redfirecracker | Fanfic / feedback wars

My god. This is the subject that won't go away.

It's like Chinese food. You eat it for hours, until you're ready to burst, and then you look at the carton and find out that you've only managed to lower the level of fried rice by, like, half an inch.

I'm only following the author wars in other people's live journals, so perhaps I'm lacking some depth of experience.

The concept of flaming is an interesting one. What, exactly, constitutes a flame?

I have been known to send feedback to authors that discussed how disturbing I found a story to be. I once sent a feedback that talked about how wonderful the story was, that it could actually make me hate the author a little bit for writing it.

I never heard anything back from that author, but perhaps she thought I was a nut case.

I might very well be, but the fact that she was able to inspire something like virulent hatred in me was the highest compliment I've ever paid to an author.

I didn't consider that message to be a flame. I certainly didn't mean it that way, and I would hope that the author did not take it that way. I like to think that the reason I never heard so much as a thank-you was just that the author in question doesn't do thanks for feedback.

Which puts this author in the rude category, but hey. World's full of them.

As a beginning author myself, maybe I'm more rabid than most about thanking people for taking the time to tell me *anything* about my story. The people who mentioned things that they *didn't* like still got notes from me, because I think it's polite.

Feedback is a gift.

hackthis said it well, better probably than I could have. Go here and read what she has to say.

Sums it up quite nicely.

Knowing how oversensitive I can be (just ask my betas! ::: blowing kisses :::), I'm inclined to be more tolerant of diva-like behavior in an author. But that's no excuse for rudeness, which is all that a flamewar really is.

We're all adults here. Let's act like it.

And again . . . let me mention the concept of free will and the delete key