Tuesday, September 9, 2008
FFnet Authors With Bad English
There's something about bad English that is so tempting- so magnetizing- that I sometimes wish people would post stories with abhorrent English on FFnet. You know, just for personal entertainment. I suppose that makes me a cynic of a high order. But it can't be helped for my life at present is so devoid of entertainment that I'd trade mine with a dead turkey's any day. When I do come across a story with bad English I have a rather condemnable propensity of not only pointing out the errors in detail, but also vituperating the author in question to a degree I would deem nefarious. I suppose that makes me a flamer. But just consider it an overly critical way of making constructive criticism. Gratuitous animadversions. Rereading them makes me realize how akin to vilification they are and I can't help but feel a pang of remorse, if only in the slightest, at having veritably obliterated the author's morale. I suppose that has earned me a lot of opprobrium around this site. But that little feeling of guilt vanishes when the author in question retaliates and uses (again, erroneous) language to make me feel as though the mistakes I had pointed out so conscientiously were inexistent. In such situations I unhesitatingly copy the retaliation onto my blog and lambaste the author in abandon, ecstatically pointing out the errors in their retaliation, as I have done in the post, 'And They Snap Back Like Snapping Turtles!' and hope that they come across it by some chance and bubble with rage and frustration at not being able to do anything about it- "It's up here and for everyone to see, and you can't do anything about it!" But if my sagaciousness tells me that the author in question is making sincere effort to improve, I may go a little soft on the criticism and help them out. It's all in the prose. One can tell when an incompetent wannabe becomes conceited. Their prose seems too highfalutin to complement their meager abilities, and that's when the truth comes out, and that's also when I'm compelled to hurl demoralizing invectives at them. This has led to a couple of stories being deleted. In a way it's good- The Slam Dunk category is being purged. But in such cases all the effort I put into conjuring a harsh criticism seems to me to have gone to waste, for I should have liked to see what other authors thought of the story. But it's all for the better, I suppose, if instead of falsely eulogizing these embodiments of incompetence we take a firm stance and be harsh when necessary. It'll pay off some day, since it will also educate these people, but only so far as they desire.
2 comments :
what's worse is they're actually uner the impression that "writing" alone would improve the quality of their work. hopeless, indeed.
Yes. Moreover some people shrug it off saying "I just want to entertain people with my writings."- Fuck, they've gotta understand it first, you moron!Some people have actually retaliated to me like that.
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