@folatefangirl / folatefangirl.tumblr.com
I was tagged by @kolimachris to do a poll of my fave female characters (so hard to decide!)
Forgot to tag people oops. Tagging (with no pressure!) @wizardheart83 @clearancecreedwatersurvival @agardenandlibrary @morethanslightly @dxmedstudent and anyone else who wants to make one for fun :)
This post brought to you by caffeine, spite, and the lovely encouragement of @drpathetique.
I’ve put a lot of this post behind a cut because there is A TON of text. Plus worked examples because the last thing I want is for y’all to have info but no idea of what it even might look like in practice (or, more relevantly, on an upcoming exam). Also, if you notice errors or if you want to suggest an alternative to what I wrote here, please tell me so that I can fix the post or update it with new info.
*Note: mEq = mmol
More after the cut:
TL;DR: I don’t want authors to interact with my reviews of their books anymore, and this long-ass post explains why. Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional book reviewer, but I fundamentally believe in the value of honest reviews.
Dearly beloved authors and aspiring authors, we need to have a talk about the purpose of book reviews and book reviewers of officially published books (traditional, indie, and self-published). While Book Twitter has been going off recently about negative reviewers who try to make authors see their reviews, I have been dealing with the exact opposite problem, which is the problem of authors who respond to the critique in reviews of the books WITHOUT being tagged or asked to respond.
After the third time this has happened (mostly with self-published authors, I might add), I’ve decided to come forward and not only ask authors to not interact with my reviews of their books, but also make a post about WHY authors interacting with reviews of their books is an extremely bad idea.
Look, I get why some authors, especially ones who are operating on their own, might think it’s fair game to interact with reviewers. No one told them not to. Many self-published authors are also fanwriters where reviews and comments are seen as “payment” to the author and interactions are encouraged. They may not fully realize the consequences of interacting with a review of an officially published work that may spiral out of control and permanently damage their reputations without a PR team or agent to advise them.
Regardless, it is a well-accepted maxim in the vast majority of publishing and reviewing spheres that book reviews are NOT written for the author. Book reviews are a snapshot of one person’s reading experience and intend to give an idea of what the book might entail. They are NOT a gift to the author and are written without the intention of ever being read by the author. Should the author decide to read their reviews anyway, it is expected that the author understands this rule of conduct and act accordingly.
Let’s break down what happens (as has happened to me), when an author decides to interact with the review anyway.
The last level is obviously the most dangerous level of interaction and the most permanently damaging and what I worry about the most when an author takes an interest in what I say about their books. It is always on my mind when I write book reviews because I unfortunately can’t take chances with my personal safety.
Let’s say an author wants to respond to their critique and would never dare to escalate to stalking or anything else. Okay. Let’s list off the potential consequences of this for their writing career, shall we?
For authors and aspiring authors:
For book reviewers:
Kathleen Hale:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/this-is-what-happens-when-an-author-tracks-down-a-critic-irl
Anne Rice: https://the-digital-reader.com/2013/04/29/how-not-to-respond-to-bad-reviews-the-anne-rice-edition/
Richard Brittain: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34775814
Based on personal experience*, especially because some of these are so underused in fiction even though they can be a treasure trove of humor and drama just waiting to happen. Also, a lot of these can be applied to the Found Family/Family of Choice trope.
*For the sake of privacy, by “large families”, I’m gonna be vague and say that I mean one where there are more than four siblings and the family has a rather tiny budget
Hogwarts gals, won’t you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon?
(It’s a Yule Ball chapter, yeet)
I’ve probably recommended this book to all of you at some point in the past 6 months because The Gardener’s Hand trilogy was bar none, the best series I got into last year and I simply can’t shut up about it because I’m basically propping up the fandom by word of mouth and text post memes. (Please, y’all, it’s lonely in here. The tumbleweeds are gaining sentience.)
Auditory hallucinations are wild and since ‘tis the season, I’ll tell y’all the story of French Demon Clock:
When I was a teenager, my bedroom had a battery-operated, analog wall clock that was Paris-themed, so lots of cutesy French artwork and words in its design. It had a metal arm to count seconds in addition to the minute and hour hands and would tick tick tick throughout the day.
During my senior year of high school, when I was extremely stressed out and sleep deprived from Life Shit going on, the batteries finally died and I never got around to replacing them.
After about a month or so after the batteries died, I started waking up in the middle of the night to: tick tick tick.
I took the dead batteries out after that, thinking that maybe just some residual charge was left in them, enough to power the seconds arm even though the minute and hour arms were still frozen from the month the batteries died.
Not long after that, I arrived home to study in my room for a bit and had just got comfortable when unmistakably I heard it: tick tick tick—
I pulled the clock off the wall to be sure I had removed the batteries and sure enough, no batteries were there. The ticking eventually stopped that day. Maybe I was imagining things.
For gods know what reason teenaged me had, I left the clock up on the wall for a few more weeks and kept intermittently hearing tick tick tick whenever I was in my room until at last I decided having cute French decor was not worth feeling like I had a possessed inanimate object in the place where I slept.
Since I am not a priest and have no powers of exorcism (and much more likely just needed more sleep and less stress), I got rid of it in the I’m-a-horror-movie-protagonist-who’s-too-stupid-to-live way by chucking it in a dark corner of the basement.
I found it again in the summer of 2017 while helping my family move and while I felt the back of my neck crawl whenever I was working with my back turned to it, it never made a peep.
