Hiya, just wanted to say that I have seen this and will try to respond soon.
General Comments:
First, thank you for starting this discussion thread and being willing to go through these edits in detail. That being said, I only have a marginal interest in tropes and am coming at this page with the perspective of someone who when initially reading it was surprised by how overtly negative and sarcastic in tone much of the writing was, while simultaneously ignoring much of the context within the story and its development over time. I applaud you for putting in so much effort to analyse a piece of writing, but I think that it has been done without a spirit of charity often. I am well aware that we are free to critique and review Quietus on this site, but I argue that critiquing it in the same way that one would critique a professionally edited and published piece of fiction is inappropriate. Keeping in mind the kind of medium within which the story was written, the amount of support the author has when actually crafting the story and plot, and how the writing has changed over the course of a decade is key to being able to understand the tropes within this story and the story itself.
To address your more pointed concerns:
1. I agree that these points could be better edited for clarity and conciseness. Nevertheless, presenting these cases as examples of the trope without any further explanation as to how they have been later subverted, abandoned, or interpreted will ultimately present an uncritical and poor reading of the story and how tropes were presented within it, however intentionally or unintentionally.
2. I did not remove the YMMV or do as many edits to the Trivia folder, so I cannot speak to exactly what the other editor’s motivations were. When reading back through what was present, though, I agree that at least extensive editing was necessary. I list my reasons as follows:
2.1. Extensive references to the author’s personal tumblr account: While the site rules are clear that you have the right to analyse Quietus, it does not follow that providing extensive details about the author’s personal preferences and tumblr account are permissible or even appropriate. This was not a tumblr account created only for advertising or expanding upon Quietus or Quietus-related themes. It was the author’s personal space and going through it in this way and posting dates when things were changed on it (which now will be accessible to anyone who goes back through the history section of this page) and the author’s own preferences was an invasion of privacy and showed a lack of respect for the author. This was not the webpage of a professional author dedicated to their works of fiction and, while I recognise that the internet is forever and we can all comment on everything nowadays, putting personal details of a normal person writing a fanfic for fun in their free time into a wiki seems inappropriate to me. Note that this was not just confined to this section of the page. I recognise that this has partially been addressed in your most recent comment, so thank you.
2.2. Schedule Slip: The Schedule Slip trope was not appropriate as the author has repeatedly stated that she is not beholden to any particular schedule. The Schedule Slips trope page clearly states that it applies to media “released late, from hours or days to months or (in a few notorious cases) years." There is no deadline for each chapter of Quietus. Updates on the status of chapters are provided in the author’s FF.net page and in author’s notes, but these do not provide specific dates for chapter releases. Hence, this was a misapplication of the trope.
2.3. Arc Fatigue: While I understand that some reviewers were impatient for the author to hurry up and get to the romance, a large section of the fandom enjoyed this arc greatly as it allowed the characters to grow to the point that *healthy* renewal of the SS relationship was possible in the Relics arc. I think that both sides should be presented.
2.4. Serial Escalation: The use of escalation and building of tension is for particular plot points and the fic is clearly rated M for mature and disturbing content. As the trope explanation clearly states, “This isn't meant to be confused with the buildup to season finales or a plot climax, but rather a consistent escalation in events that always exceeds what a viewer would expect.” Hence, I don’t see how this applies.
2.5. Unfortunate Implications: Once more I do not think that this trope applies as it doesn’t meet the criteria, i.e. “When a work's content offends a large enough audience in a way that the author did not expect, you get this.” Anonomous reviews (that are possibly posted by the same person) and a small number of criticisms of the work do not warrant this trope. There is not a large portion of the reading audience that is offended by the points you make, as you seem to state yourself when prefacing with, “There have been occasional reviews”. Additionally, the author has stated that this is not the final version of the story and a large edit will be done once it is completed, hence critiquing any edits still pending is premature. Critiquing the implications of a one-off song used to create an ambience for a particular scene yourself is also misusing this trope.
3. Adhering to a singular writing style and tone is laudable, but, as I think I have shown, many of the changes that I made were in order to present a more holistic analysis of the story. At times, I do believe that calls for more charitable interpretations and not making judgements about where the author is going with something before they get there. If this is a site where someone can come and pick apart for fun an amateur’s writing style from ten years ago that hasn’t been edited professionally, then I think that there is a problem with the site and its culture and not my interpretation. We’re analysing a fanfic and that can be done well, but there is a human being at the other end of it and fans who love the story. What harm is there in being a bit more gracious in word choice while critiquing and analysing?
Further Comments:
Several of the tropes you bring up tie into canon aspects of Naruto and the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone. These tropes are problematic and dark at times, but crediting them fully to the author of Quietus as she is crafting a fusion fic and trying to do homage to both, is reductive. It should be made clear what are original plot points and which are being integrated and reworked.
In all honesty, I do not have a great deal of time to continue editing this page in any great detail, but I think that it is wildly unfair to the story, fans, and author to have left it as it was when I first encountered the page. I admire the effort put into parsing this story for tropes and would like to see this page be a clear and critical reading of these, while also being fair in its tone and presentation.
I would like to end on a few points. I think that, if this page is to be an appropriate and fair reading of the story, multiple points of view of the story and its themes need to be taken into consideration. Negative comments or interpretations should not be singled out and presented as the views of the entire fanbase, even if the YMMV section is not as formalised as the rest of the page. Additionally, a greater effort should be made to consider and present the context of the story and its development. Finally, the author’s privacy should be respected.
I do hope that this answered all your questions and that if we do continue to work on this together, we may do so amicably.
Edited by timewilltell
Holy flurry of new edits, Batman!
I've been away for some time due to real-life obligations, and now that I've come back, it seems like it's been pretty busy around these parts. I'm amazed, actually—I didn't think anyone else would find this page, much less edit it.
So I've been reading up on the changes that were made since I last worked on the page, and wow have y'all been expanding this page for real. I don't have an issue with most of the edits; in fact, I'm excited to see that people are coming on board and making edits! (And I also need to apologize for some of the trivia edits like the date of the author's name change, which were admittedly intrusive on top of unnecessary. So, uh, sorry about overstepping my boundaries there.) That said, I noticed a few things I found somewhat concerning:
-There's a lot more context added. While it does expand on the plot and show how the characters (particularly Sasuke-as-Hades) have developed over time, much of this context is being injected into examples without regard as to how that context relates to the trope being demonstrated.
-The YMMV folder was removed and the Trivia folder trimmed down considerably. I hope this doesn't sound pushy, but I did include the tropes previously listed under those folders based on what I'd observed among the FF.N reviews as well as the author's tumblr, in accordance to site policy regarding subjective reaction tropes. (I do tend to document more critical or ambiguous reactions, I'll admit, so if anyone wants to add YMMV tropes related to positive audience reactions, please do!)
-Some of the tropes in the main section (such as Author Appeal) have been edited to sound much more, ah, complimentary to the author. Having reviewed the site style guide on multiple occasions, I believe some of these edits may be a little too laudatory for the site's general writing style. On that note I was too biased myself and will strive to take a neutral stance when writing examples for potentially subjective tropes in the future.
And yes, I did read the edit reasons—those are the short answers. I'm reaching out to y'all for the long answers because I want us to work together on this page. Before I make any new changes, I want to understand your reasons for making the edits mentioned above—the last thing I want to do is start an edit war of any sort.
Hoping to hear from everyone soon!
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