to backslide into old, bad patterns for a while thereafter. I just didn't dwell on that because it wasn't the main arc of the story. Horror of horrors, I occasionally try to maintain narrative focus!
Ah well, at least that kind of review is a sign that the fic hasn't completely sunk into the vast obscurity of the internet.
And on that note, I will return to editing my latest fic... which will go anonymously live tomorrow afternoon with the rest of the Ouroboros Mix fics, yay! I can't wait to see what my remixer did with one of my submitted stories. (And I really hope my remixee doesn't think I butchered her fic... *bites nails, twitches in nervous anticipation*)
