TheKillingAlice
Schinken
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2023
- Messages
- 444
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- 133
Good evening, my Dearly Beloved,
or whoever stumbled in to find a reason for drinking bleach,
I'd say I've been a reader in recent years to only few stories online, of which all of them were Webtoons. The only exception was a FanFiction I read with a friend of mine - we often read stories together, to talk about them; to discuss writing patterns or certain themes. We both write, so there's that connecting line. Now, I will soon find myself in a barely koherent, endlessly rambling rant, closer to an essay on literally nothing at all, so if you want to leave, there's the door - there you go, you have been warned. or whoever stumbled in to find a reason for drinking bleach,
Anyway, so I have this issue, that I read stories and I just don't give up on them, if I happened to have gone in already. There's this thing with me, that I can never log something in as "dropped", because my brain says that I can't drop something; as long as I don't drop it, I can always resume doing it, even if it takes a decade. I'm prone to quitting things, and I'm also a huge proctrastinator, so this mechanism is one I find solace in - that I don't actually quit, but just "let it rest", so I can always come back to it. As long as I'm still alive, that is.
But it has that massive drawback of, as said, me not being able to drop out on something I have given at least a modicum of my time, because I want to believe that it's going to get better. So, I read this story on a national story archive of my country, which means, no, this isn't about SH and I will not be dropping names, but I will, as a matter of fact, take a huge dump on a single person, which has been robbing me of my mental energy for the better of around three months now, since it took us this long to read two (unfinished) stories of hers to their most recent chapters.
Basically, when I feel uncomfortable in a situation or just really unhappy with something I'm spending my time with, I like make jokes about it, so that I feel better about the situation and get to vent my frustration. That's why I'm probably the person you really don't want to have as a reader - people tend to say all kinds things about how I come off to others when I write, and I guess that's just me not giving a shit, because I won't be glazing your asshole when I review your story. I might, in fact, rip you a new one.
Does not mean I'm a pro writer or anything like that - it's always hardest to determine the faults in what you yourself write down, because you see the scene in front of you and if you didn't like it, you wouldn't have written it down in the first place. But I'm thorough, when I read. And it's not rare for me to write reviews of thousands of words. Mostly, they would up negative, because I don't have much to say, if there's not much there for me to say. But if you put down something really great, you might just have me write a character or progression break down in awe of what you presented, which would also be hundreds or thousands of words long.
Then again, those are rare. But it's also rare for me to write ten to twenty t h o u s a n d words in a single review, spanning just about half your actual story and coming back with another ten thousand for the other half. That's not on me. This was the absolute state of this story that I read. And I still can't believe I did.
And the true infuriating part was that she got me to read another one of her stories, because of my hardwired brain set to finish my business while I still can, when I'm currently not procrastinating, and so I went and read one of her original works. And it ended with me writing a review with more than twentyone thousand words, going into detail, bringing in countless examples of where those issues lie within her story or examples of similar, yet different story beats properly implemented elsewhere to make the stark comparison.
I've done this in the past and I don't do it often - the reason for that being that people won't understand why you would read a story and review it so earnestly. Like, they tell you they didn't actually mean to write a proper story; they just want to have fun. Yeah, guess what - I came to have fun as well. And then your turd hit me in the face. But aside from that, what is somehow not understood, is that I don't actually do that in order to stop the person in question from writing - and I'm conscious as I say this, that my style of writing a review can be very sarcastic; I make constant jokes on behalf of the characters in the story, not just to provide some levity, but also to mirror what happens, to make the author understand the bullshit they created on accident (hopefully).
The thing is: Do people actually believe that I would use up that much of my time and energy to write all of this down, just because I'm petty? And I don't deny at least SOME pettiness in the ensuing tea, but in general, it boggles my mind how you cannot see that I'm trying to point out all the crap in your work so that you can take something away from it. In the end, you don't have to change anything but view on your story; just imagine that you're someone else; try to understand how someone might be able to see the story you wrote from their eyes. It might help you, if not with this story, maybe with the next one you start.
