I learned the hard way.

I learned the hard way that trusting the madman with a beautiful, wonderful blue box (that's bigger on the inside) is a terrible idea, because, as much as you may want to think otherwise, rule one still stands: The Doctor lies. I learned the hard way that believing in the detective and his partner-in-crime[-solving] won't get you anywhere, either, and not because the former is a "freak". I learned the hard way that investing too much attachment in the socially awkward angel with a backwards tie and equally-backwards thinking leads to a touch of angry sobbing when the writers decide that killing him off three times in four seasons is brilliant.

I learned the hard way that mother of Jesus Christ's tits, I am completely incapable of starting a profile properly.

"I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that. . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions."
―Stephen King, On Writing

Writing has simultaneously become my greatest joy and the bane of my entire damned existence, thanks, in part, to a fair chunk of the... rising authors who frequent this beautiful, friendly, one hundred percent quality website of ours. To be honest, this here is just another one of those times when I see a desperate need for a sarcastic font setting, but really―everyone and their grandmother can see that FFN, glorious and all-loving as it may be, has become linguistic roadkill sprawled somewhere along the superhighway that is the Internet. Every now and then, someone might shoot it a look, wrinkled nose and all, but other than that, the only attention it gets is from the site's equivalent of those fussy animal-lovers who insist that there's got to be some way the rotting carcass can be brought back to life. (Likely by some means of―magic, or―look, I don't even know.)

Actually, that's not as true as it could be. We have the must-save-all users, and then we have the ones who walk up to the dead animal and poke at it with a stick. These people don't always do it intentionally, but no one in their right mind can say with full certainty that there isn't a single, honestly bad author here. That's outright delusional, and while I'm typically not one for laughing openly in anyone's face about anything, this is the one instance where I'll let such a dramatic show of immaturity slide. Half of the writers here suck. More than half of the writers here suck.

Including me, before anyone starts pointing fingers and screaming, "Look! An egotist! So holier-than-thou! Kill it before it lays eggs!"

This is ramble-y enough as is, but yes, I think it necessary to point out that I'm definitely not the epitome of perfection. I make grammatical errors. The characters I write aren't always totally consistent, especially when they're canon. Sometimes, plot devices I use fall flat. And that's fine―no writer can avoid those mistakes. The people I'm talking about when I mention prodding at corpses while giggling maniacally are the ones who clearly have no idea what they're doing. You know, the ones that never use the right variation of a word, mangle dialogue, ruin characters left and right―that sort of stuff.

Leading directly into the biggest problem any website could hope to never, ever fucking deal with: people who don't see the difference between constructive criticism and insults.

If I walk up to you and say, "Your story is a cesspool of shit, and I think you should go drown yourself in it to spare us the horror of the blemish upon mankind that is your face," then I'm being a can of piss, and you should probably report my review. But, if I walk up to you and say, "Look, you clearly have some sort of passion for what you're writing, but it just isn't working. You're making a lot of beginner mistakes and here's how you can to fix them," I am giving you advice. Hell, I could even phrase it differently, say, "You're obviously trying, but the attempts are failing so miserably that you're giving me secondhand embarrassment, so here's how you need to get your shit together right the fuck now," I'm being a bit of an asshole, but it's still constructive criticism provided I give you ways you can better your writing. As long as you're given a valid solution, the review is some form of constructive criticism, no matter how harsh or brutally honest.

There are users who would think that my first example of actual advice is flaming. I have problems grasping that, considering those two sentences aren't even moderately offensive, but just being told they're doing something wrong is enough to push someone over the edge sometimes. These people are houseplants, and their reactions are never going to bother me. It's cruel, it's insensitive, but it's my way of doing things. If you can't handle knowing you're making mistakes, stop posting your work online. You are never going to please everyone.

All of the above matters in some way, shape, or form because the only type of review I'll usually let myself give is one that is constructive and critical. The timestamp on this profile is a lie spoken by my own incessant need to create new profiles whenever I start taking this website seriously again; I've been here for a decent five years, and I've been writing for far longer. It's safe to say that I know at least some of what I'm talking about, and I'm completely fine with reviewing your story if you want someone to give you something you can work off of. That said, these reviews tend to be rather extensive. You're not going to get a response in a few minutes. Maybe not even a few hours. Or a few days. It depends on how much you need to work on, and my mood.

If, for some reason, you find fault with the comment I submit and think it acceptable to stuff my inbox with long and hateful complaints, my first suggestion is don't. Really. Just outright don't do that. Sit back for a second and ask yourself if whatever it is that's offending you is worth the anger/irritation/void of anguish you've found yourself trapped in. Then, look past the mean bit, and move on to the advice. If you think it'll help, take it. If you don't think so, then ignore it, but I'll be secretly giving you the evil eye for the rest of your life, because that review took effort.

(This may require your address. Or phone number.)

(Before someone reports me to the police, I'm fucking kidding.)

"Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man… living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.”
―George Carlin