AUGH!!!

[ciroccoj]

OK, Memo to Myself, in big red bold letters:

DON'T READ FICS WRITTEN BY KIDS.

And no, I'm not talking about real kids like my kids, I mean people who are old enough to put a sentence together coherently but honestly do not understand life, rites of passage, emotions, et al.

It's pretty easy to spot these people. If you're reading a funeral scene and the parents of the deceased go back to work as soon as the funeral is over? If you're reading about a couple that's been married for ten years who decide to divorce - and do so - because one of them didn't make the coffee hot enough? If there's a conversation between two people who left school five years ago, and the topic is all about how it's nice when you don't have tests and teachers but it's hard sometimes having to be responsible all day long and you might get fired? If a character is twenty years old and has to write to his big brother to ask how do you know if a girl really likes you? And how do you know if you really like her?

Stop Reading. It will not get better. The writer will not grow up between chapters 1 and 4. Just. Stop. Reading.

Life's too short to read bad fics.




ETA: No, I'm not linking. That would be like spreading an STD. No. It would be like spreading Mono. Not devastating or deadly, just saps your energy and will to live, and is highly likely to be transmitted by somebody in high school who frenches badly.

Comments

[notpoetry.livejournal.com]

*dying* Oh my god, the badfic = mono metaphor is the most apt ever. Can I quote you?

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Heh - go ahead and quote, I kinda like it myself ;)

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Actually one of the things that dismayed me the most was while I was reading at one point I thought of you and how stuff you wrote at age twelve showed more insight into reactions, motivations, emotions, etc than any of the crap I was reading. I know you've said that some of your earlier writings now seem juvenile to you, but somehow you got most of the important stuff right and made your character's actions and thoughts believable. I honestly couldn't tell you were a twelve-year old writing from the point of view of a middle-aged man.

Here? OHMYCHRIST was it obvious. And the disturbing thing was, except for the 20-yr-old needing to ask "how you know a girl likes you," it read like the writer was possibly in her late teens, possibly even in college, but had just somehow managed to miss 90% of how most people/grownups deal with life stuff. It just hadn't occurred to her that for most people, the day of their child's funeral is most probably a day off from work, unless there's some pretty severe psychopathology going on. Badly done housework is going to happen at least once in a ten-year marriage, and again, save for severe psychopathology, will probably not end the whole damn thing all by itself. Etc.

Oh shit I think I'm still scarred :D :D :D

[daf9.livejournal.com]

You'll be happy to know that even I, who have asked you for links to bad!fic before, am not asking for links to these particular bad!fics. I've run across too many examples of this kind of stuff myself. The worst part, to my mind, is that you can't even offer concrit because said concrit would consist of "STOP WRITING ADULTS AS IF THEY WERE ANGST RIDDEN TEENAGERS LIKE YOURSELF!" And I fear that many of the authors who write that way would consider the suggestion more insulting than constructive.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

You'll be happy to know that even I, who have asked you for links to bad!fic before, am not asking for links to these particular bad!fics.
Thanks :D :D

The worst part, to my mind, is that you can't even offer concrit because said concrit would consist of "STOP WRITING ADULTS AS IF THEY WERE ANGST RIDDEN TEENAGERS LIKE YOURSELF!"
LOL!! Is it wrong of me to immediately think that the best concrit would just be "STOP WRITING"?