3315: The Lost Lupin - Hermione Granger, Remus Lupin... possibly more

[pottersues]

Don't forget about the fanfic contest.

TITLE: The Lost Lupin
PERPETRATOR: MaryRoyale
SUE-O-METER:

Comments

[anonymous]

I'm not MaryRoyale, but there was no way on earth that I would log in under my actual user name. I'm not inviting that. I found this page because I was searching for The Lost Lupin.

You can tell yourself that this isn't mean-spirited if that helps you sleep at night.

You are picking apart people's work - things they may have put hundreds of hours into, and picking it apart for your own edification. For FUN. You're knocking others down. It's mean, and it's rank.

Maybe some fanfic isn't worth the time it takes to read it, but when adults experience that, they close the browser tab and move on. You all decided to build a nasty little community.

Denying that is a burn book doesn't make you right. You seem to think that by not directly attacking the authors that you're not hurting anyone's feelings. You also seem to think that you're "calling out plot and characterization," but you're doing it in your own little LJ community, where the author doesn't seem to be invited to the party.

You DIDN'T give her comments or reviews, you said it all HERE, behind her back. That's the definition of bitchy. That's what makes it a burn book.

Regarding the spelling: I maintain that if anyone purports to be such paragon of literary virtue, stupid spelling errors shouldn't happen. Grammarly will even help you when typing online. There's no excuse for laziness. Defending that kind of laziness doesn't make you superior.

[pottersues]

Have you actually bothered looking at any of the other entries, or looking at the FAQs?

In the FAQ section the reason for not letting the writer know about the reviews written on the blog comes down to the fact we don't know if the writer is ready to handle critique, but we have had writers storm in creating sockpuppets to try and make themselves feel better. To sockpuppet, it can involve using multiple anonymous accounts, and also multiple LJ accounts, so logging in wouldn't disprove you're not the same person.

As for the author not being invited, far from true. If you'd bothered reading the Rule of Thumb before making assumptions about us, you'll find under the very first rule we don't mind the Suethor's finding their stories and participating in the conversations. It spells out the reason why we don't personally go out of our way to tell writers, the fact we've had "Not Bobs" come in and harass the commenters here, but we've had "Sals" who liked taking advantage of the fact certain writers weren't ready for critique to cause emotional trauma.

As for minions leaving reviews, that's also a bit hard, because again, we don't know how the Suethor will react to said review. So, Yemi's right. This isn't a burn book, because writers are allowed to come here as long as they act in a civil manner and make logical arguments and counters. Some even have come in and let me know they've improved or have had a good look back at their older stuff, so I can let the minions know, and I love passing the word on. You've no idea at all what goes on here, and judged us based on one entry.

In fact, check out the "good" and "okay" ratings, because while this blog features Mary Sues, I have at times found stories which contain traits associated with Mary Sues and featured them despite the fact they're not Mary Sues, because they're good examples of how to pull off said trait without making a Mary Sue. Pottersues is a fanfic critic blog, pure and simple, and like Egbert and any other critic out there, it doesn't matter how much effort gets put into the work. A critique pulls the work apart, yet you're asking Pottersues not to do that?

Telling us to move on - that's the excuse Twilight fans used for the Twilight books when people continued reading the series and criticizing the later books, but says reviews shouldn't be given based on the quality of the work. Everyone is to worried about hurting other people's feelings, yet she choose to publish just like Meyer did.

P.S. I don't think Yemi was trying to defend the fact I made a mistake, but pointing out that grammar mistakes should never be used to discredit a person's opinion. Call me out all you want on such things, but that doesn't excuse discrediting the points I made.

Not all grammar mistakes result from laziness either. I believe this entry is one of the ones I wrote when I was still html coding the entries, which made it hard to catch spelling and grammar issues, which is why I've moved to copy and pasting with no html even though the font changes format when I don't mean for it to.

[yemi_hikari]

I was definitely not trying to defend the mistake. I've honestly lost track of the times I've found myself discredited because of the grammar issues in my reviews AND my stories, of which I have no control over. We're not talking grammar where the writer doesn't bother using proper capitalization or end punctuation! It's an ad hominem attack, but so is everything else they've said.

