Bad darkfic makes me feel like the characters are being vandalized, so I have to avoid it. (Good darkfic is a thing of beauty.)

Exactly. That's the difference to me between Kat Allison's "The End of the Road" and some really, really bad stuff I've seen where my beloved characters are sixteen kinds of criminally insane.

Good darkfic often has a feeling of inevitability or tragedy about it, and should grow from what we know about the characters. Either the writer explores a darkness we've seen in the character, or shows what happens to that character's strengths and weaknesses while under different kinds of pressure.

If you're giving me a happy ending, the characters have to earn it throughout the course of the story. If you're giving me a dark ending, then the seeds of those darkness need to have been planted before the story even begins.

Once again, may I make the argument that "happy ending" does not necessarily equal "white picket fences, 2.5 kids, life in the suburbs." Happy ending can equal "on the run for the rest of our lives, but at least we know we love each other and have some sort of contentment." Yep, Scully and Mulder.

Oh, sure, but that's not the Great Happy Ending that we're culturally trained to recognize. It's not an ending at all, really, it's a fade-out. Their life goes on. In the white picket fence version, I think the life that made the characters the focus of a show is supposed to have ended, which is supposed to be good. (Which may or may not be true.)

I think the life that made the characters the focus of a show is supposed to have ended, which is supposed to be good.

A sort of "And at last they were able to lay down their arms and rest" sort of thing?

I don't mind people saying, "Nope, I don't buy it" if it's well-explained and not couched in terms of "that bleep-bleep stalker/rapist/serial killer bleep Spike" or "gosh, you might be pretty good at this if you do this writing thing a bit longer".

Or 'but Giles is old and Spike's straight!'

Yes, that bit of feedback gave me problems. It was Spike/Giles. The reader clearly didn't want to be reading slash at all. I don't even know why they opened the link.

Generally, I've very happy with 'please keep going' if it's a WIP, or 'I enjoyed that' if it's finished. Something simple, like 'disturbingly cool', is nice. Detailed is good, although I personally hate being told that my style is dialogue heavy and I should describe things more. It is, but that's because that's the way I like to tell stories. I don't mind 'why did X do this?', in fact I'll normally be happy to explain at length, but 'X would never do that!' isn't nice.

I depends on the story.

Some of them, a feedback of *glurble! meep!* means I did my job.

Others, "I normally hate this (X), but you totally sold me on it and made me like it" is the best response possible.

Oh, and those occasional long, thoughtful, nifty keen LoCs. Those are nice, too.

A heartfelt "gleerble, meep" is always a lovely thing to find in the in-box.

I've had a couple of people actually tell me that "Left Side" helped them start to process what happened to Xander and make them feel less upset. Glad to help, of course, but this journey into psychotherapy is a wee bit disturbing.

A sort of "And at last they were able to lay down their arms and rest" sort of thing?

Yeah. Which doesn't work for a lot of fandoms as well as authors think it does, but I understand the impulse.

There are some who can't bear to receive constructive criticism; there are some who, lacking understanding what the story in question is actually about, will give constructive criticism that's not constructive at all; but I think a happy medium exists somewhere.

Wrod. Oh, wrod. I can tell you stories.... One gal took all her stories down from ff.net because people had the temerity to point out that she a) couldn't spell worth a damn, and b) she had about twenty-three (no lie) unfinished stories, all with more or less the same plot. Even worse, her fans flamed anyone who dared to leave a review that was anything less than worshipful. This gal has (no lie) over 10 lists on yahoogroups that are devoted to her compulsive typing (I refuse to call it writing).

I keep waiting for negative feedback, I kinda wrote the buffy drabble hoping to get some responses from Spuffy fans.

I have one reader who never even watched XF, who I met through the Farscape fandom. When I posted my most recent XF story (not "the last" because I have one more to finish), she read the entire thing, all 200K. And sent me a long feedback letter, which by far surpassed any of the feedback I received on the story from people within the fandom.

It was marvelous. She commented on the characters, the tone, the plot (such as it was), pointed out some minor problems she had with language and flow... SO great. That's the kind of feedback you print out and tape to the wall, because it's from someone who really got the story, and appreciated not only the story but the technical aspects as well.