Authors, Part Eight

[farla]

Name: Arzeus
Profile: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2014348/
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Subject: re: Your review to Fate

A response to your review at http://www.fanfiction.net/r/6633043/

meh, i relly don't look that deep into it. I see you look into ever nook and
cranny for spelling and grammer only, and don't really look at the plot. you
arn't really looking at the story it's self. your looking at grammer and
spelling, but not detail and plot really. plus, i gurentee i'm younger than
you think for writing a story like this. But i am old enough to be on this
site. but anyway, i value your imput and all, but your not really giving me
positive feedback, and your feed back is just to plain hard to follow. anyway,
still thanks for the review

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You have received a reply from the author, DarknessSun, regarding the review
you posted for:

Title: Fate's Intervention
Chapter: 1
Story URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6633754/1/
Author URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1749295/
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Hello Farla, It's nice to know someone's opinion, but technically I never
really asked for anyone to review except in the case of a character
submission.
And on that subject, though you may disagree with me, I feel that a better way
for the writer and reader to connect is to have a mutual attitude over the
happenings and characters. By asking for a character, I am trying to combine
my ideas with the ideas others form from my writings.
Thank you for the criticism and I will keep a beta reader in mind. BYE!
DarknessSun

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Name: Eleria-chan
Profile: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2431707/
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Subject: Okay...

Okay... I get the first part, but not the second part of your critic...
Totally irrelevant...
It just say all those nonsense about quotation marks which I didn't even use
in my fic...
I let people critic and flame so that I'll know where I can improve...
Next time, write something more understandable and relevant...

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Name: Dingo T. Wilds
Profile: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2642064/
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Subject: re: Your review to Ranma's School of Anything Goes Pokemon Training

A response to your review at http://www.fanfiction.net/r/5867584/

damn if your so fuckin picky about grammer and spelling, then why the fuck are
you even on this site?

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You have received a reply from the author, The Zorua, regarding the review you
posted for:

Title: Pokémon Adventures
Chapter: 1
Story URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6635017/1/
Author URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2430551/
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Ok, granted, the title wasn't original. I agree with you on that aspect, and
I'll change it. But you were wrong about capitalizing Pokémon names; there
isn't a rule against it. It depends on the author's preference, and as long as
there isn't a rule against it, you can do whatever you want.

Pokémon are proper nouns, so you capitalize them. Species names are
capitalized, so should Pokémon species; that's why you write 'cat', but you
write 'Meowth'.

Ok can be spelt as Ok, OK, O.K, and Okay. There isn't a rule on that either.

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Forum: Complain About Farla

Topic: NaRe Review FAQ
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http://forum.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/24493256/1/#36544337

Reply:
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Poster: Librarian00X

To be perfectly honest, Farla, I hate you. And people like you. Because you don't have anything good to say about anything at all.
Don't come out and lie and say that you don't want people to delete their stories, because you do. It's fairly obvious that you do. And we all know about that saying when you assume...you know, the part where you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me." You don't come out and say that you want to delete the story, but you DO come out and A: bash the story, B: bash the author and the author's abilities as a writer, and C: make the writer lose confidence in themselves and likely will, as a result, delete the story. And you piss me off to no end.
Do you know how much damage to self asteem you've been doing with this stupid Review Month bullshit? Not all writers write just because someone else does. That's a very ignorant stereotype you've made. I, for one, write because I love it, and the ability to please the ones that I'm reading is something that I take great pride in. And then you come along and tell me my story's crap and, by proxy, tell me that I can't write a good story.
Well you know what? You're wrong. VERY wrong. And I've taken great pride in the fact that I have blocked you, but not after you basically took two of my stories - two of them, which I was perfectly happy with before you came along - and took them offline. Because you made me feel like those things I take such pride in are just a bunch of crap.
You're not an author, you're not some hero, and you're not doing anyone a favor. You're just a bully trying to cut down aspiring writers with hard words and the assumption that they're not writers at all. I bet that's what you thought about me. I hope you had fun writing those two-page long rants about how bad my stories are, because you wont' be doing it for a while. None of your words are sincere, and your intentions are just as cold as your words.
And so on behalf of the FanFiction community and all of the readers you've flamed into submission, I would just like to take the time to wish you a good day, remind you not to say anything if you don't have anything good to say, and suggest that you take the next opportunity to go fuck yourself. Thank you.

