guess what -- another miscellany post!
Mar. 9th, 2009 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerYeah, I like doing these -- just the random ramblings. Here we go:
-- "Fallacy Somewhere" had its moment on the Teaspoon home page, and now it's gone. I'm guessing that its "reads" will drop off now, although I know people do peruse the archive on Calufrax for recs. Anyway, it's had a good run -- 683 reads as of tonight, and considering that my oldest story from over a year ago has 703 reads, I'd have to say that Calufrax is pretty effective at giving a story a wider exposure. Interestingly, the story only picked up two new reviews since it was recced, but it picked up enough favorites that it is now my most-favorited story that was not posted as a WIP (which sometimes get favorited just so people can get alerts on the later chapters).
-- I'm feeling really guilty about how far behind I have gotten on "Turn Again". I did really mean to keep that going at a fairly regular pace, with no more than three weeks between chapters, but it got stopped dead in the water by my ficathon story "To the Rescue". The problem was, the two stories are pretty much polar opposites in tone -- I just couldn't write Sarah-in-Doctor-dead-world at the same time as I was writing (or thinking about) Sarah crackfic. And between the two of them, well, the crackfic won out. But now that the crackfic is finished and out there, I will get back to the angst. Promise.
-- I went ahead and submitted a story to get reviewed atfic_tossed. I'm a little nervous, but also very curious to see what they're going to say about it. I'm also wondering just how long they're going to keep this up; it's starting to look like a public-service anonymous beta-request site with some of the postings -- people saying "here's my fic, tell me what's wrong with it so I can fix it / not make this mistake again." A reviewer can certainly point out a major plothole, or a general tendency to "tell" rather than "show" a story, or say that characterizations were off, but I'm getting the impression that the people who are making these requests are looking for much more comprehensive feedback than that. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
-- I have officially decided that I can't trust the results of the CoT awards. Some of the winners were undeniably good stories, but some ranged from not-that-great to downright awful. I don't know if it's because people were voting for only the stories they already knew, or if people really do have bad taste, or if they just don't give a damn about the quality of the story as long as it fulfills some fantasy for them. Now yes, I know very well that wish-fulfillment is one of the reasons why fanfic exists, and there's nothing at all wrong with that -- but there's good writing, and there's poor writing, and an awards site should be able to distinguish between the two. Just my two-and-a-half cents.
-- Speaking of awards sites, two more seem to be about to enter the fray:oh_look_rocks, which is devoted to Classic Who (and I love the idea and that name), and smith_awards, which will work by having people post anonymous reviews and will end up doubling as a rec community (and I love that idea too, but the name's not nearly as good, guys). Hopefully these sites will do better than CoT has so far at rewarding quality. And hopefully they will help get good fic wider exposure, which is always a nice thing, especially for Classic Who. But I'm still not sold on the idea of pitting fics against each other. Quick, which is better, "Blink" or "Midnight"? They're both good, damn it!
Okay, and those are enough ramblings for the night. Especially because it's an hour later than it seems, which means it's really, really late . . .
-- "Fallacy Somewhere" had its moment on the Teaspoon home page, and now it's gone. I'm guessing that its "reads" will drop off now, although I know people do peruse the archive on Calufrax for recs. Anyway, it's had a good run -- 683 reads as of tonight, and considering that my oldest story from over a year ago has 703 reads, I'd have to say that Calufrax is pretty effective at giving a story a wider exposure. Interestingly, the story only picked up two new reviews since it was recced, but it picked up enough favorites that it is now my most-favorited story that was not posted as a WIP (which sometimes get favorited just so people can get alerts on the later chapters).
-- I'm feeling really guilty about how far behind I have gotten on "Turn Again". I did really mean to keep that going at a fairly regular pace, with no more than three weeks between chapters, but it got stopped dead in the water by my ficathon story "To the Rescue". The problem was, the two stories are pretty much polar opposites in tone -- I just couldn't write Sarah-in-Doctor-dead-world at the same time as I was writing (or thinking about) Sarah crackfic. And between the two of them, well, the crackfic won out. But now that the crackfic is finished and out there, I will get back to the angst. Promise.
-- I went ahead and submitted a story to get reviewed at
fic_tossed. I'm a little nervous, but also very curious to see what they're going to say about it. I'm also wondering just how long they're going to keep this up; it's starting to look like a public-service anonymous beta-request site with some of the postings -- people saying "here's my fic, tell me what's wrong with it so I can fix it / not make this mistake again." A reviewer can certainly point out a major plothole, or a general tendency to "tell" rather than "show" a story, or say that characterizations were off, but I'm getting the impression that the people who are making these requests are looking for much more comprehensive feedback than that. It'll be interesting to see what happens.-- I have officially decided that I can't trust the results of the CoT awards. Some of the winners were undeniably good stories, but some ranged from not-that-great to downright awful. I don't know if it's because people were voting for only the stories they already knew, or if people really do have bad taste, or if they just don't give a damn about the quality of the story as long as it fulfills some fantasy for them. Now yes, I know very well that wish-fulfillment is one of the reasons why fanfic exists, and there's nothing at all wrong with that -- but there's good writing, and there's poor writing, and an awards site should be able to distinguish between the two. Just my two-and-a-half cents.
-- Speaking of awards sites, two more seem to be about to enter the fray:
oh_look_rocks, which is devoted to Classic Who (and I love the idea and that name), and smith_awards, which will work by having people post anonymous reviews and will end up doubling as a rec community (and I love that idea too, but the name's not nearly as good, guys). Hopefully these sites will do better than CoT has so far at rewarding quality. And hopefully they will help get good fic wider exposure, which is always a nice thing, especially for Classic Who. But I'm still not sold on the idea of pitting fics against each other. Quick, which is better, "Blink" or "Midnight"? They're both good, damn it! Okay, and those are enough ramblings for the night. Especially because it's an hour later than it seems, which means it's really, really late . . .
