You *really* shouldn't have done that...
Jun. 12th, 2005 05:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI love getting my responses after I write to badfic authors. I shouldn't invest so much time and energy on revenging their paltry attacks on my reviewing credibility, but it feels so damned good!
You might recall this little deviance into merciless Mary Sue slaughter...
Well, the author's taken down the story, so victory for ME (imagine a Zim voice, please), but he/she/the dog has written back an eloquent defence, point-by-point as to why it is I who suck/am not reading carefully enough.
For your edification,
You know what? I was gonna just sit and wait for my response to your
little "review" to be posted on the site, but since I have no patience
whatsoever for people who as much misinterpret stories as they do slam
them, I feel like an e-mail would be sufficient.
That was the single most misunderstood and unnecessary review I've seen
posted since Kimmybo. It's people like you who forget what reading and
reviewing is all about, and I just proved it with this
soon-to-be-posted response of a review. It's not up there yet (it's
currently 8:27 EST here BTW), but it will be, and then you shall see.
Save for maybe 2 or 3 of those points, I had an appropriate for pretty
much all of them in writing it. You wanna know how? THIS is how:
1) Christian is 24, not 15. Sorry that I didn't include the details of
his age in the story, but that little piece of information can be found
in the other fic (which I'm now just using as an "alternate stories"
fic and not part of a trilogy of fics which I'm planning)
2) If for some reason you have a prob with Abby going for some1 else
besides King (which, infact, NEVER HAPPENED YET! Read it again), I
think you should stop and read it twice over. First off, that was just
a plotline I added to it (that she was his CHILDHOOD love, NOT
PRESENT!). The point was to have the two "contest" eachother for Abby
in the end. Sorry that you didn't think too highly of that idea, but
some people over at the Blade: Trinity movie forums thought it was a
great idea. And besides, last time I checked, Abby and King were just
FRIENDS in Trinity. Doesn't mean people can't write about the two being
a couple in their fics (most people do in their stories), but it
doesn't mean I can't have them staying as "just friends," either if I
see fit which, who knows? I might actually consider going with that
angle later on myself. Furthermore, there are no guidelines as to which
of my characters gets involved with the so-called "cannon characters"
from the movies. IT'S ALL MADE UP! That was perhaps the most pitiful
excuse for criticism in your entire review right there.
3) The reason I post "R&R" is simply because it makes for great
motivation (that's how people get better as writers). It doesn't count
as "karma" in any way. It never has. It builds confidence. The more
people review your story, the better of a writer you will be. It's
COMMON SENSE! Not only that, but also I've got posted on several other
of my fanfics, INCLUDING the one I very recently took down, that I
welcome any form of constructive criticism from other reviewers. Well,
your criticism wasn't constructive at all. Insult and libel was all
that it was. Criticism is supposed to HELP the author, not piss him
off. Reviews like that will do little more than lend you onto other
people's Ignored Authors Lists.
4) I knew Starr Jones was a TV character, I'm not THAT stupid. The
nickname "Star" Jones implied in the name IS NOT part of the name, just
another way of referring to him (a "nickname" if you will, and it's
with ONE R, NOT TWO like the TV character). Sorry if that's insulting
to you, but just remember: it's NOT part of his name in any way, shape,
or form. And the name "DarStar," while sounding stupid (even I agree
with that), again, makes for a nickname, no matter how stupid it may
sound. People often make such references to famous people (but only
when given certain first and/or last names; for example, with a name
like Darius Jones, you can easily call him Darius "Star(r)" Jones right
off the bat) all the time incase you didn't know, which is EXACTLY what
I did here.
5) No, the two (Reinhardt from Blade II and my AU character) are NOT
related in any way, but if I made it so that they were, there'd be no
problem with having that as his last name, now would there? Alls I
would have to do is to MAKE A STORYLINE UP like I've been doing ever
since. Don't like it? Fine. I'll change it so that he has an "A" in the
name so that his last name is Reinheardt (basically "heart" with a
"D"). There. Two completely different characters with two completely
different last names (well, not completely). Problem solved. Oh, and
BTW, that WAS intentional. I knew there was a character from Blade II
named Reinhardt! It even says so somewhere in my last fic, either from
a portion of a chapter or in a review, one or the other.
6) Again, I stay with the fact that YOU SHOULD READ IT OVER!! You say
the Admiral reports to the Captain in your so-called "review" when
infact, it's the opposite. And last time I checked, the Admiral is the
HIGHEST-RANKING OFFICER. He calls ALL the shots, so why would there be
a problem with that? Prove me wrong here.
7) Okay, I will admit, you've got me here. Like they say, you can't win
them all. You're right. I DID post a typo here when I said he was the
most legendary vampire of all time (of HIS time would be much more
fitting). Sorry I made a little mistake here. Happens to the best of
us. And about the name, sorry you don't like it. I've spent all morning
thinking of vampire names for the new villian to use in my story, and
that was the best one that came to mind. That's quite alright if you're
gonna criticize my intelligance here, but just remember: not everyone
is that creative.
8) As far as Christian's dialogue goes, if you read his dialogue in
later chapters of my last story, you'll find that each of his sentences
(from that point on) are always referring to something and hold a
viable meaning to them and not just "talking out of his ass" like you
claim he's done here. So I assumed that that's what people thought was
wrong with it, and thought something had to change next time around,
big deal. I'm planning on undergoing some critical changes to that as
well, for anyone who cares. Of course, some people may not like some of
the plot twists in that one (which could be the reason), but hey, it's
called WRITING ORIGINAL FICTION! If you would rather go back to reading
the 80% of other fiction (I don't mean to criticize anyone here on
their work; I've read a number of them and a lot of them are actually
very good) which the summaries are all either EXACTLY the same or very
similiar (all those aforementioned fics are about King and Abby pairing
up), BE MY GUEST. But who said doing something different, something
that hasn't yet been done around here was bad? It's called BEING
UNIQUE! Sorry that your lack of sensibility couldn't comprehend this.
9) You as much slam something for work I merely ATTEMPTED. That WHOLE
ENTIRE first chapter was written to the BEST OF MY ABILITY! I even
proofread it and made a few changes before posting it here. If you as
much slam me THIS much for something I didn't even consider to be a
"top seller" or anything like that, then maybe next time I won't take
your reviews so seriously (that is, if I'm even PAYING ATTENTION to
them, which I may not). According to your "review," this is supposed to
be some sort of half-assed "greatest seller" contest, not a normal
fanfiction site, and that is where you fall FLAT ON YOUR ASS.
10) Oh, and here's one other thing you didn't know about my character
Christian. He's an emotionally-uptight, anger-struck man who's lived a
life of darkness. And, much like I, the author, HE'S AUTISTIC! There's
ANOTHER thing you surely didn't know about me, which pretty much speaks
for the seriousness of my response to your little review.
11) Once again, you misunderstood that action scene. Of course he
"sprayed bullets in the dark". What was he supposed to do? Just rush at
him with a trendy pocket knife arcade-style and get killed, let alone
stand there like a hitch hiker on acid and get killed? NOT WHEN YOU'RE
IN THE DARK, BOTH YOUR NIGHT VISION GOGGLES AND INFRARED-RED (?) VISION
AREN'T WORKING, AND YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE LIGHT SUPPLY INSIDE!!
In other words, you're basically left in the dark with no hopes of ever
seeing the light deep inside. Again, it's COMMON SENSE! He could also
just chuck a grenade and throw it at some random spot in the dark, but
it'd be a hell of a lot easier, and more convenient, to just burn him
with your assault riffle. Hence being a "danger to other men," he
doesn't turn into some psycho until later on (that's where he turns
into a "Daywalker"... well, I guess it's safe to say THE Daywalker
since it came AFTER Blade's departure)! It's just too bad you couldn't
figure that out yourself when writing that review... just so sad.
