It's Short This Time (a ramble on skimming) · 9:46am Feb 13th, 2015
Here's another little anecdote:
When I first began the writing MLP fanfics, one of my stories (the third in sequence, actually) was originally gonna be about My OC trying to kill Gilda. The context was this: the story was told from Gilda's perspective, and to her, My OC seemed like a psycho murderer. Of course, readers (and the ponies) knew at this point that My OC was good so this was not normal behavior. At the end, it turned out that My OC's actions were over a misunderstanding--she thought she had seen Gilda hurt a child (which is said OC's berserk button). Once the mistake was cleared up, they got along fine.
Now, one pre-reader I had for this story told me straight-up that A) he had never read the first two episodes and B) that he jumped to the ending to see if My OC really killed Gilda.
.... And despite this, he then posted a review where he talked about My OC being a psycho axe-murderer, and told people that the entire series was about her running around and, quote, "murdering all the MLP villains."
When I pointed out how wrong that was, he said "Well, then maybe you should've been more clear."
How am I supposed to respond to that? By his own admission, he didn't even read the entire story or the entire sequence, and yet when he makes mistaken assumptions about it, that's my fault?
Naturally, what reminded me of this was the Bad Writing Influences topic on TWG, where again, the same thing happened--people only read bits and pieces, and then made sweeping assumptions, and when I pointed out the mistakes, it was my fault for, I dunno, not having ESP and predicting they would skim. Rather than their fault for skimming.
How do you reason with such people?
Just saying.
... Wot.
I've seen some stupid people in my time, but someone who literally skips reading a story and then talks about what happens in it?
... Not even the average creationist works on such broken logic, at least not in my experience. Damn. It takes a gift to be that... stupid.
2899183 The guy this blogpost is talking about was a TV Troper (which probably explains everything as Tropers are some of the most braindead people on Earth) named Red Savant. I hope nobody in the future lets that guy proofread their work considering the experiences I've recounted.