Darkscribes Blog for Fifth Horseman

More Peeved Ranting

February 22, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Peeve #1: DS has 127 users currently registered, but you can count the number of people who post regularly on both of your hands and have fingers left. Plenty of people lurk, but hardly any post. Okay, so a lot of the regular posting going on lately is on spam threads, but hey, at least we're there.

Don't like the spam threads?  (as if a little silliness now and then is going to hurt you) Then post in something else, or, (gasp) create a thread of your own. You signed up to the site, so where the hell are you? 

Just get on the site and post. Be active. Associate with the rest of the loons.

You might actually like it.

Peeve #2: Once again, we revisit the topic of bad fan fiction. A couple of posts ago I hit several points that bothered me. Well, those offenses still persist, but I've been reading a lot of fics again and I still find myself shaking my head at several things.

I have to wonder sometimes if some of these authors have ever read a book, or attended school for that matter. Dialogue strung back to back on the same line. Horrible or no punctuation. Paragraphs that are forty lines long. Missing words, using the wrong form of similar sounding words, it goes on and on.

And the spelling..THE HORROR! How is it possible to spell that badly, especially when you wrote it on a computer and chances are very good that there is a spell checker present on said device?

I swear, some of these authors couldn't spell cat if you spotted them the c and the a. I have seen the word dirt, spelled d-u-r-t. WTF!. Someone was writing about a character being in a coma, and the spelled it a-c-c-o-m-a. Not once, but six frigign times!

And how the hell can you write fan fiction stories and not spell the characters names right!

AUUUGHHH! It's driving me nuts. My inner demon wants to go out and find these people and bathe in pools of their blood, toss their innards about like party streamers, and use their heads for bowling balls.

Peeve #3: Reviewers, and (some) of the reviewees. As authors we all hope to get a few lines from our readers telling us what they thought. We hope for constructive criticism if warranted. Barring that, we would at least like to hear if someone liked our work, or not, and the reasons why they liked or disliked it.

What we often get is, 'I like this, wrote more', or some variation that is badly spelled or written in net speak. Now, I'm not someone who spends a lot of time bitching about reviews. I'm glad to get them, I wish I got more of them, and I wish there was more substance to them. But a review is a review, and it's nice to know that someone liked what you wrote.

Conversely, I don't write a lot of reviews, because quite frankly I suck at it. When I do review, I really should read the piece more than once because I always find something else I should have said after I already submitted my review.

When someone reviews my stories, I always try to send back at least a thank you. (Unless the review is anonymous, of course) Sometimes, I will discuss a point about the story that the reviewer had a problem with. 

But, not too many people tend to return that courtesy. A little politeness goes a long way. If you can't be bothered to acknowledge the people that took the time to review your work, then why should they be bothered to continue reading and reviewing for you?

I could go on. Let's see, the proliferation of yaoi stories (how I hate thee!) and the insanely ridiculous pairings therein, stories with lemon content that is wholly unrealistic, authors whose stories are nothing but thinly veiled mediums for their fantasy to fuck a hot anime chick etc, etc, etc. We've all seen it and continue to see it and you don't need me to remind you of it.

So, thus endeth the peevish ranting. I feel better now, though I really could use a drink.

On another note, my writing seems to be at a strange stage at the moment. I started working on a new story, and then found myself trying to work on two at once. Right now, I find myself working on a side project that will not be anything thing more than a story for my own amusement, as well as a device to push my brain in a different direction for a little while. Hopefully, I'll be back to work on my fan fics soon.