Maybe next time, if and ONLY if, you start offering some valid points
as to why it sucked, I won't take it as anything BUT "constructive"
criticism. But this so-called "conductive reasoning" is more senseless
and distraught than you claimed the story itself to be in your review.
Let this be a lesson to you when reviewing other people's stories.
Oh no! This is supposed to be lesson? Is there going to be a test?
I suppose I had better study. [Insert manical grin] I told people tonight at Dave's party that I wasn't going to be mean. No, I'm not mean. I'm polite, and as many of you know, that's a thousand times worse.
In my defense, and then the defense rests on its own merits and bad-assness:
Dear Seph2k,
As a dedicated fanfiction reader and reviewer, let me say that I appreciate the effort that went into the e-mail you sent me. You had an effective system, bulleting your counter arguments to my review in handy number-format. To return the favor, and as a sign of my respect, I feel I owe you a response and have adopted your organizing schematic for clarification purposes. Hopefully, this time, you’ll be able to understand my criticisms more thoroughly before firing off an angry missive, but the quality of your last e-mail makes it highly unlikely. Still, here we go.
1) First stop, a visit to dictionary.com
“Like” prep.
1. Possessing the characteristics of; resembling closely; similar to
2. a. In the typical manner of
b. In the same way as
When I wrote that your original character Christian behaved *like* a fifteen-year-old playing military games online, I indicated that he behaved as though he were a teenage boy, not that he *was* a teenage boy. Hence my usage of the word “like” (side note: you nowhere in your fiction stated that Christian was twenty-four). I can only attribute this mistake to two causes. One, you didn’t read my review carefully enough (highly likely since similar mistakes occurred throughout your e-mail), and two, you have a poor grasp of the English language in context. Like, like many words, can have many different meanings depending on its usage. If you’re interested, visit dictionary.com or the Oxford English Dictionary online. This qualifies as research–you know, that thing you were too lazy to do before? Write that down.
2)Your story has been removed from ff.net, so I’ll have to chart this from memory, but I don’t recall your summary for this story ever mentioning that it was part of a series or featured a recurring original character from one of your other works. If it had, I wouldn’t have assumed that this was a first introduction to Christian and critiqued it as such. Plus, it would have been my pleasure to review your other fictions and inform you a long time ago that he was a Mary Sue self-insertion character who was utterly uninteresting. My bad. If only I’d gone and reviewed your earlier work, the travesty against writing wouldn’t have gotten this far. The short story here is that there are certain markers fanfic writers use to signal that their story should be taken in context of other stories they’ve already written. A simple parenthetical reference in your summary would have sufficed. Here’s an example:
A Boring Para-Military Nut Job Takes On A Vampire by Seph2k
Christian takes on a new vampire enemy. (A sequel to my story “Can You Believe They Let This Guy Into The Navy?”)
3) You won’t find this definition in the dictionary, though you might at wikipedia.com. A ‘canon’ character (one ‘n’) is not a so-called term for anything; it is a fan-accepted designation for any character introduced by the work. Incidentally, the work in which your fanfiction is set is also termed the canonical text, or, for short ‘canon.’ So, the canon work for your fiction was Blade: Trinity, or, more generally, the universe set up by the Blade films as a whole.
However, you’re absolutely right (how often do you hear that by the by?). There is no rule that canon characters have to date or sleep with each other. In fact, many canon characters don’t even like each other that much, and you can usually identify those by checking to see if one is the ‘protagonist’ and the other the ‘antagonist.’ Moreover, the characters of Abby and King are by no means contractually obligated to sleep together, and, you’re right again to say in the movie they were only partners and friends. You must be bursting with pride to find out that you were correct about this. Bravo.
I must, regrettably, inform you that while it’s believable that canon characters can and do and will date outside the canon character roll call list, there is this unbelievably common tendency of writers, like yourself, to match up their original characters with the single/available canon character as a means to self-gratify vicariously. I know, crazy, right? Unfortunately for your story and Christian, these original characters tend to exist only to wow the canon member of the opposite (sometimes the same) sex and lure them into bed. Not only that, they also, like Christian border on being ridiculously overpowered, intelligent, rich, good-looking, well-liked, and so on. So, maybe Christian is the complex, deep, thoughtful counterpart to either Abby or King, and a future story might unite them in a romantic masterpiece. I was merely pointing out before, and do so again now, that as written, Christian falls into that unloved and unlovable category of ‘existing solely so the author can write about their self-projected character having sex with the canon character the author likes/finds sexy.’ It’s a hard sell. Best of luck to you. Yes, it’s all made up, but people read fanfiction to read more about the characters they liked from the movie. I bet that’s why there’s so many Abby/King pairings; because no one cares about what you would do if you got the chance to screw Abigail Whistler, but they’d invest good time imagining someone with more humor and intelligence, like Hannibal King, doing it. Since you’ve graciously allowed me to leave your fics behind for the eighty percent of others that do just that, I will take you up on it, much to my preference, I assure you.
4)You have a lot of fanfiction writing etiquette to polish up on. I can only assume this is a fault of your inexperience, something I can correct for you quite easily as I’ve been writing fanfiction on numerous boards, in multiple fandoms, for just about a decade now. I was new at it, too, once. I mentioned your summary before, and I’ll repeat it here: if you write a sequel to another fic featuring an original character (or not), you should say so in your summary. Believe it or not, not everyone who comes across your latest story will know that it is a sequel or that you’ve written anything before. In fanfiction, you have to do a lot of work for your readers. On fanfiction.net in particular, your old stories get buried with time. Alerting readers to the fact that you’ve written something earlier is a courtesy you owe them or you’ll get some confused readers, and confused readers, whether or not you implore them in abbreviations to review your story, will not *keep* reading. You’re right (maybe this is a trend) in saying reviews are left to teach you to be a better writer. One of the ways to become a better writer is to write something that keeps your readers’ attention long enough for them to bother leaving reviews at all. And I stand by my admonition that you *not* beg for reviews. Not only is it pathetic, it should be assumed. You publish for love of genre, character, fandom, and the entertainment of your readers; begging will not encourage bad readers to review and it will, more often than not, turn off good readers from reading your story at all. Unlike your reasoning, *that* is common sense, my dear.
One more thing: respond to your reviewers via e-mail. You know how to use this as you managed to find me just fine, so I won’t denigrate your considerable intelligence by instructing you on how to find e-mails through ff.net. If you have a gripe with a critique, respond outside of ff.net. Those reviews, as you so astutely pointed out, are for the general purpose of supporting and reforming the author (not, however, meant to build confidence; that is a by-product of a good review, but they are there to help you learn what you do well and wrong, not solely to say ‘you are the greatest ever ever ever’). The review system is neither a message board nor a personal web site devoted to you. Your assumption that I ought to have not only read your other fictions before reading this one is relatively reasonable compared to the lunacy of accusing me of having not read your reviews, too. Truthfully, I’m uninterested in what others had to say about your work. Leaving a review is a personal, reader-to-author communication, and what they got out of the story rarely helps me interpret it. Do not rely on the review section to communicate anything to future readers. Also, there is no such thing as an “Ignored Authors List” on ff.net yet, though when there is one, please feel free to put me on yours. You’re already on mine.
5) If you agree that DarStar is a ridiculous name, why use it? Why give Darius Jones the nickname “Star” in the first place if you’re aware there is already someone famous with that exact name? You should realize that she is much more famous than your original character, and she will be the first one your reader thinks of when confronted with the name Star Jones in any context. As I pointed out before with the association of ‘vampire’ with ‘Dracula,’ people read ‘Star Jones’ and think hefty, black lawyer from “The View” (she’s not a TV character, by the way, she’s a real person). This can work as a spot of humor–those crazy cadets teasing the possibly age-padded admiral–but never seriously.