In this specific example, I sat down to read with a friend and then read, and we read, and we read... and we just kept reading, and reading, and reading - because we hoped it would get better. We wanted this to get better; to get somewhere at all. Yet it never did.
In general, I put down a review, because this story was old - like, it's at least a decade old (literally, it's been posted initially in 2016). So I read the first one or two chapters and just pointed out a lot of things that were amiss, but it was not nearly as much as what I wrote when I read like ten-and-then-some chapters to review at once. The very first review I wrote, she actually answered, which I find commendable, if she wasn't happy about it, which was obvious.
But her tone was pretty much "yeah, I know it's bad, but that's just how it is and it will get better later". She completely sat on this statement, that the story would turn out waaaaay better from chapter ten or twelve onwards, but she's aware that the beginning is shit. Well, in that case, why not revise it? You are well aware of the problems and I just pointed most of them out to you as well, but eventhough you returned, to presumably finish this almost-but-not-quite finished story you last updated five years ago, you don't want to actually work on the chapters people have to read first in order to get to the new ones. Make it make sense!
The gall; the laziness; the attitude - it all kind of pissed me off, but I tried to see the bright side. The only thing that really irked me, outside of her sheer lack of will to improve a story she agrees is trash, was that she mentioned how her original works were much better and then there was the classic: "PeOPlE I kNow tOLd Me that I should publish my stuff, because it's that good." And the thing she propped up as her Pièce de Résistance is a crime novel she also shat out in 2016 and last updated in 2018. She literally saw me take her story, fold it into a paper plane, shove it back up where it came from and abort it post partum, just to offer up another one of her children as a sacrifice. I kid you not.
Not only did the preface or end all of her FanFiction chapters on the note of "Please comment and tell me what you thought of the story" (which is very common, so no shade on that - everybody wants some engagement to see if they are doing well or not), but when she did get just that, she bailed out on me with a single, very flimsy reply, in which she claimed (by proxy, don't we love that) to either be good enough to make money off of her stories on an oversaturated market or even get a publishing house to sign up for it.
So, I had to read the other story as well, right? Yes.
We just finished yesterday and I'm still kind of speechless. I'm well aware that it's not the actual last chapter; the story is unfinished, as mentioned somewhere at the beginning of my wall of text. But I'm still in awe. This person is... you know, we really tried to defend it. With the FanFiction - well, I mean, she clearly didn't do well with having to understand and motivate characters by how their personality is set, when the character isn't hers and she doesn't have the freedom to do as she wants. The original work was horrible in so many ways, but especially the crime part was just so bad, like, she couldn't get anything right.
There's an entire corps lying in front of them, with a bullet in his chest and we KNOW he had a brawl with his killers RIGHT before he died - he broke one of the assailants' nose - yet she insists that there are just no clues whatsoever. Couldn't find anything at all. Then one of the main characters gets stabbed through his side, yet somehow no vital organs were harmed. It got better when they doctor just flat out stated that he has been stabbed with a KNIFE that has a blade of around 30 centimeters. Like, to figure that out when the weapon is no longer there, at least that length would have had to impale his waist, so he's either a fatass like me (which he's not) or he was skewered like a table soccer figurine and his organs somehow evaded the blade the way tits in Highschool of the Dead evade bullets in mid air. Of course, one guy was shot, but he apparently only had a single bullet, since they had to stab the other with the... wibbly-wobbly fillet knife? You know that there's, like, around five or six types of knives that are allowed to call themselves "knives" and can potentially be 30 centimeters long? And they're all kitchen based knives; mostly pro chef knives. I should know, I used to sell all kinds of legally purchasable weapons and blades.
I'm not even touching on the fact that the stabbed guy survives just fine but the police keeps walking on eggshells, acting as if he was an actual child (20 years old, btw), not asking a single question, although he is the only witness to a literal murder. Because the policeman, who's the other very special protag, doesn't want to be meanie to that poor little poopoo. Because, I don't know - it's not like that's his job, right?
