Comments that leave you shaking your head

[Publius68]

So this one just came in on one of my oldest works, the second of a two-parter I wrote and posted before I knew what Loving Wives really was around here. I got an education in the comments, though. I got the comments that thought it was autobiographical. I got the comments that called everybody whores. I got comments that were positive. I got comments that there was no real sex. And I got comments about how this could never work and everybody’s doomed. Then I got this one, the first in years:

Holy Toledo people are taking this very, very seriously with stats, correct terms, how realistic it was...
I'm fairly certain these stories were written as tongue-in-cheek eroticism.
Personally, I'm more concerned with how you could start calling her Sara, switch to Sarah a sentence later, back to Sara, then Sarah, ending back with Sara again.
Seriously BAD editing which BARELY earned you a 3 for part 2 because of all your mistakes. Just lazy editing but combined with fantastic, truly talented writing.
I just don't get it!

There is more complimentary stuff in this than I’d expect, yet he mostly claims to have hated it because I could not decide if Sara was spelled with an H or not. Maybe Sarah doesn't really care, dammit!
Those of you who have read much of my stuff know I was lucky not to have called her Yolanda for Act 2...

Also, I literally never had someone tell me they gave my three stars before, on any story...

 

[Erozetta]

I literally never mentioned what she does at her job, but given she's accumulated six months of sick and vacation time, I think it's safe to say she's not "simply an office girl.". And yeah, shocking, but sometimes friendships can last 15 years. Even problematic friendships.





The story is literally about a woman who's at the end of her rope because of how much she does for her husband day in and day out. How selfish of her to want to stop catering to an unappreciative husband, I guess?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The story is literally about a woman who's at the end of her rope because of how much she does for her husband day in and day out. How selfish of her to want to stop catering to an unappreciative husband, I guess?

Just going by the all-caps and thoroughly butchered spelling, this one must have used AI to generate his comment. : P

 

[Statius]

View attachment 2595201
I literally never mentioned what she does at her job, but given she's accumulated six months of sick and vacation time, I think it's safe to say she's not "simply an office girl.". And yeah, shocking, but sometimes friendships can last 15 years. Even problematic friendships.


View attachment 2595202


The story is literally about a woman who's at the end of her rope because of how much she does for her husband day in and day out. How selfish of her to want to stop catering to an unappreciative husband, I guess?

The thing is, I've known women who have put up with this same type of behavior from a spouse; we all either know someone or at least have heard stories, if not lived it. They act like you're coming out of left field with all this. My favorite part of this comment is the 'why would she put up this this?' it seems pretty clear it's what the commenter would expect, though. That's an eye roll comment for sure.

 

[Erozetta]

Just going by the all-caps and thoroughly butchered spelling, this one must have used AI to generate his comment. : P

It amused me greatly. There's about zero chance they actually read the story. If they read it and still came away with that opinion, there's zero chance they're any different from the husband in that story, lol.

 

[Erozetta]

The thing is, I've known women who have put up with this same type of behavior from a spouse; we all either know someone or at least have heard stories, if not lived it. They act like you're coming out of left field with all this. My favorite part of this comment is the 'why would she put up this this?' it seems pretty clear it's what the commenter would expect, though. That's an eye roll comment for sure.

Right? "This thing that could and likely does happen from time to time is completely nonsensical!"

I mean... Most of my stories have elements of truth woven into them. Actual experiences I've had mixed with fantasy or exaggeration. I've known people in this situation. I've *been* in this situation to a lesser degree.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Right? "This thing that could and likely does happen from time to time is completely nonsensical!"

I mean... Most of my stories have elements of truth woven into them. Actual experiences I've had mixed with fantasy or exaggeration. I've known people in this situation. I've *been* in this situation to a lesser degree.

It's always a balancing act to keep a story believable yet still exciting enough to hold interest.

For instance, every day you go to the cafe for a coffee and a sandwich. Not every day does the cafe get held up at gun point while you are eating your sandwich. In fact, you could live your whole life having your daily coffee and sandwich without incident. But if it did happen to you once (and it does happen in the world on a daily basis somewhere), that would be the one day that you would write about getting a coffee and a sandwich. There is no point in writing about any of the other normal days. It's not a story worth telling. "Oh, the mayo was little bit off today," isn't exciting enough to tell.

So, yes there are many people who live this sort of unappreciated existence in their marriages, and there is more emotional turmoil to make an interesting read than in a perfectly well adjusted relationship. We're telling a story about a relationship, we're going to pick a relationship that is worth telling. In fact, the perfectly well adjusted relationship is the fantasy that is harder to believe. But of course, the majority of readers come here for fantasy, not story, and they can sometimes get extremely bent out of shape about their fantasy, as if their fantasy is how the world should be, and the stories should reflect the fantasy rather than the reality. If you feed them their fantasy, you get a 5, but if you don't, you get righteous judgmental feedback like this. There's nothing that the writer can do about it.

