OMG YOU GUYS, YOU GUYS

[farla]

We have hilarity.

It starts with a new topic posted on the forum, by ItsJustMarty. And it's ridiculous and laughable and otherwise Christmas-come-early.

But it gets better! Click on his name and it turns out he's got another version of his little essay, this time with 300% more lolarity. You guys! Did you know I am bitchy because as a female my personality is entirely derived from my vagina? I am truly glad I could get this mansplained to me, as my tiny female brain never worked that one out.

Here we go:

Okay, today I’m going to address a rather infamous topic on ff.net.
Farla
Best known for her rude, particularly grammar centric reviews. Now there are many ways to rebuff her statements, the healthiest one, yet the seemingly most difficult is to not care. She is openly, and far be it from me to throw insults around, but she is openly; a bitch. People have cursed against her and people have said intelligent, seemingly intelligent, stupid, and everything in between things in defense of themselves or offense towards her. Now you may ask yourselves if I’m writing this essay out of spite. No, although I did receive reviews that were discouraging and the usual Farla style rude reviews for “Set Up On a Date with Who?” and my Christmas Eve collection. Unfortunately they were my first received reviews.
And in other stories, author’s notes and so forth, I referenced Farla as rude, stating that, although I was giving a shout out to everyone who reviewed at the time, Farla was rude and others were much more preferable. Not just because they were positive but because they had meaning. Farla’s review simply said, in a nutshell “write like this, my way is better”. Though discouraged I eventually realized how ridiculous the reviews were, brushed it off and forgot all about it. I met people whose opinions mattered to me. Impiticular let’s have a big shout out to(in alphabetical order);

Firestar6546
Kylix
MichaelaTheUchiha
MyCurrentObsession
NyaniHenshi
Snowlight-chan

