I commented on three "errors" in three fics--1. your Cas is correcting his grammar incorrectly--is that deliberate? 2. The Impala doesn't have seatbelts 3. Gabriel is the shortest of the four.

I got back 1. Okie dokie smokie snippiness 2. Laughing insistence on adhering to road safety even if the show doesn't and 3. "I was trying to make the age difference clear" and eventual "I'll just fix it then..." when I said size kink people would be sad.

The second question was to an author I enjoyed and respected, and ~oddly~ enough, she she fielded me pointing it out the most deftly. I had never read the other two before. If someone pointed something like those out (I honestly tried to be nice each time, honest) to you, would you be mad? I'm not pointing out people's grammar errors generally, but when it makes a mistake in the story itself, it feels awkward, and I do want to be helpful.

And AO3 doesn't, unless I'm missing it, have a way to do that other than in comments, so it's right out there unless the author deletes afterwards. Some authors have sincerely told me specifically to mention anything I see, others I don't know if I can take them at their notes' word.

I don't exactly like it when people point out errors to me, but I generally like talking about my stories and why I make the choices I do when I write. There have only been a couple of times when someone pointed out to me something more erroneous than a typo (had a lot of fun with the time I had someone wear a "t-shit"). One was "Your title for that story is incorrect - that's not the proper Latin word for that, and even if it were, it's the wrong declination" to which I replied "Sorry to say, but I can't decline my way out of a paper bag and the website I got that from said it wasn't so much Latin as Greek transliterated into Latin." I could see how inaccuracy of that sort might seriously decrease the enjoyment of someone with actual knowledge of Classical languages, but I was not about to rename a novella-length fic that took me six months to write, two months after I finished it. And then there was the time someone challenged some aspect of characterization and I just flat out disagreed with the challenger's interpretation. Now that one is probably closest in spirit to the types of errors you are talking about. And it didn't make me angry or hate the challenger, but I did not find her arguments about characterization compelling, so I probably had a bit of "I know better than you" attitude.

I dunno, that might not help you at all.

I don't invite error reportage--behold! I am the perfect write! Gaze upon my works and despair!--but I enjoy the ones where I've got half a dozen glowing reviews and one person saying "X would never do that! This is horrible!" Which isn't error as much as taste, but I comfort myself how I can when I run into criticism. (I don't deal with it well.)

I only talk to people about characterisation when I agree with them. And the only reason I mentioned grammar was because it was a character action. She had tons of errors just lying there, but if a character is correcting someone else's grammar and the original sentence is correct, I figure she better be sure of that (if she is telling the truth and it's a deliberate error, it's well hidden among all the other errors throughout the fic, and it's also the only error that character makes, so something a beta should talk to her about, not me).

If someone contradicts canon in a non-AU story, that I will point out. Or gets history wrong about something close to me, or things like that. But if you think A is a bitch or B is an abuser or you can't spell for shit or whatever--those are the things fandom wars are made of and it's not my job to talk to you about. But the category of objective truth--I don't know--I just feel it is helpful.

And I will note that the writers who've said "Go ahead and call out any typos or anything you see!" to me specifically and with convincing sincerity have consistently been excellent writers. Cause and effect to be determined.

There have been a handful of times that I have called people out on characterization, but I ask them what their reasoning for the characterization is rather than flat out saying that they are wrong. There are times when I want to, but I can answer my own question, "OK there was that one scene where ___ did that, even though 99/100 times ___ does the other" so while I don't agree with that aspect being the ruling principle of the character, I can see where it comes from. The times I have challenged someone on their characterization choices, their answers have been pretty uniformly "yeah, that character doesn't act like that on screen but I wanted them to anyway."

I've decided to go with positive reinforcement (clearly fandom is craving my headpats, whatever could work better?). Every time I see a complex and interesting characterisation of the two most sloppily maligned characters (IMO) I make sure to comment saying how happy I was to see it. And that's the sort of comment that tends to strike up conversations, not just "thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it", so I'm extra glad of it.

At least once, in scenarios where I feel I've built up a decent rapport with the author, I might mention that I feel differently about a given character, but usually that's only on stories that are complex enough to bother (I do read a lot of crap, and there's no point even getting started on most of it) talking about choices.

Writers react differently to comments pointing out problems. Some don't want to hear about it, or don't want to hear about it in public, or only want to hear about it from specific people (whom they trust). The nature of the problem is also going to affect its reception: a typo is different than a misplaced Americanism, and both are different than a major logic flaw that throws the whole premise of the story into question.

If someone tells me I have a typo or an error of grammar, I can fix that on a story that's already been posted. But basic challenges to characterization, or plot holes, are going to be different: by the time the story's posted, I'm pretty locked in to whatever is there. If someone pointed that out to me, I would (I hope) thank them for it but probably wouldn't revise the story significantly to correct it. I might make a note on the story, though, to acknowledge the error.

When people write that story that hinges on it being Dean's first visit to New Orleans I just bite the inside of my cheek and don't quote the line from the relevant episode.

At least I do now. The first time I saw that I PMed "Oh, know what's funny? Dean blah blah blah" and she took it well on the surface but I felt like shit the moment I hit send, and I have no idea why that took so long.

I like being helpful and I hate seeing wrong things, but wow is that sometimes not the point.

Regionalism is something I don't mention unless the writer is totally stinking with it, or they make a request for help. I never do more than a few, because I don't work for strangers, but a "drop the whilsts and bloodys in dialogue" doesn't cost anything.

Which reminds me--I also meant to ask--regionalisms outside dialogue in a story that's strongly set somewhere? To be avoided wholesale? Including spelling? Not important unless it's tight POV? What's the what?

I wouldn't mind "whilst" showing up in regular usage more. It amuses me when it shows up in fics, like an unconscious ID tag on the author.

As long as it's not Dean Winchester or Tony Stark using it, fine. I grew up saying it, after all. But the amount of bad American dialogue--my god, I didn't know that many non-Americans were writing fic. That's good for the diversity of the fandom, bad for the flow of the speech.