Rude Reviewer's Review · 1:47pm Oct 3rd, 2020
Hey, everyone!
It's been a hot minute since I've uploaded a blog here, but I figured I'd go ahead and post something after an incident involving my good friend Ice Star. If you've never met him or read any of his stories, you should definitely change that. His writing is impeccable, his prose leaves me wanting more, and his attitude is nothing but pleasant and encouraging.
Now, that being said, Ice recently posted his story, Breathtaking Banality, in a review group, hoping for some legitimate criticism since it was one of his recent forays into the horror genre. The reviewer that picked it up was... less than pleasant in their communication with Ice, shall we say.
Essentially, what it boils down to is that the reviewer intentionally chose a story that was a genre they didn't like (Horror), gave it a very poor review, and then blasted Ice himself during the review as much as he could, literally admitting that "I had to cut out the fun parts of my review because the boss said to". If you have to be forced to be nice when doing a review, you shouldn't be doing reviews.
Unless it's the Rage Reviews group of course, I love and miss you all!
I checked this reviewers other posts, and they all boiled down to the same exact formula.
1. Criticize the idea of the story as "boring".
2. Call the author out for silly mistakes even though his review is absolutely riddled with them.
3. Give the story a poor review and say "with work, you can be a great author".
Unfortunately, the original review of Ice's story was deleted by the group after the reviewer literally quit due to the criticism he was facing for his post. However, the fun didn't stop there!
Ice himself reached out to the reviewer, requesting a re-review on his personal blog. The reviewer accepted, and what we got was... a gigantic blog that did nothing but make fun of Ice and his story. If you're interested in reading that blog, I'll provide a link below.
Now look, I'm going to make this clear. I do not condone the way this person spoke down to Ice, so I'd like to ask that you guys don't make it your mission to go to this blog and pester the guy. That's not what this is about. I just want to give some insight into how myself and some others feel about reviews such as this one. Attacking other people does no good, but I'll definitely be attacking and breaking down his review.
So, without further ado, let's begin.
Disclaimer: I could tell you the context here dear followers of mine, but I'm not going to. This blog post is for one person, and one person only, he asked me to do it this way, and I will honour his wish. I do not recommend you to read this comment if you're anyone else but Ice Star. Honestly I wouldn't recommend him to read it, it will just gonna make him more angry. But of course anyone is welcomed to read this whole thing, though if you want to find out the story behind it, you have to do it yourself.
So we're already off to a great start here. If you have to start your review off by saying "Hey, you might not wanna read this or you're gonna get super butthurt", then perhaps you should rethink doing this? After all, if you believe the review isn't fit for the author it's reviewing to read, then why post it?
As an aside, this reviewer is admittedly a Secondary English speaker, so I'm not going to berate him for grammatical errors in his comments. I will, however, say that you should take more care to ensure your review is free of such errors, regardless of your primary language. Your job as a reviewer is to set a precedent and example that authors can learn from. Perhaps an editor would help? Just a thought. Anyways, let's continue.
So when I chose your story I had one goal on my mind. I wanted to find a good story. If you look at my reviews the best score I gave is a 5. With the caveat that though it was a five, it was closer to a four than a six.
Nobody cares that the story you're reviewing is "closer to a four than a six". I actually checked the review itself, and he says the same thing in an actual review. It comes across as extremely rude and condescending to even make that apparent. You gave it a five. It's a five. If you want to make it apparent without coming across rudely, then use decimal points in your final tally.
Now the interesting fact is, that I either missed the horror tag completely, or forgot about it by the time I got around to read it, but I didn't go in with the notion that this was gonna be a horror story.
Which is what I prefer, honestly, in terms of reviewing, because a story should hold their own even if I don't have a particular set of expectation for it.
So there is the answer for your, and half the comments section's main problem with my review. The reason I reviewed a horror story, because I didn't know it was gonna be a horror story.
Damage control. Once again, you are the reviewer. You should do your due diligence when selecting a story to check out. Admitting that you didn't only makes you look worse, because it shows a lack of effort or care on your part.
I don't use the spoiler tag a lot in general, so I kinda just forgot about it, but had I thought about it I would have decided against using it because I thought it was something everyone should read. So I was not going to make it easy on the reader not to read it.
Then tag your blog or something, or even just use red text to say "Yo, spoilers ahead". The point of a review (be it for movies, music, books, games, or television) is to give the person reading your review a decent set of expectations moving forward if they decide to read it. Some may argue that reviews are also for entertainment, and while I agree to a certain extent, your main job is to either persuade or dissuade people from reading something, not to spoil the story within the first paragraph of your review.
I actually hadn't read the story, and having it spoiled was a bummer.
I categorically refuse this claim, based on all the evidence I've just provided. Also I'm almost physically incapable of being passive-aggressive. I'm way to honest for that. I go with regular aggressive.
Regardless of your intent, you're admitting to being aggressive in a review that was politely requested. Not a good look. Also, you used the wrong form of 'too', and the correct verbiage in the first sentence would be 'refute', not 'refuse'.
