Internet 'Friends' and Other Such Strangeness

[farla]

A few days ago I reviewed a story. This story was horrible, even for the things I usually read. I won't go into much detail on it, but basically, it was a horribly named author insert stu that was perfect in every imaginable way. I looked at it and knew no review I gave could even begin to do justice, but I also didn't want to allow this horror to pass without comment, so I just left a quick, one-line review chastising the author for not even spellchecking it.

Today I get an email from that author. It's short, perky, and asks me to review the second chapter, because, and I quote "I need the help".

I go back to the story. Has the author taken the only advice I gave and fixed the horrible, brain-murdering spelling mistakes? No. So why exactly does he want me to review the other chapter with more advice he'll ignore?

Probably because he just wants more reviews. That is the only option that I can even think of. He's also put me on favorite authors and author alert, which I think means I'm supposed to be obligated to review his story.

This is the second time this exact thing has happened. The other time was yesterday when I gave another one line (three word) review to an author who wrote down some random angsty/suicidal/no one understands me thoughts and then posted it as Hermione's thoughts (thus explaining why I do not go near the Harry Potter section and should stop looking at the site's general justin page). Based, as far as I can tell, on my lack of swearing and death threats, the author emailed me back telling me to read their other story.

And there have been many others who email just to ask me to read more of their story after I leave a critical review. They usually don't even claim to have improved it or to say they'll follow my advice (which is usually, in these cases, something like: Use a spellchecker, find someone to beta read, proofread once). They just tell me to keep reviewing.

While it's nice not to always get flames cluttering up my review page, I also don't understand why I end up with the opposite. People who email me over the actual review and then continue emailing me are one thing, people who seriously ask me to review their story critically are one thing, but people who email and tell me to read another story/chapter of theirs after I make it clear I didn't like the first one...I just don't understand it.

Speaking of flames, Darth Revan0518 has just gotten banned from reviewing my stories a second time because of spammy reviews/flames. I'm not sure if I'll take him off the ban list after a few days like I did last time because he's shown so little maturity. And he just left another anonymous spam review after noticing this, telling me he's blocked me from reviewing too. I'm glad he told me this, because since I wasn't going to review more of his stories due to not caring, I would never have known about his pathetic attempt to get back at me. He seems to think I'm personally harassing him, which may become true if he keeps this up.

Why do people assume I care? Why? I came, I saw, I reviewed, and then I got bored and wandered off.

::sigh::

At least my animals are behaving better, leaving more time for online dramas. I've managed to get the kittens to stop drinking the beta's water (I put a broken leaf in their water for 'flavor' and it worked), the goldfish are much happier now that they have more room, the crayfish is the crayfish and the betas are starting to play with each other, by which I mean mutual and very low-key displaying from their separate tanks rather than the little male completely puffed and the old male completely ignoring him.


On to stories.

I typed up my Christian Unoriginality chapter, which I suspect will gain many reviews from angry and stupid people, but still have no title. Dratness.

Oddly enough, I do have passable titles for other Unoriginality stories that I don't have written yet, such as Unoriginality: X-Over and such (I didn't say they were great).

I also have an old Unoriginality, Random Insanity, which is my Humor/Parody mockery. It remains unposted in part because of my dislike for breaking rules unnecessarily (the spelling is impressively bad) and in part because humor/parody stories are hard to parody, being so stupid it's hard to intensify it, so I'm not sure how much it's a parody and how much it's just more crappy writing like the rest of them.

Also, due to an inability to find the thesaurus (I suspect it to be cowering in some box, hoping it won't be unpacked), I will be instead working on a little parody involving the interchangeability of Misty and May for AAMLudicrousness.


Oh, and there are currently four new original trainer stories on the pokemon justin page. One of them invokes the cliche 'parents don't want her to go' plot device. Another uses the occasionally seen 'vanishing wild pokemon' plotline. There seems to be some sort of rule that at least one fanfic a month must talk about pokemon vanishing/going extinct/no longer being available in the wild.

