Of course I don't think we've got a big fanfiction crowd here, but I'm sure everybody will know what kind of people I'm talking about.


As a fanfiction author and reader, I usually go by the logic of 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all', and for a long time I've gone by that logic, but today I finally let go in a long review about a story that the subject matter and the execution of the story, I found so terrible...is anybody here familiar with the 'spanking stories'? I primarily work in the Highlander category and these stories run rampant there, keywords 'family' and 'hurt/comfort' and 'warning: possible spanking of a teenager' to describe these stories, and the readers eat it all up with a spoon. Among other things a key problem is when the character is 'spanked', he's not spanked, he's actually beaten, usually until he's black and blue and crying and the writer calls this the adults in the story being good parents.

Well, I got sick of every single person praising these stories 'oh this is so good' 'this was so funny' 'I love this', so I let loose with what I was thinking; it was long and detailed and pointed out my complaints with that story, and the others like it. Well, I recently put up a new story in the same category, this one I purposely injected with a character ranting against the kind of behavior present in the other stories, and THAT author I lfet the review/flame for, reviewed my story with simply: this story sucks.

Now, I can certainly understand hating it when people critize and flame your work, I've had it done to me plenty of times...but there's a whole wide world of difference in how I write my stories, and how these people write theirs...but you know, I don't think it says much for your maturity when somebody gives a detailed reason WHY they don't like your story and their complaint is legitimate, and you can only respond publicly by senselessly bashing the story with no given reason for it.

I can admit I probably went a little overboard in my tirade, but if the author didn't like ONE person out of 24 not eating the story up with a spoon, he could've sent a private message and kept it between the two of us, instead he sought to make himself seem bigger and better by publicly dissing my story and I'm guessing without even reading it.

Of course I'm sure this situation rarely comes up for anyone else, but in the sense alone of people who can't take actual detailed criticism and can only respond with childish insults like that, it doesn't really say much for them, does it? And yet there seem to be a lot of people like that, I wonder why?

Well, you will have that online more than real life for sure. People don't like criticism even if they put things out there for people to critique.

Saying 'this story sucks' isn't even a review. It was just a petty slant for the sake of being rude. I wouldn't even take it seriously; it's obvious it was a gesture of revenge. If this person is in any way entertaining a career in writing, he will have to grow up and develop a thicker skin when he receives an unfavorable critique, else he will fail.

You're not a writer or any kind of an artist really if you can't take criticism.

I don't have the honor to read your story yet, but as an Author myself, once or twice I received more or less the same harsh critics.

It makes me (you, too) angry with that kind of critics, naturally. But like I believe, if you believe in good critics, you have to believe in bad critics as well, no other choice, pal. And yes, you have the rights to complain (I did, believe me) and feel down. The question is, where do you want to go from there. You can be angry all the time or try to read your story again, maybe the bad critics wasn't wrong at all and build up your spirit again.

Shoot 'em.

Marc™ wrote:

Shoot 'em.

"That's just like you, Ron, I'm having a genuine problem and you're being sar-cas-tic."

Well - what that persons said wasn't a review. It would be one thing if they'd said they didn't like your story for these reasons and then listed those reasons in a constructive criticism way. This person was probably just upset that you'd dared to critique the abuse of characters that some seem to love so much.