we all read different stories, but some people's are more different than others'

[edenfalling]

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*)

Comments

[branchandroot]

Sometimes it's clearly a need to feel superior. Especially if they mention any creative writing courses they took as some kind of license or imprimatur to "correct" you. Sometimes, I swear, it's just the evangelical spirit which declares that they know The Truth and must proclaim it wherever they find Error, because surely if people knew they were in Error, they would embrace The Truth!

[edenfalling]

This one was not a writing critique per se (in the sense of "I know how narrative structure/grammar/characterization/etcetera is supposed to be done and you are Doing It Wrong") and more a mini-lecture on how bad relationships don't magically fix themselves: an expression of moral superiority rather than skill set superiority, I suppose. Anyway, one of the running themes of the story in question ("Along the Way") is Hermione being awkward at relationships and struggling to maintain them, so to be cautioned that I should remember that relationships are complicated and people must work to maintain them was unexpected, to say the least. *shrug*

[akatsuki210.livejournal.com]

My biggest pet peeve with reviews is when someone reads a fic I wrote a long time ago and points out that part of it is "incorrect"...when the reason it's incorrect is because I wrote it before the relevant fact had been revealed in the series.

[edenfalling]

That is always intensely frustrating!