Creating a sporking organization.

I'm getting annoyed that people keep minimizing The Worst Thing that happened to me. It was worse than that time the college administration person lied to get me put on psych hold, which I've talked about before and was a pretty traumatic experience.

As far as the racisms, I was honestly trying to find the pitfalls before stepping into them.

 

@Greallan you are still missing fundamental points that people are trying to tell you, and responding to parts of their posts without any indication you read to the end. Birdy made a statement to show how your words were hypocritical, and even clearly pointed this out! the bolding is mine, because you either ignored or didn't notice it the first time, but they* still spelled it out for you, twice, in that post. but you responded to the words which they CLEARLY LABELED as "dumb and cruel" as though they were sincere. which makes it look like you're either not fully reading or not fully understanding what people say to you.


*sorry, Birdy, unsure of your pronouns!

 

I can see the benefit of remembering to point out things that you really like. It's just that people seem afraid to say more than "hey this is really good" when I know there are glaring errors. Even "hey, this sentence really upset me" can be a compliment if that's what you're going for.

 

@hyrax they is fine

Okay, it’s fair that this thread has moved very fast, and you appear to be on post moderation right now, so your messages aren’t appearing immediately. I’m not going through the thread itself because I’m not holding your hand, but I appreciate why you’re having difficulty responding to everyone.

That said, have you noticed that like...threads start moving fast when you say really inflammatory things? Maybe try to learn what makes people upset with you and like...do that less

If writing is really as important to you as learning to drive or buying food, I would hope you’d have strategies for achieving it that aren’t “throw all my hopes on one internet forum and then get mad when that doesn’t come to fruition”. I think your fixation on the PPC has actively hurt you as a writer because you keep angrily trying to shove your writing into a very specific box that doesn’t necessarily fit it.

You’ve correctly identified that it wasn’t that they couldn’t be pleased. The reason that the PPC banned you, as far as I am able to tell, was because of your rude behavior and nothing to do with your writing. You seem like you still don’t quite understand this and expected them to welcome you back with open arms if you could just write well enough, which was infinitesimally unlikely to happen.

Fine, it was a stretch. I still think trying to write solely for the PPC because they made you upset instead of writing things for your own satisfaction is a dumb idea, and I still think that you insulting people who gave up on things because of setbacks is stupid and cruel. Especially because sometimes it’s important to give up. Like when there’s a writing forum that’s banned you and you have no chance of getting back in their good graces.

You have the right to feel any way you damn well please, you don’t have the right to act any way you please. The woman can still be mad at her mother, what she can’t do is call up her mother to harass and berate her multiple times over several years after the incident. You can be as mad at the PPC, but making sockpuppets when you had been banned was still wrong.

I’m telling you how people are most likely to perceive you trying to make your own sporking organization to spite the PPC, and they will probably see it as bitter and pathetic. I’m not even saying if that’s right or wrong, you can think that’s mean all you want but the fact of the matter is: Making your own sporking organization will not make the PPC or anyone else respect you. Nor will it make them mad. What’s most likely to happen is they will be confused that you’re still holding onto this incident.

I’m sorry your writing was getting worse, but that was a really good signal that you maybe ought to have moved on and tried to look for criticism and writing advice in more fertile pastures instead of continuing to harass the PPC.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by this but I think you having a screaming meltdown when people pointed out things you said were racist and antisemitic is really damn good evidence that that criticism struck your “heart”.

Are you playing with me, or do you truly have that little self-awareness? Go read the racism thread and the autism thread. There’s a fuckload of examples of you responding real fucking poorly to criticism

...Literally what about those FF.net comments indicates to you that they’re not giving criticism because they’re worried about fee-fees? (That’s an incredibly dismissive word and people will snarl at it, FYI). They’re not offering in depth criticism in the comments on FF.net because hardly anyone does. People normally treat comments boxes on fanfiction as a way to dash off a quick compliment, A. because writing critique takes time and energy and there’s a word limit on comments, and B. they would rather talk about what they like

They’re complimenting you, Greallan. They like your work and they’re telling you so. That can be valuable as feedback! It tells you you’re doing something right! This still makes me think that you treat scathing criticism as the only way to get better as a writer, which is still untrue.

Also, there’s a norm in a lot of fandom spaces to not offer unsolicited critique, because so many people just do it for fun and not with any goal in mind. If you put “Please tell me what was good and bad about this story, I want to be a better writer and I’m looking for critique,” in your author’s notes, you might get better results. You can’t expect people to just know that’s what you want if you don’t say so

 

You’re on post mod. I didn’t see your reply to my first post until now because there’s a lag while the mods approve your posts.

