Because the author has brought up copyright:
Our right to criticism of your books, public comments, YouTube videos and promotional style is protected under the Fair Use clause of US Copyright law. Under this law, we are allowed to quote your materials and post screenshots from publicly posted web material. This is because our only intent is to criticise your work. We do not gain monetarily from this in any way.
Thank God that’s over and done with.
Allow us to introduce ourselves; I’m Fairhonanth, and this is my friend, Findabhair (pronounced “finn-UH-veer”, not “find a bear”). Hereafter, you’ll know us as “Fair”, and “Finn” for your convenience, also because we’re too lazy to type out our entire names time after time.
Finn: You know, Fair, when you gave me this name, you didn’t mention it was spelled so weirdly. Anyways, just so everyone knows, I’ll probably be starting my own separate account eventually, since I’m the real writer among us two.
Fair: Oh, har de har har. Real writer, indeed. I’ll have you know that I do write sometimes. Occasionally. Sometimes. Rarely… I write too, okay! Back to the spork.
Okay, so Finn’s telling me we should explain why we’re sporking this. The fact is, we think we may have found the next best thing to Maradonia. Not to mention the fact that the author himself is a Tesch, N.K. Stouffer, and crazy conspiracy theorist rolled up into one incredibly entertaining package.
Finn: You’ve never heard of him. His name is Steve Nelson. We came across him accidentally on Facebook.
Fair: So, after looking at his page for a bit and deciding he is completely insane, we noticed he has written a few books. Naturally, we decided to check them out, and after one look at these vanity published travesties we knew we needed to review (and eventually spork) them.
Finn: He didn’t respond well to the reviews. He ranted rather angrily and called them “Attack Pieces” despite them being rationally put and not needlessly attacking. But how can one explain the inner workings of one overcome by lunacy?
Fair: Okay, enough of that. As they say: “Show, don’t tell.” So now we shall show. Below you’ll find the book overview copied and pasted directly from the book’s page.
Overview
Nibly the Bear Vistis the People Town, is a fiction Children’s story for kids from 1 to 99. Nibly is unsatisfied with the food in his area of the forest and goes in search of some good eat’in in the quaint little town of Nelson, BC Canada. Nibly learns a valuable lesson there in the People town. The reader follows Nibly in his Fun adventures in the People town with this delightful story. By Steve Nelson
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there is indeed more to come. So now, from depths of Smashwords.com, we humbly present to you: Nibly the Bear Visits the People Town.
Dun dun dun duuun
Finn: I’ve actually been to Nelson briefly before. It was…quiet. Some of the buildings were interesting, if a little run down, however, this book truly does the town no favours. Also, even though this book is said to be a children’s book…well, you’ll see. It’s rather a sorry sight.
Fair: First of all, we have the wonderful information on the first page.
This story is a work of fiction. It is suitable for all ages. Every Amer-I-Can kid should read this story! The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. The town of Nelson, BC however is a real place in Canada.
Finn: “Amer-I-Can” is a term he uses a lot. Looked it up, and it seemed to be a part of some sort of motivational/self-esteem campaign. I… don’t really see the point of using it here. It also reeks of self-promotion to say that every kid should read it. Although he obviously only cares about the American ones, despite the fact that this is a book about the Canadian town…
Fair: Not to mention that he emphasises all of the characters in a book about anthropomorphic bears are fictional. Isn’t that a bit… obvious?
Finn: Well, I suppose it’s a usual thing. I’ve read books where all sorts of crazy things happen, and it still insists at the front that it’s fiction. It is a drill for published books. However, this book is vanity published…
Fair: Yeah. Now on to the rating:
Rated ‘G’ Great For Everyone!
That remains to be seen. What are we getting ourselves into?
Finn: There’s only one way to find out.
Fair: I have no words…
Pryotra on 1 September 2012, 13:28 said:
Oh no, not one of these again. I always hate these statements, they’re so painfully obvious that it’s only for two year olds.
And what happens when you’re 100? I guess you’ve finally become too old for Nibly who I’m kind of envisioning as Pedobear.
Kill it. Kill it dead.
