hidetheknives

[hidetheknives]

Ça fait peur et je veux que ça fasse peur au spectateur attiré par les yeux, suscitant en lui l'inquiétante étrangeté...

[hidetheknives]

[hidetheknives]

I sometimes find it hard not to comment on errors too. To me it means “I love your fic so much I read it carefully enough to notice X” because I’d never even bother to say anything on fic I wasn’t interested in. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve written long detailed comments like that and then deleted them before posting!! So although I agree it’s generally polite not to, I also think writers should try and be less defensive about comments like these because there’s often positive intentions behind them. I know it’s hard when you feel like someone’s shaming you, but quite often I really don’t think that’s the intention. Some people find compliments difficult and that’s the best way they have of telling you they like your work. I work in a museum and people will often tell us if there’s a mistake on a display panel - they’re invariably lovely or a bit awkward/embarrassed about it. It used to annoy me because I couldn’t do anything about it, now I just feel pleased that they actually read the panel and care enough to tell us about it!

Question as an oldster and fandom lurker, since you are an author and fandom dad. Sometimes when I am reading a story I'm knocked out of it by a "newer than they think" mistake. As in, flashbacks where Steve and Bucky use backpacks for school, or sit "criss cross applesauce" and using that term. I normally just give compliments to authors, but I wonder sometimes if I shouldn't tell them. Would you want to know?

Honestly, most writers in fandom don’t want constructive criticism in comments. I know it seems strange at first, but it’s a general norm in fandom that unless someone says “Concrit welcome!” you probably should confine yourself to saying what you liked about the story. So you’re doing exactly right, and it’s good of you to think about this and ask before changing. 

Follows a lecture for people who are not as thoughtful, so please don’t think the rest of this is me yelling at you :D The general drift of the idea is 

1. That they wrote the fic as a gift to fandom at large, and one doesn’t criticize gifts; 2. That if it didn’t actually make you stop reading and backbutton, could it have been that awful? 3. It’d be a bit like going up to a stranger on the street and criticizing their haircut. They don’t know you and didn’t ask for fashion tips.  

The most common argument for concrit is “I’m just trying to help!” but well, nobody asked for that help. A lot of people write fanfic as a way to enjoy themselves, and turning it into something to Improve Yourself Upon kind of ruins the fun bit. And even if none of these convince a person to avoid giving concrit, the fact that it’s a social norm in fandom means that it’s just considered rude. “I didn’t like your fanfic enough to respect social norms” is not the message most people want to send. 

I also think there’s a larger discussion to be had about the grave sin of “knocking someone out of a story” (again, not yelling at you, it’s a very common thing that comes up in the concrit discussion). It’s come to be seen as this truly awful thing, to perturb a reader with an anachronism or a typo or an awkward turn of phrase, and I question why. There are moments in almost any story I encounter – fanfic, movies, television, novels, comic books – where I see a strange phrase or something untoward happens and I have a moment of “whoa, that was a weird choice the author made.” 

But then I generally go right back to enjoying the story. 

I think it is extremely rare that people get pushed so far out by something minor that they can’t keep reading, that one small moment of “what?” ruins the story completely. There are legit reasons to stop reading a fic, and if people are upset or angry or hurt they should stop; I’m not talking about triggers or untagged adult content or what have you. My point is, if it didn’t stop you from reading the story, then you must have enjoyed the fic more than you were bothered by the single moment, right? So why focus on that? 

But above and beyond the idea of focusing on what you liked instead of the one moment you didn’t, this is a problem that is very specific to fanfic. I think we’ve really put up an altar to this idea of the purity of experience, that nothing can come between us and our enjoyment of a story ever, and we apply it very unfairly to fanfic, particularly since it is produced by amateurs for free. It’s not something I ever see in criticism of non-fanfic media, by fandom or by professionals. 

Anyway. I’d really like people to examine why fanfic is held to such a stringently high standard that a moment of discomfort in the middle of one’s pleasure reading is the only thing that starts to matter to some people and sometimes the only thing they comment on. And maybe if we collectively rethink how view that moment – not as something vital but as a byproduct of vast quantities of free entertainment, like a commercial or mosquito bites at the beach – then perhaps it would even stop bothering people as much. 

[hidetheknives]

People on this site: How is it that 90% of my dash is filled with that gay angel and demon couple?

Anthony J. Crowley, who won three awards in Hell when he created Tumblr dot com:

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~X-Men: First Class~

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Professor X: what’s your super power?

Me: hindsight

Professor X: that’s not going to help us

Me: yes I see that now

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I've seen a few like this already, and I do like the idea, but I prefer to think about Sister Mary Loquacious taking just a little bit longer to interrupt...

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My new hobby is badly photoshopping Jon Hamm’s face on Annunciation paintings

Leonardo

Tiziano

Pozzoserrato

Beato Angelico

And my personal favorites:

Savinio

and Tissot

“Ecce ancilla Domini, I’m the archangel fucking Gabriel.”

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God only knows what the context of this is

But the Crowley and Aziraphale energy is off the charts

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Crowley over the years - part 2

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Life magazine, February 1916

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literally i do not know how to caption this someone say something about his hips

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@lifwae requested  ⁠— David Tennant and Michael Sheen being literal Aziraphale and Crowley in the interview

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Mystrade Good Omens AU?

I see Lestrade and Mycroft arguing about who would be who.

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[hidetheknives]

July 27, 1914: Kafka struggles to eat a peach

Ate rice à la Trautmannsdorf and a peach. A man drinking wine watched my attempts to cut the unripe little peach with my knife. I couldn’t. Stricken with shame under the old man’s eyes, I let the peach go completely and ten times leafed through Die Fliegenden Blätter. I waited to see if he wouldn’t at last turn away. Finally I collected all my strength and in defiance of him bit into the completely juiceless and expensive peach.