I read a story yesterday about a young hot redhead virgin bride who hastily married a trucker who spent more time on the road than at home. She fools around with the hunk gardener with the 8-ich meat missile (despite the fact that she's 'innocent' and knows that she shouldn't). The entire story from her upbringing backstory, to the marriage proposal, to moving away from home, to the wedding night, to the gardener ... is 6k words! It's all exposition. The characters are cardboard cutouts, mere excuses for kinks, the dialogue is trite stock footage, and the sentence structure is endlessly repetitive and annoying. It reads like plot notes in full sentences. I don't think that there is a single paragraph with more than two sentences in it. It is very poorly written. Ouch!

It has 6 comments (it's pretty new). FIVE of them, say awesome 5-stars, or some variant of that, another hot story, keep it up, wow my fantasy of seducing the hot young wife next door to a T. Only one comment rolled eyes at the story.

You don't have to write well to impress around here. You just have to match the fantasy. All that you have to do is get the readers to agree with you. If someone doesn't agree, this happens. Whatever.

 

[Erozetta]

It's always a balancing act to keep a story believable yet still exciting enough to hold interest.

For instance, every day you go to the cafe for a coffee and a sandwich. Not every day does the cafe get held up at gun point while you are eating your sandwich. In fact, you could live your whole life having your daily coffee and sandwich without incident. But if it did happen to you once (and it does happen in the world on a daily basis somewhere), that would be the one day that you would write about getting a coffee and a sandwich. There is no point in writing about any of the other normal days. It's not a story worth telling. "Oh, the mayo was little bit off today," isn't exciting enough to tell.

So, yes there are many people who live this sort of unappreciated existence in their marriages, and there is more emotional turmoil to make an interesting read than in a perfectly well adjusted relationship. We're telling a story about a relationship, we're going to pick a relationship that is worth telling. In fact, the perfectly well adjusted relationship is the fantasy that is harder to believe. But of course, the majority of readers come here for fantasy, not story, and they can sometimes get extremely bent out of shape about their fantasy, as if their fantasy is how the world should be, and the stories should reflect the fantasy rather than the reality. If you feed them their fantasy, you get a 5, but if you don't, you get righteous judgmental feedback like this. There's nothing that the writer can do about it.

I read a story yesterday about a young hot redhead virgin bride who hastily married a trucker who spent more time on the road than at home. She fools around with the hunk gardener with the 8-ich meat missile (despite the fact that she's 'innocent' and knows that she shouldn't). The entire story from her upbringing backstory, to the marriage proposal, to moving away from home, to the wedding night, to the gardener ... is 6k words! It's all exposition. The characters are cardboard cutouts, mere excuses for kinks, the dialogue is trite stock footage, and the sentence structure is endlessly repetitive and annoying. It reads like plot notes in full sentences. I don't think that there is a single paragraph with more than two sentences in it. It is very poorly written. Ouch!

It has 6 comments (it's pretty new). FIVE of them, say awesome 5-stars, or some variant of that, another hot story, keep it up, wow my fantasy of seducing the hot young wife next door to a T. Only one comment rolled eyes at the story.

You don't have to write well to impress around here. You just have to match the fantasy. All that you have to do is get the readers to agree with you. If someone doesn't agree, this happens. Whatever.

I think I get my kicks from writing what I want and seeing what happens among the readers. Pretty much because what I write tends to lean dark. Like, to a point I have gotten feedback that is essentially "I hate dark stories but feel compelled to read yours and I'm so uncomfortable with that."

It definitely helps to not have a set of standards on an acceptable score with the things I write, otherwise I'd probably sink into a horrific depression, lol. But, like, I write to write. I write to clear my head of bad experiences in particular, but mostly just to write.

I think I confuse the readers who follow me. "I followed you because of this one specific fluffy story you wrote and I loved it. I hate your other stuff, but my god, I couldn't stop reading it." For me, personally, that's a fucking win and I'll take just one of those over a high score any day.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

Not on my own story, but I once saw a comment that said something along the lines of "the problem with all brother sister stories is that the brother is always just a pathetic loser who can't manage to get any girl aside from his own sister". As I recall, it was on a story where that was definitely not the case, and that's definitely not true of a LOT of such stories.