Just wondering, but can anyone point out a fanfic where either of those two subjects was used well?

Comments

[katei3.livejournal.com]

"Just wondering, but can anyone point out a fanfic where either of those two subjects was used well?"
::shakes head:: (And what *is* this Justin-page-thing?)

Your posts make me (and Im guessing others) curious about the horrible stories you review. I know it's not "nice" etc, but I would die to see some great examples of horrible fics. Who knows--along with Unoriginality, that might help show readers what not to do.
i.e. the Christian Pokemon Fic. Maybe it's because I'm kind of new to the fic thing (1 month-ish), but I've never seen one. Now *that* I would like to see an example of.

I like your journal. It is the only on in Livejournal that continues to have new, substantial and funny posts on it. It makes me wonder why don't you have a webpage? I think it would be well-visited (just as I believe your journal will soon be.) But Im sure you have your reasons.

A nice flamer in an open hearth

[(Anonymous)]

You really do seem to get over your fair share of flamers. The vast majority seem to just be angry people who you have reviewed in the past. If anyone wanted to do a study on people who can't take a critcising review they would just have to search through your reviews.

I think the people who email you about giving them more reviews probably want reviews- if you check they will probably only have under 10. Some of them probably also would be impressed by you and your vast number of stories and reviews and would want to feel that liked their work.

What about Ice's story- how long before that will be up? Would people really flame you over a story about Christains for any other religion. I wouldn't believe people could be so narrow minded.

What about Fanfiction stories where the person starts in the real world and then goes into the Pokemon world?

[farla.livejournal.com]

The justin page is where you can see the most recently added stories. There's a lag time between submitting your story and having it show up in the section, because it takes a little while to update all the pages and move the other stories down. I think, anyway. So the justin page shows the twenty-five most recently added stories/chapters before the main page. Currently, I tend to just use it and not bother going to the section itself.

If you want to see bad stories, just do what I do. When you see a horrible summary, instead of avoiding it, pounce. Also, you could check out livejournal communities like marysues. There really is no end to them. I recently saw another Harry Potter story (since removed) that involved Hermione being renamed Mia, getting a makeover over the summer that involved replacing her with some sort of extremely sexy (at least, that's what the story claimed) pod person, having her real parents being the king/god of the underworld and the angel ruler of heaven, and giving her two brothers. And it was written poorly.

^^ Glad this amuses you. I don't have a web page in part because I never bothered to learn HTML, in part because I thought I'd just drop it midway through and the internet has enough half-finished sites, and in part because I never had any idea what I'd do with it. I was considering starting up a pokemon fanfic archive recently(most pokemon archives are either a bitch to use and a formatting nightmare when it comes to reading them, or else romance-oriented), but figured I'd never update it or I'd have trouble finding decent enough fanfiction to put on it.

Re: A nice flamer in an open hearth

[farla.livejournal.com]

I have a theory that the reason people hate my reviews more than usual is that I'm specific. It's a lot easier to shrug off a 'THIS SUX' review as just being some random idiot. A review that goes into detail on how your spelling, punctuation, and characters are all wrong is a lot harder to ignore. I actually had one person admit that the reason they were mad was because I explained what I didn't like (He's seen two episodes of Eva. Enough said).

I can understand people trying to get more reviews (I've gotten my share of 'I liked this story. Would you review my story at (link)?' review whoring), but it's still mystifying that they would email me after I made it clear I didn't think much of their story. I mean, at least the other people have the delusion I'd review their story positively.

Ice's story will be up once I revise the first 'chapter' again. It slips into listing mode a couple times where I just tell the readers things happen, and I hate that. So, maybe this week, but I make no promises.

Oh, people probably will, just because Christian Christians tend to get touchy. I can think of at least one annoying creature (the other author on my ban list) who'll probably start whining. Luckily most of the fundy-chans left once it was discovered that pokemon was a tool of the devil, so I have a chance of not getting swamped in angry reviews.