…
Thus promising that it’s going to be an epic of Maradonian proportions.
Woohoo! This should be fun…
swenson on 1 September 2012, 13:34 said:
This book just sounds… weird.
Should be promising. _
Epke on 1 September 2012, 14:20 said:
Nibly learns a valuable lesson there in the People town
That being a bear in a town full of people will likely lead to you getting shot, especially after eating the mailman. Sorry, I just loathe books with “and he learns a lesson” – yes, thank you, it’s not like we don’t have two hundred thousand of those already.
Tim on 1 September 2012, 16:48 said:
Some authentic crazy:
http://www.atheistnexus.org/m/blogpost?id=2182797%3ABlogPost%3A1999787
Taku on 1 September 2012, 19:20 said:
Welcome to ImpishIdea, Finn and Fair! Sounds like a book worthy of a good thorough sporking, if anything is.
Fireshark on 1 September 2012, 22:38 said:
I love how more than one of those videos begins with the claim that, while they are science fiction, the facts are real. Does that include the “Scientific Dictatorship?”
Also, while his presence on “atheistnexus.org” probably doesn’t mean much of anything, there’s a masochistic part of me that wants it to mean he shoehorned an anti-religion message into a story about anthropomorphic bears.
Rorschach on 2 September 2012, 01:43 said:
Holy shit.
From his website:
what….the hell? This is Sylvia Scott Gibson levels of crazy.
Tim on 2 September 2012, 05:54 said:
I’m going to have to do the free chapters of The Problem Eliminators Exclaimation Mark since he has absolutely no goddamn clue why Verne designed the Nautilus the way he did and it’s bugging the hell out of me.
Taku on 2 September 2012, 05:55 said:
Waitwaitwait. He wrote a book called “Nibly the Bear Visits the People Town”, and managed to make it R18+?
Really?
WHAT
Oh wait, that’s for a different book.
Also, I love his ability to come up with snappy, memorable titles. The Problem Eliminators! Escape from the ORDER! The Maintenance Engineer!
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 07:39 said:
So…we have a psycho conspiracy theorist writing about anthropomorphic bears for the 18+ crowd… We got ourselves a live one here…
Oh, did anyone else read the comments on the videos? They’re all by him. In one he called one of the reviews for the Problem Eliminators (which does not give me good mental images) a bunch of lies.
Tim on 2 September 2012, 07:58 said:
You might also note that his idea of promoting himself is spamming the shit out of other people’s videos with ads if you check his comment feed. Also I swear his ebooks include copyrighted photos when they’re not his godawful manchild scribbling.
Betty Cross on 2 September 2012, 08:18 said:
I saw his video for Problem Eliminators. He’s using copyrighted music, the guitar riff from “Barracuda” by Heart. Want to bet he’s paying no royalties for that?
Tim on 2 September 2012, 09:37 said:
Yeah, one of the others he uses the theme from Terminator. Still, I think I’m more going to crucify him for knowing absolutely nothing about the state of naval warfare in 1870.
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 11:26 said:
And he got all hot and bothered about copyright infringement? Oh, I’m sorry, that only applies to him.
Fireshark on 2 September 2012, 13:18 said:
Most people on the Internet seem to hate copyright law unless it works in their favor.
swenson on 2 September 2012, 13:30 said:
So… he’s blacklisted by the Mormon church… and therefore can’t get a job anywhere? That seems… unlikely to me, even if he does live in Utah.
Minoan Ferret on 2 September 2012, 14:43 said:
Anyone have links to some of this hilarity?
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 15:03 said:
It’s because the Ebil Mormon cult has ties to the Mafia, Muslims, Homosexuals, and Anthropology teachers… (The horror)
Wait… that’s Jack Chick’s Catholic Church.
Er…sounds to me like he just wants to blame someone else for the fact that he can’t he a job.
swenson on 2 September 2012, 15:07 said:
Here’s his profile on Atheist Nexus. It has a link to his website, but it’s no longer up.
However! Through the magic of the Wayback Machine, I have managed to uncover a copy of his website from 2009! It’s here. And joy of joys, it has more about his Very Hot book not for those under 18!
