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

[dreamflower]

Hmm...most of the time both my comments and my recs are pretty positive.

When I make public comments, I generally will send a private email to the writer if there were any problems I noticed. (e.g. "You may not have caught your mistake of using 'their' when you meant 'there'." or "You got Pippin's birth year wrong--it was SR 1390, not 1380.") They are generally appreciative, and usually fix the mistake.

Recs are a bit different. My favorite stories are pretty much free of the sorts of egregious mistakes that other people would see and say "What was she thinking to rec this story?" Still, if I find a story I like a lot, and it *does* have some of those mistakes, I may say something like "In spite of the occasional typo, this story really captures the characters well." (I prefer to give the writer the benefit of a doubt, and think they are typos rather than out-and-out spelling errors.) or "Even though it's not hard to tell that this was not written by a native speaker (or "by a first time writer") it shows a lot of promise, and I hope we will see more soon."

And if I'm not the beta, I'm not going to worry very much about occasional grammar or punctuation slips.

[sholio]

I think this is a good strategy -- and I *do* think that cricitism in recs ought to be phrased in a not-negative kind of way (because else, why would you rec the story?). So, thanks!