Ah right, yes. I'll take the sandwich, but I'm after the meat. http://www.advancedetiquette.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SanwichTechnique.jpg Oh, the complaint and how to fix it, I mean. Compliments are nice, but the time to give a useful complaint is more valued.
My motivations are not the same as yours, thank you for not assuming that they are. Ultimately, most of the examples aren't supposed to be aware that they've been made examples of, and hopefully in most cases they're not going to care because I usually go after things that are at least 5 years old, but it could be educational to others if they're open to it.
Hmmm, why do you think that racism thread went so poorly? Alright, I'm sorry that I was interested in proving that I could handle my art being mocked when he couldn't. @Vivec I'm sorry that they hurt you.
ah! that's what i figured! some or most people aren't like that, greallan. they derive comfort from the other parts of the sandwich technique being included, think that criticism is still clear when the rest of the sandwich technique isn't there, and are unsettled or upset when the meat part of the sandwich technique is the only thing there. like, the social nicety parts of the sandwich technique are viewed are by some or most people as, like, cues that the person they're talking to respects them, views them as person just like them, and/or values them. those parts make it less clear and less direct, and mean they have more to hear or read but to those people, the extra noises are reassuring and those parts don't get in the way of their understanding of what people are saying to them.
continuing to be super blunt, as your preferences have indicated: no, no one in the audience is going to get anything educational out of the sort of sporking fic you have posted you do nothing to illustrate why anything you think is bad is actually bad - you just list off titles and have your characters go 'this is terrible!', that tells the reader about nothing but your personal tastes you don't demonstrate sound writing principles, or anything your readers could study to learn how to improve their own work; it's overall wooden and stiff and speaks to your opinions as an author rather than anything your characters believe you don't really discuss the unsound writing principles in any of the fics you spork and offer good alternatives, which is the only way i can imagine you might justify pretending sporking is criticism (it's not) here's the problem with sporking, as a fictional concept: it inevitably blurs the barriers between fiction and not fiction, because it's criticising someone's real life work. this means that the things you write in your spork fic are not going to be seen as pure fiction, but as reflections of real life, because you are deliberately invoking the real world. which means that things like characters being bigoted will be seen as a reflection of yourself, or that being a complete goddamn jerk will be seen as a reflection of your own ideas this is something which is well-understood in roleplaying - it's called the IC/OOC line. you don't cross the IC/OOC line, because when you do people get upset, because real world principles get dragged into happy fiction funtimes. sporking violates that line all over, and so you drag the real world into your fic and people are going to get upset because you're mocking a real person for their enthusiasm the solution to this problem is to stop crossing the streams and just write fiction because, look, you are not going to educate anyone with what you have shown us, except perhaps as a stellar example of what not to do
I think my frustration is that I'm seeing nothing but a slice of bread sometimes... Even if there is meat, I can't figure out what to do with it. If I ask questions, people get all irritated and insist that I can't take criticism. To possibly exaggerate, (I'm not going to go looking for what was actually said, so it's how I interpreted it.) How do I change {She felt that anime was completely nonsensical} in response to a critique of {I can't get into their heads.} I could change {Larry said, "Let's watch this together."} to {Larry decided that they should watch it together. He said, "Let's watch this together."} I have a feeling that the person saying these things were just looking for potshots to see how I reacted. I get that **I** should remember the sandwich technique for others, but I feel like sometimes people are afraid to give more than an empty bun.
ah, i see how that can be frustrating. and as for that particular critique, i think you were misinterpreting what means. is much better than 'cause it is obvious that, since larry said, "let's watch this together," larry has decided that they should watch it together. what's not obvious and what you haven't elaborated on (i assume, i could be wrong) is why larry wants to watch anime with her. like, what is his motivation for deciding to watch anime with her, and what does his motivation mean to him? why is he deciding to do it with her specifically, instead of alone, or not deciding to do something else? what drove him to make that decision, and what does it mean to him? what people usually mean when they say they can't get into a character's head is that they can't understand what a character is feeling and what is motivating them to do what they do, what is going on with them emotionally and interpersonally and in their thoughts. they usually don't mean that they don't know what the character has decided to do and/or is doing.