And better yet, there’s a Youtube video promoting the book as well!
Dear goodness.
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 15:26 said:
Congratulations, you’ve learned how to read. Now stop capitalizing random words.
This sounds so incredibly stupid. Yet…at the same time…I could see someone like SMeyer writing down the same plot…
Fair on 2 September 2012, 16:06 said:
@Tim
I was going to maybe do “The Problem Eliminators!” after “Nibly”; however, if you want I can send you the entire ebook. I bought it while it was 50% off for the purposes of sporking.
Link to Smashwords page:
Clickety
Have fun and bring your brain bleach!
Tim on 2 September 2012, 22:01 said:
I’ll raise you 20% of the sequel:
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/134419/1/tomorrows-world-2-desert-trek
Here and elsewhere he has a weird tendency to write sex in allcaps in his author voice. It’s like he’s twelve years old and emphasising that he’s writing a naughty word.
Also just in case you’re curious what kind of writer he is re: erotica:
Yeah, that kind. In between the weird tendency to call everyone “the humans” even though as far as I’m aware there’s no non-human sentients around is an everyone-wants-to-bang-me fantasy reaching such awesome levels of patheticness that it makes Bernard Doove look like fucking Shaft.
*I think what we really need to know here is how big the female cock gets.
swenson on 2 September 2012, 22:14 said:
Do the female humans have super-strong back muscles and spines now too?
Again I say: dear goodness.
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 22:19 said:
O_o
o_O
It’s like those tentacle rape manga…or ErinOfTheCullenClan’s picture of Edward Cullen.
BRAIN BLEACH NOW!
Fair on 2 September 2012, 22:24 said:
Not to mention that if “the male cock” was really that long it could cause uterine rupture, hemorrhaging and death. SNel really doesn’t seem to realize that there’s a reason human anatomy is the way it is.
Pryotra on 2 September 2012, 22:32 said:
Yes, I know. I just didn’t want to go through that mental image…
For this, I say we send him Chick Tracts. Lots and lots of Chick Tracts. (Sorry, some moron posted a bunch of them to my door this afternoon, and I’m thinking about them more than usual.)
Tim on 2 September 2012, 22:36 said:
In the future men will be so manly they’ll only be able to have sex with shire horses and rhinos.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 00:10 said:
Also, this is totally how you illustrate a book:
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/131751/24/the-maintenance-engineer
I’ve have said to leave him alone because he’s clearly a stupid CoD kiddy if it weren’t for the bio that says he might be old enough to be my father.
Minoan Ferret on 3 September 2012, 02:02 said:
I thought of roosters. I need to get out more.
What are Chick Tracts? The whole posting them to your door thing and earlier mention of the Catholic Church makes me think of religious literature. Sorry if I’m wrong and that came across as being offensive.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 02:56 said:
Chick tracts are small comic-style evangelist booklets made by an elderly raving lunatic fundamentalist called Jack Chick. Picture high-school grade political stories where people who disagree with you say stupid things so that your self-insert can destroy them with his devasasting insights and then make it about religion instead.
Taku on 3 September 2012, 05:12 said:
I did too!
Actually, second thought was that old joke about a drunk being given a wish by a genie in a bottle, and got a 12-inch pianist playing at a tiny piano. “I shaid I wanted a 12-inch peenish!”
Forget the Chick Tracts, I think we need to send him Science.
All of it.
Explosively.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 05:27 said:
Oh, the version of that joke that’s actually funny is the tiny piano player is playing at the bar. Customer comes in, orders a drink, says he’s heard the barman has a magic lamp that will grant the wish of anyone who has a drink there. Barman’s hesitant but the customer insists, asks the genie for a million bucks. He gets a million ducks, and the barman nods sadly and asks if the guy really thinks he wanted a 12-inch pianist.