Suspense transcends genres. The reason I chose the most basic, rudimentary example of suspense, I know of, because it's easy to understand ... but it doesn't matter, I could have used a painting as an example had I been well-versed enough in the language of the stationary visual arts ... so I went for films, because I found that's the artistic language the largest portion of people understand.
Dude, you're reviewing a written story. Imagine if I wrote a review of Halo: The Flood, and said something like 'This wasn't good because it doesn't have the music that the game Halo: Combat Evolved has'. No shit, it's a book. Stick to the media you're reviewing.
I know that you tried to established the atmosphere, but you felt short. That's why I said you felt short. I work in mysterious ways, don't I?
This one is really funny because you spent an entire paragraph just above this belittling Ice for making an incorrect edit of your blog, but then you manage to use 'felt short' instead of 'fell short' twice in less than ten words. That's a real accomplishment.
Now I admit, this is the one thing I am biased about. I don't hate horror stories. I do hate everyone who blames other people for their own shortcomings. So I disliked Redheart from the get-go. There were clearly ways to improve on her life, and she was to blame for not doing any of them. But that's neither here or there.
It actually is here and it's there, too. The entire point of her character is to be disliked, that's why she is written in the manner she is. The fact that the story managed to elicit a reaction from you regarding her characterization is a positive sign of Ice's writing ability. It's not negative. And because I give a shit about the readers who may be interested, she takes life because it makes her feel stronger. That's a well-written killer because it is realistic.
All I get from her, that she was resentful. Which yet again, doesn't mean she has murderous intents, and doesn't mean she is gonna act on those murderous intents. So I don't care how much we don't deviate from her point of view if we don't see anything alarming from her.
I spoiler tagged that because it does contain, yet again, spoilers. Though, not exactly as the reviewer intended. It's crazy how he read this story, decided to give it a low score, and somehow doesn't even understand it? Redheart literally killed her patient. Saying "doesn't mean she has murderous intents or is going to act on them", and "we don't see anything alarming from her" is simply wrong. Like, are you actually insane? Why are you posting a review of a story if you don't even understand how it ended one single bit? You missed the point entirely, and that's the biggest joke here.
People have evil thoughts about others, it doesn't mean they are gonna act on them. I have a lot of evil thoughts I don't act upon.
Congratulations, we're so proud of you for not being a psychopath lol. Have you possibly considered that some people legitimately are, and discounting his story because "lol not everyone is a fucking murderer you dumb dumb" is pretty silly? Some people are sociopaths, plain and simple. Hannibal Lecter is a perfect example of this.
Maybe this is realistic, or something, and maybe that was your intention, but I don't judge based on that.
So you dock points for her characterization not being realistic, but then state two paragraphs later that you don't judge a story on realism? What the fuck is this, dude? Just call yourself "Four Quarters" because you'd really switch up for a dollar. This is such a perfect example of why you shouldn't be reviewing for that group, and why I am glad you aren't anymore. You can't even remain consistent in your criticism or guidelines.
So who is the biased one here?
You.
Sorry son, in my eyes your story just isn't that good. It achieves what it wants, but what it wants is being boring as fuck. You might call it entertainment, or art, I call it wasting my time
You know, I don't ever pull this card because I honestly don't give a shit, but you've got a lot of nerve and arrogance for someone who has less than thirty followers. You've done literally nothing on this website to earn that high horse you're trying to sit on, so why don't you go ahead and get off?
Anyways, that was definitely a wild ride, and I hope you guys enjoyed it, as well. Long story short, my personal advice is to never ask this man for a review unless he changes the way he does things. As of right now, he's nothing short of rude and arrogant. I will, however, highly recommend the group he left!
I myself have had a couple stories reviewed by this group, and the majority of their reviewers do an excellent job. Definitely go join and ask them to look over your stuff!
Have a great day, everyone <3
Bro you really took out the red pen on this one holy fuck
Maybe I should be fair and review one of his stories.
5369803
I honestly wasn't going to until I read the bit about him docking points based on realism, only to say two paragraphs later that he doesn't do that. That rustled my jimmies so god damned hard lol.
5369804
Nothing more delicious than hypocrisy. 🙏
Give the guy some credit. He comes up with some great lines every now and then.
Just read the post... well shit. 0_0
This is why I don't review other people's fanfics. ... Also I'm kind of insane when it comes to reviewing things, so yeah, don't have me fanfictions, not a good idea... at all
5369907
Dude needs a reality check. Man's the epitome of a bruh moment every time he types something.
5370330
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Your dissection is a welcome one.
I won't say more due to having a conflict of interests and association, but these kinds of blogs are great for reflecting on the reviewing craft. Granted, I'm not the subject, but I try to avoid the issues found in such a dissection, even as I am, in some ways, as much of a critical reader as the person in question.
Oh, so we've got Fimfiction drama now? Really? Really? We can't escape pretentious assholes anywhere at all?