Entry tags:

So here's what you missed on kurt_blaine...
Many thanks to the anon on wank_report for this one; I've used some of your wording in this post. (Note: there are spoilers for an upcoming episode of Glee in the links.)

Pyroclastic, one of the wankier BNF's of the Glee fandom and a former mod of the kurt_blaine community on lj, posts a fic to said community. The drama starts in the first thread when she pretends not to know why a mod has asked her to place the spoilers in her author notes behind a cut:

boysinperil: …Just remove all the references to [the spoiler], or delete the whole thing and just post it on tumblr, because I'm tired of your being thick about this. You helped WRITE the spoiler rules, you know them.

Then windrider1967 leaves a review:

Beautiful, if a bit too polished. Still wonderfully done and sweet and hot at the same time

Pyroclastic does not like this review. She complains on her Tumblr. Even though she blacks out windrider’s name, it’s easy enough for everyone to figure out who wrote the comment.

Naderegen points out that it's mostly a compliment and the concrit isn't slamming the fic, but pyroclastic is not appeased.

Canniblaine tells windrider that pyroclastic and her minions are mocking her. Said minions then make an appearance.

Pyroclastic complains to the mods, who agree to screen the more problematic comments while also letting her know she’s pretty much working their last nerve:

Rebootuniverse: ...You know what, you're not stupid, you knew exactly what you did when you made that post, and you knew exactly what would follow. Pretend to be the innocent one all you want, but you just can't take any actual negative commentary about what you write. There are a million other ways you could have gone about asking the reviewer what they meant before making that post, even if you couldn't open the community. A dozen other choices you could have made other than one that was bordering on insulting to the reviewer and dismissive that there might be something other than a positive opinion to your fic.

Bottom line is, you react to things as if you're better than every other person on the comm, and if half of the things you say on tumblr were said here we would have had to ban you by now. But we don't, because we don't ban people for things they say and do on other communities.

Rebootuniverse comments on the entire situation on her Tumblr and receives anonymous attacks in response. (For some reason, jf won't let me create a link for this one: http://rebootuniverse.tumblr.com/post/11119180193/fucking-delete-canniblaine-and-ban-them-you-biased). There are also messages of support and people wanting to know why pyroclastic hasn't been banned yet; everything can be found on her Twitter.

Two other critical reviews are left on the fic but haven't resulted in the same kind of response (as far as I can tell). And to round it all off, the glee_anon threads on the situation are here and here.

ETA: It gets wankier: http://gleewank.tumblr.com/post/10332827277/the-epic-saga-of-p-and-her-pa-attitude

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

	nevadafighter 2011-10-09 07:55 pm UTC (link)
	My undergraduate minor was in Creative Writing, and it boggled me how many English majors in those classes wrote the most pretentious, nonsensical, barely-coherent garble. English major =/= good writer. Heck, I have an MA in English and I couldn't identify a dangling participle or a modifier if my life depended on it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	napalmnacey 2011-10-09 11:04 pm UTC (link)
	Stephenie Meyer is an English Major. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	nevadafighter 2011-10-10 01:47 am UTC (link)
	Case in point. :) It boggled me to learn how many English professors and majors don't like writing. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sandglass 2011-10-10 06:19 am UTC (link)
	Because it's actually really hard! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ekaterinv 2011-10-10 12:41 am UTC (link)
	I was an English minor. During my last English class, I learned that many of the English majors in the class, all in their final year, thought that the Twilight books and Dan Brown's books would be considered classics in fifty years. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kermit_the_sock 2011-10-13 07:13 pm UTC (link)
	I... kind of want to die now. (Reply to this)(Parent)

mmanurere
2011-10-10 02:43 am UTC (link)

Heck, I have an MA in English and I couldn't identify a dangling participle or a modifier if my life depended on it.

Neither, IIRC, could Oscar Wilde, and not many would accuse him of not having a well-developed voice. It's nice that we have people who specialize in that stuff (they're called editors, people; and the difference between an editor and a good "beta reader" is that the latter works on fanfiction for free), but that's really not the defining feature of good (or bad) writing. (As for the bad beta readers...well...they and the bad fanfic writers always seem to find each other.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	nevadafighter 2011-10-10 02:48 am UTC (link)
	Very true; I've found it's a common misconception that if you're a good writer then you must be a well-versed grammarian, and that's just not true. I can look at a sentence and tell if it's awkward or poorly-constructed and how to fix it, but I don't know all the technical terms involved. (Reply to this)(Parent)

janegraddell
2011-10-11 01:05 am UTC (link)

Heck, I have an MA in English and I couldn't identify a dangling participle or a modifier if my life depended on it.

OMG this. I have an MA in English Lit. I also have good grammar skills. The former has almost nothing to do with the latter. By the time you get to college and grad school, English courses mostly stop teaching grammar as a separate thing. I'm good at grammar because I'm a nerd about it. (Seriously, the Chicago Manual of Style site is my TV Tropes.)

Also, if you major in English Lit (which is what the majority of English majors do), the focus is on writing academic papers and essays, not on producing lovely and grammatically correct prose. When there are entire required courses devoted to learning how to properly cite your sources, and none on grammar, that kind of shows where the priorities are. Not to mention that the type of grammar and style that's correct for an academic paper is light-years away from what can be appropriate for creative writing.

So, no, I'm not buying the English major defense, either.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	nevadafighter 2011-10-11 02:09 am UTC (link)
	Seriously. People boggle that my last thorough grammar lessons were in 10th grade and that I can't remember most of what I learned. "But you write so well!" Yeah, because for the most part I know what quality writing looks and sounds like without knowing all the labels. (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Read comments) -