--------------
I will never understand how people can both be upset and insist I'm completely wrong. I mean, I get it on an emotional level, but who the hell argues based on an emotional response?

You have received a reply from the author, M-S-Or-Ghost-The-Shiny-Umbreon,
regarding the review you posted for:

Title: Explorers of Sky: Through Her Green Eyes
Chapter: 1
Story URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6635217/1/
Author URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1883388/
--------------------

Urf... You have many points in that review, and I thank ye. I haven't written
in so long, I'm outta shape. Stupid grammar. You teach me nothing! *sigh*
Well, anyway... Er... Nintendo created the word Pokemon, and they capitalize
it, so... yea... Imma go with the video game company, sorry. And with "Eevee"
and "Pikachu," I guess it would be the same rule as "German Shepherd"
and
"Maine Coone." That's one that it took me a few minutes to think about.
Ghost is a "shiny" Eevee because she's my "Pokesona" as it's called.
She is my
alter ego, and they practically form themselves. I was looking through Eevee
pictures as a helper for when I described her, and came upon a picture of a
silvery Eevee. I saw that the title was Shiny Eevee, and an idea formed.
Basically, the artist of that shiny Eevee picture unintentionally
'inceptioned' the idea of Ghost being shiny into my head.
Thank you for the excellent review, and once more I blame the horridness on a
too-long hiatus, and now I say lack of sleep. ^^' Anyway, I'll try to make the
second chapter better (if possible) and I hope you will continue to
figuratively slap some grammatical sense into me.
Thank you, and have a good day (or night, depending on when you read this, if
you make it this far).

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Comments

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

"It just say all those nonsense about quotation marks which I didn't even use
in my fic...

Indeed. All those nonsense.

[farla.livejournal.com]

That was actually a weird one, because they actually did have quotation marks in the fic. It's like they didn't know what they'd written.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

My best guess is they meant to say "about quotes which I didn't even use." As in, "'Hi,' she said. 'This is it.'"

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably it. (But I have to give the full list or else people will end up doing everything one way!)

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but I didn't actually mean the different styles. I mean someone out there has to be dumb enough to think, "Well, none of my characters said, 'Hi, this is it!' in any form, so obviously this woman is full of shit!"

[farla.livejournal.com]

That's...depressingly possible.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I swear to god we'll all be using phonetics by the 22nd century.

[farla.livejournal.com]

At least phonetics would have some sort of structure. Some of these things compare unfavorably to my cat walking across a keyboard.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I suspect brain injury. It would explain a lot.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I feel that a better way for the writer and reader to connect is to have a mutual attitude over the happenings and characters. By asking for a character, I am trying to combine my ideas with the ideas others form from my writings.

This is actually not a horrible theory, and we have seen that, when applied correctly, it can result in pure unadulterated awesome, though that was with plot direction rather than character submission, and this person is no Andrew Hussie. I wonder where she picked it up. I've seen a few Pit authors attempting to imitate tropes and techniques from classic literature and missing the mark horribly, it's kind of interesting to see the same thing happening with more avant garde ideas.

And we all know about that saying when you assume...you know, the part where you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

...why the fuck would you say this when you're the one making an assumption? What?

[farla.livejournal.com]

I think it's a matter of structure. A major issue with submitted OCs is that they're getting dumped into stories that have a plot and setting that the submitter doesn't know. So you don't get good plot hooks or anything with them. The has to be designed around the fact you'll be getting characters. Sandbox/rpg setups where people have a good idea of the setting and what their character should be involved in would work...but then, there's also the issue of most people submitting personality-free sues. (Which is about the difference between using the first command submitted verses picking one out of a set.)

(And it sort of requires more of a mix - having people suggest characters and then making composite ones would work a lot better.)

I do get the impression it's somehow become common knowledge that if you're doing a story with OCs you should ask for submissions, since one of the story mentioned they didn't want submissions even though it was an OC fic. Maybe it's like how people used to think having sprawling interconnected fanficverses was just how it was done.

