Assorted rambling on fanfic, feedback, confused authors and more...

[sinfulslasher]

I've had two rather strange encounters with feedback today.

One, I got a very sweet feedback on a story I wrote ages ago. The subject line of the email only had the fic's title in it, and I actually initially thought it was spam! LOL! Why, you ask? Because... *blushes* I didn't even remember writing that fic! *headdesk* I actually had to look it up on my website! *headdesk again* And then I remembered it, and it's actually one of my favorite X Files stand alone fics I ever wrote! *third headdesk* How frillin' embarrassing is that?! Sheesh.

In case you're wondering, the story is Counting.

Two, the results for the first round of ncis_lfws  were posted. Since I magically managed to survive the first round, I improved my quota 100 percent - I got kicked out in the first round during the last challenge. LOL! So, that's cause for celebration, I think. Unless, of course, you look at my huge list of writing commitments, then it's a Very Bad Thing, because it means I'll have to write something else once the next challenge is posted on Thursday. So I'm doing a Snoopy happy dance combined with headdesks.

What got me though was one particular feedback. I got positive and negative feedback, and while I respect any and all people's opinion, I just honestly don't get the following point. The challenge was to write a fic using only dialogue. Everyone who entered a fic did that (I was worried some writers would ignore the challenge by adding descriptions, however short, and still get votes, but no such thing happened, so yay!) Anyway, challenge was dialogue. Meaning, if you read a fic that's all dialogue, and you can follow the action and are able to figure out which characters are there and who's saying/doing what, then it's a good fic. If you like the story idea, even better. But if the only reason why you vote negatively is because the fic is slashy, then... o_O Again, everyone's entitled to their opinion, and I'm all for diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all. But basically saying that "hey, I don't mind slash fic being written, but it's not my thing, and therefore I'm voting against it" just doesn't...compute. *blinks*

That actually kind of reminds me of something that happened to spoonyriffic during the last ncis_lfws  session. The challenge was whumpage. You could whump anyone (except Tony), and she whumped the living daylights out of Ziva. There has never been a character more whumped than the Ziva in that fic. It was a brilliant whumpage fic. There was tons of hurt, but no comfort, which was only right, because the writers weren't supposed to write h/c but whumpage. Y'know? So, someone commented that they didn't like the fic because there was no comfort. Well, the challenge was whumpage, not comfort, for crissakes!!! Someone else said that they would never give a thumbs up to a fic that features Ziva, no matter how well the story is written, because they don't like the character. Well, excuse me, but what the hell kind of point are you trying to make?! Granted, the LFWS challenge is supposed to be fun, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you can't force everyone to like everything, but...IMHO, if you cast a vote, at least be fair and give a good reason for it. Personal dislike doesn't cut it. But that's JMHO.

Then we have the ever looming deadline of the xf_bigbang  thing. I've been plotting and mentally writing all damn day, and I was going to tackle the fic tonight and get another chunk written, and I felt incredibly pleased with myself and was already proudly patting my own back, when I suddenly got tackled by the most intense NCIS plotbunny in a long time. I've never written whumped!Tony before, and I read a couple of really great fics that were posted as part of the ncis_ficathon  (you should really check out the goodies there!), and I suddenly craved whumped!Tony with Gibbs to the rescue. ARGH! I'll definitely ignore the evil plotbunny for now because I really need to work on the bigbangy thingy, but I know how my Muses usually are, and especially TonyMuse is one hell of a badly behaved brat, I fear he won't let me concentrate on X Files angst. Gah. Anyone up for adopting my TonyMuse for the time being?! *looks exasperated* LOL!

Also, I've decided to start tagging my LJ posts. I've been spending waaay too much time digging through old posts looking for this or that, and that's annoying as all hell. So, I'll need to work my way through all of my posts to tag them. Not that I have any time for that, of course. LOL! Oh well, one more thing for my ever growing to do list. ;-) However, I shall start tagging right now, so this is my first tagged post. *feels accomplished*

And now it's back to that monster of a bigbang fic...