Eh, I don't want to do self-insertion specifically for an Unoriginality chapter because it's already getting touched on (Chapter seven of Unoriginality OT especially) and also because if I ever do Reality, I think that'd cover the same ground as an Unoriginality (dimwitted kid has a team of six mewtwo who promptly kill him upon release from their masterballs, etc).

Christian Sues

[(Anonymous)]

I really haven't seen very many (or at all) Christian Sues in the Pokemon section. I ended up searching the words christianity, christian and god. The word god came up with the most results, but that's only because people were writing things like "Thank God." or "God, I've always wanted to say that." In total, I found only three stories about Christianity.
This is more of a concept bash than a cliche bash. I think it's a bit hypocritical of you to say that you wouldn't do a poor pokemon POV because few people other than you do them and it would seem more like an attack on the author when only a handful of people write Christian Sues. It's not like they're even surfacing regularly anymore, I never see them on the main page and the ones that I did find were written nearly two years ago.

Re: Christian Sues

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, firstly, they usually aren't Christian sues. The focus of the story is more the preaching. Secondly, Christian stories, although rare, are incredibly formulaic. Odd as it may sound, I rarely see much difference between published converting material and fanfic converting stories. So there don't need to be a lot to generate the cliches. Thirdly, they tend to be short-lived, which is why you won't find them at FFN (much like OT stories, actually, where a sizeable number vanish within a few days). I remember actually reading a born-again Christian pokemon journey story a long time ago. (I really must see if I can track that down again.) And fourthly, the Unoriginality itself is going to be on the general subject of using fanfic to try to convert your readers to anything, with the Christian chapter merely the opening. And fifthly: Yes, I did do it because I hate them. I hate them because they suck horribly. I also hate the much rarer atheism converting fics and every other fanfic ever written to try to convince people (unless it's a parody, parable, satire, etc, at which point it's justifiable). I have seen this sort of thing work in a real story a sum total of one (1) time, and that was by a very, very good author who laid out everything in an unbiased manner and who didn't just repeat the same stupid stock arguments AND who didn't try to force their beliefs down the reader's throat.

It's not just about if one is more common than another. I just submitted my tragedy chapter, involving a mocking of the standard 'character visits other character's grave' setting. This is a rare kind of story, but it's very, very formulaic. The formulaic part allows me to use it in Unoriginality, and the fact they're infuriatingly melodramatic makes me want to. The same goes for the Christian Unoriginality chapter.

Also: I can't parody something I'm actively writing because if I'm writing it, then I don't dislike what I'm doing. Which means I have to parody something else. And there really isn't much else unless I pick on something one specific author does, and then it's not much of a cliche. Pokemon POVs tend to fit neatly into the standard genre listings already, and authors don't usually copy standard plot devices from each other that are specific to that subgenre. Pokemon POVs aren't as formulaic as Christian fanfic, absolutely nothing I have ever encountered can come close. They make low-grade AAML fluff stories look original. And no, the Christian chapter won't be an unfair attack on a specific author because I'm not using a specific author, which is what I'd have to do if I wrote a POV parody.

I will be using pokemon POV chapters in different Unoriginality stories, but I don't see many cliches that are specific to them alone. Why don't you go and write one yourself if you feel there's this much need?

Random Insanity!

[(Anonymous)]

If you don't upload that parody, could you at least put it on LiveJournal or something? I wonder how much worse it could actually be...
Those random insanity things are pointless, plotless and only gratifying to the review whoring writers of them. I remember a year (or was it two?)ago there was a huge explosion of RI fics mostly made by the same handful of people and a couple of other writers following the trend. The RI fics usually had the authors alter-ego doing extremely weird things with their other review whoring friends who would use the reviews as a sort of messageboard system. God I'm so glad they're all currently inactive.
Now after saying all of that, it sounds like I wouldn't want to see this parody at all, but I'm curious and I'm also the kind of person who likes car crashes.XD

Re: Random Insanity!

[farla.livejournal.com]

Sure. Car crashes are fun.