Flames I have not written ...

[blamebrampton]

There have been a lot of flame-related posts of late, from people receiving their first ones, to a sweet young one on a comm who was cross about one that turned out to be harshly worded concrit (a fine distinction, I grant you).
It made me think about the art of flaming. I don't think it's a good idea on principle, because surely you could receive a more visceral buzz from going out and actually kicking a puppy or stealing a small child's sweets (easier to do than you might think, they have short attention spans). However, I recently made the mistake of mentioning to some friends that I had read the worst story ever. They hastily corrected me and pointed me in the direction of the actual worst stories ever.  I suspect the nadir may have been reached. And I could see why people flamed. Indeed, I had Strong Urges.

So strong, in fact, that I wrote them all down, but here, not in the several theres that inspired them. Rest assured, dear flist and casual readers, none of these were directed at any of you.

* If that is truly how you believe gay men behave, you need to change your reference material from Teletubbies to Queer as Fuck.

* Stop now, remove Word from your computer, and contemplate accountancy. It pays very well.

* That manoeuvre would have resulted in hospitalisation and a very embarrassing recuperation.

* No English person, in the history of the world, has ever said that. There are laws against it.

* No Malfoy would ever shop there.

* The Dursleys are Middle Class, not retarded. There is a clear distinction.

* Boys do quite often shag just because they would like to have sex now, thank you. It is unusual for them to wait for a lengthy monologue on the nature of love to be completed first. Not impossible, I grant you, but unlikely. Most boys I have known would have made a cup of tea, played a quick game of internet spaceships, or had one off the wrist in that fifteen minutes. The nice ones would have made two cups of tea.

* I pride myself on a willing suspension of disbelief, but Isambard Kingdom Brunel could not have bridged these plot gaps.

* Is it just the HP women, or all women who make you this angry?

* Have you ever actually seen a penis?

* I admit I have not exhausted the variations, but I am fairly sure that you can't have sex like that. Unless you are an elephant. In which case you missed an animagus scene.

* The Queen is not happy with what you have done to her English.


What about you lot? Anything you've wanted to rant on but have kept inside? Stop bottling, let it out. No names, no URLs, just vent the badness ...

Comments

[empress-jae.livejournal.com]

Have you ever actually seen a penis?

oh my god, i can't even count how many times i've asked that question while reading ba...uh, fic that is not up to my apparently high standards of quality. either that question or, "you do know an anus is NOT a vagina, right? there are no moist folds back there."

[kestrelsparhawk.livejournal.com]

I couldn't possibly compete. But I LOVE yours -- particularly since they're not actually attached to those poor fics...

"Unless you are an elephant, in which case you missed an animagus scene."

*snrk*

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

I love you!

OMG! You're on my flist, you've seen my snark. I agree - I'd rather do it in private than hurt someone. I'm not infallible, and make many mistakes in my own writing. People put a lot of their heart into what they write, be they good or bad. So who am I to rip their little world down around their ears.

But, YES! Sometimes you just want to grab them by the ears and go 'WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?'

What gets me even more is when I find a fic (ie., my recent post) that boggles my poor little brain, and then see writers that I actually have a reasonable amount of time for commenting on the same fic as raving about how good it is. Then I start to wonder what's going on in the universe, or whether I'm just a picky bitch and should give up.

But... on with the rants, as you have so kindly opened up the invitation.

* You DO NOT own Draco Malfoy, and despite some amusing fanon interpretations to the contrary, he is NOT a mincing, whining, girl in leather pants, and if he was (crack!fic aside), Harry would NEVER want to have sex with him. There are limits!

* Two penises cannot fit in there together if the men possessing those penises are standing side by side. It just doesn't work that way... please see some basic anatomy books and start again.

* Lube... for god's sake, please remember the lube. I'll even accept a spell, or saliva, if you're generous.

* I'm no expert, but you might want to reconsider those 'English as a second language' courses, because it certainly doesn't appear to come naturally to you.