Likewise, with Reinhardt, why? Why confuse your reader? I promise you that your average fanfiction reader is surpassingly lazy; if you make too close a connection between your original character and a canon one, they’ll put two and two together to get five. And, unless you want to waste their time and dedicate a sentence to saying “TWO AND TWO ARE FOUR” in fanfiction speak, change the name. If there is some *dire* need (you mentioned you chose the name intentionally) to have Christian be Christian Reinhardt, you’ll have to back it up (perhaps a secret hidden in the etymology of the original family name “Reinhard”? Six magical letters might clear up this problem: G, O, another O, another G, L, and E). Changing the spelling won’t matter because, as I said twice now, fanfiction readers aren’t necessarily versed in spellings of the characters’ names (as evidenced by the frequent misspellings of “Danica,” “Jarko,” and even the relatively more common “Hannibal”). They’ll see no difference between “Reinheardt” and “Reinhardt” (incidentally, did you know they were both descended from the same German-rooted family? Fascinating, and Google, again). The problem here is that you might have readers coming to this section of ff.net very familiar with Blade II. You should account for them because they won’t for you. You cater to the fans and rely upon them for your encouragement, something you’ll get more of if you don’t confuse them with name mix-ups. Consider that.
6) You’ve taken down the story, so I can’t find the exact line, but the incident about ‘reporting’? I’ll see what I can remember. It was something like Admiral Jones calling something to Christian and then after the dialogue in quotation marks, you had ‘Admiral Darius “Star” Jones reported.’ I thought it might be a word-choice mistake, and perhaps you really meant he ‘bellowed’ or you forgot to change the pronoun to reflect *Christian* reporting. Either way, fix it, please. There is not problem with him calling shots as you phrase it, he is, after all, an admiral. But unless he’s a member of the Joint Chiefs (don’t ask, just Google), he probably didn’t create the orders that Christian and his remarkably trusting teammates are to execute. Even generals and admirals get their orders.
And thank you for kindly informing me that the rank of admiral is the highest in the Navy. Very good. To quote the venerable Obi-Wan, you’ve taken your first step into a larger world: research. I bet you looked really carefully through the review I left you where I told you that, right? See? It’s easy!
7) I think I mentioned this before, but at the risk of educating you, allow me to repeat myself: if you hate a name and know it’s problematic, why keep it? The offender this time is ‘Fangora.’ You’re correct; not many people are as creative as you and can come up with a name like that. Most people are *more* creative. They wouldn’t have seriously thought to use a bastardization of a horror-movie magazine title for the main bad guy of their fiction. Most people know better. Happens to the best of us, though, right?
8) People not liking the twists in your story is common. And yes, creative license gives you right to write as you see fit. I would like to mention that you posit as an excuse that you write, and I quote, “ORIGINAL FICTION.” Correction. You are writing *fan* fiction, and while you enjoy the authorship of the plot and your original characters, nothing you are writing, so long as it takes place in a world built by another author (David Goyer, in the case of Blade fanfiction), is considered eligible for the title of ‘original.’ As for your character being super-powered, super-strong, a member of an elite group such as the Navy SEALs, and a possible love interest for one of the canon characters? Also ineligible for another title, and again I quote you, that of “BEING UNIQUE.” The reason the moniker Mary Sue exists is because too many authors invent the over-talented original character love-interest in too many fandoms. We call characters like Christian Mary (or, gender-correct, Marty) Sues so other readers know the story is an excuse for the author’s alter-ego to score with one of the actors/actresses in the movie/book/TV show.
None of this changes the fact that Christian has a tendency to talk in incomplete phrases, alluding to events not foreshadowed or efficiently flashbacked in your work. If they’re covered in your previous stories, say so in your introduction, and maybe we’ll slog back through the stories to find out what you’re *not* telling us. The way you reveal his back story is a violation of good creative writing rule number one: show, don’t tell. You sit and have Christian remember to himself things he wouldn’t have to explain if he were merely thinking about in his head. He’s friends with Abby and King? He would wonder how his friends were doing, not think ‘I was friends with Abby and King’ or however you poorly phrased it. My problem with Christian’s dialogue was mainly that it was unrealistic. No one thinks or talks as he would or did. There’s a stilted, writerly formality and a ludicrous, ungrammatical confusion to his thought and speech patterns. Fortunately for us all, the story is down. You can pretend I don’t know what I’m talking about some more, and I am spared the loathsome task of finding an example for you as it would mean re-reading your story for the third time (contrary to your opinion, I read your story carefully *and* more than once–as for why, I can only plead masochism or insanity, and though I’m leaning heavily towards the latter, your story is painful enough to give weight to the former).
9) What’s wrong with writing fanfiction such that it’s a, sorry, what did you term it? A ‘greatest seller’ contest? There’s a lot wrong with that terminology for starters, but, if I’m interpreting this correctly, you want to know why I should be so harsh to an earnest attempt by a (probably) young writer when this (ff.net) is supposed to be a fanfiction site? A couple of reasons. One, the point of posting to fanfiction.net is to gain exposure for your non-original writing devoted to a particular fandom; with the benefit of exposure, you assume the risk of people disliking your drivel as much as liking it, and I am as entitled to find your story worthless as you are to find it genius. Two, with harsh reality comes greatest education. Because of my unforgiving stance on your unoriginal, uninteresting, possibly psychotic character, your confused, haphazard, lazy sentence construction, and your muddled, unrealistic, directionless plotting, you’ve taken your story down. Now, what have you learned? You’ve learned that not everyone on ff.net is going to praise you or your story because it seems really cool that Christian can blow stuff up without consequences, get promoted despite being dangerous insubordinate, seemingly insane (if the admiral didn’t know about non-human terrorists, why wouldn’t he have a problem with his new captain babbling on about vampires killing his family?) and apparently *autistic* (nowhere stated in this work), or because you use the odious net-speak “R+R PLZ” in your summary and in bold at the head of the fiction. If you never again plead with people for reviews, I will consider this worth my time. If you sit and reconstruct sentences such that they don’t appear to have been translated from another language back and forth into English a la Babelfish, it’s a victory for humanity, let alone you or I. If you learn not to write patronizing, aggressive, poorly thought-out e-mails to people kind enough to read your stories, that will be proof that God exists.
In short, why encourage you to write as though this were a competition? TO GET YOU TO WRITE AT THE PEAK OF YOUR ABILITY. Posting your fiction is supposed to be about enjoyment for all, not self-gratification for you and consternation for your reader. If this is the climax of your ability, I’ll take another partner, thanks, because you just don’t do it for me. Go ahead and post and reap the reward from those foolish enough to see character and dilemma in a Mary Sue and wangst. And, language, dear. “Ass” is unbecoming, betraying both a poor vocabulary and a weak mind, and, trust me, you really needed no help from profanity to do that.
10) You’re right. I didn’t know Christian was autistic because you failed to mention it in this story that you also failed to mention featured a recurring original character (I’d say I sound like a broken record at this point, but dollars to donuts, you’re too young to remember music formats from before the age of the cassette). More power to him that he’s somehow able to get into the US Navy at all, let alone promoted to captain and entrusted with the lives of others. Does the Navy routinely recruit autistic ensigns? You have to pass a bevy of medical tests, you realize, and they do look at your medical history and continuing complications. Him being an “emotionally-uptight, anger-struck man who's lived a life of darkness” can’t be good for his psychiatric profile either. I cannot state for a fact or give you any record of their specific policy on autism, but you can contact a recruiter through the Navy’s website at www.navy.com.
