Dude, it is from a Panic at the Spambot video! There is no possible way on any human earth that they will EVER EVER EVER EVER make sense.
I'm telling you, if I ever wind up even on the fringes of another non-warned-rape wank, I am going to post this link for every single person who bitches about it. LIFE DOES NOT CARRY WARNINGS. I may USE warnings, I may READ warnings, but that does not mean that I am going to shit a brick if someone posts a scenario that is not my cup of tea: it means that I am going to HIT THE BACK BUTTON AND GO DO SOMETHING ELSE, LIKE PLAY IN TRAFFIC.
No, I can see that. I mean, I'm so OTP-dependent, and such a voracious consumer of fic - I realised the other day that of my memories approximately 180 of them are fic-specific; that's not counting repeated listtings - that I wind up reading a lot of absolute utter crap because I just want to read SOMETHING, and it is sometimes just SO horrifying that it boggles the mind.
Like, there's one author I would tell, if I had balls, "Just because William is bottoming in your scenario, that doesn't give you licence to make him sound like a gay man in a 1960s movie. It's out of character, and it's also slightly offensive."
There are other authors that I would like to just say "OH MY GOD GET A BETA GET A GOOD BETA YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS THAT THE PERSON YOU USED MISSED THAT." I mean, I know I missed things in your fic, no one's perfect, but my goal is, and always has been, that by the time I'm done looking at a fic or a book or whatever, it will have <3 errors in it. Up to 3 is okay; above that, I am not doing my job. (I think you wound up with three, for which I am sorry.) But that's not the same as, once yet again, mixing up, say, "peak" and "peek" - and if anyone has another peek of nipple I WILL KILL THEM ALL.
And then there's stuff like, okay, if your character thinks the phone died three cities back but it rings anyway, how is the call happening so that it's still not gone to dialtone after he falls asleep despite him not falling asleep quickly, and anyway, why is a CELLPHONE going to DIALTONE? *buzzer* Thank you for playing!
I know that of all these scenarios the only one that counts as "bad writing" is the first - and it is ATROCIOUS writing - but I don't have the guts to go to someone I don't know and say "Dude, your fic SUCKED, seriously, how can someone be so thoroughly wrapped in a blanket that they can't unroll it? I don't think you've thought this through." Not even nicely am I comfortable with doing that. So I think there's a lot - A LOT - of judgement going on, and unfortunately it doesn't all stay in the head of the judger, but it comes out of somewhere like bandflesh, which is not exactly the most peaceful, unwanky place EVAR, so it's not taken very seriously. Because god forbid we tell people what we think; I know that some people write stellar fic now and used to suck, so there's the hope that they'll grow, but there's also SUCH a lot of cowardice in the fandoms I've been in, and it makes sense, but it's still cowardice (even if I do it too.)
Besides, if someone wanks about bad writing, how long will it be before the wankee comes and wanks the wanker's writing? Mutual Assured Destruction does work, unfortunately.
Surely that's what generalisations and crypticness are for, though? For avoiding mutually assured wankstruction and just spreading the bad feeling?
And I'm not even talking about the logic problems, just the overall COMPLETE ABSENCE OF READABLE STYLE that so many seem to suffer from. And the purpleness dear god the purpleness.
What makes me want to stab faster than anything is first person. I just file that immediately under "bad writing" in fic and toss it out the back window.
For me, aside from cowardice, it also comes down to where to draw the line. I mean, yeah, the purple prose is a bit much and all (or a lot) - I don't know, I think I should man up and start saying things as I would to an author I was paid to edit, with the praise/criticism/praise sandwich model. Because if someone does decide to flame out and attack me for concrit: that doesn't hurt anything other than my feelings, and I should be big enough to know that hurt feelings aren't going to kill me, at least not when they come from someone I don't know.
And then I will just have to learn how to get to the end of, say, an overly-eptheted fic (I don't need to be told constantly "his boyfriend Jon" or whatever, I CAN FIGURE THAT OUT FROM CONTEXT. And if I can't, ur doin' it rong.
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From:
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From:
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I'm telling you, if I ever wind up even on the fringes of another non-warned-rape wank, I am going to post this link for every single person who bitches about it. LIFE DOES NOT CARRY WARNINGS. I may USE warnings, I may READ warnings, but that does not mean that I am going to shit a brick if someone posts a scenario that is not my cup of tea: it means that I am going to HIT THE BACK BUTTON AND GO DO SOMETHING ELSE, LIKE PLAY IN TRAFFIC.
/soapbox
From:
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BAD. WRITING.
FUNNILY ENOUGH THERE IS NEVER ANY WANK ABOUT THAT.
From:
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Like, there's one author I would tell, if I had balls, "Just because William is bottoming in your scenario, that doesn't give you licence to make him sound like a gay man in a 1960s movie. It's out of character, and it's also slightly offensive."
There are other authors that I would like to just say "OH MY GOD GET A BETA GET A GOOD BETA YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS THAT THE PERSON YOU USED MISSED THAT." I mean, I know I missed things in your fic, no one's perfect, but my goal is, and always has been, that by the time I'm done looking at a fic or a book or whatever, it will have <3 errors in it. Up to 3 is okay; above that, I am not doing my job. (I think you wound up with three, for which I am sorry.) But that's not the same as, once yet again, mixing up, say, "peak" and "peek" - and if anyone has another peek of nipple I WILL KILL THEM ALL.
And then there's stuff like, okay, if your character thinks the phone died three cities back but it rings anyway, how is the call happening so that it's still not gone to dialtone after he falls asleep despite him not falling asleep quickly, and anyway, why is a CELLPHONE going to DIALTONE? *buzzer* Thank you for playing!
I know that of all these scenarios the only one that counts as "bad writing" is the first - and it is ATROCIOUS writing - but I don't have the guts to go to someone I don't know and say "Dude, your fic SUCKED, seriously, how can someone be so thoroughly wrapped in a blanket that they can't unroll it? I don't think you've thought this through." Not even nicely am I comfortable with doing that. So I think there's a lot - A LOT - of judgement going on, and unfortunately it doesn't all stay in the head of the judger, but it comes out of somewhere like bandflesh, which is not exactly the most peaceful, unwanky place EVAR, so it's not taken very seriously. Because god forbid we tell people what we think; I know that some people write stellar fic now and used to suck, so there's the hope that they'll grow, but there's also SUCH a lot of cowardice in the fandoms I've been in, and it makes sense, but it's still cowardice (even if I do it too.)
Besides, if someone wanks about bad writing, how long will it be before the wankee comes and wanks the wanker's writing? Mutual Assured Destruction does work, unfortunately.
From:
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And I'm not even talking about the logic problems, just the overall COMPLETE ABSENCE OF READABLE STYLE that so many seem to suffer from. And the purpleness dear god the purpleness.
From:
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For me, aside from cowardice, it also comes down to where to draw the line. I mean, yeah, the purple prose is a bit much and all (or a lot) - I don't know, I think I should man up and start saying things as I would to an author I was paid to edit, with the praise/criticism/praise sandwich model. Because if someone does decide to flame out and attack me for concrit: that doesn't hurt anything other than my feelings, and I should be big enough to know that hurt feelings aren't going to kill me, at least not when they come from someone I don't know.
And then I will just have to learn how to get to the end of, say, an overly-eptheted fic (I don't need to be told constantly "his boyfriend Jon" or whatever, I CAN FIGURE THAT OUT FROM CONTEXT. And if I can't, ur doin' it rong.
From:
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From:
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