On the other hand, I do have a WIP in the depths of my abandoned strata where the premise actually is that the guy is shy and pathetic around girls other than sis, has an unwanted wet dream about her, and suddenly gets weird around her too... I haven't touched that WIP since reading that comment (I already wasn't sure I actually liked the characters, which is a different issue), but honestly, thinking more about it, why the fuck should that necessarily be a bad thing? Shy, unconfident dudes deserve to fuck their sisters too, goddammit! (ETA: In T/I fiction, anyway.)

 

[old_prof]

I got this on the first part of my new sci-fi novel the Cliff. As some background, Earth experienced government collapses followed by major wars when some parts of the world became uninhabitable, leaning to overwhelming immigration. The story takes place on a remote planet trying to be settled, all by people from what was France. The FMC has carried her bigotry against the North Africans who came in overwhelming numbers to France (and elsewhere in Europe). It becomes a major initial plot point.

Anonymous 29 minutes ago
Other than putting the blame were it belongs and instead spouting climate nonsense as being responsible for a certain sect's warlike ways.
An interesting story.

So our favorite commenter managed to be a climate denier and an Islamaphobe all in one sentence.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

I got this on the first part of my new sci-fi novel the Cliff. As some background, Earth experienced government collapses followed by major wars when some parts of the world became uninhabitable, leaning to overwhelming immigration. The story takes place on a remote planet trying to be settled, all by people from what was France. The FMC has carried her bigotry against the North Africans who came in overwhelming numbers to France (and elsewhere in Europe). It becomes a major initial plot point.



So our favorite commenter managed to be a climate denier and an Islamaphobe all in one sentence.

There are a fair few white supremacists on this site. It makes me wonder what happens when comments are reviewed and approved. Like, I'm curious to see the comments that were rejected by the moderators.

 

[Erozetta]

The back to back diversity of anonymous:

Also, it's funny, but I literally lay out the reason she chooses to cheat. She's tried to leave her husband before and he guilted her into staying. She cheated specifically with the hope that he wouldn't want her anymore because of it and he would let her leave, finally.

 

[old_prof]

There are a fair few white supremacists on this site. It makes me wonder what happens when comments are reviewed and approved. Like, I'm curious to see the comments that were rejected by the moderators.

I think they only filter for spam, like advertising sites or selling viagra and standard spam shit like that. My understanding is they put it in when that sort of thing started happening years ago.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think they only filter for spam, like advertising sites or selling viagra and standard spam shit like that. My understanding is they put it in when that sort of thing started happening years ago.

I agree because if you look at some of the unhinged comments in LW stories its obvious they don't really care what gets through.

 

[anthrodisiac]

So our favorite commenter managed to be a climate denier and an Islamaphobe all in one sentence.

Legitimately impressed they managed to cram both into such a small comment, and then also compliment the story. These are the type of people I'd love to put through a battery of psychological tests.

 

[darkquasar]

I always shake my head at the "not realistic" or unbelievable comments on T/I stories.
Like my buddy, my pal, my dude, its a story about a guy banging his mom/sister/aunt/etc, no shit its not realistic.
If you wanted realistic in that category, for every 1 story of two relatives knowingly sleeping with each other, you'd get 99 stories of people who were adopted unknowingly banging a sibling or other relative and either never knowing about it or finding out when doing a dna test for fun.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There are a fair few white supremacists on this site. It makes me wonder what happens when comments are reviewed and approved. Like, I'm curious to see the comments that were rejected by the moderators.

Comments are reviewed for spam, not content. Anecdotally, the site used to run a hate speak scan through comments from time to time (as evidenced by people saying comments were there under a story, they didn't remove them, but later they were gone). I've not heard that for a while, though.

Authors have free rein to delete any comments they choose, and comments can be reported - the site will do something more active in that case.

 

[StrentWriter]

Just finished reading Married with Children what a beautifully layered intimate slice of life I loved how you capture the quiet complexities of marriage blending tender moments of family and passion with the underlying tensions of duty and distance. Peta's reflections and the subtle foreshadowing of Sam's deployment add such emotional depth making it feel achingly real and relatable. Your prose is elegant and evocative truly masterful storytelling to complement its warmth and depth your story deserves a custom cover art piece. As a professional artist specializing in paid commissions I could create something classy and seductive hinting at the domestic intimacy family bonds or the looming uncertainty. Check my portfolio here:

Redacted the profile and website.

When you go and check the profile, it’s literally touting for business and has said similar things elsewhere. Probably hasn’t read the story at all.

And that’s what made me roll my eyes. So aggravating!

 

[StillStunned]

Redacted the profile and website.

When you go and check the profile, it’s literally touting for business and has said similar things elsewhere. Probably hasn’t read the story at all.