While you’re there, consider reviewing the fact that as an enlisted officer, Christian would have had to have had completed college level schooling with a degree. Even if he is an incredibly gifted autistic, he probably wouldn’t manage to escape college at an age lower than twenty. Some more things to keep in mind regarding his age: the youngest he can enlist is seventeen, so even as a genius, he cannot get into the Navy before that age, and only then with parental consent (which, due to the oh-so-tragic deaths of his parents, is not possible); the minimum age for enlistment on one’s own recognizance is eighteen; the first step to becoming captain involves an average stint of two years as an ensign before one is considered for promotion. As you thoughtfully reminded me, Christian is twenty-four. Ensigns make the rank of captain, on average, using the Navy’s “Officer Planner” after twenty-one to twenty-three years, and the turnover at each stage of promotion is very iffy. So, Christian is quite the prodigy, having gotten his college degree by eighteen and risen to the rank of captain in a short six years. By all rights, he ought to be middling away as a lieutenant.
Do you comprehend why I regard your ‘original’ character with suspicion, skepticism, and disgust now? He’s not only an anomaly for the fandom, he’s an impossibility for reality. Original characters who are amazingly proficient to the extent they stretch the bounds of reality and the rules of the canonical text are Mary Sues. Your positing of Christian as autistic, and mentioning that you are as well, only makes it clearer that he is a substitution into the world of the Blade films for *you.* He is you as you wish you could be, a self-insertion Mary Sue, and Mary Sues are the work of the Devil. They chew through fandoms and spit out characters who are not as we knew them from the original work. By the time you get done with them, Blade, Abby, King, vampires, day, night, cats, dogs, even gravity will be warped by the magnetism of Christian’s impossible ‘charisma;’ they won’t resemble the canon characters, facts, worlds, and rules we knew, and only your character will be left standing, probably holding the love-interest puppet you made of one of the canon characters. That is what it means to be a Mary Sue. Mary Sues are the enemy of fanfiction, as far as fanfiction is meant to expand, enrich, and revisit the world the fans fell in love with. Mary Sue is the enemy. Christian is the enemy. You, Seph2k, are the enemy.
11) Sprayed bullets in the dark. Re-read that, sir. “Sprayed bullets in the dark.” Have you ever fired a gun outside of a video game? I’m guessing here, but I’ll vote for ‘not.’ Have you ever talked to an enlisted officer or soldier and asked them what it’s like to use a weapon as lethal, complicated, and dangerous as an automatic weapon? Again, I’ll wager that you haven’t. Let’s try an easier question: have you ever heard of boot camp? Do you imagine people enlist in the army, navy, whatever, and are immediately given a flat-top haircut, dog-tags, and an assault rifle? They train you pretty damn well in the armed services, especially as concerns firearms, and emphasis number one with a bullet (if you excuse the pun) when it comes to guns is firearm *SAFETY.* I’m pretty sure shooting wildly into an obscured area in which might be your own friends and fellow soldiers falls pretty firmly outside the admittedly variable range of safe operation of an automatic weapon.
If Christian enters a room and his night vision doesn’t work, he switches to his eyes. Infra-red vision isn’t standard, as far as I know, for anyone other than the Predator. His eyes will adjust in the near-dark to give him a clue as to possible interfering objects and the movements of his squad. If his squad is so poorly trained that none of them have any reserve signals, flares, flashlights, or other means of signaling in the event of mass equipment malfunction, they deserve to be shot by the psychotic teenager put in charge of them. Frankly, if the Navy trains men like Christian to shoot at anything that he can’t see, it’s a wonder that anyone survived walking into that warehouse or wherever because the other soldiers ought to have been shooting willy-nilly, too. Either way, you can hardly argue that blind shooting when you’ve neither confirmed the presence of your target or the position of your teammates is “COMMON SENSE.” Common sense would be to fall back, attempt to realign your gear, and then make a re-entry. Or radio the base for an e-vac because this is not a mission you can win. I’m not suggesting Christian try knifing this Fangora in the dark, as you seem to think. What I was suggesting was that it was ludicrous for you to have this supposedly hyper-intelligent navy man push on with his mission at all, no matter what weapon he used. Unless he was wielding a light sabre and was comfortable manipulating the ebb and flow of the Force to guide him to his target, no weapon Christian used would have been acceptable.
12) Sigh. Last thing: one does not become a Daywalker in the Blade franchise at twenty-four. One cannot become a Daywalker at fifteen, or forty-seven, or any of the incongruous ages Christian acts like or ought to be to match his ranking, respectively. This is not my opinion, this is the fandom’s rule, supported throughout all three Blade films and held up in the novelization of the last film which I have read. Blade’s mother was pregnant when she was bitten by vampire. She died but delivered her baby, Blade, who turned half-vampire as a result. That’s how you get Blade, and that’s the way you get a Daywalker. If you intend Christian to be half-vampiric from birth before the story begins, fine, whatever, that only adds to his Sue-ishness, but is not (strictly) a violation of the rules of the canon (I say not ‘strictly’ because the Blade films make it clear that it is extremely HARD to get a Daywalker, seeing as there ARE no others besides Blade despite years and years of well-funded vampire research). If you are going to go out on a limb and devise a new process for making half-vampire, half-human hybrids, I hate you, and the rest of the fans of Blade hate you. Go mess around with Anne Rice, she likes this type of garbage. Think of that old “The Highlander” catchphrase when you think of Daywalkers in the Blade universe: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
I might also point out that you made no mention that a) Christian is a Daywalker, b) that Blade is gone so that Christian can be (quoting!) “THE” Daywalker, or c) where Blade might have gone that means he’s out of the game forever and ever. You said, and I quote for the last time, “It's just too bad you couldn't figure that out yourself when writing that review... just so sad.” Again, for the last time, you’re absolutely right. It’s incredibly sad that I didn’t know all these things you never said, wrote, or hinted at in this story, and that you never said, wrote, or hinted at this being a continuation of a character from another story. If only I’d known! If only you’d written out in outline form on the first page the following:
US Navy SEAL Marty Sue, 24
Daywalker, soon to be lover of [fill in the blank canon character name]
Fights new and better and stronger bad guy than ever, wins
Sleeps with [name from blank] a lot
Missed chances, I guess. I should have been able to read your mind to know all this, or, at the very least, expected that in order to enjoy a story listed without reference to any other that I should have read all of your singularly awful stories to appreciate your Mary Sue–and read your reviews, too! If only I’d known...I’d have called you a psycho and not bothered critiquing Christian at all.
Some parting questions as your e-mail managed to stump me a bit:
1) Who’s Kimmybo? Did she say you weren’t the best writer on the planet either? Can I have her e-mail? I’m starting a recovery program.
2) When are you going to stop putting into quotation marks words that ought to be just fine on their own? I need to mark it on my calendar as ‘Start Taking Seph2k Seriously Day.”
3) What *is* “conductive reasoning”? Is it so ‘senseless and distraught’ it, too, must be in quotes? Does my reasoning power miniature science-fair light bulbs and buzzers? Wahoo.
Let this be a lesson to me, you say. Congratulations, it has been. I’ve learned never again to leave you a thought-out critique of why you fail as a writer because you lack the ability to discern among building materials for those out of which it is worth constructing a fiction. From now on, I will restrict my views to ones you’re more familiar with–the type that is no more than ten words or a line long, but instead of “OMG PLZ CONTINUE...UR SUCH A GR8 WRYTR,” expect a conversely scathing “You’re still writing, are you? I thought I told you to stop.”
Off I get to review other people’s stories. Ones with better raw material and better attitudes. I usually end by wishing my reviewees the best of luck, and I will do so again. Best of luck to you, Seph2k. You’re going to need a lot more than that, but that’s all I can give you.
You might recall this little deviance into merciless Mary Sue slaughter...
