damned with faint praise

[tielan]

You know, I still haven't worked out if I should be pleased or insulted by feedback which boils down to:

"Well, it was a good fic, even if it did have John/Teyla in it."

I should have thought that good fic was good fic, no matter what pairing it was. But maybe that's me using that damned Earth Logic again?

There are certainly pairings that I don't like and I don't read. I'm sure there are excellent fics about these pairings that won't hit my icky, squicky, and picky buttons - given the sheer volume of them, and the fact that some of those authors write stories about other pairings that I enjoy, there must be. I just choose not to read them.

But I don't think all fics about the pairings I dislike are crap. Some of them are, certainly. Then again, some fics about the pairings I like are also crap. Pairing is not the be-all and end-all of what is good, right, true, and wonderful about fandom, fanfic, or fans.

Much as some people might wish it was.

Please note that I consider the previously mentioned feedback very different to:

"I don't usually read or like John/Teyla, but I enjoyed your story."

The latter is praise in spite of a non-preferential pairing, where the mention of preference is a compliment to the author.

By comparison, the former seems like a grudging admission. Perhaps it was beaten out of them after a protracted session with a clue-by-four to which was attached a copy of said story?

I'm not going to discuss the people who feel 'dirty' after reading a fic where John/Teyla is the background pairing and *gasp* enjoying the overall fic! Oh, noes!!!111eleventy! "Please go to the John/Teyla decontam chamber on level four, where your brain will be scrubbed down for OMG liking a totally foul and disgusting pairing!"

*sigh*

I have no patience for fantards.

...I guess, to completely bastardise the words of Gaius Baltar, I should be glad to have received any praise for my John/Teyla fic - even if it was faint and damning.

Comments

[blade-girl.livejournal.com]

Man, that was a very tactless way for the commenter to tell you he/she liked your story!

However, I have seen people give comments like, "For a John/Teyla fic, that was pretty good." Now, that clearly means, "All John/Teyla fics are, inherently, at best inferior and at worst heinous. So what the poster in my hypothetical example really meant was, "This story already suffers from its hideous pairing, so it can never be considered objectively good, but for a fic with that insurmountable handicap, it was almost readable."

Your commenter, on the other hand, seems to have been saying something more along the lines of, "Normally, the John/Teyla pairing would be the kiss of death for a fic I'm reading, but in this case, the fic was actually good." Still suffers from a total lack of tact, but it's a huge difference in meaning from my example. :)

Of course, it would be easier if people could just leave their petty biases out of their comments, or if they can't, just restrict themselves to commenting on fics where they can leave untainted praise.

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

You're hanging out in those weird places again...

[tielan]

Still suffers from a total lack of tact, but it's a huge difference in meaning from my example

True that.

I've gotten the "that was pretty good for a John/Teyla fic" feedback in the past. There's definitely a 'this is the reader slapping you in the face' feel to it.

But, yes, this is one level up from that kind of response, but still with a distinct backhand.

[tielan]

Right now, I'm hanging out in the Slipper room. So, yes, quite certainly a weird place.

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

:-P

[tielan]

:D

Are you coming to the weird place, too, Sue?

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

Going out to dinner...might be in later. :-D

[lacylaces.livejournal.com]

"Well, it was a good fic, even if it did have John/Teyla in it."

Why would someone think it's okay to say something like that. It's rude!

Sorry about that. Some people are stupid and rude, unfortunately.

[tielan]

I understand the desire to 'differentiate' oneself. And I've had quite a bit of feedback that said:

[disclaimer][compliment] - eg. "not usually a fan of X, but I like this and how you've done it."

Which works.

I guess the "a good fic even if..." feedback is just a way of saying "Well, don't get too cocky, but you did okay with what little you had." Which is, as blade_girl pointed out, somewhat tactless.

I try to leave my preferred pairings out of my fanfic responses because I feel that the fanfic deserves praise for what it is, not for what I feel it should have been, or for what I felt it wasn't.

[lacylaces.livejournal.com]

I try to leave my preferred pairings out of my fanfic responses because I feel that the fanfic deserves praise for what it is, not for what I feel it should have been, or for what I felt it wasn't.

I agree. I think that is exactly the way comments to fic should be based. If you make the choice to read a fic that you know is a pairing that you don't like, you should be able to evaluate the fic on w w/o regard to the pairing. Or you should at least try.

When I comment to fic I try and base my comments on the fic as it is, not on how I think it should have been or for what it is lacking, but what it got right or the impact it had on me. Unfortunately, I don't think a substantial no. of people in fandom share that philosophy. Particularly when it comes to pairings that they don't like.

As you said, there are better/more constructive ways to express how you feel about a pairing while commenting on a fic that may have surprised you and taken you out of your comfort zone.

I admire that you have the courage to put yourself out there and write/post your fic in spite of comments that really do more to tear people down than to encourage.

[tielan]

The 'weird' responses are the rare ones. Most people are polite. It's just sometimes, you just look at the response and wonder, "Now was I hugged, or was I slapped?"

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I've had that happen to me once or twice with feedback for two of my pictures with Teyla and John in them. One wasn't actually a pairing, just happened to be the two of them but the other one was the kissing picture. The first one was odd and made me think the commenter's first language probably wasn't english which was why it seemed...well, somewhat more tactless in its phrasing. The second was much more direct, it started with "I can't usually stand this pairing" and then went on to praise the picture in such glowing terms that I had absolutely no reason to take offense :D I figured the mention of the dislike was somewhat more of a compliment. Given how many people don't leave feedback at all even if they like something, that someone would encounter a pairing they don't see at all and still enjoy the work and comment on it favorably possibly counts as a plus point.

