@sinfulwords I have no issue with your criticism. To me, it's a matter of execution, but I can see how an overused trope might annoy you. I'm just not deep into the fanfiction community, so I don't have that same overexposure to that trope. But I get the feeling. It's the same for me with forced orgasms in noncon stories. I think it can be done well, but in 99% of stories I just roll my eyes at it. It's the number one immersion killer for me.
What I do have an issue with though is the false positivity of your first post. In general, I prefer an honest, but respectful feedback over false positivity. It makes it hard for me to take praise on my stories seriously if even stories you don't seem to like that much get a gushing review from you. I get the idea to be generally positive as we're all just doing this for fun here. But if every story, even ones that you don't seem to like that much, get a 10/10 in your comments and 3 rating points, it makes me wonder what to make of your feedback. I don't think that this kind of forced positivity is actually helpful in the long run. It just makes me reevaluate your positive comments on my stories.
For example, when I now think back to your very first comment on one of my stories, your feedback for the The Infinite Rape, and see that you gave that story only 2 points and a much shorter, but still very nice comment compared to Party Hard... should I now assume that you secretly disliked it? I already noticed that you sometimes leave an 11/10 for stories in your comments. Should I assume that those are the ones you really like whereas the 10/10 ones are maybe not horrible but just kinda meh in your eyes? You see the issue that this hyperbolic praise creates?
To come back to Party Hard: I'm perfectly fine with you not liking the use of the song. I would probably object to the word "cheesy", partially because that's a word that I would generally avoid when I express my dislike of something because it's so loaded and very subjective. But it's totally fine for me that we disagree here.
Many stories here would take a prompt like "One More Time" and integrate it into their story by having one character say "Let's do it one more time for old time's sake!" or something like that and that would be it. Even apart from my own writing, I'm always happy when I see somebody use a prompt in a less superficial way. That is what I like about the song integration here. But in the end, that is a personal value judgment.
But now that we identified a point of disagreement rather than just buttering each other up, we could talk about something more interesting that arises from this whole discussion. Do you think that integrating lyrics directly into a story is generally bad? I get that it is apparently an overused fanfiction trope for you, but can it be done well in your opinion? Have you seen it done well?
I think yes, obviously, but I also tend to like framing devices that give a scene structure. I have experimented quite a bit with music for storytelling purposes. I would consider Party Hard probably my second worst story of everything I wrote, even though I still like it overall. And the fun thing is: I don't even like "One more time" that much. I just remembered a time when I thought the song was just everywhere and got annoyed by it. So when I got the prompt, my mind went immediately to it and I thought everybody would recognize it if I used it. I also thought the song fit the story quite well even if the music itself doesn't appeal to my personal taste.
The thing that I wrestle the most with when using lyrics directly like this is the question if this makes the story just inaccessible to readers who don't know the song at all. In later music inspired stories, I took a much more subtle approach where somebody who doesn't know that the story is inspired by a song wouldn't even notice its fingerprints at all.
Anyway, I'm curious what you think. Can music in a story work for you at all? And I mean by that, directly quoted lyrics as a framing device for a scene, and obviously not just a vague "I like the vibe of this song and I tried to capture that same vibe in my story." That's a completely different thing for me.
In general, I'd like to encourage you to be a bit more honest with your feedback. In the long run, I don't think it's doing anybody a favor to rate everything 10/10 even if your true feelings are "This was kind of cheesy".
Let's be adults and talk about different creative choices we'd make. And yes, even if you voice your criticism very respectfully, you will still have some people react very strongly to it. That happens occasionally. But don't let that discourage you. I simply adjust my style of commentary depending on how sensitive I perceive someone to be.
I’m sure it was a dope era lmao….besides it’s just my opinion on song inserts
there are A LOT of people who really like them!