Well, the author's taken down the story, so victory for ME (imagine a Zim voice, please), but he/she/the dog has written back an eloquent defence, point-by-point as to why it is I who suck/am not reading carefully enough.
For your edification,
You know what? I was gonna just sit and wait for my response to your
little "review" to be posted on the site, but since I have no patience
whatsoever for people who as much misinterpret stories as they do slam
them, I feel like an e-mail would be sufficient.
That was the single most misunderstood and unnecessary review I've seen
posted since Kimmybo. It's people like you who forget what reading and
reviewing is all about, and I just proved it with this
soon-to-be-posted response of a review. It's not up there yet (it's
currently 8:27 EST here BTW), but it will be, and then you shall see.
Save for maybe 2 or 3 of those points, I had an appropriate for pretty
much all of them in writing it. You wanna know how? THIS is how:
1) Christian is 24, not 15. Sorry that I didn't include the details of
his age in the story, but that little piece of information can be found
in the other fic (which I'm now just using as an "alternate stories"
fic and not part of a trilogy of fics which I'm planning)
2) If for some reason you have a prob with Abby going for some1 else
besides King (which, infact, NEVER HAPPENED YET! Read it again), I
think you should stop and read it twice over. First off, that was just
a plotline I added to it (that she was his CHILDHOOD love, NOT
PRESENT!). The point was to have the two "contest" eachother for Abby
in the end. Sorry that you didn't think too highly of that idea, but
some people over at the Blade: Trinity movie forums thought it was a
great idea. And besides, last time I checked, Abby and King were just
FRIENDS in Trinity. Doesn't mean people can't write about the two being
a couple in their fics (most people do in their stories), but it
doesn't mean I can't have them staying as "just friends," either if I
see fit which, who knows? I might actually consider going with that
angle later on myself. Furthermore, there are no guidelines as to which
of my characters gets involved with the so-called "cannon characters"
from the movies. IT'S ALL MADE UP! That was perhaps the most pitiful
excuse for criticism in your entire review right there.
3) The reason I post "R&R" is simply because it makes for great
motivation (that's how people get better as writers). It doesn't count
as "karma" in any way. It never has. It builds confidence. The more
people review your story, the better of a writer you will be. It's
COMMON SENSE! Not only that, but also I've got posted on several other
of my fanfics, INCLUDING the one I very recently took down, that I
welcome any form of constructive criticism from other reviewers. Well,
your criticism wasn't constructive at all. Insult and libel was all
that it was. Criticism is supposed to HELP the author, not piss him
off. Reviews like that will do little more than lend you onto other
people's Ignored Authors Lists.
4) I knew Starr Jones was a TV character, I'm not THAT stupid. The
nickname "Star" Jones implied in the name IS NOT part of the name, just
another way of referring to him (a "nickname" if you will, and it's
with ONE R, NOT TWO like the TV character). Sorry if that's insulting
to you, but just remember: it's NOT part of his name in any way, shape,
or form. And the name "DarStar," while sounding stupid (even I agree
with that), again, makes for a nickname, no matter how stupid it may
sound. People often make such references to famous people (but only
when given certain first and/or last names; for example, with a name
like Darius Jones, you can easily call him Darius "Star(r)" Jones right
off the bat) all the time incase you didn't know, which is EXACTLY what
I did here.
5) No, the two (Reinhardt from Blade II and my AU character) are NOT
related in any way, but if I made it so that they were, there'd be no
problem with having that as his last name, now would there? Alls I
would have to do is to MAKE A STORYLINE UP like I've been doing ever
since. Don't like it? Fine. I'll change it so that he has an "A" in the
name so that his last name is Reinheardt (basically "heart" with a
"D"). There. Two completely different characters with two completely
different last names (well, not completely). Problem solved. Oh, and
BTW, that WAS intentional. I knew there was a character from Blade II
named Reinhardt! It even says so somewhere in my last fic, either from
a portion of a chapter or in a review, one or the other.
6) Again, I stay with the fact that YOU SHOULD READ IT OVER!! You say
the Admiral reports to the Captain in your so-called "review" when
infact, it's the opposite. And last time I checked, the Admiral is the
HIGHEST-RANKING OFFICER. He calls ALL the shots, so why would there be
a problem with that? Prove me wrong here.
7) Okay, I will admit, you've got me here. Like they say, you can't win
them all. You're right. I DID post a typo here when I said he was the
most legendary vampire of all time (of HIS time would be much more
fitting). Sorry I made a little mistake here. Happens to the best of
us. And about the name, sorry you don't like it. I've spent all morning
thinking of vampire names for the new villian to use in my story, and
that was the best one that came to mind. That's quite alright if you're
gonna criticize my intelligance here, but just remember: not everyone
is that creative.
8) As far as Christian's dialogue goes, if you read his dialogue in
later chapters of my last story, you'll find that each of his sentences
(from that point on) are always referring to something and hold a
viable meaning to them and not just "talking out of his ass" like you
claim he's done here. So I assumed that that's what people thought was
wrong with it, and thought something had to change next time around,
big deal. I'm planning on undergoing some critical changes to that as
well, for anyone who cares. Of course, some people may not like some of
the plot twists in that one (which could be the reason), but hey, it's
called WRITING ORIGINAL FICTION! If you would rather go back to reading
the 80% of other fiction (I don't mean to criticize anyone here on
their work; I've read a number of them and a lot of them are actually
very good) which the summaries are all either EXACTLY the same or very
similiar (all those aforementioned fics are about King and Abby pairing
up), BE MY GUEST. But who said doing something different, something
that hasn't yet been done around here was bad? It's called BEING
UNIQUE! Sorry that your lack of sensibility couldn't comprehend this.
9) You as much slam something for work I merely ATTEMPTED. That WHOLE
ENTIRE first chapter was written to the BEST OF MY ABILITY! I even
proofread it and made a few changes before posting it here. If you as
much slam me THIS much for something I didn't even consider to be a
"top seller" or anything like that, then maybe next time I won't take
your reviews so seriously (that is, if I'm even PAYING ATTENTION to
them, which I may not). According to your "review," this is supposed to
be some sort of half-assed "greatest seller" contest, not a normal
fanfiction site, and that is where you fall FLAT ON YOUR ASS.
10) Oh, and here's one other thing you didn't know about my character
Christian. He's an emotionally-uptight, anger-struck man who's lived a
life of darkness. And, much like I, the author, HE'S AUTISTIC! There's
ANOTHER thing you surely didn't know about me, which pretty much speaks
for the seriousness of my response to your little review.
11) Once again, you misunderstood that action scene. Of course he
"sprayed bullets in the dark". What was he supposed to do? Just rush at
him with a trendy pocket knife arcade-style and get killed, let alone
stand there like a hitch hiker on acid and get killed? NOT WHEN YOU'RE
IN THE DARK, BOTH YOUR NIGHT VISION GOGGLES AND INFRARED-RED (?) VISION
AREN'T WORKING, AND YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE LIGHT SUPPLY INSIDE!!
In other words, you're basically left in the dark with no hopes of ever
seeing the light deep inside. Again, it's COMMON SENSE! He could also
just chuck a grenade and throw it at some random spot in the dark, but
it'd be a hell of a lot easier, and more convenient, to just burn him
with your assault riffle. Hence being a "danger to other men," he
doesn't turn into some psycho until later on (that's where he turns
into a "Daywalker"... well, I guess it's safe to say THE Daywalker
since it came AFTER Blade's departure)! It's just too bad you couldn't
figure that out yourself when writing that review... just so sad.
Maybe next time, if and ONLY if, you start offering some valid points
as to why it sucked, I won't take it as anything BUT "constructive"
criticism. But this so-called "conductive reasoning" is more senseless
and distraught than you claimed the story itself to be in your review.
