The Pit & Me, A Fractious OTP

[timepiececlock]

In a mood of bitchy whatever today I changed my profile page at The Pit. I decided I'd kept what was up there as the same for more than two years, and really, I didn't feel like scrolling past so much anymore. I was sad to ditch the quotes, but I wanted to simplify. Streamline. So I decided to put down my essential opinions about ff.net in two neat sentences, bold, and follow with my favorite unidentified quote.

I think I was feeling oddly inspired by this picture (though I hadn't been to that particular site in a long time), combined with a general irritation at people who can't take critical reviews without their brains and sense of manners exploding. They just bug me. And hell, criticism is usually only about 10-15% of the reviews I leave when I'm reading fanfic.

So there it is. Simple, to the point, and not requiring any further explanation on my part, I hope. This way when I write a review complaining about bad rape fic or using Japanese suffixes for American cartoon characters, they can float their irritated asses over to my FF.Net account, observe my bio page, and know I really don't give a crap if I hurt their best friends' feelings and scared her away from fanfiction forever just because I pointed out that she has terrible dialogue.


So...yeah. Bitchy. Really don't know where that came from, since I haven't actually had that particular internet experience in at least a month.

Must be because I have to houseclean tonight. I hate housecleaning.


Edit:
You know what I'm going to do tomorrow night?
I'm going to make a scatterplot of my number of fics versus reviews. Then I'm going to use it as my userpicture at ff.net. Then I'll finally be able to point people somewhere when they threaten to stop writing if they don't get X number of reviews. I'll be like, "Talk to the scatterplot, not to the face."

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

For a second I was like "I don't even know who Yanocchi is"... and then a few seconds later it clicked and I was like "Oh, yeah."

No, I've already forgotten about that. And I was never angry at her[?], just disappointed. Some things make me roll my eyes and turn away, my pet peeves if you will, and that was one of them. Anger is too big a word; what you're looking for is "oh please, stop whining" irritation. Usually it's just an eyeroll and an "off my alert" click. In that case I felt like explaining, because there was a bit of irritation, but even that really depends on my mood. ...And that actually wasn't negative reviewing at all, in the sense of story criticism. I liked the story. That was just me saying "Dude, wtf?"

And she's not at all the first person to bitch about lack of reviews in their stories. I roll my eyes a *lot*, being that I've only enjoyed decent amounts of reviews in the last two years or so (HP fandom), and really only in the last six months for greater amounts of reviews (Avatar fandom), whereas I've been writing fic for like 5 or 6 years, at least. It's once people hold stories hostage to review counts that I get annoyed. For two reasons, mainly:

1.) On a writing level, because for me a story is something that you *have* to write; it writes *you*. The idea of it being like a product, where you sell it for feedback... that's so far away from how I view writing that it's practically a canyon. And I can't respect people who treat writing like product instead of art. Writing that doesn't have your heart in it is going to be crap, no matter what. The people who do that... either they're lying and intend to finish their story anyway (in which case, slimey) or they really are writing it only for reviews. I think in Yanocchi's case she probably was going to keep writing anyway, which is why I told her in the review that I hoped she had more confidence in her own writing in the future. This is one of the few subjects on which integrity colors my view of fandom: where's the integrity in saying you'll only write if people you've never met a state or a world away write you a one-line "that was cool" email? Have some frellin' self-respect. [no YOU, just the hypothetical "you"]

2.) On a personal interaction level, because I find it hard to respect people who through the internet equivalent of a five year old's fit in a candy store.

But that's all rather off-topic. Besides, I won't remember it in a month anyway. I don't put a lot of emotional stock in reviews I write or reviews I get. (except "romantic" fics that use rape as a way to have the guy rescue the girl, because seriously, I'll lecture at every sexist brat on the internet one by one if I have to when it comes to that)

In general, this post was driven by the aggregate effect of multiple months of reading fic in the same young fandom (not only that many fans are young, but that many of them are new), and thus getting annoyed with a whole bunch of things. As it says in the post-- no one particular thing or things sparked it.

...Okay, that's not entirely true. Upon reflection it might've been unconsciously sparked by a post I read on LJ a while ago complaining about constructive feedback as being "trying to get them to change their story from its true identity" which is such bullcrap for that particular review cited.

Most of this though is that, at times, people bug me. It doesn't even have to ocurred recently. And since I'm so much more active right now on ff.net, I've become more aware of the fact that more people visit my bio page. I like to think of this as a sort of insurance: I've already advertised myself as fairly critical and a fic snob, so that if I do criticize something and that person accuses me of being mean (doesn't happen very often, but has happened) they can't say they were taken by surprise.

[dracori.livejournal.com]

In the words of Billy Madison: "Ok, a simple 'No' would have been just fine, but ugh..."

Well, by the tone of your review, you seemed angry. What with stating how you were taking her off your alert list and deciding to no longer review. But I get it now. Yes, irritation seems more logical. It's just that when I read this: Then I'll finally be able to point people somewhere when they threaten to stop writing if they don't get X number of reviews. I took that as a hint that you were still hung up about that little ordeal.

I used to be one of those fanbrats who wanted a certain amount of reviews and I hate myself for it. I no longer do that though, and I frown at anyone who does. I can't say I'm not a review whore though. Yes, I will keep writing despite the few reviews I may get, but reviews are a source of confidence to me, and also encouragement. However, I try to find confidence within myself because lately, reviews have become nothing but either mindless praise or mindless criticism. Never something that actually digs deep down inside the story and pulls out every essence of the reader's enjoyment. It's always the traditional "Update soon!!1!" thing. Very rarely do I get a review that goes far into detail and recaps certain moments of the story that the reader found most pleasurable or not so pleasurable. So yeah, I no longer really rely on reviews to give me confindence. I just push myself to keep going. I used to enjoy mindless praise, but not so much anymore.

Hey, I've got plenty of things that annoy me as well, and I'm not the sort of person to just bite my tongue and move on. And this gets me caught up in a lot of internet arguments a lot, which makes me feel twice as shitty.