"Experts"

[wiseheart]

Don't you like "expert" readers who just love to correct "mistakes" in your stories - mistakes that aren't there in the first place?

I know it's stupid to get so upset about it. It only causes me splitting headaches every time. Still, I get annoyed when it happens. Why? Because I do my goddamn homework, and the canon facts I present in my stories - completely regardless of what particualar fandom we are speaking about - are solid canon facts. I point it out in my goddamn Author's Notes whenever I change or bend something.

After a long time, I finally got some reviews on TFF-net - God knows it happens rarely enough. They were positive reviews generally. But the helpful and eager reader found it necessary to point out that only Ilúvatar could create living beings, therefore my presentation of the Dwarven creation myth in "A Dwarven Yuletide" must be mistaken. Although she dutifully added that she needed to re-read the Silmarillion to be sure. Then why the Hell mention it?

She also pointed out that Christmas didn't exist at the time when LOTR takes place. Now, aside from the fact that for me LOTR doesn't take place in any particular historical age (Tolkien rejected the idea early on, sometime around the first version of "The Book of the Lost Tales", I don't remember that I'd ever used the word "Christmas". And Yule was a feast mentioned in the Mannish calendars in the Appendices.

She also reminded me that certain spices weren't known in England at that time. In her review to "Winter Solstice". Well, excuse me, I thought frigging LOTR took place in Middle-Earth, not in England, right? And so the entire argument is moot. Not to mention that - according to "Life in a Medieval City" by Joseph and Frances Gies - most exotic spices were already known in 13th-century Europe, so I wasn't soo far from historic facts, either.

Finally, she mentioned considering ˇAstonishment in Mirkwood" that she doesn't believe Elven hair would change colour the way I invented it for my Silvan Elves, and that she preferred Legolas blond. Well, I'm so fucking sorry! It's not as if Elves would be real creatures with real genetics involved or whatnot. So what if I made their hair change with the changes of the seasons. I still find it a clever idea, and I still hate blonde bimbo!Legolas. So there!

Yes, I know it all was well-meant and she tried to be helpful. I'd still wish people could get their frigging facts straight before they start criticizing others who do a great deal of research to make a story work. That's why I like SoA - there an author can answer the reviewers on the review board and set such things straight instead of having to let other readers think that s/he's an idiot who didn't know his/her stuff.

In lesser extents, such things have happened to me in the Trek fandom, too, and in Andromeda. But sometimes I think the Tolkien fandom is the worst of all that I know.

Okay, I'm feeling better now.

Comments

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Just laugh at the review and put it aside. As you said, she no doubt meant well; she just has no idea she's wrong.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I know. The problem is, a lot of other people probably don't know it, either, and would think that I'm an idiot, when they read her "helpful" comments.

[songfire3.livejournal.com]

There's just no way you'll ever please everyone...

I'm a very choosy (is that a word??) reader, and your stories are very well written and researched and I enjoy them very much. Which is why you are on my flist :). I don't review as often as I should, because I steal my computer time from my "sleep time" and my comp keeps crashing...but you do have a gift and I for one enjoy quality Tolkien fic!

Don't let *them* get to you - and if they do just vent here, feel better afterwards and write some more ;) !!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :))

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Nitpickers who are wrong aren't worth fretting about. (They tend to make me feel triumphant for knowing more than they do.) But if you do regardless, can't you send them a mail pointing out their errors? Or add a review of your own correcting your reviewer?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, I do have journals at TFF, and I added a long entry to the journal for my Mirkwood-related stories with the corrections. I just hope I won't stir up another hornet's nest with that. People can be ugly when they are proved wrong - assuming they are willing to admit that they were wrong to begin with.

[jilba.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, this is what happens when someone takes things too seriously because they don't have a life. As for food and spices in LoTR, well, there oughtn't to have been tobacco, yet Tolkien put it there! So, I say, have a chuckle, delete the review and go on writing.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

You're right on the tobacco! And the hobbitses do have potatoes, too, even though they call them tatters... which, on the same principle, they shouldn't have, either. Haha!

[jilba.livejournal.com]

And there was a noise like a steam engine in the Hobbit, was it a shriek from Bilbo? In any case, trains in ME? We fanfic writers can't do worse then Tolkien did, so the canon freaks ought to know better.

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Sounds like she's a little unclear on *real* world history as well as Arda if she is mixing Christmas and Yule, not aware of the early development of the spice trade and so forth.

And if she doesn't *like* your changing hair color, that's fine. It's your creation, something you made up, and reasonable folks can disagree on such things. Some readers may find your idea plausible or interesting, and some won't like it for whatever reason. I happen to think it's both a believable trait to find in Elves who live in the woods AND a cool way of dealing with your dislike of Blond Legolas, but that's only an opinion, too, and just as easy to dismiss as your critic's view. [grin]

On the bright side, if she posted reviews to several of your fics, she must have been enjoying them; otherwise, she would have stopped at the first one.

It also occurs to me that some people think "critique" or "review" means "talk about what's wrong with this work," forgetting that the concept is actually to point out what does work, as well as what doesn't. And maybe that's not surprising: many book and movie reviews I see or hear in the US these days seem determined to win the reader or listener over by being clever and snarky about the book/film, essentially showing off how smart and witty the reviewer is. Maybe your reader has fallen prey to that model?

At any rate, I am glad to hear you're getting more reviews and am not at all surprised that most are positive. Remember to give those priority: they reinforce what you do well. As for criticism that you know is just plain wrong? into the dustbin!