ACADEMY: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Criticism

[Beth Pavell]

From what I can tell, Farla is notorious within the Pokémon fanfic, um, fandom for being a caustic critic with a sarcastic streak a mile long. I've seen people state that she's rather full of herself, and apparently tends to stick very tenaciously to her own personal bits of fanon. How true all that is, I don't know. I haven't actually seen any of her reviews - I think kintsugi said once that she does a review month every year and focuses on new stories, so my own would have been under that radar.

In general I take a dim view on the whole caustic, sarcastic critic thing. It's not funny and it's certainly not clever. Anyone can write a rant claiming that they want to reach through the computer screen and beat the author senseless with their own keyboard because that sentence made their eyes bleed, blah blah blah

 

[LightningTopaz]

When I review, I first focus on what they are doing right, or what I really liked about the episode/chapter

I next phrase any criticism I have as a question or a gentle suggestion (eg. I noticed you did X here, is this a stylistic choice or a mistake you missed?)

 

[AceTrainer14]

Farla is exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote the bit in the lesson about caustic, nasty reviewers. The thing is that while she can be very negative and quite bitchy in reviewing, people do make requests to get that type of feedback.

What do you guys think is worse though: empty, almost meaningless praise or mean, overdramatic reviews but they actually bring up some good points?

 

[LightningTopaz]

"cool fic write more plz" and its counterpart of (forgive my French) "u suk" are actually more annoying to me than overwhelmingly negative reviews--with empty reviews, I don't know what I am doing well, nor do I know what to fix.

Although I have frightened off a few trolls by being nice--"I'm sorry you didn't like the fic, what do you suggest I do to make it better?"

They never answered back.

 

[kintsugi]

My former vitriol toward Farla has actually lessened a far amount over the years--I suppose no longer being fifteen does that to you, lol. My main qualm with her was how she would copy-paste the same block of text for every review if it was necessary (ie, author botches a dialogue tag -> entire paragraph full of random examples about punctuating dialogue that is vague enough to probably cover whatever the author messed up), because that's like going to the doctor with a cough and coming back with some decongestants, a cast on your pinky finger, anti-migraine medication, and a hysterectomy or something.

...Then I tried my hand at reviewing every single story published in the month of January, and, yeah, there's absolutely no goddamn way I'm writing personalized paragraphs to every single author on the site who doesn't know how to use a comma. I also didn't even come close to reviewing every single story, and I don't think I could do it, even with copy-pasting for the more broad grammatical concerns.

So yeah, more power to her for giving out concrit in a fandom where getting reviews, let alone useful ones, is ridiculously difficult. People may receive her message better if she didn't crosspost the stuff on her blog for people to laugh at offsite, or if she were a little more polite, but eh.


On a mostly unrelated note, I present this gem review for srbs, courtesy of anonymous guest reviewer The Blue Diamond: yeah ace blue engine blue diamond i c u

Between the pretentiousness of the writing and the references to standard high school English curriculum, it really is quite believable that this is narrated by a child. Well done.

This isn't Cinnabar. I didn't bring enough Burn Heal for this looooools.
i ain't even salty

 

[AceTrainer14]

It is a valiant effort to go out and review all the stories: it is no easy task and it is nice that someone does it. However, I think it would be much more helpful to do so in a positive way. Even copy/pasting general guidelines is something I'm not that fussed about, it's just the aura of being sassy/sarcastic/mean that I think is generally unproductive.

I present this gem review for srbs, courtesy of anonymous guest reviewer The Blue Diamond: yeah ace blue engine blue diamond i c u

Girl, if I was going to sass you, I'd do it to your cyber face also remember crossover battles

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Shame that Fanfiction.net is so datedly-designed, because otherwise I could link this thread that person who does nothing but condescend people for capitalising Pokémon with the same copy-pasted paragraph, and then post long lists of punctuation corrections.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I think I know the one - I seem to recall they popped up around January. I've seen a fair few of their reviews (Around January I browsed through the reviews of stories in the Pokémon fandom, out of curiosity) - they've almost never got anything to say other than picking out matters of technical accuracy.

Which reminds me of a small peeve of mine when it comes to reviewing - not separating out fanon from canon. Pokémon seems to accumulate a lot of this, where aspects of the different canons are cross-conflated or assumptions that have little to no evidence are taken as canon. I don't think it's a problem to point out which bits of fanon you prefer in a review, particularly if you can give reasons why in terms of suspension of disbelief, cliché management, etc. The issue is when the reviewer starts to insist that their favourite fanon is canon, as if fanfiction should never deviate from that

 

[Nitro Indigo]

On the reviewing advice page on Cave of Dragonflies, Butterfree basically says that you shouldn't tell the author to change the premise, because then they'd be writing your story, not theirs.

I've never seen anyone complaining about crossing canons, though I'm now remembering this really stupid review I saw on Fanfiction.net which said that a certain word was outdated, and Pokémon started as a trading card game, on the same subject.

 

[AceTrainer14]

One thing I've been contemplating the past few days with reviews is: should you stick to one style for reviewing chapters, or should the author be allowed to request a particular style that they find most beneficial?

 

[Beth Pavell]

Depends, I suppose. If the author's the type to insist on explaining away every criticism in a review, or doesn't acknowledge it, or never does any reviewing themselves, I'm not likely to want to depart from my usual format on request.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I was talking more along the lines of should people give reviews that the author will actually find helpful, or should the reviewer just do whatever they want and the author be damned? Take the FF.net example from above: if someone kept reviewing a story but simply just listed the grammatical errors, or continuously only reviewed from the POV of their personal canon, what do you do? Is there an etiquette at all to say to a reviewer 'thanks but no thanks', or does the onus fall on the author to just put up with it, even if the review is more of a distraction/irritant than it is helpful?

 

[AetherX]

The reviewer's doing the author a favor in the first place, so I don't think they're obligated to do it in any specific way. The author can certainly ask for a different format, but the reviewer doesn't have to do anything. You'd be running the risk of insulting them so that they stop reviewing entirely. You're also well within your rights to ask them to stop entirely. Don't know why you would do that, though. Personally I have never ever received a review that didn't help at all. It's a matter of mindset. The reviewer leaves whatever feedback they feel like and it's up to you to interpret it. Personally I'd appreciate someone listing grammatical errors rather than just saying "some errors here and there." What some people see as nitpicks are actually genuine insights that the author can take or leave. If the author would rather leave them, then that's up to them. But then the author can't really complain about not getting any reviews.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I don't think I've made myself clear. I'm not really referring to in-depth reviews or the ones you generally get here. I'm talking more the FF.net style of reviewing where people pretty much don't give you anything of substance at all. I'm not even talking about the overly complimentary reviews that FF is practically built on, as it is good to know if people are liking something. I had a reviewer once who literally just summed up every chapter or spoilt the cliffhanger in each review. That's not helpful in any way shape or form, but I wasn't sure how to approach it: they were the only person 'reviewing' so if I asked them to stop, I'd have none, but at the same time, it was of more of adherence to my story than a benefit.

The reviewer has a lot of power in the fandom world, and it's a power that I think a lot of people don't really use very well. You call it a 'favour', but it's not really a favour if you are just doing what you think is helpful, is it?