justaphage replied to your post “Unsolicited Opinions on Fic Criticism”
I mostly agree with this but will say that on tumblr the way you get exposed to criticism of your work might not be "vanity searching yourself" because tumblr likes to suggest shit to you, or people may reblog it not knowing the author follows them, you just go in the tag for your ship, etc. Which is why I prefer to keep criticism I do not mean to share with the author to private channels.
Yeah, one of the shitty things about Tumblr is the total inability to define semi-private spaces or un-advertised backchannels. You’re either globally on blast, or you don’t post at all. The closest we’ve got to quiet backchannels are replies (prominent in the post notes, but not blasted out to your followers) and tag chatter (semi-hidden in the post notes, broadcast to anyone who sees your reblog on their dash).
OTOH, the lack of privacy means fandom has evolved elaborate customs for when a post is and isn’t your business. If someone’s untagged, read-more’d vent post comes up in Tumblr search despite their best efforts, picking a fight with them for talking shit about your fic is a dick move. This is another area where some leeway has to be built in, because people’s immersion in Tumblr social norms varies a lot. But I’m pretty comfortable saying that if a fic-crit post didn’t say anything about you personally, clearly wasn’t meant to be seen by you, and wasn’t meant to affect anyone’s interaction with you, it’s a mild-to-moderate dick move to treat it as an attack or jump in without good reason. (Reasonable responses: catty vagueblogging, undeclared spitefic, griping to a sympathetic Discord channel and basking in all the totally unbiased outrage at how Wrong some people’s opinions are, etc.)
emilyenrose replied to your post “Unsolicited Opinions on Fic Criticism”
bonus opinion: most fans are better at identifying ‘there’s something not right here’ than they are at identifying what, exactly, isn’t right. good critical editing is a skill. i’ve been in fandom for years and can count on my fingers how many people i’ve come across who can do it. odds are that the majority of any given person’s concrit is just WRONG.
Endorsed. I mean, for one thing, coming up with useful suggestions with any kind of specificity means knowing what the author was going for, and oftentimes the whole problem is that the author isn’t sure. Or there’s a mutually-unidentified missing link between what they intended and what they actually got across. But even if you’ve reached “I can see what you’re trying to do, and I can handwave in the general direction of where and why it’s not landing right,” teasing out the specifics--let alone a fix--is the stuff of back-and-forth brainstorming sessions with a good beta. Pulling it off in a drive-by AO3 comment would be kind of uncanny.