* They're called 'tenses' - please research and apply.

* 35k words of plotty fic where Harry and Draco only start actually talking to each other in the last 5k words? May be an excellent story, but it is NOT a H/D fic.

* Necessity may be the mother of invention, but was it really necessary to invent new words? The English language has a lot of them already, and it's hard to believe you weren't able to find something to fit.

* Are Gay boys really THAT MUCH more sensitive than straight boys? I've touched a few, and I've yet to see one really moan just because someone ran a finger down their neck, or stomach... yes, I get that their passion is SO MUCH more passionate than anyone else's, but, okay, have you actually ever touched a boy?

* Screaming is loud, screaming is extreme... it's not a normal consequence of the average orgasm, or penetration (unless you forgot to look at my comment on Lube). Cry out, moan loudly, shout even... but scream? Someone's been doing too many method acting classes, I feel.

* Unless your character has fingers the size of Danish salamis, single digit penetration generally is NOT painful. Especially with lube (yaye lube). It can be a shock, invasive, uncomfortable, but pain, not so much. You might try it for research purposes - remember the lube. ;)

Hmmm, I do seem to like occupying large spaces in your comments list. (Kai sends a tummy pummel for good measure)

[lalaith-niniel.livejournal.com]

Stop now, remove Word from your computer, and contemplate accountancy. It pays very well.

I think I love you. I've wished I could take away the internet from so many people. Instead, I just have to his the back button.

As for sex scenes, I figure if I start craning my neck trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together as described, I really should be skipping it.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

Anything you've wanted to rant on but have kept inside?
I haven't felt the urge to rant about badfic since I decided I was going to use my back button if the first three paragraphs fail to wow me. Now if you had been asking about meta...

No, wait, I just thought of one I see in headers and it drives me fucking bananas (or possibly pineapples if bananas are too politically incorrect), especially now, because I have just spotted an instance of it in a Discworld book (NOT COOL, PTERRY-OR-HAPLESS-EDITOR-OR-CARELESS-PRINTER. NOT COOL.):

The apostrophe is not used to denote past tense or plural. Nothing is beta'd; it is betaed or beta-read. A case can be made that the apostrophe is showing omission as in "KO'd" to avoid an awkward-looking pseudo-word, but in most of these instances it's obviously being used to denote past tense, which is wrong. (i.e. there's a clear difference between breaking the rules knowingly and being a punctuation ignoramus (or apostrophetically challenged, if that's more PC). This difference usually shows up in those all-important first three paragraphs, too.) Also, if one has beta's, then one's betas need to be fired (but not fire'd).

...I've also noticed that the older I get, the more defensive I grow of the apostrophe. I should join the Apostrophe Protection Society, for srs.

However, Have you ever actually seen a penis? never ever gets old.

[empress-jae.livejournal.com]

and probably a surgical procedure.

[potteresque_ire]

I would be happy to receive flames that are as well written and full of delicious snark as those in this list. LOL. :) Sometimes I read MSTs for badfics, but I haven't found ones I really enjoy ... and I think the only worse thing than a flame is a poorly written flame...I feel embarrassed for the complainer :).

Insofar I haven't generated much mental flames - I don't feel confident enough about my knowledge of what good fics should be like, but the stories that make me hit the back button usually have this element:

Boys do quite often shag just because they would like to have sex now, thank you. It is unusual for them to wait for a lengthy monologue on the nature of love to be completed first.

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

Is guilty... *hangs head in shame*

[aunt-agatha.livejournal.com]

I too would like to propose marriage. Your list is beautiful.

Also, I would like to rant, yes. I won't, but I'd sure like to. Mostly about lj being like high school around some parts. *eyeroll* /pseudo-rant

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. :D

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

*sentences you to a lifetime of pineapples!*

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

With lube, though. Right?

*looks hopeful*

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

yes, but it's PINEAPPLE-FLAVOURED!

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Please, please stop being so florid in your descriptions of sex. No part of the body should bloom.