Did they not tell you you’re on post mod? That’s screwed up if it is the case

 

greallen, what exactly is your idea of useul criticism?

i say you should look up the first chapter of my immortal and criticize it how you want to be criticized so people can tell what you mean

 

I’m sorry if you haven’t picked up on me being a shit stirrer, I thought that part of the established lore.

Just listen to other more patient people explain things tbqh

 

While it might have had a major effect on you, being banned from an internet group that makes shitty fics for being rude is objectively a minor thing. I'd certainly rank it under, say, harassing that internet group with four years of sockpuppeting as a response to said ban.

Are you like going out of your way to sound like someone's racist grandpa on facebook, or what. Because like "fee fees" and all this ranting about people being too sensitive is definitely not a good look.

 

ok. I was going to start w/ the racism thread, bc holy fuck every single reply from you after like pg 5 was defensive and hostile, but the "quote this post" buttons disappear on locked threads (for v good reason) so

instead, let's go w/ the ppc thread (and please understand, I'm being blunt here, not trying to be mean or attack you):

context: "hey, you've been harassing this group for years now and even if they've hurt you, this behavior is not ok" your response: "ok but what if I really want to harass them?"

also, you explicitly said that you think all of their problems w/ you were them acting in bad faith which is a) unlikely and b) a pretty big red flag, bc when you say that you're saying that you don't think people who have legit problems w/ you actually have any real problems w/ your behavior and are just acting out of personal animus

this was in response to seebs saying that ignoring other people's boundaries is bad. it was a wild escalation and an attempt at manipulation. you were framing this as an either/or choice between "trampling boundaries" and "just taking it bc I'm such a good victim." it's a really messed up false dichotomy, and it looked like you were trying to manipulate people into validating your boundary-stomping behavior.

after a few pages of people telling you that the sockpuppeting and harassment were not ok, you were still trying to find a "win" condition where people would accept that your actions were totally acceptable. you weren't listening to people who were telling you that your behavior wasn't ok, you were looking for how to manipulate the facts into justifying your behavior.

then, there was your TCHGB thread w/ Etansel, who I'm not pinging bc you've done enough to them. in that thread, you threatened them w/ bringing up their own abuse history, then after they asked you not to do that, you went ahead and tried to justify the things their abuser did to them.

I could go on, but I rly don't want to. there are dozens of pages across several different threads of people trying to get you to accept criticism and make positive changes, and more often than not they're met w/ excuses for why doing x or y was really ok, and no one should have a problem w/ it

and if that's how you handle constructive criticism about your behavior (after you've said you wanted to debug communications issues, no less), why would anyone think you wouldn't do the same thing about constructive criticism on your writing?

edit: there's a lot more in the ppc thread, but this post is long enough as is, and also I just. don't want to do that. ever.

 

And part of my problem was that the character was wooden. I'm trying to ask him how he feels about the anime, and he says "My boss asked me to do this, so I will do it. I want to keep my job so I can do my job." His motivations don't have any roots. If you've seen Pleasantville, he's like the soda jerk that will stand there and polish the counter until he wears a hole in the laminate unless triggered to do his next action. When broken out of that NPC path, he decides that he doesn't want to be a soda jerk.

 

So... write different characters? Or develope that character more until you can get at his motivations? Or heck, just lean into the motivationlessness and make that a core, intentional feature that gets referenced.

 

If you want to know why I keep minimizing the PPC banning thing and why I think it's pathetic that 4 years later you're still pissed it's because I and other people have had far worse shit happen to us. Perhaps this is getting into misery olympics to some extent, which isn't a game I'm terribly fond of, but I am kind of pissed that you think that being banned from an internet forum and then proceeding to harass them and being this pissed years later is something you can compare to more extreme tragedies. Part of why I'm pissed is some of the comparisons you've made. Part of why I'm pissed is because I've spent most of my life being yelled at and beaten and here you are, banned from a fucking forum and nothing else, acting as though this is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Part of why I'm pissed is you forced out someone's abuse history and then threatened to use that against them.

...and all that happened to you is you got called racist and were banned from a forum.

Again, I don't like playing misery olympics because it's a fucked up game but when you being banned from a forum is what you've got versus my being beaten and yelled at for literally all of my life until I ran away to another state I'm not going to be inclined to think this is a major problem.

 

This is by far one of the most disgusting things you've done here and why I don't think we could provide you criticism on your writing safely. And a big part of why I don't trust you at all.

 

If anyone got missed, go ahead and poke.

I suppose a better example is that other people are learning by using someone else's mistakes as an example. The report cards relate more to people getting upset if they learn they didn't do good.

The thing about sporking is that most of the formula is there, so writer's block isn't an issue. The characters are put into a scenario that's running, and their plot interweaves with what's happening.