Taku on 3 September 2012, 08:26 said:
That’s the one, yes.
swenson on 3 September 2012, 09:04 said:
Re: Chick Tracts: Jack Chick is so nuts, even some Christian fundamentalists won’t even touch him. And I’m talking the really crazy fundamentalists, not just fundamentalists in the sense of taking the Bible literally. He’s probably most famous for his Chick tract in which he “revealed” the sordid “truth” about Dungeons and Dragons (it’s a cult! It involves real magic! It leads to suicide for poorly explained reasons!), but there’s very few topics that have escaped his pen, from Halloween (it’s Satan’s birthday!) to Catholicism (they’re evil and consort with demons!).
Anyway, I would consider Chick tracts a worthy punishment for THAT horrible piece of writing.
Pryotra on 3 September 2012, 10:07 said:
It’s also played exclusively by women. I know some people into D&D who like to pass that thing around as a kind of inside joke. Most of them wonder why there aren’t any more girls who come to their sessions.
Oh, and apparently, Catholics have a computer where we have the name of every single Protestant in it and when we take over the world with the aid of gay people, New Age priests, atheists and those dastardly anthropology teachers, we’re going to kill of them. Oh, and we are already secretly running the world and have crazy sex parties every Sunday.
Another famous Tract he did was where a dude molested a seven year old girl, but he said he was sorry for it and he immediately went to heaven. Yes, it’s there. I think it’s called ‘Lara’, but it’s hard to find it nowadays.
Yeah…
There’s really just no excuse.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 11:00 said:
Yeah, as I recall doesn’t the GM basically kill the one girl’s character without giving her a reaction test or any kind of save?
Chick is basically proud of one of the biggest issues re: salvation by faith versus salvation by works. He likes to think a nice person would go to hell if they never accepted Christ and the biggest bastard in the world would go to heaven if he confessed and accepted one second before he died.
I’m fairly sure God’s just going to tell people like Jack that they’re in Heaven and then stuff them in a divine broom closet so they don’t fuck up the real heaven for all the actual good people.
Nate Winchester on 3 September 2012, 11:45 said:
I think he still is. His body has just continued to age. (seriously though, I almost feel sorry for him, it reminds me of my favorite quote from Dollhouse: “And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.”)
Didn’t you read the comic? They all committed suicide! (which is a shame, I’d like a cute geeky girl to roll dice with)
Well… damn, i do need to become a catholic.
Oh no, He’ll let Jack wander around heaven, because the revelation that he was wrong all along will be the worse hell for Jack.
swenson on 3 September 2012, 11:51 said:
It’s completely ridiculous. There’s no concept of dice or anything even remotely approaching real DnD rules. The one player commits suicide because their character gets killed… and they’re thrown out of their gaming group as a result. Apparently there is no such thing as “rolling up a new character” in the Chickverse.
Pryotra on 3 September 2012, 11:52 said:
Yeah, I think so. And then she’s out of the group and can’t make up another character for some reason.
I’d love to see that.
If you join today I can set up with some evil cultist robes at a low price.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 12:23 said:
“SORRY JACK, TURNS OUT I MISSED ONE OF THE EIGHT DEADLY SINS. THE OTHER ONE IS SMUGNESS.”
“Oh balls.”
“YEP, OFF TO THE PIT WITH YOU.”
Nate Winchester on 3 September 2012, 14:30 said:
Uh… I’m 99% sure “smugness” falls under “Pride”. (king of the 7)
Yep.
Tim on 3 September 2012, 14:57 said:
He’s got wrath down pretty solid, too. Maybe 8 is “being Jack Chick” just to rub it in.
Fireshark on 3 September 2012, 23:06 said:
Chick would be rather run-of-the-mill as Protestant fundamentalists go, except that he attributes everything he doesn’t like to malice. For example, it’s well-known that Protestants and Catholics disagree on the significance of Communion/Eucharist. In normal person land, this is just a reflection of the fact that there are always multiple ways to interpret something. But in Chick land, this is proof that Satan and an early pope made up Eucharist to screw with people, get them to worship a false “cookie god,” and eventually make them burn in hell. For the lulz.
Fireshark on 4 September 2012, 00:12 said:
From the excerpt Tim so kindly linked us to:
This reminds me of Chris-chan’s writing.