Let this be a lesson to you when reviewing other people's stories.
Oh no! This is supposed to be lesson? Is there going to be a test?
I suppose I had better study. [Insert manical grin] I told people tonight at Dave's party that I wasn't going to be mean. No, I'm not mean. I'm polite, and as many of you know, that's a thousand times worse.
In my defense, and then the defense rests on its own merits and bad-assness:
Dear Seph2k,
As a dedicated fanfiction reader and reviewer, let me say that I appreciate the effort that went into the e-mail you sent me. You had an effective system, bulleting your counter arguments to my review in handy number-format. To return the favor, and as a sign of my respect, I feel I owe you a response and have adopted your organizing schematic for clarification purposes. Hopefully, this time, you’ll be able to understand my criticisms more thoroughly before firing off an angry missive, but the quality of your last e-mail makes it highly unlikely. Still, here we go.
1) First stop, a visit to dictionary.com
“Like” prep.
1. Possessing the characteristics of; resembling closely; similar to
2. a. In the typical manner of
b. In the same way as
When I wrote that your original character Christian behaved *like* a fifteen-year-old playing military games online, I indicated that he behaved as though he were a teenage boy, not that he *was* a teenage boy. Hence my usage of the word “like” (side note: you nowhere in your fiction stated that Christian was twenty-four). I can only attribute this mistake to two causes. One, you didn’t read my review carefully enough (highly likely since similar mistakes occurred throughout your e-mail), and two, you have a poor grasp of the English language in context. Like, like many words, can have many different meanings depending on its usage. If you’re interested, visit dictionary.com or the Oxford English Dictionary online. This qualifies as research–you know, that thing you were too lazy to do before? Write that down.
2)Your story has been removed from ff.net, so I’ll have to chart this from memory, but I don’t recall your summary for this story ever mentioning that it was part of a series or featured a recurring original character from one of your other works. If it had, I wouldn’t have assumed that this was a first introduction to Christian and critiqued it as such. Plus, it would have been my pleasure to review your other fictions and inform you a long time ago that he was a Mary Sue self-insertion character who was utterly uninteresting. My bad. If only I’d gone and reviewed your earlier work, the travesty against writing wouldn’t have gotten this far. The short story here is that there are certain markers fanfic writers use to signal that their story should be taken in context of other stories they’ve already written. A simple parenthetical reference in your summary would have sufficed. Here’s an example:
A Boring Para-Military Nut Job Takes On A Vampire by Seph2k
Christian takes on a new vampire enemy. (A sequel to my story “Can You Believe They Let This Guy Into The Navy?”)
3) You won’t find this definition in the dictionary, though you might at wikipedia.com. A ‘canon’ character (one ‘n’) is not a so-called term for anything; it is a fan-accepted designation for any character introduced by the work. Incidentally, the work in which your fanfiction is set is also termed the canonical text, or, for short ‘canon.’ So, the canon work for your fiction was Blade: Trinity, or, more generally, the universe set up by the Blade films as a whole.
However, you’re absolutely right (how often do you hear that by the by?). There is no rule that canon characters have to date or sleep with each other. In fact, many canon characters don’t even like each other that much, and you can usually identify those by checking to see if one is the ‘protagonist’ and the other the ‘antagonist.’ Moreover, the characters of Abby and King are by no means contractually obligated to sleep together, and, you’re right again to say in the movie they were only partners and friends. You must be bursting with pride to find out that you were correct about this. Bravo.
I must, regrettably, inform you that while it’s believable that canon characters can and do and will date outside the canon character roll call list, there is this unbelievably common tendency of writers, like yourself, to match up their original characters with the single/available canon character as a means to self-gratify vicariously. I know, crazy, right? Unfortunately for your story and Christian, these original characters tend to exist only to wow the canon member of the opposite (sometimes the same) sex and lure them into bed. Not only that, they also, like Christian border on being ridiculously overpowered, intelligent, rich, good-looking, well-liked, and so on. So, maybe Christian is the complex, deep, thoughtful counterpart to either Abby or King, and a future story might unite them in a romantic masterpiece. I was merely pointing out before, and do so again now, that as written, Christian falls into that unloved and unlovable category of ‘existing solely so the author can write about their self-projected character having sex with the canon character the author likes/finds sexy.’ It’s a hard sell. Best of luck to you. Yes, it’s all made up, but people read fanfiction to read more about the characters they liked from the movie. I bet that’s why there’s so many Abby/King pairings; because no one cares about what you would do if you got the chance to screw Abigail Whistler, but they’d invest good time imagining someone with more humor and intelligence, like Hannibal King, doing it. Since you’ve graciously allowed me to leave your fics behind for the eighty percent of others that do just that, I will take you up on it, much to my preference, I assure you.
4)You have a lot of fanfiction writing etiquette to polish up on. I can only assume this is a fault of your inexperience, something I can correct for you quite easily as I’ve been writing fanfiction on numerous boards, in multiple fandoms, for just about a decade now. I was new at it, too, once. I mentioned your summary before, and I’ll repeat it here: if you write a sequel to another fic featuring an original character (or not), you should say so in your summary. Believe it or not, not everyone who comes across your latest story will know that it is a sequel or that you’ve written anything before. In fanfiction, you have to do a lot of work for your readers. On fanfiction.net in particular, your old stories get buried with time. Alerting readers to the fact that you’ve written something earlier is a courtesy you owe them or you’ll get some confused readers, and confused readers, whether or not you implore them in abbreviations to review your story, will not *keep* reading. You’re right (maybe this is a trend) in saying reviews are left to teach you to be a better writer. One of the ways to become a better writer is to write something that keeps your readers’ attention long enough for them to bother leaving reviews at all. And I stand by my admonition that you *not* beg for reviews. Not only is it pathetic, it should be assumed. You publish for love of genre, character, fandom, and the entertainment of your readers; begging will not encourage bad readers to review and it will, more often than not, turn off good readers from reading your story at all. Unlike your reasoning, *that* is common sense, my dear.
One more thing: respond to your reviewers via e-mail. You know how to use this as you managed to find me just fine, so I won’t denigrate your considerable intelligence by instructing you on how to find e-mails through ff.net. If you have a gripe with a critique, respond outside of ff.net. Those reviews, as you so astutely pointed out, are for the general purpose of supporting and reforming the author (not, however, meant to build confidence; that is a by-product of a good review, but they are there to help you learn what you do well and wrong, not solely to say ‘you are the greatest ever ever ever’). The review system is neither a message board nor a personal web site devoted to you. Your assumption that I ought to have not only read your other fictions before reading this one is relatively reasonable compared to the lunacy of accusing me of having not read your reviews, too. Truthfully, I’m uninterested in what others had to say about your work. Leaving a review is a personal, reader-to-author communication, and what they got out of the story rarely helps me interpret it. Do not rely on the review section to communicate anything to future readers. Also, there is no such thing as an “Ignored Authors List” on ff.net yet, though when there is one, please feel free to put me on yours. You’re already on mine.
5) If you agree that DarStar is a ridiculous name, why use it? Why give Darius Jones the nickname “Star” in the first place if you’re aware there is already someone famous with that exact name? You should realize that she is much more famous than your original character, and she will be the first one your reader thinks of when confronted with the name Star Jones in any context. As I pointed out before with the association of ‘vampire’ with ‘Dracula,’ people read ‘Star Jones’ and think hefty, black lawyer from “The View” (she’s not a TV character, by the way, she’s a real person). This can work as a spot of humor–those crazy cadets teasing the possibly age-padded admiral–but never seriously.