They aren’t the ONLY ones who matter; I love most of the rest of my reviewers, but they’re the ones that make the most of a difference. And I think they’re all girls. So give yourselves a round of applause girls. _
But back on track. When I found these opinions that mattered more to me, and should really matter to other reviewers, I was more content and could resume the comfortable writing I’m used to while improving in areas that actually need it. And naturally, I checked out their stories too from time to time. Impiticular, Kylix is an AmberShipper and they may or may not have been my doing, because I get a lot of people telling me I got them into AmberShipping. And of course I want to read her stories, and she wrote a story entitled “A Second Chance”. I left my review there, and AmberShipper or not, I highly recommend you read it.
But while I was there, a familiar, ugly face from a less than fond part of my past reared up. The only thing that made me hate a picture of a baby seal. Farla left a review, and of course she didn’t have anything nice to say. So after looking it over, I thought back to how discouraging her reviews were to me and I also think that Kylix took my advice in her story “Pokémon Special Oak Academy”(Also a good recommendation, and the pairings are Special, OldRival, MangaQuest, Frantic, Amber, Haughty, and Commoner if I remember correctly), and a grammar tip as well. So I’m worried that she’ll take Farla’s review seriously and discontinue the story or change it to fit Farla’s definition of “flow”.
Of course, I consider Kylix my friend, and am worried about her interesting and quite frankly unique story telling style being changed or vanishing because of Farla’s review. So, faster than a speeding bullet, I send her a private message that went like this;
--I noticed Farla dropped a review.
Maybe I'm just speaking out of spite, but don't listen to a WORD she says. I mean maybe you take well to criticism; maybe you apply it to make your fics "better". But everything that girl types is an absolute CURSE. She's the reason my fic updating went so slowly at first, I can rightfully blame her for a lot. And I don't want you to seriously consider her review, she hasn't the foggiest clue what she's talking about. Even if you do take advice and apply it to your stories, for this occasion, DON'T. I don't want Farla's poisonous words to alter the way you write for the worse. I mean her review was ridiculous, listen to this;
--Okay, I give you credit, you're one of the few who seems to know that opening sentences should try to sound interesting. That said, it kind of falls apart within a few lines.--
She just being "Oh well I'm so good at this with my insults" right here. She thinks she's acting like an important personality
--"These kinds of questions were perfect for the girl I decided to ignore that dreadful day."
See, this is just unnecessarily stilted.--
How? It sounds like the speech a real person(namely a guy like Gold was in your story) would use. It sounds the way a real person would word it, and since it's from his viewpoint that makes it perfectly okay to word in the way of a normal person's speech.
-- Your tense is funny, "I want to know stuff" doesn't lead well into "screw knowing, important thing is how perfect the questions are for a girl". I mean, maybe you meant the girl could have answered them or something,--
DUH! Because that's how the speech is used in real life!
-- but it seems more like you just meant saying them to the girl would have been perfect somehow, and I really can't see what perfect has to do with it.--
That's because Farla's an idiot. Okay maybe that was just overly spiteful. But how she got THAT out of a perfectly normal used in casual conversation sentence like the one you used is baffling to me. I guess Farla must be anti-social and with the attitude she displays it's no wonder.
--This is a problem with pretty much all of your story. Focus more on making it flow neatly, and less on sounding deep.--
Just ignore this. Your story flowed fine and gave off the emotions it meant to and told a great story, especially from Gold's point. At NO time was your "flowing" incorrect.
--You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. Similar reasoning should be applied to terms like trainer, types like electric and items like pokeballs.--
Coming from someone who WROTE, FROM SCRATCH, the AmberShipping AND ViridianShipping page on Bulbapedia, AND did almost ALL of the work for the LuckyShipping page. That's wrong. You DO capitalize things like Pikachu and Pokémon. You also spell it with an accented "e" but you can never find the thing on the keyboard so I won't bug you about it. And you capitalize Electric and so forth if you're referring to the Pokémon type. And "pokeballs" is written "Poke Balls". It's two words, so ignore Farla here.
--Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.--
She tried to feed me the same bullcrap. Your prose format fic does NOT have to follow those rules IF they even exist in professional writing. I don't think it's written like that. It's a sentence and thus ends in a period unless the sentence isn't over yet. Like so;
"I see," He grimaced, "but at the same time, I can't allow you to pass."
It doesn't end because you're describing it but he also says it consequently, with only a short pause in the sentence signaled by a comma, as opposed to a break in the speech with a period, get it?
--Don't label flashbacks. Seriously. You shouldn't even need italics, the story should flow neatly around it, but italics are understandable. Big bold -Flashback- breaks though? Really not a good idea.--
Once again, bullcrap. You can label the flashback however you want, there is no right way to do it. The way she's suggesting is that you just go into the flashback without alerting people it's a flashback. Does that really sound smart to you?
Look, I just don't want Farla's ignorant, pretentious and quite frankly, incorrect review to influence you or your story because I LIKE your story. And I'm not just insulting Farla for the sake of insulting Farla, I mean every word on this page. Did you notice she just talked about your grammar and how much more like "hers" it should be? Not even once did she reference your plot or story development.
Maybe you like Farla or something but I'm begging you, just take my word for it if I haven't convinced you by this point to pretend she never left that review. Will you do that for me? Please? =(--
Maybe I sound a little sappy at the end here, but I meant every word as I desperately attempted to convince Kylix not to listen to Farla’s review. So am I typing this because I’m bitter about the reviews she gave me, no, but her comments, as always, were rude and I felt she had no right to talk to my friend this way. Through most of this essay I’m trying to convey truth about Farla here, though in my once-private message I may have sounded a bit more insulting, mainly because I was worried about Kylix.
