Question

[kriadydragon]

What's the weirdest (or most annoying, or most confusing, or most absurd) review you've ever received for one of your fanfic?

Mine remains the one in which a reader lectured me on Arthurian legend for a fic that was a modern AU of Merlin, a show in which the wizard Merlin is a twenty-something year old kid, Arthur and Morgana never got together, Mordred isn't Arthur's son, and Merlin didn't end up in a tree or get stuck in a cave.

(And i swear that the Merlin fandom must have a lot of nit-picky readers, because I also swear I've never had so many nit-picked fic until I started writing Merlin fic).

Comments

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

I wrote a SGA, And Then There Was One, as a result of a photo prompt. The team, minus Teyla, exit the wormhole but something has malfunctioned after they dial home. They step out onto a planet that proves to be not what they dialed. To add to the problem, Sheppard is now wounded, shot during an attack while team was on former planet. He takes shelter in a sort of tower and sends a reluctant Ronon with Rodney as he tries to fix the DHD.
She complained not enough dialog.
????????????
Sheppard was totally alone soon after they exited.
Rodney and Ronon were outside a distance away. Ronon, who is not exactly known for a lot of chatting, is there to ensure Rodney's safety and Rodney is not exactly talkative when he is busy.
I never replied as I felt it was just nitpicking without real thought.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I try to cut nit-pickers some slack since most of them are trying to be helpful (and sometimes they do have a point) but, yeah. I sometimes wonder if some readers are actively looking for stuff to nit-pick, so take whatever they can get.

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

Sheppard was alone......most of it was what he was thinking and the setting etc. as he waited.....
Rodney does not chatter when he is busy working as he was with the DHD and we know how Ronon is not much of a
conversationalist.
That was why I found her comments kind of nitpicking

[karri-kln1671.livejournal.com]

The Tolkien fandom was exceedingly nit-picky back when the fandom was at its peak. Nit-pickiness in fanfiction has always somewhat baffled me. It's fanfiction! Playing with the characters and the universe is part and parcel of fanfiction. If one doesn't like a story, one simply doesn't read it. If one doesn't like an author's take on things, one simply doesn't read the author's works. If one doesn't like anything outside of canon, one shouldn't be reading fanfiction at all.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I've heard tales of the nit-pickiness of the Tolkein fandom (like, heaven forbid if you stray too far from canon, or something).

I can understand some people's frustration with certain things (like fanon stuff that becomes prevalent to the point that it's all you get in fic). But at the end of the day it's important to remember that, yeah, this is fanfic, and in fanfic pretty much anything goes. There comes a certain point in which nit-picking doesn't serve any purpose except to make the one nit-picking look like a control freak.

[karri-kln1671.livejournal.com]

The nit-picking always came across to me as the nit-pickers way of proving they'd read Tolkien and not just watched the movies.

To me the biggest problem with nitpicking a fandom as complicated as Tolkien is so much of what is considered canon is open to interpretation. For example, the Silmarillion, which is pretty much required reading for any ficcer who wants to be considered to be writing within book canon and not movie canon, was finished by Christopher Tolkien after his father's death, based on his father's copious and often contradictory notes. So, can it really be considered canon? Even it's considered canon, it often contradict itself and the earlier material (LOTR, Hobbit). Then what's canon - the earlier material or the later material? It's simply too complicated a fantasy universe for there to be one absolute view of canon, and that's even excluding movie-verse, which has a canon of its own.

Really, I think that same is pretty much true with the Merlin fandom. The mythology and legend surrounding Merlin and Arthur has so many interpretations and embellishment that even excluding the various movie and television version, is there really one absolute canon?

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

I wrote a piece and ran it past my sister and BIL who are both writers. They really liked it and
encouraged me to post it. When I did some said "More please" but I listened to those who did not like it and some pointing out it was AU...ah, most of LOTR is AU......

[bratfarrar]

In the story I wrote about John's uncle dying when John's a kid (8, I think), the ending is basically John's mother trying to distract John with cake, as it's also his birthday. I got a comment complaining that she should have hugged him or otherwise comforted him in a more blatant fashion.

Despite the fact that her husband is basically going to pieces and trying not to show it, while John is just quietly sitting on their front stairs. And that John has never been shown as a touchy-feely guy, which I figure would extend back into his childhood.

Which I suppose shows that the story worked on some level, if the commenter connected enough to feel they needed to criticize the parenting John was receiving. But still.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The problem with constructive criticism in fanfic is that you can never say if a piece of criticism is actually pointing out a problem or if it's just someone whose reading was being filtered through their own perceptions of canon (and their own perceptions of life in general).

I once got into this discussion with someone over a scene I wrote in which a character was unable to start a fire because he was cold, shaken and having a difficult time thinking straight. The person didn't find the scene believable, and kept citing reasons as to why the character should have been able to start the fire. But to me they were missing the point of the scene entirely, which was to show the characters (because there were two) being in a bad place both mentally, physically and emotionally. It was also such an odd thing to nit-pick, especially since the person admitted that they weren't a survival nor fire-starting expert.

[karri-kln1671.livejournal.com]

"Okay then..." and "Um...okay." are the most annoying, absurd reviews I've received, I think.

I've had people nit-pick the canon or comment on the writing, but I can respond to those comments. Something like the above... What do I do with that as a writer?