Likewise, with Reinhardt, why? Why confuse your reader? I promise you that your average fanfiction reader is surpassingly lazy; if you make too close a connection between your original character and a canon one, they’ll put two and two together to get five. And, unless you want to waste their time and dedicate a sentence to saying “TWO AND TWO ARE FOUR” in fanfiction speak, change the name. If there is some *dire* need (you mentioned you chose the name intentionally) to have Christian be Christian Reinhardt, you’ll have to back it up (perhaps a secret hidden in the etymology of the original family name “Reinhard”? Six magical letters might clear up this problem: G, O, another O, another G, L, and E). Changing the spelling won’t matter because, as I said twice now, fanfiction readers aren’t necessarily versed in spellings of the characters’ names (as evidenced by the frequent misspellings of “Danica,” “Jarko,” and even the relatively more common “Hannibal”). They’ll see no difference between “Reinheardt” and “Reinhardt” (incidentally, did you know they were both descended from the same German-rooted family? Fascinating, and Google, again). The problem here is that you might have readers coming to this section of ff.net very familiar with Blade II. You should account for them because they won’t for you. You cater to the fans and rely upon them for your encouragement, something you’ll get more of if you don’t confuse them with name mix-ups. Consider that.
6) You’ve taken down the story, so I can’t find the exact line, but the incident about ‘reporting’? I’ll see what I can remember. It was something like Admiral Jones calling something to Christian and then after the dialogue in quotation marks, you had ‘Admiral Darius “Star” Jones reported.’ I thought it might be a word-choice mistake, and perhaps you really meant he ‘bellowed’ or you forgot to change the pronoun to reflect *Christian* reporting. Either way, fix it, please. There is not problem with him calling shots as you phrase it, he is, after all, an admiral. But unless he’s a member of the Joint Chiefs (don’t ask, just Google), he probably didn’t create the orders that Christian and his remarkably trusting teammates are to execute. Even generals and admirals get their orders.
And thank you for kindly informing me that the rank of admiral is the highest in the Navy. Very good. To quote the venerable Obi-Wan, you’ve taken your first step into a larger world: research. I bet you looked really carefully through the review I left you where I told you that, right? See? It’s easy!
7) I think I mentioned this before, but at the risk of educating you, allow me to repeat myself: if you hate a name and know it’s problematic, why keep it? The offender this time is ‘Fangora.’ You’re correct; not many people are as creative as you and can come up with a name like that. Most people are *more* creative. They wouldn’t have seriously thought to use a bastardization of a horror-movie magazine title for the main bad guy of their fiction. Most people know better. Happens to the best of us, though, right?
8) People not liking the twists in your story is common. And yes, creative license gives you right to write as you see fit. I would like to mention that you posit as an excuse that you write, and I quote, “ORIGINAL FICTION.” Correction. You are writing *fan* fiction, and while you enjoy the authorship of the plot and your original characters, nothing you are writing, so long as it takes place in a world built by another author (David Goyer, in the case of Blade fanfiction), is considered eligible for the title of ‘original.’ As for your character being super-powered, super-strong, a member of an elite group such as the Navy SEALs, and a possible love interest for one of the canon characters? Also ineligible for another title, and again I quote you, that of “BEING UNIQUE.” The reason the moniker Mary Sue exists is because too many authors invent the over-talented original character love-interest in too many fandoms. We call characters like Christian Mary (or, gender-correct, Marty) Sues so other readers know the story is an excuse for the author’s alter-ego to score with one of the actors/actresses in the movie/book/TV show.
None of this changes the fact that Christian has a tendency to talk in incomplete phrases, alluding to events not foreshadowed or efficiently flashbacked in your work. If they’re covered in your previous stories, say so in your introduction, and maybe we’ll slog back through the stories to find out what you’re *not* telling us. The way you reveal his back story is a violation of good creative writing rule number one: show, don’t tell. You sit and have Christian remember to himself things he wouldn’t have to explain if he were merely thinking about in his head. He’s friends with Abby and King? He would wonder how his friends were doing, not think ‘I was friends with Abby and King’ or however you poorly phrased it. My problem with Christian’s dialogue was mainly that it was unrealistic. No one thinks or talks as he would or did. There’s a stilted, writerly formality and a ludicrous, ungrammatical confusion to his thought and speech patterns. Fortunately for us all, the story is down. You can pretend I don’t know what I’m talking about some more, and I am spared the loathsome task of finding an example for you as it would mean re-reading your story for the third time (contrary to your opinion, I read your story carefully *and* more than once–as for why, I can only plead masochism or insanity, and though I’m leaning heavily towards the latter, your story is painful enough to give weight to the former).
9) What’s wrong with writing fanfiction such that it’s a, sorry, what did you term it? A ‘greatest seller’ contest? There’s a lot wrong with that terminology for starters, but, if I’m interpreting this correctly, you want to know why I should be so harsh to an earnest attempt by a (probably) young writer when this (ff.net) is supposed to be a fanfiction site? A couple of reasons. One, the point of posting to fanfiction.net is to gain exposure for your non-original writing devoted to a particular fandom; with the benefit of exposure, you assume the risk of people disliking your drivel as much as liking it, and I am as entitled to find your story worthless as you are to find it genius. Two, with harsh reality comes greatest education. Because of my unforgiving stance on your unoriginal, uninteresting, possibly psychotic character, your confused, haphazard, lazy sentence construction, and your muddled, unrealistic, directionless plotting, you’ve taken your story down. Now, what have you learned? You’ve learned that not everyone on ff.net is going to praise you or your story because it seems really cool that Christian can blow stuff up without consequences, get promoted despite being dangerous insubordinate, seemingly insane (if the admiral didn’t know about non-human terrorists, why wouldn’t he have a problem with his new captain babbling on about vampires killing his family?) and apparently *autistic* (nowhere stated in this work), or because you use the odious net-speak “R+R PLZ” in your summary and in bold at the head of the fiction. If you never again plead with people for reviews, I will consider this worth my time. If you sit and reconstruct sentences such that they don’t appear to have been translated from another language back and forth into English a la Babelfish, it’s a victory for humanity, let alone you or I. If you learn not to write patronizing, aggressive, poorly thought-out e-mails to people kind enough to read your stories, that will be proof that God exists.
In short, why encourage you to write as though this were a competition? TO GET YOU TO WRITE AT THE PEAK OF YOUR ABILITY. Posting your fiction is supposed to be about enjoyment for all, not self-gratification for you and consternation for your reader. If this is the climax of your ability, I’ll take another partner, thanks, because you just don’t do it for me. Go ahead and post and reap the reward from those foolish enough to see character and dilemma in a Mary Sue and wangst. And, language, dear. “Ass” is unbecoming, betraying both a poor vocabulary and a weak mind, and, trust me, you really needed no help from profanity to do that.
10) You’re right. I didn’t know Christian was autistic because you failed to mention it in this story that you also failed to mention featured a recurring original character (I’d say I sound like a broken record at this point, but dollars to donuts, you’re too young to remember music formats from before the age of the cassette). More power to him that he’s somehow able to get into the US Navy at all, let alone promoted to captain and entrusted with the lives of others. Does the Navy routinely recruit autistic ensigns? You have to pass a bevy of medical tests, you realize, and they do look at your medical history and continuing complications. Him being an “emotionally-uptight, anger-struck man who's lived a life of darkness” can’t be good for his psychiatric profile either. I cannot state for a fact or give you any record of their specific policy on autism, but you can contact a recruiter through the Navy’s website at www.navy.com.
