chaostrigger

Oh dear. You say you've been reading crossover fanfiction. Well there's your problem right there. Nothing good has ever come out of reading crossover fanfiction.

Mcjon I know that like 99,9999999% of it is shit or mediocre but we actually have a good one on this forum.

Seriously.

I know it's unbelievable.

I can't believe it. I won't. I've never seen a fanfiction I like that wasn't more or less a completely original story in a shared setting, and I refuse to look. :V

Dude.

Dude.

Just read this shit:
http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...e-Crossover%29

I frequently use it to cure the blind and leprosity.

^I3uster is making sense.

Criticizing is 100% allowed as long as it's constructive and not insulting. There's a difference between "I don't think this would work" and "you fail at writing, die in a fire."

If the author doesn't have the skin to handle criticism, they have no business writing - my personal opinion, mind, but then again, I rather embrace criticism. Praise tells me I'm getting it right, but criticism tells me what I'm getting wrong - so it's more valuable.

But well, some people have bigger ego than others. Unfortunately that's out of your control, but it's definitely not something we endorse here; as I said above, as long as it's not directly, personally insulting, criticism is and always will be allowed.

Remember, if you give valid comments and they get mad at you for it, stop posting and feel superior internally!

Right, If you don't mind I'll speak in Hero's defense again.


The reason why Heroslayer got pissed what that one or two persons kept bringing up the fact that they didn't like the fact that Shirou was pretty much useless in MSLD, even after Heroslayer explained his reasons for that. There is just a huge difference between the natural talent that is Nanoha and the third rate magus that is Shirou. People where hoping for Shirou to get a powerup as the plot demanded, but Shirou's string of failures was pretty much planned form the beginning, to force the nine year old to undergo a chance that will come to fruition in the next part of the story.


Perhaps Hero didn't execute his idea perfectly, and of course there are flaws in his story. The point remains that, even after Hero answered those complaints with his explanation, that single point was still the only thing that was brought up EVERY SINGLE TIME.


You are right that authors need to have the guts to take criticism, but repeatedly hitting them with on the same point even after they made their rebuttal is not helping anyone. By the time you entered the thread Hero's mood had already deteriorated to the point that your post just, even if it was not your intention, became nothing then rubbing salt in the open wound. At that points it starts to sound like you just want them to stop writing, and that hurts.


While posting F/NS I also got some criticism on my mechanics, both on BL and Spacebattles. I used that to improve my writing. However, I too had someone repeatedly pointing out a "flaw" several times even after my reply. Such advice will turn rather sour if repeatedly mashing into the authors face, even if he agrees that there's something wrong.That can really take the fun out of writing a story.


(Ofcourse, in my case it was a Spacebattler who insisted that that the Nasuverse magic was crap. Eventually he answered my question on how he would fix my setting with the brilliant suggestion that I should just explain Thaumaturgy with earth-magic as the side-effect of a gigantic lost logia, as that makes more sense then Nasu. I just told him that that's his opinion and moved on.)




In short, i think its okay to comment on a story and to criticize, but please try not to rehash the same point that other people have brought up. Even the best intentions can completely backfire if you do that. I mean, look at it form Hero's point of view: He finally finished his fic, which took him a lot of work, and all he sees is the same complaint from 6 months ago all over again.



Tl;Dr " Complaining reviewers are okay, but don't repeat the same thing for months! thats just plain annoying and isn't helping anyone!!





However, Chaostrigger, it's not like you were completely wrong, You just posted in the thread at the wrong moment and Hero was just really... really tired.


EDIT: Looks like Bear already stepped into the MSLD thread so I'll ignore his little jab here. DP's response however makes me rather sad, because that suggest that mid-tier writers like Hero and I ether are supposed to have an elephants skin regardlng of the kind of reviews we get, or don't write at all. That's seeing things rather Black and White there.

Originally Posted by fraggle

EDIT: Looks like Bear already stepped into the MSLD thread so I'll ignore his little jab here. DP's response however makes me rather sad, because that suggest that mid-tier writers like Hero and I ether are supposed to have an elephants skin regardlng of the kind of reviews we get, or don't write at all. That's seeing things rather Black and White there.

Not necessarily, as I don't know the whole of the situation, which you've filled in.

In this case, I can absolutely see growing tired of it - I was, after all, assuming a blow-up-out-of-the-blue. That's my mistake. However, Heroslayer should be able to handle the situation better regardless. I won't blame him for getting angry if this was just months and months of it, but the better thing to do is to just point people towards the posts where you explained your reasons and move on, as opposed to an explosion, and in the end, as you said, if need be go "Okay, that's a nice idea, but this is how I wanted to do it so it's how I did it" and leave it be.

In the end, it is up to the author to answer why he did (or did not) do things, after all. Exploding never looks good, as this episode shows, even if you're tired to death of answering the question over and over. I will fault him for that accordingly, but as long as he learns from it (and I'm sure he will), then all will be fine in the end. We cannot do something right without doing it wrong first, after all.

Nobody has to be a perfect writer, and indeed, no one can be. However, the whole point is to learn from the bad, whether perceived or otherwise. In this case, the lesson Heroslayer can learn is not one direct to the story, or his writing abilities, but perhaps one of learning to keep his tempers in better check and point out he'd already answered the question several times before - i.e; learning to handle such "repeat questions" better.

Right. I handled this badly and I will avoid it in the future.

Sorry about all of this.

Guys hero is someone else leave him out of this D:

But yeah, a lot of threads here are 'hugboxes' as I've heard them called. Just endless praise. I don't generally don't comment unless I've got something to say, positive or negative. But I also haven't been reading much on BL, or at all really, unless it's by a select few, like fish, arashi, or velsper. I may branch out again though.