(You can pry my parens from my cold dead fingers)
FelicityGS is very attached to her parentheses. She recently posted "There's Nothing There" a Loki/Steve Rogers fic, to AO3. The earliest reviewers seem to enjoy it. And then a fiend known only as "J" has the unmitigated gall to post this scathing, atrocious, narrow-minded comment:

Almost all of the parenthesis and several commas were unnecessary. If a sentence goes on for more than two lines, it should probably be broken up into two or more sentences. You might want to get a beta who is really good with grammar/punctuation. Otherwise, great story. Very cute and well thought out. (:



FelicityGS's enraged response spans four comment blocks. In the course of the novella she compares herself to Nabokov and goes to great length to justify how her style should trump. I will not inflict the entirety of it on this poor post, but it ends with the following:

Do you have to like it?

No.

But do me a fucking favour:

don't fucking tell me I need a fucking goddamn beta who knows grammar really fucking well and that I could get rid of all those fucking parens and had too many fucking commas because I did not use any of those fucking lightly and you are a fucking douche.

Because if the above didn't give it away?

I know fucking grammar. I know style. I am comfortable in my style, I have given thought to my style, and I know the difference between grammar and style. I write fanfiction as a labour of love and to share stories, to hone my craft and to practice what I have been doing since I could hold a pen.

Fuck.

You.

<3

It's the little heart that just classies it up. The other commenters come in for mixtures of lol and wtf, as well as wondering why she equates Nabokov with her Avengers slashfic. This she also can explain.

I reached for the first book I had at hand. I apologize it wasn't low brow enough for you.

One bold anon tries to stand up for her.

But you're probably also someone who tells their granny the Christmas socks scratch and the cookies are dusty instead of doing the right thing. What a miserable bunch of hypocrites and nasty bitches claimed Yuletide this year!

Which would have made sense if the fic was actually. Y'know. For Yuletide. Another anon explains the fail.

Gift exchange? Yuletide? Also, the author was the one reacting with hostility to a helpful comment-- vile, abusive hostility. WITH AN EPIC NOVEL OF OVERLY DEFENSIVE BABBLE. I don't even-- what is with your comment? Are you trying to paint me as some sort of hands-rubbing, world-domination-wanting Grinch? Where are you going with this absurd reading into things that aren't there at all?

But AO3 isn't big enough to contain the rage of FelicityGS, so the rage goes to tumblr

every time I get a review complaining about parens

My hackles immediately go up.Parentheses are a much loved stylistic device of mine. I am sure many of you realize this by now. And I do understand the complaint about them on occasion.

This doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people give me many words, and they tell me a whole arc of thoughts—what they enjoyed, things that didn’t click. These people almost always can explain why they didn’t care for the parens in coherent ways, and I respect their opinions and look I’m even writing an entire story for those people without a single set of parens in it.

(it may be killing me on the inside)

But if you fucking drop me a review that is only ‘lol i liked this i guess but too many ()s’ I will immediately disregard your opinion. It is worthless. I don’t know why you didn’t like them. I don’t know if you didn’t understand, if you found them unclear, if you just hate parens (you monster), if you simply glazed over them because you decided they weren’t worth reading, if you think that I put them in for NO FUCKING REASON.

But I don’t fucking like you. I am not changing.

I.

Love.

Parentheses.

And you can pry them away from me and my style over my cold, dead body.

(fuck you)

(no seriously)

(but not you guys that actually explain why you don’t like parens, you guys are cool)

As usual, fail-fandomanon gets in on the action, including reposting an allegedly deleted comment. The claim is supported by these two posts by FelicityGS, who continues to believe this is a rational response to anything.

that moment when you take a step back, examine the forest, and then grin like a maniacal loon as you take fire and axe to the rotten tree that soured your mood.

Uh huh. But she's doing much better now.

I actually feel delightfully, refreshingly vindicated and good for breaking down that comment and addressing it in that manner, because I can look at it and see that, no, no, I’m not fucking crazy.

Maybe you can, but the rest of us...less so.