[(Anonymous)]

"I see you look into ever nook and
cranny for spelling and grammer only, and don't really look at the plot. you
arn't really looking at the story it's self. your looking at grammer and
spelling, but not detail and plot really."

I see this argument a lot. I wonder what their response would be if you told them that grammar is like the foundations of a building; yeah, it's not part of the story itself, but it's a necessary prerequisite to have a story at all.

They'd probably just make up some silly rationalization, but I am still curious. Or have you tried that before already?

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Also generally when she doesn't talk about the story itself, it's because the story itself is just plain boring. So they really would not be any happier if they got their way on that.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

And frankly? Spelling *this* atrocious is so distracting that I'm not sure how one could focus on anything else.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, for some of these I don't even know what the plot is. If the first paragraph or so has enough errors, they get mechanical corrections and me moving on, because sometimes it's really too much work to try reading.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Generally, the argument is a binary one. If I can understand what they're saying, then the grammar is good enough for the task. That there's levels of effort, and the worse the grammar is the harder and less rewarding it is to read, is something they don't get.

I kind of suspect a lot of it is people who have trouble reading normally, so they don't understand some forms of writing are less trouble than others.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: you provide an extremely valuable contribution to fan fiction by doing this almost exclusively thankless toiling.

In the ceaseless tide of both legitimate and gratuitous criticism fan fiction provokes from academia, the media, authors and elsewhere, absysmal literary competence and a fundamental lack of even basic language skills are the two most damning items cited.

[farla.livejournal.com]

It's not just fanfic that's like this, though. People just don't know what they're doing. I think a lot of it is just that they're really young...not too young to actually manage to write decently, but too young to want to put in the effort.

(...and I'm not sure it really has any effect, since every time I do this I end up explaining the same things.)

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I agree that literacy is a huge issue across the board. But for it to be such a common trait of *any* literary genre is way beyond appalling; it serves in direct opposition to very act of committing a story to text.

I often marvel at your ability to remain steadfast insomuchas I can only suppose you would often feel as though you were pushing against a river. Unfortunately, I believe that's part and parcel to the work you do.

However I still believe in the concrete importance of your efforts and that despite that sense of repetition, despite that you're not in a position to see the immediate difference you're making, what you do is so vital and heartening. I believe you are making a real difference and for that I respect and commend you.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, it's irritating when places like fictionpress seem to manage minimum standards of grammar. But bad fanfic takes less effort than bad original fic and people have always thought something matters less if you can't make money off it, so it's not that surprising.

Thanks, hopefully it will!

[(Anonymous)]

I think part of the problem is also that you're reviewing fanfics of the Pokemon fandom. I mean, a decent fic can come from this fandom, but the way in which the pokeverse is set up is questionable. I mean, the cool thing about this world is that it allows someone to just insert themselves into it, sue and all. Plus, the games and show were aimed for kids, so it's only natural that such terrible fanfiction would spawn from it. I mean, that's no excuse for this level of incompetence, but when compared with other fandoms, the pokemon fandom is greatly lacking in intelligent story lines. The pokemon universe itself is set up in such a way that conflicting canon cans single handedly derail a story with gaping plotholes.

But I digress.

(It still is considerably better than the Sonic and Spyro fandoms, though.)

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But I'm not really expecting brilliance here, just baseline readability. At this point I welcome the sues if they're at least spelled properly and have something resembling actual events in them.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Pokemon is very much an entry-level fandom and ff.net an entry-level site. The one hope I cling to is that in five years or so they'll be in a high enough grade that their teachers will start marking them off for spelling or major grammatical mistakes. And maybe a few years after that they'll look back and be amazed that the horrible, cliched, Mary-Sued drivel they used to write and feel slightly ashamed about their reactions to very well deserved criticism back then.

[farla.livejournal.com]

You don't get marked off for grammar mistakes in most school systems. I don't know why either.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I got marked off for grammar "mistakes" in my AP US History class. Some of them were technically incorrect things like ending a sentence with a preposition. Others were more along the lines of, "this perfectly grammatically sound sentence is just too long!"

Meanwhile over in AP Composition I'd earned the status of living legend by scoring better than the teacher on the first practice AP.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

By "good grammar is required," I mean compared to their current level: punctuation appearing at the end of sentences and such. I've had few teachers who knew grammar well enough to teach it or grade on it.