I really hate the, "but someone's feelings might get hurt" part, because going through life attempting to avoid getting your feelings hurt is psychologically damaging. Getting upset because somebody didn't have something positive to say about your story does not compare at all to having someone say call you ignorant and uneducated because you're black, but doing so just trivializes what the latter goes through. It needs to stop.

[yemi_hikari]

Laziness?

Hypocrite.

You remind me of one of my reviewers from ten years ago who wrote something along the line of "the story would be good if it weren't for the grammar. Any good Beta will tell you perfect grammar is an impossibility on the writer's own, even with programs like Grammarly.

Calling the inability to reach the impossible laziness is bullying, yet you come in here calling what Pottersues does a burn book despite the fact she doesn't personally attack the writer, and the stuff she critiques is actually within the realm of possibility. Of course, weren't you also arguing that on the infinite impossibilities should be included in the infinite possibilities of an AU as well?

I'm dyslexic. I struggled for YEARS with the idea my writing sucked simply because people told me I was lazy for something I had no control over. That's very different from a writer not having done their research on things like PTSD, or not bothering to care about keeping the feel of he original material - which comes from the writer's own words.

I'm also sick of people thinking a person should get a pass because they're only doing it for fun and personal enjoyment. The writer made the choice to publish their work. When a writer publishes, there are times their work does get knocked down, but they get right back up and keep going. They don't act like the world owes them some kind of favor.

Also, can we not say the writer "may have put hundreds of hours into" what they wrote, when they likely did not. The average person is able to type at the speed of 38 to 40 minutes. If one puts the actual word count of this fic into hours, one gets 50 hours of work. How does one get another 150 hours of work in this particular piece?

Even if they had put a ton of hours into their work, that doesn't ever get a writer a pass on their work getting critiqued, yet you're still acting like critique is a personal attack on the person rather than something which is focused on the work itself.

Why?

The argument you've made is based on whether a person's feelings get hurt by hearing something they don't want to hear, not because there is actually anything wrong with what's been said.

"If you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them." F. Scot Fitzgerald

"Sparing people's feelings is just a way to make yourself feel OK. It's selfish and pretty close to lying." https://onlifeandhope.com/2014/03/29/why-you-shouldnt-spare-peoples-feelings/

You talk to us about how we're telling ourselves it's not a burn book to make us feel better, but in reality it is those who think sparing people's feelings rather than telling them the truth who are attempting to make themselves feel better. They're the ones who are talking behind writers backs, even if it's just to themselves, not us. After all, the writer is free to come in here if they find their story featured.

[anonymous]

Why is it that you people think that any sort of negativity equates to jealousy. Now that I think about it, you seem rather displeased at this review. Are you perhaps jealous of Pottersues in some way? Or are you saying that it's only okay to give a writer a negative review if they have practically no reviewers? I hope you realize how that made no sense.

Pottersues has been around for over a decade. You think no one's ever said "if that helps you sleep better at night"? Does saying that to people help YOU sleep better at night? You don't write critiques for years and suddenly doubt yourself because some angry anonymous fan thinks badly of you. I'm starting to believe you have no idea what a critique means. As a reader, I find these critiques helpful. Deconstruction is a legitimate technique for literary analysis. There's dictionary definitions, scholarly articles, etc explaining what it is, if you don't believe me. There's no excuse to avoid critique.

I find your words to be somewhat hypocritical. You're basically telling us "don't like, don't read," but here you are reading something you don't like and throwing a fit. Unlike a critique, there's no justification for lashing out. What you're doing is stroking your own ego and making an excuse to belittle others, which is ironically what you're accusing Pottersues of. Projection much?

[pottersues]

Just to clarify, the blog's been around for over a decade, but not me. I'm actually the forth Pottersues and took over in 2012. If any of the Pottersues doubted what we do here, they would not have passed on the mantle to another person, let alone tried finding someone who would uphold the blogs values

[yemi_hikari]

That's the conclusion I've come to as well. As per the quote I found, "Sparing people's feelings is just a way to make yourself feel OK. It's selfish and pretty close to lying."