Tim on 4 September 2012, 03:20 said:
wait a minute
Yeah, that works a lot better. The problem is we’re supposed to be rolling these up and smoking them.
Fell Blade on 4 September 2012, 12:33 said:
I found this quote SNel’s review of his “book” “Tomorrow’s World #1”…
…………….
……………………………………………………
What the heck did I just read? Did someone drop this guy on his head as a baby and he never recovered? Was he sexually repressed during his adolescence? I could see a teenage boy coming up with something like this, but…really?! Oh, where is the brain bleach?!
Fell Blade on 4 September 2012, 12:41 said:
Ok, this from SNel’s response to a review on B&N… just… priceless!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that!!!
Licht on 4 September 2012, 14:21 said:
In the same response he also said: “Plus the Cowardly person who wrote it can’t speak English and they have the gall to post a reference to their supposed review at my youtube video slideshow…”
That guy is a troll, right? Right? Yes? … Please?
Fair and Finn, why the first paragraph? Did you already have the pleasure of talking to him?
Tim on 4 September 2012, 14:49 said:
Fair and Finn, I think, is the person he’s actually talking about there who posted those reviews.
Finn on 4 September 2012, 17:23 said:
Tim is correct. Fair posted the reviews over the summer. He also posted a bunch of angry posts on FB about how she was “stocking” him and about how his books must be “really swell!” to be criticized. he also called the reviews “supposed reviews!” and “Attack Peices!” Unfortunately, I believe they have been deleted…
Forest Purple on 4 September 2012, 19:53 said:
Because it’s so romantic to lose the number at the end of your partner’s name and just use their sex.
…
Why do I get a feeling I’ll be needing gallons of brain bleach by the end of this?
Good luck, anyway.
Tim on 4 September 2012, 20:42 said:
Given some of the names in his other stories, I think it’s more that he’s awful at thinking of character names. Though the fact that he promotes as a utopia what most people would consider a waking hell is kind of frightening
Especially since it seems the dreaded SPH has spread beyond furries in his future.
Fireshark on 4 September 2012, 21:04 said:
THIS. He can’t see the difference between love and sex, he seems to view all human beings as interchangeable (to the point that he even calls us “humans” in a story without any aliens or other creatures), he believes that all humans, without exception, desire 15” penises or DDD breasts, and he seems to support eugenics. What the hell kind of future is this?
Fair on 4 September 2012, 21:07 said:
Brave New World, anyone?
Fireshark on 4 September 2012, 21:13 said:
And to make matters worse, now he’s got ME doing it! :(
Feels bad, man.
Tim on 4 September 2012, 21:31 said:
Plus he seems to have that Nice Guy attitude that a woman will provide sex if you perform the correct series of actions to earn it. You could literally replace all the women (sorry, “females”) in his stories with robots and nothing would change. If Male Action = “anything” then set legs = “open” should do for programming.
I seriously thing this guy is somewhere on the autism spectrum, he seems to have absolutely no idea that other people are people and treats any disagreement with him as LIES and SLANDER because he can’t internalise the idea that opinions other than his can even exist.
Not that this is an excuse, since autism doesn’t automatically make you a complete assbasket, but I can’t see any way a neurotypical man in his fifties would have the attitudes Steve does.
Fireshark on 4 September 2012, 23:26 said:
I think you’ve got the autism spectrum wrong. While autistic people may have lots of trouble identifying others’ emotions, that doesn’t generally lead to the idea that others don’t HAVE complex emotions.
Most likely, autistic or not, he was just raised in an environment that enabled his attitudes and didn’t demand that he try to understand or respect others.
Fair on 5 September 2012, 01:11 said:
I think that would put us on a one-way trip to brain dumbage.
