small obsessions, no regrets

Stalking the Franky-House fanfiction forums brings a smile to my face.  Sure,  you get recommendations, good friends, good laughs, but you also get a lot of encouragement and the pure sense of wanting to do well, to write well–to succeed.

But my guiltiest of guilty pleasures occurs at the flogging of another fanfic.  I don’t mean flames or cruel comments.  I mean “Silly author” moments.  Like, in “Unexpected Happy Happy Dippy Do Day! XOXOXXX,” written by BlueMoonSSR.

One of the things that I detest as a writer is a “hot off the press” fanfiction.  Let’s face it.  Fanfiction has a pretty bad rep as it is, and the perfect fanfiction is more precious… than… hot pink gold.  Well, not really, but I know you know what I mean.  “Hot off the press” fanfics haven’t been reviewed, they haven’t been beta’d–heck–sometimes, they haven’t even been thought out entirely, so chances of a plot are entirely up to fate.

The logical reason why anyone would want to post like this is because most of us are eager to share.  There’s a whole world filled with people who love the same fandom you do, so posting a fanfic to share your common interests and obsessions, to connect with someone else who gets excited just as much as you do, is entirely logical to me.  Unfortunately, for a quality snob such as I, hot-off-the-press, spelling and grammar-error-riddled  fanfics just isn’t something I want to connect over.

So, when I came across a thread entry where this author bitch-slapped her reader for an honest albeit cruel review, I laughed.  I laughed really hard.  It was much easier to agree with the critic than the author, especially since the author wrote an “in-chapter-dedication” flaming the original reviewer.

Spelling’s made a little easier these days with a built-in spell checker, so “I don’t know how to spell” isn’t going to hack it with me.  Grammar?  Most fanfic writers have it, but a good number of them don’t, and yet grammar errors can be avoided with some help.  With FanFiction.net, there’s an abundance of Beta-Readers demanding more fanfictions.  You just gotta reach out and ask for some help.  But this writer, claimed that she wasn’t smart enough, that English wasn’t her native language, etc., etc.

I laughed…

Until I read the reviews.  Out of the 113 reviews, 7 out of the 8 pages are riddled with heckling comments on her grammar.  Lyriko, the reviewer who was singled out by the author, was the 7th reviewer.  So, a good 90% of these reviews are sharp, one-liner comments about BlueMoonSSR’s grammar.  It was probably written or posted by the same person, or the same group of people who banded together with similar heckling goals.

What happened to be a good laugh at first, turned into a dreadful, nauseating experience.  Before I knew it, I was in the writer’s shoes, imagining what it would be like to receive 100 emails along these lines.  It might be funny the first three times, but it gets irritating after seeing it more than a few times.  Irritating, upsetting, maddening.  Justifiably made angry.  And then… sad.  Just… sad.  Depressing.

“Please consult and use your dictionary more frequently. I think it’s lonely.”  “I can’t tell if you are a genius in your use of misplaced words, or just really bad in figuring out how to write in english.”  “This is so wrong. Just so wrong. You really need a beta.”  “I am going say something worth repeating. Your grammar sucks.”

Something worth repeating, yes.  But not like this.

Did the author deserve a few take-me-down comments?  Maybe.  Maybe.  But 100?  Isn’t this the kind of bullying that parents hope their children would never have to go through in real life?  The kind of bully that parents fear for their children, and pray that they wouldn’t commit social or physical suicide over?

That’s what it feels like to me.

I can’t imagine this author wanting to write any more stories because of this.  If I hadn’t dug a little deeper, I might’ve been glad that there’s one less “stupid fanfic writer” on the internet.  But I’m not.  I’d rather see ten harsh, but honest, well-written critiques on this person’s fanfiction review page than 100 bad ones that amount to no help whatsoever.   I don’t have anything against Lyriko’s original review because it was honest and self-reflective.  I might’ve just laughed at it and ignored it if it was written about one of my FanFics, to tell you the truth.  But it’s the other 100 reviews/reviewers that piss me off.

People need encouragement.  All of us.  When we’re good, when we’re bad, when we’re down, when we’re up.  We all need encouragement.  There’s something so wrong about seeing a 100+ comments that are so unhelpful, cruel, and downright petty.

Also, there’s something that needs to be said about fanfiction and grammar.  When I was in high school, I was a straight-A student and grammar was boring.  I could draw diagrams upside-down and write essays in my sleep.  The summer before my senior year, our sister school had decided to close its doors permanently, so those students were integrated into our private school.  What I had never realized before that year was that our privileged, private school education was truly and honestly much better than theirs.  It shocked me that these new students had a very mediocre understanding of grammar.  Grammar was hard to grasp, despite how much effort that they put into it.  It wasn’t a matter of private-school versus public-school education.  We were both all from private schools!  But some of these kids just couldn’t do it as quickly or as easily.

It does matter where and when you get your education.  Grammar is just like everything else.  Some people get it easier than others.  Some people have to work for it.  Does it make you smarter, stupider, stronger, or weaker?  I don’t know.  But perhaps for this person, it’s like me and art.  It comes slowly, gradually, and sometimes, I don’t always get it, but when I do and when I do make it, it’s rewarding and I want to share it with others.

For this particular case, native languages and secondary-languages learners are amazing.  I’ve taken three-plus years of Japanese and it’s still difficult for me to even want to write or read in Japanese to someone else.  But I like doing it, and if I have someone to read or write to, I will.  But there’s always a sense of fear that I’ll be mocked for my mediocre grammar skills or for my terrible, terrible accent.  Personally, everytime I get mocked, it makes me want to speak less, and that’s a horrible feeling to have.  To have invested three-plus years in learning a difficult language and being bullied into not-wanting to use it?  It sucks.  I want to have that constant “Aja-aja fighting!” attitude, but when you keep hitting a wall over and over again, you fall down, and sometimes you need someone else to pick you up.

We all need encouragement.  All of us.  Each and every one us.

I know it’s not my business, but if I could, gently, honestly, earnestly: please, be kind to one another.  I love writing.  I love Skip Beat! and its crazy fans and fandom, and I love writing.  If I could, I’d tell everyone to help each other out.  Sure, for some of you, you can keep writing mean critiques because it’s funny, but also give encouragement and tell the author how they can get better, instead of being just plain mean.  But for the rest of you, keep bringing your wonderful, sun-shiny selves to the FanFiction pages and forums and share the love, give encouragement, and be happy!  For authors, write and write well.  You’ll get your readers and your kind critiquers if you put a little bit of effort into your writing–and trust me, readers know when effort is being made.

It might be all about Darwin-ism out in the real world, but here, in our own little corner of fandom, couldn’t we please be just a little bit nicer?

[Postscript: Now that I’m actually reading this fanfic, I’ve realized that there’s actually “no” spelling mistakes.  That is, she relies too heavily on the spell check in her word-processor, so all of the spelling is correct (minus the Japanese names, which is often spelled wrong LOL), but these “correct spellings” totally throw off her grammar.  It’s actually not as terrible as I’d thought it would be.  Ironic, isn’t it?  A copy of her chapter, with the correct grammar revisions can be seen on the review page here.  If she updates it accordingly, it still won’t be the very best fanfics out there in the interwebs, but it certainly isn’t among the worst.  That’s all.  Thanks for listening to my rant.]