The Return of mrsphan

Apparently everybody's favorite psycho writer is desperate for attention. This afternoon, she emailed me the following:

Quote :

Name: mrsphan
Profile: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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Subject: Re: I know can't write but...

Now, I know you said I can't write but...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I guess over 5,000 hits this month and 100 reviews can't all be a lie, can
it?

Oh...forgive me, I forgot you've never experienced that. You really should
try. It can be fun you know, unless someone forgets themselves and acts like
a twelve year old.

Don't forget to do your homework now. :D

It took me a while to stop laughing. All I can say is I wish she had my fans. They leave intelligent, well-thought-out reviews, not "great story, write more" one-liners. