Subject: Question for the oldbies: When did the PPC stop leaving reviews on fics' pages?
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Posted on: 2023-12-23 17:12:09 UTC
From what I recall, in the early days, PPCers would leave reviews on the pages of fics they would mission. Does anyone remember how that worked, or when it stopped?
-Ls
Some people are keen on leaving reviews, others aren't. If I remember right, Araeph even had a policy where she would leave concrit on a fic she was considering for a mission, and if the author responded positively, she'd leave the fic alone; if they responded negatively, she'd mission it. Not sure about no response.
As for me, I used to be more of an active reviewer when I had more energy for fanfic in general. Sometimes I still do, though not on anything I'd mission, since per my current policy, anything I'd mission these days is old enough that there would be little point in reviewing.
I couldn't tell you exactly when the community in general slowed down. I have a hypothesis, though: it happened about the same time we stopped being mostly Lord of the Rings fans. The PPC at that time was a subset of the larger Tolkien fandom, with members being active in other fan communities where bad fanfic was suddenly on the rise in the wake of the films. I didn't experience this myself, because I wasn't part of any other Tolkien groups, but I suspect that there really was a sense, as hS alluded to, that fans had to protect their fandom from the invasion of crud. I don't know that it was an unprecedented phenomenon, but it may have been an unprecedented confluence of factors all coming together to create the zeitgeist that made the PPC take off.
... I digress. Returning to the point, without the sense of being part of a larger fanfic community, there can be no sense that reviewing is part of the social contract where giving reviews = getting reviews, so there's no incentive to participate in community activity like providing feedback on other people's work. I mean, we're not even very good at that within the PPC itself. Reviewing takes effort, and there's often little reward for it, especially if you're not a writer yourself and can't even expect reciprocal feedback on your own stuff.
That's a whole lot of words to say, ultimately, I don't know. Times change; people change; the world has changed. Maybe that's just the way it is.
~Neshomeh
I did leave a couple of otherwise very missionable fics alone because the author answered positively to my concrit - in fact, in one case I ended up in a message exchange in which the author proceeded to then ask my thoughts on the parts they hadn't written yet so as to whip those into shape too, and in another case the author went so far to discontinue the original version of his fic (was something like only a couple chapters in) and incorporate my advice in the reboot so as to fix the glaring inconsistencies with canon they had unwittingly introduced.
Proof that a subpar story might not be the result of sloppy work by a self-centered idiot, but simply the early, imperfect work of an inexperienced but earnest author who did the best they could at the time.
I actually don't think I ever ran into someone snapping back at me for leaving a non-stellar review, but I do remember an unsalvageable story being taken down soon after I left a review. It was in no way a scathing one, I mostly pointed out that several of the things they claimed about planes didn't work that way in a polite manner.
Nowadays my policy is to not make "proper" missions based on real badfics anymore (I'm fine with making missions about my old shames or made-up badfics, though, 'cause I still love the PPC setting), but then again my current works are pretty much "outside" the PPC so there's that.
For my Driftwood missions, I always post Agent Kaitlyn's Concrit as a review, anonymised and with any references to the PPC excised. Giving concrit is good!
Telling people you've executed their character is not. That's how the DOGA website got taken down the first time, with at least one story being lost forever. It was never a great idea, and the modern "kinder, gentler PPC" definitely shouldn't do it. We recognise now that we're not actually a force that will Fix Fanfic - we're just here to have fun, and maybe do a bit of concrit along the way.
hS
I'm just curious--at what point did the Old PPC angry rant review mission stop being a thing? Do you have a vague idea of what year it would be?
-Ls
Missions were never meant to be posted as direct reviews of a fic. I can't swear no one ever tried writing a mission in comments or reviewing in-character, but I'm pretty sure it would've been considered out of line even in the beginning. Flaming an author to their face was never encouraged, either, even when it wasn't as stringently discouraged.
I don't recall anyone within the PPC ever thinking it was a good idea to tell an author one of their stories had been missioned, either; that did happen, but as far as I know it was 99.9% trolls.
~Neshomeh
Have we really had that many trolls try to tell authors about missions, though? Just curious.
-Ls, wishing everyone a merry Christmas.
Just saying it was never likely to be a PPCer doing it.
It may not necessarily have been trolls per se, either, to be fair—occasionally I suppose an author's friend has come across a mission somehow and decided to tell them about it, which is understandable; or someone who reads PPC missions but doesn't actually know the community culture might've thought they were "helping" by informing an author. I don't know where to find any examples offhand, though, and if the end result is predictably upsetting the author and/or inciting the author to come after us, it's hard to distinguish from doing it on purpose.
~Neshomeh
and not just angry trolls looking to stir the pot.
I also used to give some concrit to people whose fics I'd missioned without mentioning the mission at all, but a couple other writers were alerted to missions of their fics without me having anything to do with it. That's why I don't really plan to do new missions.