I need a life, part 495,746

[sholio]

Pertaining to the previous SPN post, a couple of links to interesting discussions on race and gender issues in SPN:

Letter to Eric Kripke
On fannish objections to race/gender discussions of SPN

What I should be doing at the moment is working on my graphic novel script, which is soundly kicking my ass today. Obviously, I'm having some trouble maintaining proper focus. Also, I just realized it's already the 23rd and I still owe stargateficrec two recs each in the Sheppard and Sheppard/McKay friendship categories before the end of the month. Oops.

Hey, a question for everybody: When you rec stories, do you feel compelled to point out the flaws in your rec (making it more like a review, I suppose), or do you try to remain positive?

I find myself taking a different approach when I'm reccing things on my journal vs. at a public rec site like stargateficrec or stargategenrec. In my role as "public" reccer, I really do try to do all-positive recs -- which sometimes means finding things to rec that I really don't have any complaints about, or sometimes forcing myself to avoid mentioning the issues that I might have had with something I'm reccing. (Spelling/grammar mistakes, an ending I didn't like, etc.) I suppose that it seems unfair to bias a reader against something beforehand, when the item that bothered me might not bother them at all.

On my journal, though, I'm usually a lot more honest -- I still wouldn't rec something I didn't feel was worthy of it, obviously, but I do tend to mention things that bugged me about the story as well as things I thought were brilliant. The difference ... I guess that it's a matter of my journal being my own private space, and because it *does* make me a little uncomfortable to rec things I'm not 100% positive about without mentioning the flaws, I'd rather preserve my own comfort in my own journal. On public rec sites, I'm less concerned about my own comfort and more interested in pointing readers at a fic without predisposing them to look for the flaws in it.

As a reccer, what about you? Or is it even something you've thought about?

As a reader, do you prefer an honest, "warts and all" review, or would you rather go into a story with a more positive impression in mind? Or do you even read a rec beyond simply finding links to click on? (Which is actually the approach I take, more often than not. I'll skim the summary part of a rec to find out if the story sounds like my cup of tea, but I don't usually read beyond that because I'd rather be unspoiled.)

As a writer, do you object to having recs of your stories that aren't all-positive? Would you prefer not to be recced at all rather than have your story memorialized for all time as "Great characterization, terrible grammar"? (Me, I don't mind a bit, just for the record. Well, I might gripe in private about a review that I thought was really, truly unfair, but mostly I'm just interested to find out what people have to say about my stories.)

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- something I hadn't really considered until answering one of the other comments above is that the way I rec is heavily influenced by the way that I treat recs as a reading list without paying much attention to the actual content of the rec (i.e. if I know the reccer well enough to have a general idea of their reading tastes and I know that they liked a story, that's good enough for me). So it doesn't really occur to me to think that some people would use recs to warn them away from certain dislikes (lousy grammar, etc).

[kristen999.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say be warned away, more like a head's up. Hey this is great Rodney story with a twist blah blah blah, keep in mind the POV strays from time to time but overall a great read.

That's what I'm talking about...I love recs though because they really direct me to stories I would never had found because of its linked to an LJ I never see, or an author's site I never existed, many times with writer's I've never seen before.

I won't balk at one negative aspect of the fic. For instance I tend to read most everything you rec with my favorite characters, because we have the same taste most of the time. :-P

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get what you're saying! Upon further reflection -- I suppose I'd assumed it would be poor reccing etiquette to mention things like that, which is another reason why I feel more comfortable to do so in my own journal (where I can be as rude as I damn well please *g*) but not in a public reccing journal. The thought had never really occurred to me to view it as a service to readers to warn about flaws in the work.

(The one exception being content warnings of a "contains blah blah, may offend" nature. For example, character death warnings, or mentioning non-gen content in stuff I rec at genrec. I do always try to do that.)

[kristen999.livejournal.com]

To be honest though as I said before if you're rec'ing a fic, it means it was good, I doubt there would be much would have an issue with.

This is a big assumption on my part, but I'd say that %99 of the rec's anyone makes the material of the story probably doesn't have enough 'negative' crit to even worth mentioning.

If I read an average 30 rec'd stories a month, I think almost 29-30 don't have anything glaring..kind makes the balanced rec kind of null and void. My example above was of an extreme, happened a few months ago....and was an on F-list LJ not a public listing.

This all falls down almsot to FB in a way, no need to 'look for crit' just give your overall take on something. In the end I think how you've been recing has been fine as I haven't come across anything that would make me think "oh why did she rec this it it had all this XYZ issues?"

I'll stand by if its worth recing, I doubt there was much to be critical to begin with.

Though I'm glad when I'm warned if something is dark or has chracter death.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

You know, that's a really good point, actually -- because, while I tend to remember the handful of stories I rec'd and thought, "You know, I ought to mention [xxx]" and then didn't, that's a minority by far -- the vast majority of stories that I rec are ones that I really enjoyed, and don't see any need to give caveats for. (Aside from basic warnings for dark material and such.)