TLDR: I'm bad at it so trying to ascribe any noble purpose is completely lost to my being bad at it. I already admitted that I was drinking the PPC koolaid. That one fic where I figured out that the story was bad because the villain had no motivation? I'm pretty sure I could find it, but it was written with that one character who wouldn't stop being a wooden puppet despite my efforts to make him a real boy. (Note to self, write a story about an author whose character is like that.) Kinda lost me on IC/OOC line. I tried D&D and D10 a little bit, but not enough to really get that line going. The closest I came was when I decided my character went off on her own because I couldn't stay awake, and I was perfectly fine with horrible things happening to her offscreen.
again, there's a good chance this is because you have demonstrated a tendency to completely lose your shit when people criticize you on things that aren't your writing. even if you can take criticism about your writing, people are likely to assume you can't if you throw fits about literally anything else
Which is something that someone finally explained in the middle of everyone else screaming at me for literally doing what they told me to do. As for the why he said that they should watch it together, he had gotten a note with instructions to watch it and a vague implication that it was addressed to both of them. As far as what it means to him... what emotion does a Gateway store employee feel when told to get a computer from the shelf? I didn't do much retail, but I can never tell what store employees are feeling when they're doing their jobs.
That makes the question/analogy about the contents of report cards sort of irrelevant, doesn't it? If it's not supposed to be done for their benefit, then there's no connection at all to the purpose of report cards. If the goal is to write better, this is not a useful method.
Also, and this is super important, criticism-only is awful for getting better. Negative feedback is dramatically less useful than positive feedback, because it's much easier to Do X More than to Do X Less. Being told "don't do that" doesn't tell you how to achieve goals differently. If you want to get better, you must get positive feedback too. If you only want "the meat", you're not actually gonna learn much.
Last thing I'm going to post here before I stop wasting my time attempting to communicate with someone who is willfully ignoring me-- Criticism can absolutely be blunt and straightforward without being cruel - Salted Earth provided a good example. The reason people offer compliments along with their critiques is so that the subject doesn't excise the parts where they demonstrate skill. It's stupid to make the subject of a critique think they have to completely re-invent the wheel after every critique... unless the point is to make them stop trying at all. @Greallan, you aren't proving that you're an Internet Tough Guy by repeating that you can totally take harsh critique but no one is mean enough - you're only demonstrating that you like the sound of your own voice when you talk big. You're making yourself look increasingly foolish as you continually refuse to respond to any criticism or even attempts at discussion that isn't phrased in a sweet enough tone. This isn't an autism problem, this is an asshole problem. Maybe work on that.
I'm having problems making sure I respond to everyone. This thread isn't even a week old. If you feel missed, poke me. And I have been responding to criticism.
so, he was basically doing it 'cause it was his job? and hmmm, i've never worked in retail myself but i get the sense, from what i've noticed people in retail saying about it on the internet, that a lot of them feel a resigned annoyance about their jobs and/or get tired out from putting up a cheery front for customers and/or are upset 'cause their bosses treat them badly. so a gateway employee might feel like, "ugh, that's yet another boring and/or stressful and/or tiring task i have to do" when told to get a computer from a shelf. 'cause, like, though i think there might be some people who like retail, it's the kind of job that tends to be boring and/or stressful and/or tiring for people. so, if he doesn't like anime (or the particular anime he was assigned to watch) and/or doesn't like the person he's been assigned to watch it with, and you want an idea of how he would feel about then being made to watch it with someone for his job, this should be a good start, i think. but if he likes anime (or the particular anime assigned to watch) and/or likes the person he's been assigned to watch it with, he might be happy about the assignment and excited to watch it with that person. this latter option doesn't seem like what you're going for but i figured i'd throw it in as a possibility anyway. what he's doing is his job, yeah, but there is plenty of emotion that can be gotten from that, even still. probably not really intense emotion, this isn't a super angsty situation or anything, but plenty of emotion all the same.
yeah, you're right about that. :D i just was bad at explaining it 'cause, like, i know less about the Making Things Better side of Criticizing Things Well than i do about the Not Making People Upset With It part 'cause i felt like learning the Not Making People Upset With It part was higher priority for me to learn when it came to the skill of Criticizing Things Well than the Making Things Better part. like, yeah, Making Things Better is one of the points of criticism but it's not the first thing i think of when it comes to when i think of why the compliment sandwich is helpful for people.
