Real Talk Pertaining To Insecurity, Unreasonable Standards, and Judgmental Behavior. · 6:45pm Mar 2nd, 2014
God, that's a lot of negative words, huh?
I just want to say, I've been thinking a little bit lately. I'm by no means a wise man, but I wanted to let a few thoughts out there.
I think society these days tends to place relatively high standards on it's citizens, and not a lot of people really stop to think about what kind of an impact collective expectations of performance have on the people expected to perform.
I study biochemistry and physics in a highschool setting, and will be moving on to university soon enough. Let me tell you, the krebs cycle, photospectroscopy, enzyme kinetics ( I know, I am really just throwing buzzwords around now), it ain't easy at all. If I had to count all the times I broke down with despair because my source material was too hard to read, or because the report I had to write had a deadline that was wholly unreasonable, I would be forced to stop rather quickly for fear of bringing too many bad memories upon myself.
Does any of this sound familiar? Does the standards that the world holds you to make you uncomfortable? If they do, then you have probably spent just as much time as I have, wondering whether you were really good enough to be doing what you are doing. Wondering whether your work is solid, and whether your performance inside your chosen field or study is really high enough.
I think we tend to be very judgmental of ourselves. The more complicated or tough our everyday work is, the more judgmental we become. I think it's sort of a stress response in a way. Your body knows that the future is going to be rough, so it imposes standards of behavior, work ethic, and quality upon you, in order to make sure that you are prepared.
Standards like, 'you need to work concentrated at least 2 hours a day' or, 'you have to make sure you proofread everything you write at least once'.
Or maybe even. 'You need to be at least as good as your dad at writing', or, 'you need to try harder to improve your spelling and grammar (just using examples that pertain to a storytelling community here. Not necessarily standards that I hold myself to)'.
These standards are all well and good, maybe even healthy at times, as long as the challenge you are trying to overcome isn't too large for you to handle. However, it sometimes occurs that we impose our own standards upon others, and that is when the shit really hits the fan. When someone who holds themselves to an extreme standard, starts thinking that others should be held to the same.
I see a lot of Fimfiction members (myself included) bashing and picking on new writers for their bad grammar or storytelling capabilities. I'm thinking this isn't necessarily the right thing to do. You can end up seriously hurting or discouraging a new author. Worse even, you might stress the author out enough that they come up with their own unreasonable standards, based on what you said to them, going on to pass those standards in judgement of others and themselves.
In some cases we do need to hold fiction to high standards. Like when proofreading a fic for someone with experience in writing, But in other cases, imposing standards is just extremely harmful.
I guess, what I am trying to say is, I am sorry if I ever offended you by suggesting that what you wrote wasn't good enough.
I am sorry if I made you think that you were bad at writing. Opinions are subject to the subject perceiving the object in question.
I am, especially sorry for being a gigantic prick, who only just really realized this after spending more than 1 and a half years among you wonderful writers and readers.
I don't have any more that I would like to say with this entry. Maybe I'll continue the thought later if I feel like it.
Our entire mission is exploration. To seek that which is unknown and to learn from it, grow from the discovery, and make our lives that much richer. Growth and exploration, not to replace who we are but to find ways to adopt so that we can be better as a group and much richer as individuals. Here on Earth we once fancied ourselves absolute; our way was the only way, our truth the only truth.
O how wrong we were. From the time of first contact til today, we have learned the folly and hubris that comes from the mentality of "perfection". Assuming you have already achieved perfection or that you have found the one way to become perfect, well, that limits you. That is the way to regression, not progress.
Some of our greatest achievements come from mistakes. That must seem antipodal to the idea of perfection, but think of it this way. If years ago, we had not fought ourselves to near extinction, we would have never had the idea of warp. One of our greatest inventions. Stemming from mistakes made many times over.
You want perfection, then I say your collective is a confederacy of fools! Empty shelled automatons striving for that which is not possible. And what of your perfection? How many times have our inferior species handed you defeats? To hell with your perfection! As long as one of us can reach out into the cold space with hope warming our hearts, as long as just a few of us can take joy in our victories while learning from our failures, as long as we can grow and try and love and LIVE you will never win! Futile? Far from it. I say to you this day we will boldly go forward to the future and we will not yield we will not relent we will grow and learn and you had better well get use to it.
And if you doubt us, if you want to test us, then come forward. We will show you where you can stick your perfection.
Kill the view screen, raise shields
1888509
I didn't write that.
Woah, man! Where is all this coming from?
I can get the self-judgemental part of that (because that's totally me), but the other part about offending others?
What's up?
1888510
Sounds a lot like something out of Star Trek.
1888516
Well, maybe I have a knack for offending people. I get the feeling I probably made one or two people feel really /really/ bad about themselves. I only really realize the impact of my critiques and statements once they have been said.
I think the high standards that I hold myself to in my studies and everyday life are to blame for my degrading of other users, is the gist of it.
Hmm... true saying words like that can put down an author. But if that author really wants to write his story that just wouldn't stop him/her from doing so. Yeah, I have to say I wasn't please receiving that comment you gave about my story. But looking past it all I was able to use that to help me better my story. If I'm to be a master of telling fanfiction stories or any story I write I must be willing to go to all level and corners of the earth to achieve the mastery.
So instead of beating myself with trying to write a good story. I'll just write away. After all, when I get better I'll be able to make what was wrong with the story great anyhow. So in the end I still thank you for giving a comment on my story because it has bettered me as a writer. :)
And that only makes me happy.
1888520
Pretty sure it is from Star Trek
This made me think of a Blog that JustAnotherTimeLord made last December. I'm not saying it's the exact same circumstances, or even slightly related, but it came to mind when I saw this.
I can personally say that I've had some personal experience from both sides of this. When I first joined fimfic I did what a lot of us do when we first join; write something simple, purely to get something out there. And I didn't take the criticism so very well... (Long story short, I kinda gave up on writing for a good amount of time.) The criticism wasn't necessarily 'mean' but it wasn't worded the nicest either... And now that I've kinda come to the other side of that, I can see how some of my own comments could be seen as less than 'polite' in how I worded them...
It's something we all need to work on; whether it be taking the criticism better, or learning how to give it politely and 'correctly.'
Just my thoughts and observations that I felt pertained to the subject. My apologies if this is less than coherent, I'm a bit tired...
1888651
No, no. Very coherent. I can relate to what you said about the early time spent on fimfiction. I think I remember one of my own stories receiving some criticism that really bummed me out as well.
1888537
.
You really can't imagine how happy it makes me to hear you say that
1888989
I read back over it once I finished typing it and it seemed a bit garbled. 
I'm glad that I was able to be at least moderately coherent..
And I just found myself guilty of less than politely worded criticism today, looking back on something I wrote to someone I edit for.. Immediately after I noticed it I felt beyond awful for doing so, even though I know this author has had worse criticism before.
It's a delicate balance.. Good criticism vs. overly harsh criticism/less-than-politely worded criticism.
(That's why I usually try not to review things... I tear apart the stupidest little things..)