And that’s what made me roll my eyes. So aggravating!

Without the username I can't say for sure, but someone has posted something very similar in Story Feedback. They've also been spamming the Editor's Forum offering paid editing services, even after @_Lynn_ warned them off. The poor punctuation isn't a very good advertisement for their quality, though.

 

[RocketGrunt]

So I got one of Stacnash's unhinged 855 word review tirades on one of my works. A lot is intended to be insulting to me and my readers, so naturally it is. But here is my favorite part:

On the technical side, your writing doesn’t stand up to any form of scrutiny. When you double up on usage of had like this “…maybe the truck driver had had to pay out?” it showcases a real lack of imagination and affords your prose a workmanlike quality that does you no favours.

On the technical side, that's the past perfect tense. It's not doubled usage. It's just... the past perfect tense. When an action started and finished in the past, that's the English construction. The first had is the tense identifier and the second had is the verb, they are different words that are spelled the same.

It was just... really weird for someone to appoint themselves the arbiter of what is good or bad in all of English writing and to just obviously not know the twelve tenses of English verbs. Just.... why?

 

[TheExperimentalist]

So I got one of Stacnash's unhinged 855 word review tirades on one of my works. A lot is intended to be insulting to me and my readers, so naturally it is. But here is my favorite part:



On the technical side, that's the past perfect tense. It's not doubled usage. It's just... the past perfect tense. When an action started and finished in the past, that's the English construction. The first had is the tense identifier and the second had is the verb, they are different words that are spelled the same.

It was just... really weird for someone to appoint themselves the arbiter of what is good or bad in all of English writing and to just obviously not know the twelve tenses of English verbs. Just.... why?

Sounds like a... tense situation. (I'm sorry. I'll see myself out.)

 

[TheLobster]

So I got one of Stacnash's unhinged 855 word review tirades on one of my works. A lot is intended to be insulting to me and my readers, so naturally it is. But here is my favorite part:



On the technical side, that's the past perfect tense. It's not doubled usage. It's just... the past perfect tense. When an action started and finished in the past, that's the English construction. The first had is the tense identifier and the second had is the verb, they are different words that are spelled the same.

It was just... really weird for someone to appoint themselves the arbiter of what is good or bad in all of English writing and to just obviously not know the twelve tenses of English verbs. Just.... why?

If these are the character’s internal musings, which the maybe-ing suggests, then I agree with Stacnash (le gasp!) that transcribing them with perfect grammar is awkward and robs your prose of that little bit of extra character.

Of course, she could have worded her comment like this, or similar, rather than insulting your imagination and calling your prose pedestrian, but Stacnash gonna Stacnash

 

[StillStunned]

If these are the character’s internal musings, which the maybe-ing suggests, then I agree with Stacnash (le gasp!) that transcribing them with perfect grammar is awkward and robs your prose of that little bit of extra character.

Of course, she could have worded her comment like this, or similar, rather than insulting your imagination and calling your prose pedestrian, but Stacnash gonna Stacnash

I agree. Grammatically correct doesn't mean elegant. I might have said something like "had been forced to pay out", or "had needed to pay out" or something, just to avoid "had had".

 

[RocketGrunt]

If these are the character’s internal musings, which the maybe-ing suggests, then I agree with Stacnash (le gasp!) that transcribing them with perfect grammar is awkward and robs your prose of that little bit of extra character.

Of course, she could have worded her comment like this, or similar, rather than insulting your imagination and calling your prose pedestrian, but Stacnash gonna Stacnash

The character in question is attempting to figure out why she was in an opulent room far beyond her means. Since she remembered being struck by a truck, her hypothetical involved a monetary settlement from the driver. Since the evidence of funds was already present, the hypothetical settlement would have had to have already completed. (That sentence uses THREE distinct "haves")

Are there other ways to get that point across? Obviously. English prose can be done in virtually limitless ways, and the concept could even be conveyed through poetic metaphor rather than literal text. But like, there's no doubled word there. That's just what the past perfect tense looks like.

It's really weird to me that Stacnash has appointed themselves a story grader, giving long diatribes and creating graded lists to try to shame authors when they obviously can't diagram an English sentence at an 8th grade level. I feel like a fuckup of that level should involve a Japanese style public apology with a press conference and an extended formal bow.

 

[onehitwanda]

Redacted the profile and website.

When you go and check the profile, it’s literally touting for business and has said similar things elsewhere. Probably hasn’t read the story at all.

And that’s what made me roll my eyes. So aggravating!

Was it a website with a lot of "furry" stuff, from a user who registered in February this year?

If so they've been DM'ing as well.