Thursday 9 July 2009

Scripty

Today's been sad on the updates board.

Legal nihilists are skipping like bunnies in Australia. Songfics, author's note chapters, interactive entries, and last, but definitely not the least, chat format.

The first two are general ignorance factors. People just generally nod off to whatever is given to them. 'Sign this' and they do. Does it matter that such deals lead to semi-legal human trafficking? Of course, not. A thirteen-year-old doesn't read. Yes by default. I'll just cite a review reply to make it easier to understand.

"Thanks for explaining that to me. I didn't really know that songfics were
banned. Oh, and ust so you know, a lot of people use "Sonikku" when writing a
romance using Sonic."

I'm generally amused by how simple the writer must think the critic is. With an account as old as mine, I would be stupid not to know Sonikku spreads like AIDS overnight. Back to the point, though.

"Copying from a previously published work (including musical lyrics) not in the public domain" is a quote from the guidelines. The administrators made writers accept them over and over on a monthly basis. How can you not know what rules you accept? One thing I can say to those people: See you in a public building!

I know mediaminer.org accepts song-based fictions provided more than half of the text was created by the writer. Hadn't bothered to check other sites. Fan Fiction dot Net banned them completely. Though, you could admit the rule is a tad 'formal' and can lead to misunderstandings.

Is it wrong to write a song? No. If you wrote that, or a poem, it can fit perfectly into a story (or be a story on its own).

So what songs are banned? By default, anything that is not yours. In my view, any commercial song. There are so-called amateur creatives. Some people don't make lyrics for profit, and they can be aired on real radio stations without paying copyrights institutions any tax. Though, that's just extra.

The notes part is rather obvious. Also from the guidelines: "Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes, and etc." Sadly, I don't have a reply ready that states they didn't know about this rule. Usually, they just do a five-minute copy/paste to place the chapter back. I guess it's not needed to write an excuse. Rewriting a songfic into something decent takes more time for the report factor prevention.

Now we get to my favourite peeves. I have a mall-wide variety of replies on interactivity and script here, but I'll only post a few. Let's concentrate on current issues and save time. Coincidentally, the issue of interactivity and chat format bounces into one fad: truth or dare entries.

Before we begin, I want you to think why script format was banned in the first place. Official messages say one thing, but I'll tell the practical reason: quality. When a small teen writes a script, it rarely differs from what you'd see in MSN chat windows. Sometimes the script is taken directly off a chat window or an RPG forum. Let's have a live example.

"Jack: I know how to make Chaos suffer! (uses a mop to break apart Chaos, then scoops it up in a bottle, has Eggman drink it, and then has Eggman go to the bathroom, sending Chaos to the sewers)

Eggman: Ugh…that did not feel good coming out of my bladder!"

Do take a while to stroll through and analyse. This is an obvious case of bathroom humour, which is considered one of the lowest comedies used only by amateurs who think with their lower regions. Stating simply: it's stupid and disgraceful. Such an entry does not look good on a literary site. However, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Putting up such content gives the site a bad name. Coincidentally, those that post entries of this kind reduce the domain's authority. It loses face. Fiction Press authors openly laugh at those 'stuck' with Fan Fiction dot Net, as the domain is 'riddled by fools'. Sadly, when submissions like the one above are posted, it proves the critics right. What is scary is that these monstrosities get the most reviews.

What is scarier, it motivates review whoring and copying. New writers are inspired by content, which is against the rules and is of greatly lower quality than offered prose. Cancer, dear readers.

This, consequently, covers up script, but not interactivity. Why is it banned? Simple. Some authors use their own heads to write a story from beginning to the end. Others make a collaboration to pool intelligence together for an original work. Co-partnerships are not interactive, as they are hidden from the public during production. Interactivity, however, is different.

INTERACTIVE entries REQUIRE the public's HELP TO CONTINUE POSTING. This occurs when the author is unable to write a submission on his or her own. The public is forced to compensate for the disability. While doing so, the community concentrates on giving input so much, they forget what reviewing is all about. Moreover, because the amount of pseudo-reviews increases over time, the author has an increasing amount of people demanding a part of the story. This leads to really messy situations, as I have yet to see an author capable to control the flow of information once interactivity was begun. Putting it simply, having absolutely no idea of how a story is supposed to look in the future, since it depends entirely on the readers, the original uploader becomes a plagiarist. Some 'cleverer' uploaders become selective to pick out only some readers' ideas, which turns interactivity into a lottery. Everyone is lured by a chance to win - have their ideas used in the production. However, because their thoughts are 'inferior', they are shunned and become a victim of false advertising. Interactivity is scamming readers.

It is also against writers' sportsmanship rules. When a whole community is involved in the making of one random humour collection, stories that have far greater quality and added value are shunned, because reviewers are busy with something else. It even ruins the impetus to write. 'Why should I bother to write paragraphs myself, when I can have someone else do the dirty work?' No wonder authors who feel low quality fiction is overrated on Fan Fiction dot Net leave and express their talent elsewhere. Sadly, idiots don't leave. They are too dumb to understand the harm they are doing.

