Expectations and reviewing · 2:47pm Aug 30th, 2014
What makes a bad fic bad?
It seems like a simple question, and one that any reviewer should be able to answer with ease. Bad grammar, overused plotlines, flat characters - the list could go on and on. But why are these things bad? Is there some objective way to measure a fic’s quality?
I don’t think there is. Even things that seem to be objective, like spelling and punctuation, are subject to change, because that’s the nature of language. It’s always evolving to meet our needs and sometimes conform to modern usage. As if that weren’t bad enough, these “rules” can be ignored to produce a story deemed “good,” as was done in “Flowers for Algernon” or my fic “The Editor in My Head.”
Maybe I’m just not smart enough to figure it out, but I can’t come up with any reason many traits of a bad fic should be objectively considered bad. Nevertheless, when I see that story about a depressed teenager who tried to commit suicide and turns into a black and red alicorn (once I hack through the description’s spelling errors) at the top of the “New Stories” column, I know. It’s going to be downvoted to oblivion, the comments won’t be kind, and I feel my stomach churn at the thought of reviewing this kind of thing for the hundredth time.
So the question isn’t so much what makes a bad fic bad, but why? I believe the answer is fairly simple, but I think it has some important implications for anyone who wants to review - not just on Fimfic, but everywhere.
The reason a person deems a fic bad is because it doesn’t meet his or her expectations. Beyond basic mechanical competency, we expect a story to entertain. When it fails to entertain, we feel cheated and reach for that downthumb. Reviewers take it a step further and analyze what, exactly, about the story robs it of its entertainment value. As I said before, this could be any combination of things - bad characters, boring plot, etc. - and the reviewer’s job is to identify and explain to his or her audience where the fic falls short.
Seems easy enough, right? Except it’s not. In my opinion, a reviewer should strive to be as objective as possible, analyzing a fic based on its merits on not the reviewer’s particular biases. How can you do that if the standard of judging a fic is subjective in the first place?
The key, I think, lies in identifying which expectations can reasonably be applied to a story. There are some that are near-universal - good grammar, for example - but others only apply in limited situations and may be exclusive to a single person. For example, you wouldn’t expect a tragedy to leave you laughing on the floor. For another, it’s unfair to condemn a story about Twilight riding a snowboard just because you don’t like snowboarders.
That doesn’t mean you have to like it, of course. Everyone has their own preferences, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re going to review, you need to recognize which expectations are shared by the community regarding the story in question, and which are your own preferences, which, while valid, are perhaps not a good standard for judging a fic’s quality.
I’ve run into this situation a few times, and each time I’ve tried to distinguish between my preferences and the community’s preferences. I once read a story with the following premise: Twilight fell into a coma before the mane six reached the Elements of Harmony. Nightmare Moon took over and executed all of the mane six, except Twilight, who was locked in a cell. The story begins with Twilight waking up and realizing what has happened in her absence, realizing that all of her adventures were nothing more than the creation of her mind while in a coma.
It was a dark, short one-shot, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. When I reviewed the story, I didn’t condemn it as bad. I pointed out some things I thought the author did well, and explained that while the story didn’t fit my tastes, I couldn’t find any reason to call it a “bad” story. So should reviewers distinguish between their taste in entertainment and the expectations held by the community as a whole - the expectations by which a fic should be judged in a fair review.
That said, there’s one other aspect of expectations I think needs addressing. What if the community as a whole has an unrealistic expectation? For example, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the colors red and black, OCs, HiE, or alicorns. They get hated because, most of the time, they fall into other pitfalls that make them boring - usually absurd characters and plot.
A writer should take this into consideration, but that’s not the point of this blog. What should a reviewer do when faced with such an expectation?
As before, a reviewer should distinguish between what takes away from a story’s entertainment value and what only happens to have negative connotations. When I encounter the dreaded red-and-black alicorn (a very rare occurrence nowadays), I simply explain that this particular character design has been overdone, and done badly, so many times that few people will give the story a chance. Does that make it a bad story? Not by itself, no.
And that’s the role of a reviewer - point out what detracts from a story’s entertainment value and leave biases and preferences at the door, or explain to a writer why these biases exist in the first place.
Not sure if this made any sense. But hey. What do you think?
~Scribs
An interesting summation. We enjoy a fic because we set a bar (whether that's based on our personal high and lofty standards, or if it's slightly jaded by first reading a lot of badfic) and the fic in question soars over that bar. When we first join the community and start reading, our personal standards are lower so it's a lot easier to enjoy things. If you've gone back to read our first favorite story in the fandom, and nowadays it sorta makes you flinch, then you know exactly what I mean.
But that's just the point though; it's not a science. I'm sure plenty of us out there have gone with friends to a trashy summer action flick, and entered the theater with low expectations. Even if the fic would score quite low on an independent metric, you might still have a very enjoyable time simply because it was so much better than you thought it would be. That's why I've always maintained that more critics in the community is a good thing, because I do not believe this to be an objective system. As a reader, I would be looking for a reviewer/review group/locked group like TL or RCL who has tastes very similar to my own, whose opinions have repeatedly proven themselves to be in line with my own expectations.
This is kinda eh with me. Many stories on this site don't meet my expectations. Around 80-90% of them, actually. I'd fave or like just about anything, but it's an extreme rarity (
) that I genuinely love a fic. For a bad fic in my perspective, it's not only below my expectations, it destroys them. Beats their knees with a bat until they're broken. Pours gasoline all over those expectations and then sets it alight. Anything else is just an eh fic. A bleh fic. A mediocre fic. Not necessarily bad nor good, just blah about.
2414378
Wow, thanks for stealing the quote I was gonna use, Pav.
NOW YOU GET IT!
fimfiction-static.net/images/group_icons/204/cd87648b113152f5f831.png
THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE!
2414456
i.imgur.com/tcWgc84.gif
2414378
I think I actually had higher standards when I first joined the community. I remember reading Half the Day is Night because it was six stars on EQD and thinking to myself how carelessly written it was.
2415089
Interesting! So you're saying your standards are lower now, than at the start? What factors caused that, d'ya think?
I think that bringing expectations into the analysis is unnecessary. I'm not convinced it matters what you expect from a story. I think it just matters whether an honest engagement with the story on its own level is likely to affect you in ways that stories are supposed to.
Reviewing stories involves identifying intersubjective standards of craft and measuring stories by those yardsticks. If it were not possible to extrapolate from one's personal experience of a story toward a more universal human experience, reviewing stories for the benefit of others would not be possible. But there are no objective standards of craft, as far as I can tell. If there are universal standards of craft, they can only have such status if there is something universal about humans that makes them interact with stories in specific ways. I think that the tendency to enjoy the resolution of conflict is perhaps as close to a universal human trait as you can get. Perhaps the tendency to see certain symbols, such as the sun or running water, as having certain meanings, such as life, is also nearly universal.
I've written more on this subject here, if you're interested.
2415109
I expect that the answer is that I am desensitized to the laziness of most fan writing because I am more used to it. Kind of like how toilet humor sounds really subversive when you first encounter it, but quickly becomes indistinguishable from regular humor.