It seems to me that it often gets used in a "this is the good crack" way by readers, as a shorthand way of describing a story that pushed particular buttons for them.
That, or extreme wackiness--"what kind of crack was SHE on when she wrote that?" etc. I hadn't thought about it, but, yeah, I use the term in different ways, for different reactions. Stories I could lose myself in for days if I had enough of them are 'the good crack', while stories that are kind of outlandish and wacky, maybe wildly original or sort of insane, are 'cracked'. Two definitions? More, maybe?
On another it bothers me, perhaps because of my own instinctive rejection of labels. Hell, I hate the term literary. And I dislike crackfic for the same reason. It establishes a hierarchy of stories. These are the serious, meaningful stories, and these are the crackfic.
I'm with you on that. And that's why it bothers me, sometimes, when an author labels a story crackfic--she's doing the thinking for me, telling me how to judge the story, where to rank it. But I want to do that, myself. And it is, I'm sure, about the writer's feelings about her story and her own process while writing it, but it still bugs me some to be told that I shouldn't be taking this story seriously. What if I do? Does that mean my judgement is off? I don't think it is, and, anyway, all that is so subjective, so dont' tell me what to think about your story. But it's a silly thing to be bothered by, when it's really about what the writer is feeling, not about me, the reader.
For me there isn't any category of story that qualifies as 'crackfic,' nothing I would regard as addictive, or that I would smoke just for the hit, no matter how good or bad it was. Which is the imagery that the term crack conjures.
For me, there are--stories that hit my kinks (another dodgy and difficult word, definition-wise) will work on me any time, will make me crave more. But I would never have thought to classify those as crackfic; I've always thought of those as kinkfic, especially when the author is writing to hit those particular buttons and says so up front. Has kinkfic been subsumed under the crackfic label, too?
no subject
That, or extreme wackiness--"what kind of crack was SHE on when she wrote that?" etc. I hadn't thought about it, but, yeah, I use the term in different ways, for different reactions. Stories I could lose myself in for days if I had enough of them are 'the good crack', while stories that are kind of outlandish and wacky, maybe wildly original or sort of insane, are 'cracked'. Two definitions? More, maybe?
On another it bothers me, perhaps because of my own instinctive rejection of labels. Hell, I hate the term literary. And I dislike crackfic for the same reason. It establishes a hierarchy of stories. These are the serious, meaningful stories, and these are the crackfic.
I'm with you on that. And that's why it bothers me, sometimes, when an author labels a story crackfic--she's doing the thinking for me, telling me how to judge the story, where to rank it. But I want to do that, myself. And it is, I'm sure, about the writer's feelings about her story and her own process while writing it, but it still bugs me some to be told that I shouldn't be taking this story seriously. What if I do? Does that mean my judgement is off? I don't think it is, and, anyway, all that is so subjective, so dont' tell me what to think about your story. But it's a silly thing to be bothered by, when it's really about what the writer is feeling, not about me, the reader.
For me there isn't any category of story that qualifies as 'crackfic,' nothing I would regard as addictive, or that I would smoke just for the hit, no matter how good or bad it was. Which is the imagery that the term crack conjures.
For me, there are--stories that hit my kinks (another dodgy and difficult word, definition-wise) will work on me any time, will make me crave more. But I would never have thought to classify those as crackfic; I've always thought of those as kinkfic, especially when the author is writing to hit those particular buttons and says so up front. Has kinkfic been subsumed under the crackfic label, too?
*tucks you in* Night. :)