Oh. Oh, dear. It appears that I, in my capacity as 'one of those mean girls from high school who made life Hell for everyone else', have once again succeeded in making a stranger hate my guts. Meet Pissed-Off Reader.

Pissed-Off Reader - or POR, as Pissed-Off Reader is a pain in the ass to repeatedly type - leaves fanfiction.net flames. I know this because I woke up to find an anonymous 'review' for Ordinary People in my inbox. Unfortunately, it seemed to have nothing to do with the brain-breaking power of Ordinary People (she's writing another Ken rape fic? Say it isn't so!) and everything to do with... well, I couldn't really tell at first.

It turned out she wasn't annoyed because she hated my habit of raping Ken or because I'd sporked her Convenient Relative. She'd come to butt heads with me over some Final Fantasy fic that at first I couldn't initially even remember reading. Okay. Anyway, onto the flame.

Pissed off reader
2008-08-01
ch 1, anon.

Remember that story A SeeD life that you reported?

Well thanks to your friend eyesofshinigami sending the author a flame on their story "The Chronicles From A Fantasy" bragging about reporting it for abuse I know you're one of the people who reported my friend's fanfiction and I'd like to say if you're going to report something then it's real dumbass the brag about it.

Your community is a bunch of lifeless queers who have no writing talent of your own so you think you insert your talent you people suck.

Now, POR, since you oh-so-bravely posted this anonymously and left me no way to contact you - and that's really going to impress me, isn't it? If you're going to bitch at someone on behalf of a dear friend, have the courage of your convictions and own your bitchery! - I clearly can't respond to you in person. I can, however, respond here. Since you found my Pit profile, I can't imagine it would be that difficult for you to make your way here, either. I'd rather take this up with you in private, but as you've made that impossible you'll just have to settle for an open letter.

First off, just so you know, I may be one insecure adult but I'm not so insecure that a poorly-written flame about something I barely even remember doing is going to send me BAWWWWing off to my hugbox. So, if you're expecting this to turn into a lengthy whine about how unfair you are and how I can't believe that anyone could be so mean, or foot-stamping about how I JUST DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE AND HE'S ME TL;DRING FOR 18 PARAGRAPHS ABOUT HOW MUCH I DON'T CARE, SEE ME NOT CARING, you're going to be disappointed. Feel free to comment to this entry, if you find it, and tell me why I'm a lifeless queer again. Irrelevant homophobic slurs make you look so classy.

One problem: I do have anonymous commenting turned off.

Anyway, to the bulk of your... complaint? Rant? Hate-filled screed? You tell me what to call it.

Okay, now for the deconstruction. Would you believe me, my dear POR, if I said I really had to think hard about it to remember 'that story A SeeD Life'? It's true! I don't really remember 'that story A SeeD Life'. I've seen a lot of bad fanfiction in my time, and I have to really think hard to remember the individual stories. Unless they're genre-definingly awful, like Riding Beyond the Subway or Twin Blade Illusion or no choice, it takes me a little while to recall them. All I could remember about this one at first was that it didn't sound like something I'd have sporked myself, having little to no interest in FFVIII except where it crossed over with Weiss Kreuz.

My thought processes, for the record, went something like this. Hm. A SeeD Life. Was it that stupid thing with Megan and Hollie and the cast of Weiss Kreuz character-raping themselves gleefully so they could better catfight over which of them got to mark time with the Sues' shiny selves? No, wait, that was Final Fantasy Weiss and it was pain. What the fuck is A SeeD Life, then?

Oh yeah, it was that thing I saw on marysues.

I seem to remember it was the one which wasn't actually a story so much as it was a character biography and an OC casting call. Which is all very well, but it doesn't belong in the middle of a fanfic archive.

Here, for the record, is the (lone) comment I left on that community post in which I cruelly and viciously mocked POR's poor, poor friend, gloating shamelessly about my vile deeds after so callously reporting the story into which she had poured so much time and attention - nay, her very heart and soul! Also, I eat puppies for breakfast and have an adorable Ken icon.



That's it. That's absolutely all I said. zOMG, CUT MY EYES AND BLACK MY WRIIIISTS. Or something.

Personally, I don't much like 'not a fanfic' bait and switches. If a summary looks promising, I want to read that fanfic, not the putative author rambling about how she has this great idea for a fanfic and might write it someday and by the way I don't think there's enough Sue in this story with just my one, anyone want to send me profiles of their own Sues? That's when I start getting annoyed and my finger starts twitching on the 'report story' button. Not because I'm evil and I want to shatter the author's dreams, but because I go to the Pit to read fanfiction, not 'there might be something here someday but probably won't be' placeholders.

If your friend's 'story' hadn't been a big pile of TOS-raping nothing, POR, it wouldn't have been deleted for violating uploading guidelines.

Just so you know, if I'd stumbled across your friend's 'story' by myself, without any help from marysues, I'd still have reported it. Why? Because it, as I've said before, wasn't a story.

POR, I'm sure your friend's story was marvellous in her head. I have any number of stories that are marvellous in my head - but, unlike your friend, I don't spam fanfiction.net about stories I may write someday. I babble about them incessantly to my friends and rant about them here on Livejournal instead, because I possess a little something known as a sense of occasion. If your friend really wants to talk about stories she may write someday and ask people to submit their own OCs so she can write them in, there are places for that. She can do that on Livejournal or Myspace or Gaia Online or, who'd have thought it, the fanfiction.net forums. She can't, however, do it in the Final Fantasy VIII fanfic archives without risking being reported for breaching the terms of service.

Ah yes. The Terms of Service. You remember those things? You should do, I keep mentioning 'em. Your friend, POR, would have been told to read these things not only when she signed up to the site, but every time she uploaded a fanfic. She would, therefore, have known damn well that she ran the risk of having the entry deleted if anyone reported it. POR, let's take a look at the TOS, shall we?

Entries not allowed:

1. Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes, and etc.
2. One or two liners.
3. MST: comments inserted in between the flow of a copied story.
4. Stories with non-historical and non-fictional characters: actors, musicians, and etc.
5. Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc.
6. Chat/script format and keyboard dialogue based entries.

Sound like anything? Yes, it sounds like A SeeD Life. It's a non-story. You cannot post something that's not a story to a fanfic archive and expect people to be fine with it.

And then there's that thing about 'my friend eyesofshinigami'. Who the fuck is eyesofshinigami? We've barely spoken and have a handful of deeply generic interest in common. POR, upsetting though it may be to realize this, marysues is a big community. It's not a small group of friends gathering to snark fanfics written by people who they don't like. There were, at last count, 2,729 members. That doesn't include the people who watched the community and never joined, or the people who just occasionally show up to read the archives. Of course, they're not all active posters. However, we certainly don't all know each other. Mention quietladybirman to whoever eyesofshinigami turns out to be and chances are their response would be 'who?' Much as mine was about her.

I don't know eyesofshinigami. To the best of my knowledge I have never really spoken, even LJ-spoken, to them. The one (count it!) comment I left on the post that upset you so, POR, was actually addressed to galbadia.

More pertinently, the person calling themselves 'eyesofshinigami' on fanfiction.net is, as far as any of us can make out, not the eyesofshinigami who sometimes posts to marysues. I seem to remember her saying something about some anonymous idiot going round to the people she sporked and linking them to the comm posts. If she personally was going about bragging to the authors that OMG I REPORTED UR SUE, she'd very quickly find themselves no longer part of the community. Wank and spork communities are very good at eating their own and the people who mod them know full well that kicking out the members with a penchant for trouble-stirring and dramarama is pretty much essential if it wants to keep on bringing the funny.

Therefore, if you have a problem with eyesofshinigami and think you can prove that the person mocking authors on fanfiction.net is the same one as the marysues member - and a coincidental screen name isn't 'proof', I'm afraid - contact the mods of marysues. They don't want people pulling that crap in their community any more than you do.

It's the Internet, honey, anyone can claim they're called anything they like here. Even 'pissed off reader'.

I'm not even going to go into that last line. Maybe I don't have a lot of talent myself, but I do at least know how to parse sentences so that the majority of my readers can understand what I'm talking about. Now, I've re-read this last line of yours five or six times and I have no idea what you think you're talking about, but it sounds enough like the tired old 'you're only saying that because you're jealous of my/her Suethor skills' chestnut that I feel quite comfortable in rejecting it out of hand.

I'm jealous of a number of people's writing skills (why couldn't I have written Deep Blue or Bekampfen sie das Kreuz or Bountiful Autumn?), but jealous of a random Suethor who's so devoid of inspiration she has to ask other people for 'OCs' to write into her story? Clearly, I'm just jealous because I don't have the imagination to write anything myself, like the story you posted this review on. And the 29 others posted on my Pit author profile. And the six at the Adult Pit. And all the rest of the stuff I wrote and just didn't bother to upload. Yup, I'm totally unimaginative. Not like the people who write OC fics and ask other people for their characters to bulk out the cast at all.

Um, no. Sorry, but no. That's the oldest excuse in the book, and every bit as convincing as that would imply - and, if her writing is anywhere near as clumsy and ungrammatical as yours is, why would I, or anyone, envy it?


Unfortunately, vaguely amusing though your rant may have been, I deleted it as the 'Free Herbal Viagra' of fanfic flames it was. Ultimately it's just boring, pointless, and has nothing to do with anything.

Next time try and be a pissed off reader about something I actually wrote, okay? Or just write a fanfic. Easy!