Old School
May. 28th, 2008 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyoreFanlistings. I don't get them. Am I missing something, or is this some hang-over of pre-internet fandom I'm not getting? Just... what's the point?
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In my search for good X-men (movieverse) fic, I found the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xmmficathon archive. I've justed started reading through the 2004 entries, and wow - so far, every fic has been worth reading. Just wow.
All this great fic, sitting there on LJ. It got me thinking about reviewing older fanworks (fic, in this case, but the point is just as valid for art), and how, after all this time, I feel sorta odd, leaving a comment. I'm not sure why. A year, two years, no problem. But four?
Perhaps it's because people's fannish lives are so transitory, especially on LJ. 4 years is an eternity, and people move on, from fandoms and genres and writing styles. It almost seems like an intrusion to comment and have a slice of then emailed into people's inboxes.
On the other hand, if anyone dug up one of my fics and commented on it in 4 years time, I'm pretty sure I'd be thrilled.
Anyway. Comments? Anyone else have a personal statute of limitations on reviewing?
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In my search for good X-men (movieverse) fic, I found the
xmmficathon archive. I've justed started reading through the 2004 entries, and wow - so far, every fic has been worth reading. Just wow.All this great fic, sitting there on LJ. It got me thinking about reviewing older fanworks (fic, in this case, but the point is just as valid for art), and how, after all this time, I feel sorta odd, leaving a comment. I'm not sure why. A year, two years, no problem. But four?
Perhaps it's because people's fannish lives are so transitory, especially on LJ. 4 years is an eternity, and people move on, from fandoms and genres and writing styles. It almost seems like an intrusion to comment and have a slice of then emailed into people's inboxes.
On the other hand, if anyone dug up one of my fics and commented on it in 4 years time, I'm pretty sure I'd be thrilled.
Anyway. Comments? Anyone else have a personal statute of limitations on reviewing?
~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 02:18 am (UTC)And fair point about the distinction between 'feedback' and review'. I'm using 'review' here in the traditional fanfic 'please read and review' sense.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 02:37 am (UTC)Unless the author actually asks for constructive criticism, it doesn't make sense to me to give negative feedback. Even if the work is awful, someone spent time on it, and then posted it in the hope that other people would enjoy it. If I don't like it, I don't say anything, and that seems to be the general rule around LJ. I might (depending on whether I know the author or not) politely mention a canon or factual error if I spot one, assuming it's something that could be corrected without destroying the story. (If it's a central plot point, I wouldn't bother- if it's something that can be fixed easily, I would.) I've had people catch a couple of these in my stories and I've gone back and edited the story to correct them.
And this sense of 'review' must fall in between my fanfic experiences...when I was reading print zines pre-internet it was 'LOCs' (letters-of-comment).
no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 04:12 am (UTC)Yup, that's pretty much my rule too.
And this sense of 'review' must fall in between my fanfic experiences...when I was reading print zines pre-internet it was 'LOCs' (letters-of-comment).
I suspect this use of 'review' may stem from Fanfiction.net - their feedback feature is called 'reviewing', and with their character limited summaries, it makes for a convenient acronym (read and review = R&R). I'm fairly sure that's where I picked up the usage from, anyway.