While you’re there, consider reviewing the fact that as an enlisted officer, Christian would have had to have had completed college level schooling with a degree. Even if he is an incredibly gifted autistic, he probably wouldn’t manage to escape college at an age lower than twenty. Some more things to keep in mind regarding his age: the youngest he can enlist is seventeen, so even as a genius, he cannot get into the Navy before that age, and only then with parental consent (which, due to the oh-so-tragic deaths of his parents, is not possible); the minimum age for enlistment on one’s own recognizance is eighteen; the first step to becoming captain involves an average stint of two years as an ensign before one is considered for promotion. As you thoughtfully reminded me, Christian is twenty-four. Ensigns make the rank of captain, on average, using the Navy’s “Officer Planner” after twenty-one to twenty-three years, and the turnover at each stage of promotion is very iffy. So, Christian is quite the prodigy, having gotten his college degree by eighteen and risen to the rank of captain in a short six years. By all rights, he ought to be middling away as a lieutenant.
Do you comprehend why I regard your ‘original’ character with suspicion, skepticism, and disgust now? He’s not only an anomaly for the fandom, he’s an impossibility for reality. Original characters who are amazingly proficient to the extent they stretch the bounds of reality and the rules of the canonical text are Mary Sues. Your positing of Christian as autistic, and mentioning that you are as well, only makes it clearer that he is a substitution into the world of the Blade films for *you.* He is you as you wish you could be, a self-insertion Mary Sue, and Mary Sues are the work of the Devil. They chew through fandoms and spit out characters who are not as we knew them from the original work. By the time you get done with them, Blade, Abby, King, vampires, day, night, cats, dogs, even gravity will be warped by the magnetism of Christian’s impossible ‘charisma;’ they won’t resemble the canon characters, facts, worlds, and rules we knew, and only your character will be left standing, probably holding the love-interest puppet you made of one of the canon characters. That is what it means to be a Mary Sue. Mary Sues are the enemy of fanfiction, as far as fanfiction is meant to expand, enrich, and revisit the world the fans fell in love with. Mary Sue is the enemy. Christian is the enemy. You, Seph2k, are the enemy.
11) Sprayed bullets in the dark. Re-read that, sir. “Sprayed bullets in the dark.” Have you ever fired a gun outside of a video game? I’m guessing here, but I’ll vote for ‘not.’ Have you ever talked to an enlisted officer or soldier and asked them what it’s like to use a weapon as lethal, complicated, and dangerous as an automatic weapon? Again, I’ll wager that you haven’t. Let’s try an easier question: have you ever heard of boot camp? Do you imagine people enlist in the army, navy, whatever, and are immediately given a flat-top haircut, dog-tags, and an assault rifle? They train you pretty damn well in the armed services, especially as concerns firearms, and emphasis number one with a bullet (if you excuse the pun) when it comes to guns is firearm *SAFETY.* I’m pretty sure shooting wildly into an obscured area in which might be your own friends and fellow soldiers falls pretty firmly outside the admittedly variable range of safe operation of an automatic weapon.
If Christian enters a room and his night vision doesn’t work, he switches to his eyes. Infra-red vision isn’t standard, as far as I know, for anyone other than the Predator. His eyes will adjust in the near-dark to give him a clue as to possible interfering objects and the movements of his squad. If his squad is so poorly trained that none of them have any reserve signals, flares, flashlights, or other means of signaling in the event of mass equipment malfunction, they deserve to be shot by the psychotic teenager put in charge of them. Frankly, if the Navy trains men like Christian to shoot at anything that he can’t see, it’s a wonder that anyone survived walking into that warehouse or wherever because the other soldiers ought to have been shooting willy-nilly, too. Either way, you can hardly argue that blind shooting when you’ve neither confirmed the presence of your target or the position of your teammates is “COMMON SENSE.” Common sense would be to fall back, attempt to realign your gear, and then make a re-entry. Or radio the base for an e-vac because this is not a mission you can win. I’m not suggesting Christian try knifing this Fangora in the dark, as you seem to think. What I was suggesting was that it was ludicrous for you to have this supposedly hyper-intelligent navy man push on with his mission at all, no matter what weapon he used. Unless he was wielding a light sabre and was comfortable manipulating the ebb and flow of the Force to guide him to his target, no weapon Christian used would have been acceptable.
12) Sigh. Last thing: one does not become a Daywalker in the Blade franchise at twenty-four. One cannot become a Daywalker at fifteen, or forty-seven, or any of the incongruous ages Christian acts like or ought to be to match his ranking, respectively. This is not my opinion, this is the fandom’s rule, supported throughout all three Blade films and held up in the novelization of the last film which I have read. Blade’s mother was pregnant when she was bitten by vampire. She died but delivered her baby, Blade, who turned half-vampire as a result. That’s how you get Blade, and that’s the way you get a Daywalker. If you intend Christian to be half-vampiric from birth before the story begins, fine, whatever, that only adds to his Sue-ishness, but is not (strictly) a violation of the rules of the canon (I say not ‘strictly’ because the Blade films make it clear that it is extremely HARD to get a Daywalker, seeing as there ARE no others besides Blade despite years and years of well-funded vampire research). If you are going to go out on a limb and devise a new process for making half-vampire, half-human hybrids, I hate you, and the rest of the fans of Blade hate you. Go mess around with Anne Rice, she likes this type of garbage. Think of that old “The Highlander” catchphrase when you think of Daywalkers in the Blade universe: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
I might also point out that you made no mention that a) Christian is a Daywalker, b) that Blade is gone so that Christian can be (quoting!) “THE” Daywalker, or c) where Blade might have gone that means he’s out of the game forever and ever. You said, and I quote for the last time, “It's just too bad you couldn't figure that out yourself when writing that review... just so sad.” Again, for the last time, you’re absolutely right. It’s incredibly sad that I didn’t know all these things you never said, wrote, or hinted at in this story, and that you never said, wrote, or hinted at this being a continuation of a character from another story. If only I’d known! If only you’d written out in outline form on the first page the following:
US Navy SEAL Marty Sue, 24
Daywalker, soon to be lover of [fill in the blank canon character name]
Fights new and better and stronger bad guy than ever, wins
Sleeps with [name from blank] a lot
Missed chances, I guess. I should have been able to read your mind to know all this, or, at the very least, expected that in order to enjoy a story listed without reference to any other that I should have read all of your singularly awful stories to appreciate your Mary Sue–and read your reviews, too! If only I’d known...I’d have called you a psycho and not bothered critiquing Christian at all.
Some parting questions as your e-mail managed to stump me a bit:
1) Who’s Kimmybo? Did she say you weren’t the best writer on the planet either? Can I have her e-mail? I’m starting a recovery program.
2) When are you going to stop putting into quotation marks words that ought to be just fine on their own? I need to mark it on my calendar as ‘Start Taking Seph2k Seriously Day.”
3) What *is* “conductive reasoning”? Is it so ‘senseless and distraught’ it, too, must be in quotes? Does my reasoning power miniature science-fair light bulbs and buzzers? Wahoo.
Let this be a lesson to me, you say. Congratulations, it has been. I’ve learned never again to leave you a thought-out critique of why you fail as a writer because you lack the ability to discern among building materials for those out of which it is worth constructing a fiction. From now on, I will restrict my views to ones you’re more familiar with–the type that is no more than ten words or a line long, but instead of “OMG PLZ CONTINUE...UR SUCH A GR8 WRYTR,” expect a conversely scathing “You’re still writing, are you? I thought I told you to stop.”
Off I get to review other people’s stories. Ones with better raw material and better attitudes. I usually end by wishing my reviewees the best of luck, and I will do so again. Best of luck to you, Seph2k. You’re going to need a lot more than that, but that’s all I can give you.
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Date: 2005-06-13 04:54 pm (UTC)I wonder if they are different? I had a fan in Final Spirit, once. Oh well, if he's another Trin555, count me out.
And I realized that's who this guy was after going back to his old stories. He basically reviews himself and says THNX, I NO I"M SO AWESUM! after each chapter.
::cracks up:: Writes fanfic for a living!? If only. If only...