Uhh yeah. Who doesn't read what other's have to say? Really, there are bad long fics, there are good short fics. You just seem to enjoy defending the smaller fics.
*Face. Palm.* I read what you said. "Generally" = generalization = "most fics are this way." What I was saying = "I wouldn't say most are that way, but anyway, let's talk about why we should be looking at both because, y'know, there's terrible bits in both types of work, so it clearly doesn't matter as much as other things."
At this point, I'm going to assume you're looking for a fight because right now you're putting words in my mouth and arguing
again over something I never said in the first place.
Yes they are one liners,but have you ever stopped to think why there are over 1,000 reviews for them? No? Thought so.
Yay insulting people's intelligences! That's a mature way to go about a debate!
No, but really, I have... and I even said why in my last post. It's not my fault you'd rather pick out little bits and pieces of what I have to say because you want to prove that I'm an idiot for some reason. :/
Ever heard of analogies? No? Google is your friend.
Aaaaaand reported!
Yay!
Cool. So as I mentioned, Africa, Asia, and South America don't count because they are bad? It is the largest database. It is the best representation of Fanfic.
No, it doesn't, but because I've already said why and because you keep missing important parts of what I have to say, I'm going to just leave it at that. Hey, it's practically what you did for all those ~numbers~ bits.
Do me a favour and read the initial discussion on that point.
Do
me a favor and read the initial post you're trying to argue against here.
Why do reviews happen? A reader likes what he or she reads.
Wow. Now I get it. You're an FFNet fanboy, like one of those guys who goes around and submits one-liner reviews to random fics.
Seriously, on FFNet where everyone pats each other on the back and where the people who don't are automatically EVIL OMG (y'know, like Farla), yes. However, in most other writing communities (of which there are
plenty), reviews are to give writers
feedback. Reviews aren't meant to pat a writer on the head, tell them good job, and be on your merry way. They're to be
honest because reviewers are the best means of figuring out how you stand as a writer. As such, there's such a thing as "concrit," wherein readers tell writers what they
didn't like about a fic (in varying degrees of politeness) so that they might try to improve. That's what being a critic online is all about.
Now, I'm not saying every review
has to be negative on some level -- just that reviews aren't
exclusively positive. Hell, this is even actually true on FFNet, where on occasion, you
do get competent reviewers who have the balls to tell you what you did and didn't do wrong. (Farla is an extreme example. There's plenty of more polite reviewers out there.)
That being said, yes, it's entirely possible for a review to be
negative towards a work (as gorgonfish said), and it's possible for a story to amass a lot of intelligent, serious negative reviews, even on FFNet. Just because you get a review doesn't necessarily mean that's an automatic positive.
In fact, I'd hate to say it, but that's the mentality a lot of newbies to
FFNet have. (To compare, I've been there since 2001 in one way or another, so no, I don't consider myself a newbie.) They automatically assume that fics with huge numbers of reviews are popular for all the good reasons, so they go into it biased and believing that the fic can only be good. That's why, as gorgon said, most writers on FFNet try their hardest to cultivate a large number of reviews: because new readers flock to fics that have huge numbers of reviews, regardless of what those reviews actually say.
Character depth and crap can be helped by the beta.
Not if they're entirely unworkable. If you have issues with grammar and spelling, yes, those are easy to clean up. However, if your issue is the fact that chapters one through five are terrible because the battles that take place within them make no sense, the characters are completely OOC, and so forth, the only thing you
can do is completely rewrite those chapters, and doing a complete rewrite of chapters -- especially at the beginning of a fic -- could lead to a massive overhaul of an entire fanfic. That's not something a beta can help you with because betas tend to work on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Sure, they can help you with overarching ideas and whatnot, but they don't normally go back to chapter six when you've published up to chapter eighteen and tell you, "You need to scrap this entire beginning half." Once it's published, it's in the reviewer's hands.
Can I ask you something, actually? How much experience writing fanfiction do you actually have? This is a legit question and not one that's meant to insult you. I ask because a lot of the assumptions you're making are things you'll learn aren't true the more you write and experience different writing communities. For example, that entire bit about reviews being only for fics you like. You'll find, by posting your work (even on FFNet) that that just isn't true. However, that's an assumption a
reviewer on FFNet can easily make, especially if most of what they do is submit brief, all-praise reviews and don't bother reading a lot of reviews other people leave.
Maybe I'm talking about your heavy lean to smaller fics?