For a mosquito, it's essential to feed on human blood. Parasites, dear colleagues, have fun at whatever expense. Only when they are put down peace ensues.

I've had a rather fruitless discussion on this matter with someone with a long pen name.

Firstly, I wanted to understand why are people writing garbage, from a garbage writer's perspective.

"Well Lord, since you asked so nicely... what ever motivates people to write any fanfiction. The need to write, to bring laughs, to just make others happy. For Sonic Truth and dares, seeing mush hated characters put through alot of horrible, terrible pain and suffering for laughs. Violence and seeing others in hiliarios pain is theroputic and relieves stress for both the writer and the reader. And if your being sracastic about them being fictions, tell me one real life senario where a two tailed is being launched into space to be attacked by polar bears under the sea."

The need to write...Hmm 'I wanna write something stoopid today! This site will accept me, because stoopid is kewl'

Seeing hated characters in pain... 'I am a fan. I do not lack fandom. That is why I will make the fictional universe members suffer.' This pretty much ruins the idea behind fan fiction. Instead of showing care for the series, little teens vent their hidden sexual frustrations on hurting imaginary creatures. Violence, dear colleagues, doesn't pay. It only shows how monstrous one's psyche is to the public and encourages more violence. Killing in games does cause actual murder, I'm afraid. So the health benefit is clearly overrated.

I couldn't even understand the rest of the text. I attribute that to a very specific mindset of a rule-breaking submission writer. The words that come to mind are: stubborn, ignorant, short attention span, ill-witted, unbalanced, rude, closed-up, defensive.

The next message only assured my worries.

"For Grammer well... I guess we are not up tight about that I guess... Also, again about the pain, why do you think half the stuff on youtube is? People getting hurt. Besides, since we are causing pain on some of the worst written characters in video game history, and they are not real, we can all laugh without feeling sorry for them."

Notice how this same person cannot spell grammar and calls it 'not being uptight'. Add careless and disrespectful, nihilistic to the list. Studies showed that those who disrespect their language are more prone to criminal activity.

Causing pain is the issue again. I find it moronic, colleagues. If you hate something so much, why write about it? Again, I am definite that this is a hidden sexual frustration release vector. These pubertal teens are merely jacking off their way. We can also see the fundamental consensus error here. The person thinks that others participating in this activity makes it forgivable. With all due respect, no matter how many idiots say that 2+2=5, it will not be this way. When ten people break the law, all of them are guilty. Think about those that joined the Nazi party.

"Most TaD fics are written as they are simple because it is easy to read. This makes it easier to have many characters talk at once then having to write (insert name) said, "blah, blah, blah." Also makes it easier to surprise the reader with a joke. The way it is written is as close as possible to visiale humor possible for a written work anyway. Also, having to check ever little detail of grammer for over 1,000 word chapters is exteremly hard and would push back when chapters can be published. For serios works, yes, grammer is inportant, but for the much sillier and far more relaxed TaD fics, it can be forgiven."

I didn't count the number of typos in the next note.

Ladies and gentlemen, we come to the most astounding conclusion. Script authors are hedonists! Going for the low-end easier way, not wishing to excel, because it is 'hard', 'difficult', 'takes time'. And because of this, it's totally forgivable! Yes! 'I aim to be a murderer. It's only bad for normal people to say it, but not for me.'

These people just don't want to try, and taking the submission, from which I've extracted my example, we can see that the author neglects on other writings for sillier random issues, thus proving my point.

Finally, it allows them to 'write' 'faster'. Surely, it takes less time to build a doghouse than a regular home. Of course, the end result is that you can't live in a kennel. This is the option random chat writers give the reader. Chat kills. Use prose and save lives. Besides, reading stupidity kills your brain cells, so you can wave to those authors for reducing general intelligence.

This review board has turned into a chat room...and nobody even bothers to write a genuine review, because it's not the easiest way out.

What is sad is that I've appealed to those authors to write something proper and inspire newcomers with proper style and language. I have never received a reply.

Good day and good luck!

3 comments:

  1. ... I had a nice response written out.

    But this box does not allow copy/paste.

    Thanks for the history of script/chat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, very nicely done! :D

    I managed to read all your articles, they were very entertaining and informative :3

    Keep up your awesome work~ I look forward to seeing more!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very much thanks. Ended up here more or less by chance after just clicking around - and it was great. Got me smirking quite often.

    And you're so right. Attempting to find a good piece of fiction to read is the well-known search for needles in haystacks, so that for me being frustrated after such a search that turned up mostly junk as described in these blogs of yours was a truly relaxing experience.

    There's still hope...

    Maybe I'll check on this block again when being in a desperate mood. So long!

    ReplyDelete