So I do something I haven’t done in a while, I visited Farla’s home page and low and behold, I found this atrocity she refers to as National Review-Writing Month, or NaReWriMo. Yes THIS will definitely make everyone’s Christmas joyous (obvious sarcasm). So it’d seem Farla’s going to go around spewing her period induced emotions on everyone’s stories. You may wonder, is this meant to hurt Farla’s feelings? No. She states she won’t read long paragraphed statements about her because of laziness and probably assumes herself so far above me as she does with everyone and assumes I don’t possess the intelligence required to say anything that wouldn’t just be a long rant on why she’s a mean person. And even if she did read it she would not care considering she basically assumes herself right and wouldn’t take into account anything I’ve said.
So then why type this if I know and/or suspect she isn’t going to read it? Well the answer my friend is that it’s for the people she reviewed, not Farla herself. Is this meant to start an attack against Farla? No, quite the opposite, if she hasn’t reviewed something of yours, BLOCK HER while you still have the chance, even she suggests it. And what if she has left a review? Ignore it. I know, easier said than done, but all she ever talks about is;
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned.
And how much you should’ve done here or how you spent too much time there or that you shouldn’t label these. Why? Just because it looks better to her if you do it that way.
Honestly, I’d be more than willing to point out the bullshit in any Farla review, even if I agree that your story is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean Farla pointed out something accurate.
And the big question, why block Farla prematurely? What if she likes my story? Chances are she might like it, but she still won’t say anything nice to you. And I would consider it an insult if Farla enjoyed something of mine. But in your case, she probably will talk more about your spelling, which may have been a typo but she’ll assume it was on purpose, your grammar, which may fit better to fit a specific person or slang but she’ll assume you’re illiterate anyway, and your punctuation, which will amount to;
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned.
Even though I’m sure EVERYBODY ELSE will be perfectly fine with it. Ooh, you used a period to punctuate a sentence. How horrible. She’ll almost never get into why the plot is bad or if it’s bad. I say if the reader knows what you’re trying to say, go for it, use that period. It won’t make the slightest difference to anyone except Farla in the end.
And remember how I just said “So it’d seem Farla’s going to go around spewing her period induced emotions on everyone’s stories.”? This is a direct comment from Farla herself(though she’s speaking in third person);
--reviews may vary based on how pissed off Farla is at a given moment. It's quite common for her to become steadily more irritated, hit a peak, and then return to relative calmness. She is trying to avoid anything excessive, but would like to admit up front that yes, it's quite possible that she was harsher on your story than average.
In addition, the bitchiness of a review tends not to measure overall worth but how bitchy the story made Farla, which the management admits is a separate issue. A story that Farla couldn't read will probably just get a standard review saying to use paragraphs and spellcheck, while one that was well enough done that she tried to read it, only to find the plotline nonexistent and setting full of holes is more likely to make her bitchy. Farla knows that technically the first story was worse, but she feels writers of the second should know better, dammit.--
So she will be mad one minute, and regardless of whether or not your story caused it, she’ll take out her emotions on it anyway. So you’re not really getting a fair thought out review. Then again the last time Farla thought about anything was how long ago? Seriously, she just goes out with these ridiculous comments that’ll amount to nothing but will still manage to hurt someone, and she honestly thinks being rude and insensitive like this is okay? I mean did her parents not love her or teach her manners or how to be polite? What’s her problem?
Back on track, a review from Farla, positive or negative isn’t really worth anything. So my message that I’m trying to convey to everyone is; IGNORE FARLA, HER REVIEW WILL ONLY DAMAGE YOUR CONFIDENCE AND YOUR WRITING WILL NOT IMPROVE EVEN WITH HER ADVICE. JUST BLOCK HER AND BE DONE WITH IT. YOUR EXISTANCE HOLDS NO SIGNIFIGANCE TO HER SO HERS SHOULDN’T HOLD ANY SIGNIFIGANCE TO YOU.
Another question asked would be; what if I really want to hurt Farla somehow. Well I’m afraid that’s your vendetta. I’m just trying to make sure no ones writing is severely affected by Farla’s blasphemous comments, I’m not trying to attack Farla, I’m trying to help you guys. BUT! If EVERYONE on FFN blocks her and she doesn’t get to review as often or ever because we’ve shunned her like that, it might make a difference. Just to piss her off. And also, if that falls through, once again it’s your vendetta not mine.
But what if your story really is bad? Well then someone will come along and word it either more politely or in a more trust worthy way. Or if it’s on Bennett the Sage’s “masterpiece fanfic theatre”, then you know your story is the very best in the very worst of fanfiction.
Is there anything else I want to bring up? Yes.
-- Q: Seriously, though, why are you doing this?
A: Um...look a kitten!--
That’s just her way of saying, “I have control issues and I also have a superiority complex”.
And finally, why should you listen to me? If you’re not convinced after this 5 page essay, very well then, but continue at your own risk. P.S. If Farla seriously hurt your feelings all that much and you wanna talk about it, I’ll listen. I’m my school’s leading student in psychology. Just be sure to consider what I’ve just said and remember it’s probably healthiest if you block Farla. Thank you.
Update on that subject: This is particularly if you write fics of the Pokemon Special manga. I was looking at this relatively new fic, "What's Small, Cute, Yellow?" which I intend to read and review soon but I checked previous reviews and was hit again by a wave of less than pleasant nostalgia. First story? Check. First review is a negative one by Farla? Check. Granted this one was short lived. And it went;
Your title needs to be capitalized properly and your story needs to be over on fictionpress, as just calling a random college student "Yellow" doesn't make the story about a pokemon character.
Notice anything? Yep Farla doesn't know who Yellow is and it seems safe enough to assume that she doesn't know much of PokeSupe either. So if Farla reviewed your PokeSupe fic, I hope this is enough to convince you she doesn't know what she's talking about.

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

What are you talking about? Clearly he does not care at all about Farla and her reviews. See? He says so about ten times!

[farla.livejournal.com]

My imaginary psychology degree tells me that's true! And people with imaginary psychology degrees are always, always right.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

As are Democratic-Republicans! It's so impressive to identify as a member of a political party that dissolved in the early nineteenth century!

[farla.livejournal.com]

Don't mock! He has some very important opinions on whether or not the US should create a navy! And he's doesn't like this whole "peace with Britain" nonsense!