Tim on 5 September 2012, 02:41 said:
What it can do is result in a state where you’re aware other people exist but really have no idea what’s going on in their heads (lack of empathy). And as you’ll see in his stories, he totally lacks empathy with his characters, who tend to just be one-note robots or his Gary Stu. He’s also got the “unusual eating” down pretty well since the only things his characters seem to eat are protein shakes or bars and vitamin pills, he’s got the weird speech patterns and odd repetitions (in particular a recurring tendency to effectively step back from his story and say how wonderful something is) and a tendency to obsessively describe some things (often completely trivial) while totally skipping much more important things. In general he completely lacks descriptive ability and his stories are just sequences of flatly described actions, the kind of thing a kid would write when describing their weekend (“I did X, then I did Y…”). Also, this:
And this:
Now, combine autism with being a dick and you arrive at a state of affairs where you believe anyone who doesn’t agree with you actually does agree with you and is lying for some inexplicable (but obviously dishonest) reason. This is why people like him, Chris-Chan, Mike Sparks and the like will tend to respond to criticism by becoming extremely hostile. They literally refuse to understand that you can do that.
Tim on 5 September 2012, 07:29 said:
Also apparently he’s found an alternate source of income which is, um, spamming Twitter for weight loss sites.
Taku on 5 September 2012, 07:30 said:
I think the biggest problem is that he is a dick, not that he might exhibit some of the more prominent symptoms of autism spectrum. Most of those listed are also prominent symptoms of various other cognitive disorders as well. For example:
One of the most well-known symptoms of sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, schizotypal disorder…
Paranoid schizophrenia, reputation-defending (narcissistic-type) schizoid disorder, among others.
acquired cognitive trauma, e.g. short term memory loss or brain damage, schizotypal disorder, etc.
…
I think we would be best served by not trying to answer questions that we do not have the data, experience, or medical training to answer.
Tim on 5 September 2012, 07:56 said:
Yeah, but most of those wouldn’t cause you to exhibit all of them together; splitting up a series of observations and rebutting each one piecemeal doesn’t really work when the point of the examples is to display that there’s a pattern.
I’m not saying he’s a dick because he’s autistic, I’m saying he’s a dick who’s probably also autistic. I have ADHD and I’m also a dick, I don’t assume everyone who has ADHD is going to automatically be a dick because I am.
Being a moderator for a couple of large websites I’ve seen more than a few people who act exactly the same way Steve does, some of whom were specifically called out as ASD and admitted such (and some who realised they needed help and got it, which was nice). The only tell he hasn’t given me yet is becoming ridiculously pissed off at an attempt to clarify something because THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID and that I think is only because he hasn’t actually bothered conversing with the OP.
I do have experience, thank you. And I rather resent the idea that just because you don’t want to make a reasonable educated guess I shouldn’t either. Also, if we’re admitting he almost certainly has some cognitive disorder, is it really worth arguing over which one? The main point is that at least part of the issue with his writing is that he’s not all right in the head.
I know that everyone on the internet who does anything of note usually leaves enough evidence to be twisted into proof that they have NPD, ASD or (usually) both, but reading this guy’s stories you literally get every ASD symptom laid out in front of you. I could throw a big list of examples at you, but the point is I’ve seen enough that I’m convinced.
swenson on 5 September 2012, 09:50 said:
Quite frankly, does it matter? This guy having or not having autism or some other disorder has (or should have) nothing to do with our criticism of his work.
Well, I suppose if we were doing biographical criticism here, but sporkings typically don’t get personal. Bad writing stands on its own as being awful; no need to dig into the author’s personal life unless they start forcing it down your throat.
I mean, if the guy was going around saying “I HAVE AUTISM SO EVERYTHING I DO SHOULD BE FORGIVEN”, I’d be all for discussing the topic. But as it stands, we’re working with limited evidence here. Coming to a personal conviction is one thing, but alternate points of view are available, again considering that we’re working off a handful of posts on the Internet and a couple pieces of terrible writing. I don’t think a “right” or “wrong” answer can be determined from that alone, so defending a point of view to the death is kind of silly.
Unless someone here is a psychologist or psychiatrist IRL, in which case, yeah, actually, I’d say they’re qualified to make some diagnoses, even based on limited evidence! :)
Tim on 5 September 2012, 10:47 said:
Well sure, but telling someone they shouldn’t have a pet theory because they’re not qualified is equally silly. Anyway, I’m working on The Problem Eliminators Exclamation Mark. This is going to require the use of a pair of secret weapons which sporkers have never been informed of because they’d never use any other emoticons ever again.
