Backhanded Complements

[farla]

And yeah you are good, but why waste your time on Pokemon?
This is about the dozenth time one particular reviewer has told me this. Not only is it somewhat insulting for him to say what I spend time on is a waste, but it really makes me wonder how much he actually likes my stories, given how much time he's spending trying to convince me to stop.

Wow very dark. You should try prozac.
Not only does this imply I'm mentally ill, saying that the only reason someone could write that is that they're so severely depressed as to be unbalanced does not reflect well on the story quality either. And telling me how to 'fix' my 'problem' of writing these stories again makes me wonder how she could actually like them.

With complements like these, who needs flames?

Comments

[farla.livejournal.com]

It seems to be the fanit equivalent of 'exceedingly good' in standard English. As in 'I'd buy what you wrote/I see no difference between you and (person of established quality)' and possibly 'You deserve to earn money for writing these stories'. I've seen it in a variety of contexts, and that appears to be the normal meaning (See: Harry Potter, rewriting the fifth book of).

This particular reviewer takes it a bit far.

[myrgourrza.livejournal.com]

I can see.
But it's the little 'Hey you're as good as a published writer' followed by 'hey, you should publish stuff' that makes me want to kill.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah. In fairness, my parents take the same attitude sometimes - but then, they're my parents, not my readers.

[myrgourrza.livejournal.com]

XD