I would, but certain people within the group say it for for me most of the time :). I'd rather not just be an echo...
My dear, if you've got something to say about a fanfiction, chances are, it does more harm than good to simply keep it to yourself, and it's not at all polite to blanket insult those authors on a public forum, rather than tell them how you feel directly to their faces.
Of course all of them aren't, but many of them are,
Not everyone thinks the same way. Period. It's great that you've got an idea of what does and doesn't work for the genre, but those other fics get the reviews that they do for a reason: because other people
do think they're readable. And regardless of whether or not your group of friends thinks the same, there's a
lot of people reviewing these fics with praise. If you disagree, go review them rather than talk crap about their fics without naming names.
It's rather annoying and frustrating to see that you seem to put your fanfiction on a pedestal. Sure, you say it has cliches, but you're also saying that it's more readable than anything else in the genre. At the same time, you seem afraid to comment on someone else's work because you're afraid it'll be an echo.
Let me say one thing about that: if you don't like something that's going on with a genre or if you don't like a story, chances are, the author won't know about it until you say something. FFNet's full of new writers. They don't know what is and isn't kosher; they simply see other fics like theirs and think what they're doing is okay. If all they get is praise, they'll keep doing what they do without fixing their mistakes. If they just get one voice of concrit and tons of praise, they'll think the one voice doesn't know what they're talking about. If they get a few voices, it might pass through, but chances are, it still won't. If they get enough voices telling them they're doing something stupid (in polite words), they'll either give up or, if they actually care at all about writing, try to improve.
There's
no reason why you should hold back except if you're compensating for your own fic. I say compensating because when you get out there and actually leave decent reviews, you start to look at your own work with a more critical eye. You're leaving yourself open to getting reviewed in return, so you end up looking carefully at your work and realizing it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread to brace yourself for someone just like you to give you the kinds of reviews you left.
But in general, I'd hate to say it, but "I don't want to sound like an echo" =/= a good excuse. If you don't like it, rather than trash talk the genre behind its back, go out there and tell the authors to their face exactly how you feel.
Otherwise, you don't come off as particularly friendly right now by putting your own work on a pedestal but refusing to say why someone else's isn't up to par. (Yes, you said it here, but you're preaching to the wrong choir.)
For the last time, I forgot/didn't know (Yes it is a mix)! :(
The rules are in a sticky. Not beating it into your head or anything here. I'm saying we can't review because we can't review, so please stop expecting us to. In other words, emphasizing an issue that keeps popping up.
I still think that, in the case of fanfic, it does more harm than good for everyone's stories in terms of reviews...
Except for one thing: if an author's fic has been dead for a year, chances are, the author isn't active anymore. Basically, here, you're saying it's productive to review a work, only to have the original poster never see it because they don't visit the site anymore or have moved onto other projects.
That's really the thing about update frequency and what it tells the readers as well. Untouched stories that have gone inactive for more than a month usually tell the potential audience that it's dead for a reason. Numbers of authors around here leave stories unfinished (as I've said before) but move on to something else because they don't like the story they were working on. There's
absolutely no way to know whether or not the story is actually active unless the author actually posts a new chapter, so most people will automatically think that if it's gone for so long without the author so much as saying a peep about it, it's one of those abandoned works that the author doesn't care about anymore (if the author hasn't simply up and left altogether).
In other words, yes, it makes sense because it automatically bars us from replying to a dead project. We've got better things to do than to offer advice to a fic when the author is either not even on the community anymore or has improved and is showing that through newer work. It's not productive to take a risk, put effort into a review, and leave it where we're not sure if the author will actually see it and can use our feedback.
At this point I think so, I was trying to change the subject :\.
How many times were you taking a condescending attitude towards me and insulting the general public? Hey, at least I openly admit that I'm getting annoyed.
And change of subject or not, you responded, so I replied. Sorry, but you can't really shepherd me into simply ignoring a response and avoid a subject unless you're saying something particularly illogical.