And this is not even a fraction of the crap in just the first two chapters. It got so bad that we looked into yet another story, to see if crime maybe just wasn't her thing - though, you really shouldn't write something you know virtually nothing about, if you don't want to do any research - but then I saw it had a sort of native / tribal setting. And I turned to my friend: "I don't know about this..."
But he wasn't so cynical. "I mean, it's an entirely different setting, it could be better."
Sure, he's right, but there was something on my mind. "Yes, but, do you believe that she knows how to... do things?" I said, and I was actually getting at the fact that tribal people can't just go to the local supermarket or Diner to get some grub. They have to do quite a lot of things in order to survive and you have to be able to describe that even a little bit, for it to feel like a proper setting and real people. But it was hard to condense a single question, because I questioned her ability to portray any and all of it.
I didn't clarify that, so my friend just paused. When he finally answered, he was like: "You know? It's hard to admit, since the question is so comically broad, but... I still feel like the answer is 'No'."
And it was a beautiful moment of revelation for the both of us. She showed to know so little of anything at all, that, at this point, I'd go so far as to wonder what she can do at all. She writes in a way that makes her seem like the quinessential mouthbreather; if I were to ask her, to cook up a pot of noodles, she'd probably turn her head in my general direction and blink aimlessly with a dead stare behind it. She's not even a Hack - like, Zack Snyder is a Hack.
This person is, in fact, a Hack of All Trades.
But to some up some conclusion that makes sense to anyone but me:
I get it, you might not like a lot of criticism dumped on you. But if you are going on about wanting to publish (no matter if it is about a publishing house or self publishing), you should want to polish up your writing; you should want that engagement, even if it's just to see the perspective and challenge what you think is good. (Which, again, I assume you do, otherwise, why would you write it down?)
In this example, it's especially frustrating, because all of the worst possible traits of authors congeal together into a sticky, rancid mess. She constantly asks for feedback - yet doesn't want it, when it's not positive. She's not even in the realm of those that claim to "just write for their own enjoyment and shouldn't be criticised" (as they write to upload it online, for everyone to see), because she claims to want to publish her stuff for real. She fucking agrees on how shit her story is, yet doesn't want to revise it - instead, she doubles down and adds a line to her synopsis, saying the story is old, but totally gets better in later chapters, so readers should just endure it. And the real kicker is: It's not getting any better. In fact, it's a downward spiral; it's getting WORSE, KAREN, and the whole thing PEAKED at chapter 3 - out of 38!
But again, it's not like this is the first time. I've had a streak of people deleting their stories over truly short, all nice and sugar coated reviews, just because they contained some criticism and then I was made out to the be one at fault. So, again, I kind of stopped giving a shit. It made my life easier.
If I read a story and you fuck up, you will know, because I will tell you in autistic detail; to the point you will see me haunting your stories in your nightmares.
In all honesty, I get it. You get a huge damper on your story and you have to stomach it first. I'm also prone to snapping back by taking every part of the criticism apart - I also tend to show the scenes in question to people who I know and they know I write, but they don't know the story, so that I get actual reactions to it, to see if the reader in question was right. Even if I end up not seeing merit in any of the things stated, I will still read every word, keep it in mind and, upon the next revision, I will factor in what was said and tweak some lines, for example, to make sure there really isn't anyone misunderstanding this certain thing or whatever. And I'm headstrong as fuck, and on top of that, I'm needlessly proud. So I wouldn't just take something lying down, yet even I can do that much, because I care about my stories. Reacting like this is not someone "feeling bullied, just wanting to write their stories, without someone rude coming along to shit on it", but it feels rather like they don't give a single shit.
And that is... pretty sad.
Oh, and here is something that policeman MC really reminded me of. Just to round up this endless wall of nothingness.
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I have a fanfic too~! I wonder what the lesson might be, though?