How to deal with things that hurt to read

[Masaki-kun]

My ex girlfriend wanted me to read a fanfiction she wrote.
It was her first one.
I thought she wasn't allowed to call me pet names after dumping me, but here it went.
So I read it.
It was a massive crossover. Badly integrated.
It had original characters. Badly integrated.
It had stiff dialogue. Badly integrated.
And she spelled so many things wrong... like the title... the Title, for Christ's sake.
We have TECHNOLOGY.
It's as if you lived in America and you died of childbirth, and your harelipped child died of polio.
You have no excuse, we have technology, we have scientists who made it their life's work to stop that shit from happening.
We don't have to live in a world where people misspell SO MANY SIMPLE WORDS
And it's just so many things that annoy me in fanfiction when done right. Like making an upbeat character "dark". Or putting Sephiroth into anything that's not a battle from FFVII. Or... Father God, help me. I wanted to seppuku so hard. I don't want to tell her that, because it's wrong. But it hurt me so much to read that.

What can I do? I'm only 19, I can't drink the memories of that fanfiction away.

[Rejected Again]

I suggest killing the fanfic with fire, brain-bleach, and a good book to replace the memories of that crap. I also suggest you show her the joys of spell check.

[Kim]

Be as brutally honest as possible, even if you feel like a jerk for it. There are two possible results to this behavior.

1. She listens to what you say and actually works on the flaws you pointed out.

2. She gets really pissed and never shows you any of her fan-fiction again.

Both seem good to me.

[Kepor]

If you don't mind being a total asshole, you could get some good friends together and ridicule the hell out of it. Sure, it isn't constructive and might just break your ex's spirit completely, but if you this thing has mentally scarred you as badly as you've said, humor may be the only way to cope.

If you want to be a good person, do what NonCon said. (How 'bout that?) You can use some tact in how you present it, but telling it like it is will ultimately help her improve as a writer. Or stop writing altogether. So yeah.

[Masaki-kun]

I did the second. My best friend volunteered to flame her like a salamander in an oil well, but some part of me wanted to have mercy.

[Lady Cygnet]

Originally Posted by NonCon

Be as brutally honest as possible, even if you feel like a jerk for it. There are two possible results to this behavior.

1. She listens to what you say and actually works on the flaws you pointed out.

2. She gets really pissed and never shows you any of her fan-fiction again.

Both seem good to me.

This would be what we refer to as a win-win situation.

I get so angry at my 13- and 14-year-old nieces for not being able to spell or use proper grammar, as her mother, uncle, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, and I can all spell well and use proper grammar...but then I read the stuff my 30-something cousins and other assorted relatives post on facebook and myspace and wonder how it was that we were the only ones in our family who stayed awake and paid attention during English class. It's embarrassing, because I never thought it was that difficult a skill to master.

In fact, I'm embarrassed by how sloppy most people are on facebook. I can understand it on myspace, but facebook was originally engineered to help college students and alumni network and lead to better jobs, and it's kind of turned into myspace lite.

As for fanfiction, one would assume that if one loved a work enough to write fanfiction about it, one would want to make it as perfect and polished as possible, with absolutely immaculate spelling and grammar. After all, it's a labor of love, right?

[Meister]

But then again, remember Kirby2000?

[Kim]

I try not to.

[Kepor]

Why, Meister? Why?

[Meister]

To put things into perspective for Masaki, because whatever he read can't possibly be anywhere near as bad.

also, sadism.