[nqdonne.livejournal.com]

LOL. I love you. Let's see... I think you covered them all. The only one missing that crosses my mind sometimes is:

** Please stop affecting style. Write in the style which comes naturally to you. And if that which comes naturally isn't very good... Well. Don't write.

:P :P :P (I think that with regard to journalism, too. Some of the people I had to deal with on the school newspaper and in class were RUBBISH at feature writing and criticism)

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

Oooh, zesty, refreshing and good for you, too!

*giggles*

You evol pineapplematrix!

[kayleigh-jane.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, which Discworld book was that? (And you really shouldn't read Jonathan Swift in the original spelling. Apostrophes wherever you look!)

[corpus-delecti.livejournal.com]

This made me laugh so hard.

It also filled me with the morbid desire to actually read these fics. Yeah... some people rubberneck to look at car crashes. I read terribly written fanfiction. It's a thing. I'm working on it.

On the topic of flames, as a whole... I think that people take the internet way too seriously. I mean, you are dealing with real people, with real emotions, which you do have to take into account. But honestly, when you really think about it, does anyone really care about what someone they will never meet, never see, or even be in the same city with thinks about them?

Not to spout the whole "why can't we all get along?" line, but... if we can't all get along... why can't we just leave each other alone?

[blindmouse.livejournal.com]

* Is it just the HP women, or all women who make you this angry?

Oh, that one, all the time. I realise that the easiest plot device for a breakup is for one half of the couple to be awful (I remember a line from P. G. Wodehouse's notes on Sunset at Blandings to the effect of: Unless B will in fact end up with X rather than Y. This will make Y some species of rotter.), and I mourn for originality but still, whatever. But the sheer anger of some writers at the girls getting in the way of their slash pairings ... it makes me want to cry. And shake them, obviously, lots.

[kestrelsparhawk.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I hope there's an anti-apostrophe subcommittee, because I want to join. I don't mind "beta'd" because of the "KO'ed" thing (though one can ALWAYS avoid words, right?) but it's the ubiquitous add-on: "carrots' for sale" that gives me the screaming jeebies.

[kestrelsparhawk.livejournal.com]

Can I just say, I LOVE the icon. I've been trying to think of a pithy way to say the "you're/your" one for months.

[grey-hunter.livejournal.com]

* I admit I have not exhausted the variations, but I am fairly sure that you can't have sex like that. Unless you are an elephant. In which case you missed an animagus scene.

*blinks* You give me the worst bunnies, seriously!

[grey-hunter.livejournal.com]

Unless your character has fingers the size of Danish salamis, single digit penetration generally is NOT painful.

So I guess the pairing wasn't Hagrid/Flitwick? :P

[luthien82]

It's weird that I actually wanted to do a similar post like that too. So I just dump my complaints here:

* Writing angst doesn't mean you have to throw every physical and psychological pain available on this planet at the character. It's not a shopping list.

* Letting the second character declare his love out of the blue without prior indication that those two have even looked at each other like that while the first character is still struggling with a coma resulted by all the aforementioned shopping list trauma only hurts your audience. It's not called Hurt/Comfort for that.

* Just because you can doesn't mean you HAVE TO fulfill every cliché available. Again, it's not a friggin' shopping list!

* Has anyone ever told you that you CAN'T WRITE??? How anyone would publish you is beyond me.

* Also: if you have the need to write slave fic, kindly get your history straight before you do? Reading slave fic in modern USA as if it's the most natural thing just leaves a sore taste in your mouth considering the past.

For the record: none of this is related to HP fandom (though I'm sure it could be if I search hard enough...)

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

Mwahahaha... Oh, that's just, not a pleasant thought at all.

It always fascinates me how some writers are obsessed with the whole 'it must hurt first' approach to anal sex. I'm not anti-hurt, I just prefer it to be plausible. ;)

And when it goes in one scene from a single finger causing pain to everything short of (and occasional including) double penetration... *rolls eyes*

Oh, I am too fussy. *heavy sigh*