Okay, it looks like @Birdy is talking about everything else when I'm talking about fiction. I think part of it is also that I hate people telling me that I'm doing something on purpose when it was more in the range of accidents or not understanding that it was bad. If I hadn't argued in the racism thread, my takeaway might be along the lines of complimenting Jewish people in general is anti-semetic.

"I don't believe that getting put off your passion because of a setback proves that it's not a real passion, but I'm going to mock you with what you said to make you see how dumb and cruel it is."

I'll start keeping a list, but it also seems flammable when I say things that people just don't agree with.

The PPC was a go-to when a lot of other avenues have failed, so it was more like a last hope. I hadn't gotten enough feedback to see that the sporking wasn't really working. Also, since then, I can't even let my mind wander to find new ideas, so complete blockage. I used to have Mittyesque fantasies that could be adapted into parts of stories, but now it turns ugly if I don't stay in control.

There were two problems. The bigger problem was about their hazing me until I started fighting back, and they make out the writing as the bigger problem when they were barely looking at it.

It would have been over long ago if they had just listened to me explain the problem in the beginning.

And I don't get it. Should we praise people who give up because of one stumble and deride people who kept working until they established whether or not success was possible?

BTW, the whole point of creating something similar but different was so that it didn't rely on the PPC's world.

There's wrong and then there's wrong. I don't have a comparison that will make people understand it.

Making my own sporking organization isn't about the PPC's respect. It would give me a way to post the rewritten stories, which apparently aren't worth the effort of rewriting them.

I was expanding my irritation to see if people would finally get the message to stop pointing it out after I asked them to. It was also to see how boundaries work, which seems to be that people can decide to arbitrarily not respect them.

I'm pretty sure that even that complimented writing wasn't that good. It seems to me that ff.net used to be a space where people could post negative reviews and the author was supposed to view them as a valuable tool. I would put notes about accepting negative reviews and encouraged people to do so.

I think I picked up fee-fees from a fatlogic forum. Then again, they aren't the best people.

 

I'd rather do https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2409048/1/Selfishness-Ico. Looking back, my biggest problem is that I barely describe anything, like scenery. Her bedroom really doesn't matter much, most readers would know what the chronoplast room looks like, but when they get to the castle in ICO I should have done a bit more. That's only the beginning of what people could have mentioned while reading it. Here is my godawful attempt to spork it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o-Wgb5AA7WVaDYembEXXsyk9XkUQ9bSlzE9K7koLmI0/edit?usp=sharing Unironically, I need to go in and add more description to the spork, even after I was bashing myself for not having enough description.

I'm still working out how post mod works mechanically. I don't think they're being approved in order, and I wasn't noticing which posts were getting moved to the wiggler.

You're not going to apologize for that, are you? Are you going to read the post above yours?

 

Options one and two are what I was trying to convince the PPC to let me do. I do wish I had thought of option three because they might have outright rejected him as a character instead of making me fight with him when he wasn't working.

 

so, basically, a sense of, like, resignation?

of him being like, "it's not something i want to do but fine. i need this job, after all."

or does he have pride in his job and that's why he wants to keep it?

either way, you can really lean into it and try writing about how he feels, expanding on what he said about it to you.

 

With your analogy, it's like you decided that they didn't have any broken bones without actually taking an x-ray.

Maybe I didn't make this clear enough, but the problem with the PPC boils down to how they were not listening to me. It got worse during the time I was away, slightly better during the sock, and actual progress when I revealed myself. People are starting to get uncomfortable at the mistakes and the lack of acknowledgement.

I think I got all of the points... poke me if I missed one.

Stop saying four years because it was not four years.

I think I picked up fee-fees from fatlogic. One of their hobbies is to talk about people of size who get upset at any negativity about their weight.

Alright, I'm sorry I used extreme tragedies for examples. I'm pretty sure I've already explained repeatedly why I did it.

I'm going to have to go more in-depth over Etan later, but... People have been making a point of how people on the internet don't have the ability to force me to do anything. What Etan did was internal motivation if not strictly a choice. Using this as a pin.

It's not like nothing else bad ever happened to me, it just didn't affect me as much as this thing. What's a word for "like a trigger but not bad enough to make it impossible to act fine for a while" because I was running into them constantly over the PPC and not realizing what the clamping down was doing to me.

To play misery olympics against myself, if the worst thing that happened to me is trivial, then everything else is super-trivial. If I were to make a list, my close number 2 is having a forced hold in a could-be-better psych facility, and that ranking's because it didn't disturb my ability to sleep. I could give you more examples of stuff that might get a "that's effed up" out of you.

You win on the having to move thing. As for Etan, all I touched was the online stuff, not the other stuff where they were the clear winner.