Phoenix Creation Journal #4

If you read my last Story Spotlight post, then you know that sometimes when I'm at my computer, I'm not working on my own book (like I probably should be), but I am instead checking out Fictionpress and more recently Wattpad in search of something interesting and well written, doling out constructive criticism as I go and secretly hoping to cause one of the people I critique to go read something I've written and in turn comment on that. (Preferably something I've written this year.)

So I admit I have something of an ulterior motive, but hey so does everyone. Your parents probably had any number of secret reasons for you being born. Maybe they needed another tax write off. And it's not a sinister one, so I have no guilt.

But anyway, I recently took a look at three different stories, two of which I was genuinely interested in and one which I admit I was drawn to simply because the summary was a horrendously common "I suk at summaries lol" and I wanted to impart some advice and hopefully make the poor author stop being so generically bad.

None of the three stories ended up being worth writing up a story spotlight on. There was a story which lured me in with a zany title and promises of cyborg adventure fun times, but at time of reading it consisted exclusively of a single prologue which detailed a horrible childhood accident (presumably giving birth to the titular cyborg). Nevertheless, I was genuinely alright with it and wish there had been more, since what was there wasn't enough to make me want to set up notifications.

See, I don't "follow" or do the local equivalent lightly, like a lot of other people on the internet (no offense). I don't friend someone on XBL or Steam unless I've played with them on two separate occasions and enjoyed both times. I won't favorite an author online unless I like at least two of their works. I won't subscribe to a Youtube channel unless I enjoyed at least two of their videos. Okay, I completely break that rule on Twitter, but that's just because I can't take Twitter very seriously. And neither does it. 140 characters is not enough space for serious. I digress.

The other two stories consisted of a story about a human/alien hybrid caught between the two sides of a human/alien war and another prologue, this one to a story about angelic warfare and fallen angels and also the apocalypse? Pretty sure there was an apocalypse thrown in there. They mentioned nuclear war once.

I left some constructive criticism on all three, opening by stating my intentions were benign but this was going to hurt, like the nurse who gives you your shots. I admit, I got a tad scalding at times. I'd just finished a marathon of Zero Punctuation, it rubs off on me. But I tried to keep my tone light and supportive. I think I did a fairly good job of it too.

The author of the alien story offered a brief reply, paraphrased as such: "Thanks for the feedback. I'll work on it." The author of the angel story opted to assume the fetal position and have themselves a brief cry. That in an of itself isn't the end of the world. Criticism can hurt sometimes, even if it is made with best of intentions. As long as you don't ignore it, you're doing fine.

But this is where it gets interesting. Because a fan of the story, not the author, but a fan of the story, decided to take it upon themselves to stick up for the story, and responded to my criticism with a levelheaded and dignified acknowledgement and rebuttal.

By that of course I mean they cursed me out (that'll show me, trying to call the writing style immature), declared that they and plenty of other people liked the story (which clearly means it is flawless and couldn't possibly be improved by something like proper grammar), informed me that the author's work was way more original (I never slagged the author's originality. If anything I think I'd actually praised it, but what ever) and all around better than mine because they'd seen my work (And I wonder what they meant by that. The single, three year old story I have on Wattpad? Or the various five year old stories I have on FF.net?) and my work was just a rip off of most Sci Fi RPGs (Now they're just making things up. I wrote PJO stories that borrowed from CoD and zombie movies [not as cool as it sounds] not from Sci Fi RPGs. My Wattpad story was about a fat guy joining the CIA and dying. What Sci Fi RPGs was this kid playing?), and if I wanted to be "that guy" I could take my critique somewhere else because I'm a horrible human being. Also, fuck me, apparently.

And my apologies to you sir or madam. I did not realize that the word "comment" translates directly to "cheerlead." Constructive criticism, which I'd left, is meant to help the author improve their work. Those who cannot accept it are doomed to fail.

All of this came to my mind as I read the extremely eloquent and well thought out response to my criticism, and suddenly I realized that the "Reply" button was sitting there, mockingly mooning me and daring to fire back.

"No, it's okay, you don't have to stoop to their level," it cooed seductively. "You can be calm and rational and be the bigger person and make them see the error of their ways. Then after lunch you can cure cancer and go piggy back riding sea horses on the moon. It'll be wonderful."

