tenlittlebullets | (no subject)

More and more often, I find myself leaving feedback only on badfic. Mary Sues to be specific. I know when I find a fic I like I should thank the author by leaving them some praise, but I feel like I can't review unless I have something to say. If I find something striking and unusual I'll usually bwee at the author, but in the case of most goodfic I feel like I don't have anything to say. "I liked it?" "Reading this wasn't a waste of my time?" "Yay, there was nothing glaringly wrong with it?" Meh.

And really, is it condescending to try to turn Suethors into goodfic writers by con crit? I want more goodfic. The Les Mis fandom needs more goodfic. If that requires offering to beta for someone with decent writing but an abysmal Sue, I'm game. Ditto that if it requires leaving reviews explaining who Mary-Sue is, why we don't want to read about her, and why writing Sues isn't a crime but should be kept as a private pleasure. I used to be caustic about sporking Sues, but I think now I've realized that it's a phase most people pass through when they start writing fanfiction, and if I can gently poke some people out of that phase faster, it means more goodfic for me. Gently poke. Not attack with sarcasm. How weird is it that I tend to be nicer giving reviews to Suethors than to mature authors? But they're new, straight-up con crit makes them feel attacked, and I usually try to dig up something good about their fic that I wouldn't ordinarily comment on in addition to my usual "this is a Mary Sue" spiel. That if anything is what makes me feel like I'm being condescending, but what am I going to do, skewer them on their first jump into the fandom?

I'm more hesitant to criticize fanon and characterization issues, though. If a fic is decently written and contains specimens of my least favorite Enjolras and Grantaire characterizations ever, I usually don't say anything, because it could legitimately be argued as being a matter of interpretation, and therefore on the same spectrum of asshattery as "Good fic but I hate that pairing and you shouldn't have written it." (Okay, that's significantly more blockheaded, but the point is that criticizing a fic for interpreting canon differently than you do is a slippery slope.) And yet, said least favorite characterizations are solidly fanon. Should I leave a review suggesting that the author take a good hard look at the characters herself and come up with her own interpretations, rather than letting the fandom spoon-feed it to her? Or a review saying this fic has been written a zillion times before, and something marginally original would be nice? Or should I even bother, considering how deeply entrenched that interpretation is?

I think the root of my dislike for fanon, and of my severe case of multiple figment syndrome, is that part of the reason I like fanfiction is because it lets me Fuck Around With Shit. I like the new and interesting. I don't like "these are my interpretations of the characters and they're the only ones I'll accept," or even "...and these are the only ones I'll write about." I like playing around with cracked-out characterizations and pairings; I like sociopath!Montparnasse and Eponine/Javert and genderfucked!Enjolras and Marius/Eponine and guilt-complex!Valjean and Enjolras/Fantine, all without ever considering them Absolute and Canon. Canon-compliant, if I can help it, but not The One And Only Interpretation, or even anything that would have worked or been possible outside of my crazy little head. On the flip side, I have a problem with interpretations that I don't see as canon-compliant--magnified a thousandfold when they become conventional. In fact, all fanon bugs me, especially when people don't see it for what it is. If clumsy!Bossuet and pacifist!Combeferre were a couple of my spin-off figments, I'd think they were cute, but now they're so prevalent and so accepted that they irritate me. Greatly. I'm also of the rather crotchety opinion that if Hugo hints strongly at something--that Jehan was the 19th-century equivalent of a goth and dressed weirdly on purpose, that Eponine's wretched situation included prostitution, that Grantaire's love for Enjolras wasn't exactly pure and brotherly--it's fine for it to be fanon, but it's not fine for the reverse to be fanon. colorblind!Jehan, pure!Eponine, and straight!Grantaire should be the exceptions, not the defaults. Obviously it varies--colorblind!Jehan is near ubiquitous, opinions on Eponine run fifty-fifty, and Grantaire gen is uncommon enough to get specifically labeled "not slash, I promise!" I'd write all three, but only as a lark.

And yes, I do have default interpretations of all the characters. I'm conceited enough to think they're based directly off Hugo's versions, but at least I back up that conceit by rereading their sections of the Brick whenever I'm in doubt. Usually the defaults pop up as cameos and supporting characters when the story's not about them, because when I write about someone, it's usually some odd bee that's gotten into my bonnet and therefore not about the default. I don't mind fanon as much in supporting characters, but I get pissed off when people write stories centered on fanonized versions of the characters. Where's your creativity?! Shouldn't the point of your fic be something more original than the same old bastardized version of Enjolras having the same old conversation with the same old bastardized version of Grantaire? For god's sake!

....okay, I got seriously off-topic there, considering this post was originally supposed to be about feedback.

OH. You know what else annoys me? Errors. Not just netspeak out the wazoo, but littler things like mispunctuated dialogue, homophone confusion (even and especially rarer words that are almost always confused, like discreet/discrete or flout/flaunt), comma splices, anachronistic speech patterns, uncorrected typos, uneven capitalization, and the like. My eyes tend to slide over them by now, and I've stopped twitching at every little error, but even if there are only a few, my gut impression of the fic will be "sloppy" no matter how good the writing is. (And conversely, if I stumble upon a fic that is mechanically flawless, I will be impressed by that alone.)

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Re: character interpretation: I find myself with very, very ... original characterisations of Enjolras and Grantaire in my novelfic, but I blame that partially on the fact that it somehow became this epic AU. Still, one thing I hate to see (and this is probably just me and the way I read R) is people acting like 'Oh, he's a drunkard, he can't be too smart,' and seriously, if you read his drunken rambles, those aren't the rambles of a half-witted man. I have a feeling that my interpretation of teh R in L'Avenir is probably going to appear anytime I write him, which isn't often other than L'Avenir. (Although, now you said it, I'm tempted to write fic where he's actually sleeping with women. Hm.) But as for Enjolras in that -- yeah, that one, he's mostly original character by the time the damn story's done, and I can accept that he's just plain not normal. Which may explain why I have about five different Enjy-figments floating around -- different fics call for different interpretations. Not that I've written that much fic.

Re: leaving good feedback -- I read fic and I only ever leave feedback if something about a fic strikes me, and that's usually a line or a phrase or even a passage that really got my attention, whether funny or really apropos or just extremely well-executed. I rarely leave, "I like it," and I only ever leave con-crit if it's something that I can't stand and that the author might not be aware of -- for example, badly-chosen or badly-translated Latin.

Re: errors -- I usually don't get betas, because I'm so obsessive about errors and just general bad parts that I usually read my own stories eight or ten times before I let them out into the open. I have to have a good reason to not proofread six times before sharing. I have actually discovered nine flaws so far in "Curious" which are definitely going to get fixed as soon as I'm not too lazy to do so.

Re: genderfucked Enjolras -- for some reason, that gives me ideas that make me drift off into daydreams. XD

I shut up now. :D

Anachronic speech patterns in fic are among my least favourite things, ever.

...Incorrect grammar and such also distress me, but to a lesser degree because I'm well aware I neglect to proofread all too often.

Very, very original characterizations are a good thing! XD And I agree, R's rambles are way too full of allusions and caustic insights for him to be stupid; his problem is more that he's off his jug half the time and doesn't want to use his wits for anything other than poking holes. (Also, why do the Enjy-figments tend to multiply more than most? o_O I also have at least five versions of him living in my head.)

for example, badly-chosen or badly-translated Latin.

Oh man, my eyes skate right over English grammar errors by now, but badly-executed (or badly-translated) French and German in fics? That makes me twitch like none other.

I don't get betas either, but that's because I'm equally nitpicky about my typos and don't have a tendency to make outright mistakes in spelling or grammar. Really, the concept that someone would let an error-riddled fic out into the wild boggles my mind. If you know you have problems with spelling or punctuation, that's your cue to spellcheck, reread obsessively, and seek outside verification.

My genderfucked!Enjolras has issues, man. He's refused to let me refer to him as "she" anymore, and overcompensates horribly for his perceived lack of masculinity. Poor dear.

The Latin thing gets me double, really -- firstly it's the only non-English language that I can even pretend I'm fluent in, and I read it well enough to understand, and secondly people tend to use Latin in titles to make it seem more, I don't know, prosy? authentic? literary? ~~pretentious~~, but don't bother learning anything about Latin grammar while they're at it, which makes me want to STAB THEM WITH A SPORK. But as for fangirl French, I've probably been guilty of that time and again... >_>

... I really, really want to meet your genderfucked Enjy now.

I never studied Latin, but Gothic has a similar case system and you do not try using it when you don't know how the case system works, or the verb conjugations for that matter. If you do you screw up and get smacked with a fish. French at least is easier to fake.

I have a lot of very specific plotbunnies for genderfucked!Enjolras, but none of them have been written yet. Maybe he'll make an appearance sooner or later.

There is one fanfic that makes my stomach turn. It's a cliche Eppie-Sue story where Eponine joins the Les Amis, and uses Sueish powers along the way.

Ew, I think that one's a bit beyond saving. *shudder*

For sure. I want to leave a constructive review, but she doesn't seem to be listening to anyone else so what's the point. She's only going to take as an attack on her precious little feelings. I hate when fanficers do that when they get concrit especially when they start demanding reviews.

Sometimes I get the urge to read badfic, and FFNet always satisfies. I don't ever leave reviews, though.

I am open to pretty much any interpretation of character that can be supported by any stretch of the imagination. I can even get behind not terribly supported characterizations if the story is well-written. I don't get it when people get so involved in their versions of the characters that they freak out on anyone who "dares" write something else.

But seeing as I only tend to write cracked-out things, this all might be self-defense. ;)