Minoan Ferret on 5 September 2012, 14:58 said:
“Every Amer-I-Cannabis kid should smoke this story!”
Sure, from personal experience I’d wager that the guy seems to be somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum. He hasn’t played the AS card, he doesn’t harp on about it if he is on the spectrum (like Chris-chan), so let’s focus on his writing instead. I’d hate to see this get argumentative.
Kyllorac on 5 September 2012, 15:19 said:
There is a reason why the rule “Attack the writing; not the writer” exists. And why it’s worth following.
Prince O' Tea on 6 September 2012, 21:48 said:
Unless we’re talking about Gloria Tesch or Robert Stanek. That’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Kyllorac on 6 September 2012, 22:32 said:
Especially in those cases, it’s best not to make things personal.
Prince O'Tea on 7 September 2012, 07:10 said:
For me, I think it’s only fair to criticize their behavior if they put it into the public and it relates to their work, which is the cases with the Tesches and Stanek. Gloria for example has her sockpuppetry to promote herself and insult her critics, has sent death threats, steals people’s artwork and sells it as “Official Maradonia Art” and then abuses copyright laws to silence her critics. Since all of this behavior relates to her writing, I don’t see the problem in calling her out on it.
Same with Chris-Chan. Whatever he puts out on his Twitter/Youtube/websites = fair game. Hacking his facebook/emails and harassing anyone who assosiates with him in real life = pretty disgusting.
swenson on 7 September 2012, 09:14 said:
That’s an excellent point. No matter how much grief a person brings upon themselves, their family and associates should be left out of it (unless they too start having foolish public behavior).
Pryotra on 7 September 2012, 10:05 said:
Yeah, that’s pretty much my philosophy for criticizing people. You don’t attack anything that they do in real life, but if they put something related to their work online and act like a jerk, than it’s pretty much fair game.
After all, they put it up there for the world to see.
With Glo and Stanek, while we mercilessly bash their writing, websites, bad behavior on the net and other things, it’s something different to make personal attacks against them. For instance, Laurell K Hamilton has written some pretty stupid things in her blog (including the infamous Dear Negative Reader that I took the title of my review series from). People use this blog as fodder for a lot of jokes, but attacking her weight, her religion, her appearance or saying anything about her divorce other than that her writing spiraled into Sexy Times when she divorced her husband is just wrong.
Fell Blade on 7 September 2012, 11:17 said:
Some times it’s hard not to speculate about an author though, because a lot can be learned about someone through their writing. It’s almost reflexive to read something like Fifty Shades of Grey or Tomorrow’s World and wonder “Wow, is that really how the author sees reality? Why is that?” But I agree that personal attacks and unfounded accusations are inappropriate.
Prince O' Tea on 8 September 2012, 17:03 said:
Especially when the writer in question already has plenty for people to work with. If the author is already using sockpuppets to sing their own praises and attack anyone who disagrees with them, posts mindboggilingly ignorant and offensive statements on a regular basis and generally behaves badly, then that’s already plenty for you to criticise. Don’t get greedy.
Fair on 8 September 2012, 22:33 said:
Um, unrelated question: How long does it take for articles to be posted after listed as “pending”? Finn and I finished Ch 1 three days ago. We submitted on the 5th, but because we thought we had done something wrong submitted again today. Any suggestions?
Kyllorac on 9 September 2012, 01:04 said:
I’m not seeing the one submitted on the 5th, so I’m guessing it never went through. I do see the resubmitted version, though.
In general, it’s made live as soon as an editor sees and checks it, unless another article was posted within 24 hours earlier (we like to have at least a day in between new articles).
I’ve set it so that Chapter 1 will be posted tomorrow, a full day after Kitty’s was posted, so 5 AM EST.
Fair on 9 September 2012, 02:02 said:
Okay, thanks! :)
Potatoman on 23 September 2013, 05:16 said:
I didn’t kids got classified like that. I’ve never met a 99 year old kid.
Potatoman on 23 September 2013, 05:40 said:
*know.