[tielan]

Given how many people don't leave feedback at all even if they like something, that someone would encounter a pairing they don't see at all and still enjoy the work and comment on it favorably possibly counts as a plus point.

True - hence the quoting of Baltar at the end of the post about being grateful for any feedback that came my way.

Still, I think there's always going to be a moment during which I'm going to go, "uh, okay. that was...not the usual kind of feedback".

[canlib.livejournal.com]

Sorry to butt in here and feel free to ignore me :)

I find this interesting because it ties in with some meta I was reading a while ago about leaving feedback. One of the reasons why I'm really bad about commenting on fics (I'm working on doing it more often, I promise!) is that what I get out of reading is not easily expressed, at least for my
complete non-writer brain. I worry about anything that's not just a very simple statement not coming out the way I meant it.

To me the difference between

"Well, it was a good fic, even if it did have John/Teyla in it."

and

"I don't usually read or like John/Teyla, but I enjoyed your story."

is one of phrasing and tact, but not content.

I would see both as a huge compliment to the author. If something really truly doesn't work for me in terms of what I've seen on screen and then an author has taken that and made it something that does work for me in that fic, that is at least as big a compliment as a pairing I like anyway done well. And expressing the skill of the author in making it work when normally it wouldn't requires at least some comment on the fact that it normally wouldn't.

I guess maybe it depends on who left the comment, and probably who is reading it as well.

Hmm... now you've got me thinking again. Hopefully smoke won't start coming out of my ears *g*

[tielan]

It's entirely possible that I'm oversensitive to nuance. And, yes, it makes a difference who's saying it.

[canlib.livejournal.com]

Or possibly there's a few of us who are undersensitive once in a while ;)

[tielan]

Or maybe even a bit of both, depending on the time of the month and the alignment of the heavens! ;)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Please note that I consider the previously mentioned feedback very different to:

"I don't usually read or like John/Teyla, but I enjoyed your story."

The latter is praise in spite of a non-preferential pairing, where the mention of preference is a compliment to the author.

I'm glad I went ahead and clicked on the cut and read the rest of the post, because initially I was like, "Oh crap!" Because I've left feedback similar to the above. "I don't normally read John/Elizabeth, but I really liked this." "I don't normally enjoy fics with non-con, but I thought this was very tastefully done" -- stuff like that. And I've had people leave feedback for me along the lines of "I'm not a gen reader, but I liked this story anyway" and to me, that's actually a much higher form of praise than feedback of the "OMG! TeamLuv4Evah!!111!!!" variety, because it means that you actually got someone to read and *enjoy* a story that would normally be out of their comfort zone, which takes some doing. I usually feel like I should mention it if it really is far outside what I normally read because that *is* a compliment to the author; as a non-shipper and someone who has a lot of sexual squicks in fic, there are a lot of things that make me hit the back button, and if someone can get me to read past the first few paragraphs of a 'ship fic or one that hits my "eww" buttons, it really *is* a huge compliment to their ability to craft a story.

I guess I try to take feedback as a compliment even when it comes out sort of backwards -- there was one I got awhile back on a story that was essentially Rodney and Carson-centric, which basically said ... um, let me find it. *digs through LJ* Aha, here we go: "Carson and Rodney just don't hold my interest the way Shep/Rodney do and Carson just seems out of place when he's not in the infirmary. Loved the whumpy Sheppard parts." Um ... thanks? I guess it's nice to know that the reader enjoyed 5% of the story even if they didn't like the rest!

[saphanibaal.livejournal.com]

Be both pleased and insulted. Saves time.

(And I say this as someone who has, on at least one occasion, given the response "I absolutely do not see this and you made me see it for the duration of your story" to somebody's fic. I think I may have actually remembered to go on and say something nice about the writing or the fic itself, but I'm not sure of it.)

Dirty? Seriously? The only time I can think of possibly feeling dirty would be where a good fic either incorporated one of my outright squicks (and given that my reaction to, say, the one crackfic that had a teacher-student pairing in the background was something along the lines of "hysterically funny, although I wish that pairing hadn't been there" and the response I sent boiled down to "this was hysterically funny. Thank you," I don't think I'd feel dirty exactly) or had an excellent plot and dialogue but poor characterization or spelling. In the first I wouldn't bother to let the writer know what didn't work for me because it was a) personal and b) not something the writer was likely to change; in the second I would, but I don't think people are fans of bad spelling or sloppy characterization the way they are of pairings. Some people are fans of "fanon characterization," but I expect a writer to note when they're writing such for the convenience of people looking for it. (Hm. Perhaps I should note when I'm writing mathy John -- I try not to make him OMGSuperMathGenius, but...)

I like your phrasing on //Perhaps it was beaten out of them after a protracted session with a clue-by-four to which was attached a copy of said story?//, by the way.

[tielan]

Be both pleased and insulted. Saves time.

Practical. And elegant to boot!

I have seen one comment from someone (not in this LJ or against one of my posts) after they read a story with a secondary pairing they're against. And, yes, it did say something to the effect of: "I read the story, and you're right, it's good. But the John/Teyla! Now I feel dirty."