What lean? You mean the one that I had in response to gotpika's heavy lean towards
long fics and the one that I followed up with by saying, "So really, you can't say that long fics are better than short fics because both have equal chances of being both bad and good?" Y'know, which was the entire point of my first post?
Of course, that's probably going to be pointless to say because instead of wanting to listen to me, you'd rather just put words in my mouth and decide what I actually mean for me. Because that's a classy way to hold a debate.
In other words, that lean that got you so worked up was
a counter to someone else's lean. By bringing up the point that the opposition (long fics in this case) has an equal chance of being bad and then using that idea to introduce the point that length doesn't necessarily matter. Which you later said was stating the obvious, so I feel like we're just going around in circles here.
The contradictions arise from you not doing your part, by reading what I have to say?
I don't really find much of a point in arguing against you when all you're doing is spouting off assumptions and raging about something that wasn't even said. I mean, right now, you're doing the equivalent of insisting that a pink elephant is standing in the room.
You just tend to associate quality with shorter fics more. That was the start of it for me.
...Actually, I'm inclined to think you haven't really read
either of the first two posts. Otherwise, you'd realize you've got it hilariously backwards.
Yes... except the fic I was talking about was actually one of the more popular (because people actually liked it) fics. Y'know. A Little Night Music.
Outliers (sorry for my ignorance but, who the heck is CoriFalls?)
Uh... you do know that Kutie Pie brought up CoriFalls in
her first post, right? Complete with links that explain who she is?
Okay, I'm going to assume for a second that you're from FFNet. Let me introduce you quickly to how writing communities on forums work. First and foremost, even if it's a lengthy thread, pay attention to everything everyone has to say. Don't just barge into a thread and start barking all over the place because you'll miss important details.
Second, you can't just shrug off a debate with one-liners. (Note: I'm talking about the writing forum here. Let's not get into what the actual debate forum does.) In fact, that could be considered flaming at worst, trolling at best, and laughable somewhere in the middle. Most discussion areas will expect you to think carefully about your responses. So doing things like, "lol math doesn't lie" to a carefully worded argument that brings up a lot of examples to the contrary is not going to be received well.
Third, hey, since you're in this particular forum, you might as well
read the stickies while you're at it. That should give you some idea of how SPPf works at the very least. At the very most, it'll help you understand how the forum scene
in general works.
And I guess you should read what I have to say carefully too?
The problem is I did, but you completely misconstrued my original point. As a result, everything you said after that wasn't even something I brought up, so it's like you're accusing me of being racist just because I said there's a lot of different Thai dishes I don't like. There's a disconnect, and you keep flipping out whenever it's brought up that you're not even discussing the original point anymore.
Sure, you weren't directly making the point that small fics are better than longer ones, but your post had a heavy lean towards them, hence, my comment.
Context is a wonderful and beautiful thing. Removing posts and arguments from it lead to many an assumption that is, quite frankly, incorrect.
You do realise the existence of such thin's as opinions?
Funny you should mention that because you were rather adamant earlier about me not having my own. I mean, it's rather odd that you'd go on and on about how I'm biased and stupid and incorrect about what I think is a good or bad fic according to my opinion (which was highlighted with words like "subjective" and "in my opinion") but then turn around and say that I don't understand what opinions
are.
I never even shrugged it off, learn to read. All I said was it has a small word count, so that leads to me hating the damn thing?
Actually, you kind of did when you brought up the fact that:
1. It's the only long fic on my favorites.
2. Its chapters are extremely short -- considering the context in which you were telling me that longer fics are better than shorter ones.
Aaaanyway, yeah, because most of that was basically a series of personal and unnecessary attacks... yeah. Speaking as someone who genuinely wants to give you a heads up here, you'll probably want to step down at the moment because the mods here tend to be stricter than on FFNet, and you didn't
have to introduce yourself by asking me if I was abused by fanfiction as a child. Then again, I also don't have to reply to you, so if your next response is just as insulting as this one (i.e., implying that I can't read, questioning my ability to read, belittling me and patronizing me), then I really don't see how we can continue to have a good ol' fashioned discussion here. I mean, this post was skirting it as it is, what with you deciding that it's more important to belittle me than to discuss my points directly (which, incidentally, I'm taking as meaning you just couldn't counter what I had to say). Geez, for someone who had to end a post with the old "haven't you heard of
opinions" trick, you sure are adamantly against people who don't agree with you.
Edit, to Kutie Kitten Pie: That's because all of you are my harem. All of you.
