My butthurt or their dumbassery? · 7:05pm May 19th, 2014
So I have been wondering a bit about critiques.
I do not think it's immodest of me to say I am a good writer. I've been doing this for 40 years, I'd better be good or I've wasted my life. :-) I don't, however, like to be the kind of person who thinks my shit don't stink, so when I get critiques, I try to consider them in all fairness and try to see what the reader saw in them.
Sometimes, though... the reader comes across as so nitpicky or such a dumbass that I wonder to myself if there is even any point to considering their words.
Case in point. I received a critique from a well-known MLP site regarding my story "Hit Me" - the most popular thus far of my MLP fics. Among various other things, they pointed to this:
His face was suddenly directly in hers again. "What I've done to your books thus far can't begin to compare to what I'll do to them if you won't cooperate with me, Twilight Sparkle," he said in a very menacing tone. "I tried to do this the nice way, but if you insist on being obstinate... why, books are so very fragile. So many natural substances inimical to their material... water, fire... petrification... chocolate milk..."
She backed away. "You wouldn't dare."
"Are you going to bet your library on the belief that I wouldn't dare to do something randomly destructive for a stupid reason? Really, Twilight?"
Their response to this was something on the nature of Discord not being willing to risk his friendship with Fluttershy and therefore he wouldn't destroy Twilight's books.
Okay. Reality check, here. I'm the writer, so I know my intent. Did anyone else not get that, regardless of whether or not Discord is bluffing, his goal in making the threat is to get Twilight to cooperate with the game he wants to play, so the only thing that matters is whether Twilight is willing to call his bluff or not? And therefore, regardless of what we the readers think, the question is not "would Discord really dare to do something randomly destructive for a stupid reason and risk his friendship with Fluttershy" but "would Twilight believe that he might?" And given the events of Princess Twilight Sparkle, in which everyone but Fluttershy was certain that Discord was destroying Ponyville with those vines on purpose, how could we possibly doubt that Twilight would think that yes, he very well might?
When someone says something that reveals that they think that Discord wouldn't make a threat to Twilight's books out of fear of consequences, because the thing he's threatening to do is something he wouldn't actually risk doing, without considering the possibility that he's bluffing and without considering the fact that this character is well known for being impulsive and doing stupid shit that pisses off his friends even before the season finale came out... how am I supposed to take anything else they say seriously? They've just revealed that they either have no concept of Discord's character or they have no concept of how fiction works (ie, that you can have a character who is willing to lie make a bluff to another character, and as long as the other character believes them, the other character will respond as if what they said is true... it doesn't actually have to be true for this to be a valid thing to happen in the story).
Then there's other things. They noted:
Twilight lowered her head, letting her bangs fall over her eyes and narrowing them so much it would look through her mane like her eyes were closed.
and observed that because Twilight is the perspective character, that last bit is an irrelevant detail unless Twilight wants it to look that way for some reason. Like, um, maybe that she's trying to trick Discord into thinking she's in serious need of medical attention so she can zap him when his guard is down, which happens three seconds later? I realize that many writers do, in fact, include irrelevant details about the appearance of POV characters that the POV character would not reasonably be thinking about, but when a character is, right then and there, attempting to pretend to be halfway to collapsing from exhaustion, maybe her making it look like her eyes are closed when they're really not isn't an irrelevant detail at all?
I dunno. A lot of the other stuff they pointed out was typographical nitpicks and stylistic choices. They mentioned talking heads, which I do know is a problem I have, and said the fight scene went on too long, except that the fight scene was basically a large part of the point of writing the story, and felt they didn't get much emotional impact, which ok, I can see that. But... how seriously am I supposed to take a critique where 80% of it is criticising typography nitpicks (like "italicize the ! at the end of an italicized word") and grammar issues where I knew perfectly well what the rule was and broke it for effect (yes, there is sometimes a point to leaving out a comma in a person's speech -- it indicates that they didn't pause!), and of the few bits of meat they had to offer, at least two of them demonstrated this level of ignorance? It's like they can't comprehend that I am actually writing in Twilight's POV, and they don't comprehend how a bluff works. Dude, I have Aspergers and I get the concept that you might threaten to do something you won't really do because the person you're talking to can't take the risk, or that you might use body language to convey the wrong impression.
Am I being butthurt, or is this reviewer really just kind of a tool?
I feel this statement SO MUCH!
&*#%ing people second guessing what it is that I am trying to do with MY work.
Telling me what my @%^!ing intent really is, based on their point of view, telling me how I really meant it. Crap keeps happening to me lately.
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Well, to a certain extent, your intent doesn't matter if you don't have the skill to carry it out. I can't tell you how many fanfics I've read where the author's intent was for you to like and sympathize with their OC, where... it didn't work. So it's valid to say "Is my intent coming across correctly?"
However, yeah, when people tell you what you intended to do and you're like "no dude I know my own brain" and they're like "YOU LIE!"... seriously that is some bullshit.
I've had people tell me they wouldn't want to be in a room with me without a knife to fend me off because they read a story THAT HAD WARNINGS and wasn't even done (it did eventually have a happy ending, they just got totally butthurt about the fact that before getting to a happy ending we got to the total Wagnerian apocalypse of a romantic relationship crashing and burning as hard as it possibly can.)
The two specific criticisms you mentioned were unfair on his part. Bibliophile though I am, Discord has done far worse things than scramble knowledge (and incidentally, I must thank you for that scene because it is explicitly what gave me the notion that one of the reasons Equestrians don't know much about their history before the foundation of Equestria is that Discord scrambled the books -- and this is also why the Crystal City's Great Library is so important -- the Crystal City is one of the few places on that planet Discord never touched and hence its Library one of the last sources of reliable texts from before Equestria and even before the Cataclysm).
As for the "looking at herself from the outside" POV thing, intelligence largely consists of being able to model one's own and others' likely behavior based on the perceptions of each actor. Twilight Sparkle is one of the smartest Ponies in canon, and of course she could consciously trick Discord based on her awareness of his perceptions and hence likely strategies. Why not?
I have to agree that Discord does not sound out of character at all. I knew it was Discord immediately. Typographical errors are easy to notice and to point out, which is possibly why they fixated on them. Anyway, you're not obligated to agree with a critique. I've had a few where I thought, "eh. This time, it's not me."
In those two examples, I think they most definitely missed the point. I could say more, but I think everyone else already covered it. Sometimes you should question yourself, but not always. Subtlety can be a misfire even when it's good. You can't guarantee everyone will catch on, regardless of how smart they are. This person might have missed a lot. You can't win 'em all.
As for the title question.... Eh. A little of both?
You have a point with the two references you sited. I think those complaints were illegitimate.
But Alara, people are READING. And having a REACTION that's good news.
Maybe it's just that I'm new to this, but I invite nitpicks, I INVITE trolls. At least they read.
Remember how you stepped up and defended me against that dude who said he was annoyed by my paragraph length? We both know he was full of it, but I invited the comment! I would rather have people blast my story to bits than have no views at all. So nitpick away, I say.
(PS. I got some more chapters up if you're interested)
That's not critique so much as personal opinion over character interpretation. A legitimate concern would be something blatantly out of character in general (like if discord set fire to an orphanage for shiggles) or if the plot was contrived/ had poor progression or something. Specific character traits? Not so much.
Witch one of your stories is this from?
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Copying Yildun in here because she's a Discord enthusiast like me, and she's... y'know... awesome.
Someone had a problem with Hit Me? Dude, that story was amazing. I remember the day I read it at school; 'twas a good day indeed.