Ancient's Smashing Reviews

Why I Smash

Recent events have left my remembering the very reason I started this review book and so I wanna share it while its fresh on my mind.

A story of why I choose to give my criticism's via a review book designed around neutral, blunt, and fairness for what works and doesn't work within the scope of my opinion.

Originally I didn't plan to have a review book. I have written nearly a dozen stories spamming millions of words over multiple decades of my life, and wanted to give something back more directly. So I found a Read-4-Read here on Wattpad in February a year ago. 

The author I got paired with did not read my story, breaking the rules, but I pressed on anyway. I could have stopped, wanted to stop, for the single reason that it was by far the worst story I have ever read, and to this day I have still not found a story as bad. Not in terms of grammar, but in the story itself. It was truly painful to get through the first chapter alone, so you can imagine how much percerverance it took to get through all eleven that were currently written. Along the way I made comments, as I came to understand this to be the best way to help. Compared to what you might see here in this review book, I was VERY VERY VERY gentle. Mostly my emotion was expressed via a lot of "??????????" and me going "what? this makes no sense. [lays out the events that just transpired and why it makes no sense]". and I also pointed out comma spots and a few punctuation issues. And then when I was done I spent pages and pages of text explaining in the forum thread of Wattpad why the author's character was a problematic mary sue that needed to be corrected. I explained to the author how a few small changes, that wouldn't rework any chapters at all but remove or add single sentences here and there, would correct it and make the character less toxic and hard to bear with. The author has autism, like me, and has a medical problem so she can't use her legs easily so, out of sympathy, I made sure to be so gentle I felt I was petting a broken bird. Other people on the same thread joined in on the conversation, agreed with my points, and tried to help her understand. When she didn't understand, despite hours and hours every day for a week trying to explain things on such a basic level I felt I was explaining things to an infant, I then took it up to DM and tried to help her understand there.

So, yes. I put a lot of effort into helping the author understand a few basic things. If you have seen my smashing reviews here, you know I can be blunt, and I promise you I approached her with all the tenderness of a feather. I held back easily 99% of my bluntness and spent hours trying to make sure I phrased myself both gently and easily understandable.

In response, she made excuses that her medical leg issues and autism apparently make her stupid. (which is an insult to me, but I ignored that.) And so she cannot improve and not only doesnt understand, but doesn't WANT to understand.I find it complete bullshit. Having leg issues doesn't mean brain issues, nor does autism mean stupid.

Yet, fair enough. Thats fine. Some people just want to write for fun and I respect that. So I left the conversation. She did not leave it, however, as apparently I have become a permanent fixture in her life.

It was at this point I landed on the book club by a guy called princess. Met some really cool people, and we took off to Discord because we liked who we were so much. Since then we have only continued to grow, some of us have started publishing as of this week (YEAAAAAAH!!!!) and we encourage and love each other. I wanted to contribute, but I didn't want to put myself through the many many many MANY MANY hours I spent with 'Author' trying to help her via comments and forum threads, and allow myself to be blunt and actually say what I want, so I started this review book. I did it with Nigel as the theme because even as blunt as I wanted to be, I still wanted to cushion it with a hint of humor.

If only it stopped there.

For the next 6-8 months, since I left 'Author' behind, a number of events happened that I will briefly gloss over. 1) A number of her extremely vocal and zealous fans harassed me via DM, via the comments I made in her story, via the forum threads, via comments in my own story, and in the conversation tab on Wattpad. I don't know if she sent them or not. Wouldn't surprise me if she did, wouldn't surprise me if she didn't. I ignored them, closed the conversations off from the start, and moved on. I bring it up simply because, well, it did happen, a lot. 2) There was not a single post she made, among which were hundreds across dozens and dozens of threads, where she did not mention me as being a cruel person who gave her PTSD. Not. One. I know this because after a couple months, some random people came to me having heard of me from her and were like "dude wtf is going on? she wont stop talking about you." and I looked her up, checked her post history, and my god it was incredible how much crying a person can do, how much nonsense, lies, and empty words a person can use, how many excuses a person can do, and how long someone can hold onto a grudge. Like seriously, If I actually gave her PTSD by touching her with a feather-like gentle touch, then she needs professional help for far more things in her life than me going "yeah, this sequence of events doesn't make sense." 3) she mentioned me in her story and announcements as having been cruel to her as to bring her beyond the point of tears.