So I did not click the reply button, and I never will. In fact, I intend to never directly acknowledge my extremely well mannered new friend ever again. Because some people are just not worth the effort, and those people typically conveniently coalesce in the comment sections of the internet.

I still wanted to rant out my rebuttal though, so you guys get this. And to you, my silver tongued fellow Wattpad connoisseur, to you who will almost certainly never read this, I say

Fuck off.

Story Spotlight #1 Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunions

To start off with, since this is a bit of a new thing I'm doing here, I'd like to explain what's going on right now. As I'm sure I've mentioned about six or seven billion times, I'm writing a novel. In this particular case, it doesn't really matter how much further in the future you're reading this or how known I may or not have gotten in time since writing, because I will always, always be writing a novel. At some point, I'll develop dementia and every time I sit down to start writing I'll have forgotten what I'd written before and probably never get anywhere anymore, but still. I will always be writing a novel. That's one status that never needs updating.

But anyway. I know how incredibly hard it can be one of the innumerable horde posting writing to the internet. I know firsthand the steady decline in ambition when you throw your work out there for all to see and no one so much as glances your way. Yeah, maybe you see the view count go up a hair every now and again, but really, no one seems to taking notice. No one makes note or comment of your existence. It sucks. I don't like that feeling, and I certainly wouldn't wish it on anybody else.

So to that end, I'm going to do my fellow unknown authors a bit of a service, and give them a shoutout. Fat lot of good that'll do them now, since at time of writing I'm pretty sure the only one who reads this blog is my wife. But whatever. It's the thought that counts.

Alright, that's enough explaining what I'm doing, time to start doing it. For the first ever Story Spotlight, I give you:

Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunionsby Fatal-Blow

The Defenders of Earth series is, by all impressions thus far, a snugly fit member of the superhero genre, one of my favorite genres of all time ever, so even going init had already scored points with me just by being about one of my favorite subjects. Which was good, but it definitely lost a point or two with it's title. Colonize if you want, but if you're going to colonize, please drop the "Book 1."

Anyway, the title can be forgiven for now, since the big function of a title is to draw new readers in and if you're hearing about this story from me instead of Fictionpress you obviously don't need the title to be directed to give this story a try. Makes sense? Good.  Now we can talk about more important things.

Defenders of Earth, as I've said, is a superhero story, chronicling the coming together of a group of teens who have all inherited superpowers from their biological parents, a group of genetically engineered superheroes who used to work for the government. The teens come from a very diverse range of backgrounds and locations, with many of them not even speaking the same language (though you'd be amazed at how many people in this story speak Wolf).

The one thing they all have in common though, is that they're all kids dealing with their powers. My favorite chapters in this story are easily the character spotlight and introduction ones, where the reader gets to walk in the shoes of the new character and see what it's like ti have any number of these abilities.

If you're like me and you're fairly well versed in comic books and comic book movies, you're going to notice some X-men parallels. There's a good guy with mental abilities recruiting the kids so he can help them deal with life and they've got a really swanky mansion, and there's a bad guy who the good guy used to know who's also recruiting for his own likely nefarious causes. Where I think the two IPs differ, at least importantly, is that the X-Men franchise has always been much more about asking the question of how the world would react to people with fantastic abilities (and also an allegory for LGBT rights if you're Bryan Singer, apparently. Totally missed that as a kid. But hey, I was like six when I saw those movies.). Which is a great question to ask and answer. Defenders of Earth, however, looks at things from a different angle and asks how the people with the powers react to having powers.

One complaint that I'm sure some may have will be that the actual plot does seem to be moving a bit sluggishly, at least so far in as chapter 10. I personally didn't mind too much, since there were a lot of characters being introduced in all of those chapters and I was just having a ball getting to meet them and then watch them interact with each other. Call it a character driven story I guess? I hear people like those.

So anyway, if you like superheroes, and if you like character centric writing, I think this might be worth a look for you. I know the author would be thrilled to get some feedback on what he (or she? It's the internet, it's kind of hard to be clear unless they come out and say it.) (...I'm a guy, by the way.) has out so far. So please, saunter on over. And tell 'em 003 sent ya. (You don't actually have to say that I sent you. Though I guess it'd be cool if you did.)

Anyway, I'm Agent 003, and this has been Story Spotlights.