Tales of a Long-Suffering Beta
Once upon a time there lived a normal girl. Sure, there were moments of unconventionality in her life, such as painting those around her with blue face paint and the occasional impromptu song (sadly the fact that they were impromptu made it almost impossible to add dance routines). Anyway, I'm straying from the point, the point being that she was once a very compus mentis, regular girl, who had coincidentally read the Lord of the Rings books.
This was before she met her. Once close friend, now bane of her existence. It all started one cold winters eve when our dear writer and beta were having a nice chat over cyber tea and biscuits…
"So I'm writing a LOTR fic and I'm quite pleased with it…Yea I think it's good."
"Oh right," replied our poor, unsuspecting beta, "That sounds good. About Aragorn and Legolas I assume?"
"Of course! I just need someone to read through it for me…You know, to check my spelling and stuff." And thus the cunning writer began to set her trap.
"I could do that if you want, then you could post it tonight."
"Oh no, I couldn't possibly let you do that! You can't read it before it's posted. You might not think it's good." said the writer with a sly yet subtle smile.
"Oh go on I can help you."
With a melodramatic sigh the writer pretended to relent, but all the while snickering to herself at how easy the beta was making it for her.
The rest of the then innocent betas night was spent correcting grammatical errors, just a few commas and capital letters here and there, a few spelling mistakes, but nothing too major.
It was at this time our poor betas mental health began to deteriorate. Nights were spent changing "Aragron"s to "Aragorn"s, being conned into looking things up in the Silmarillion that beta hasn't read, and attempting to distinguish actual plot in the writers mindless Estel and Legolas torture. The beta eventually began to ease her pain and suffering by consuming excessive amounts of vodka and banging her head against a wall.
Her immeasurable exposure to the aforementioned fan fiction then began to affect her in her life outside the internet. She started to think in Lord of the Rings similes, metaphors and compare the fan fiction to her life, for example she would think things like, "What would Elrond do?" and "If Aragorn was here he'd sort that orc of a boy out!". Before anyone knew it, the insanity had set in. She was no longer the happy teenager she once was. Oh no. She had become one of them.
The moral of this story, my friends, is to never trust a writer; before you even realise what's happening they'll have conned you into believing that they are doing you a favour by letting you spend your life pouring over their usually badly written fanfiction. To those of you who are considering beta-ing, I offer these words of caution, and to those of you who have already fallen into this black abyss, I salute you.
Authors note: I'm sorry I inflicted this fic upon you all, but the mood took me and I couldn't help myself. If anyone feels like reviewing then please…Don't let me stop you :p.
I'd also like to thank my (dare I say it) beta, Nietta, for pushing me into writing and posting this. You should check out her fanfiction, contrary to what you may have been led to believe, it's actually really good.
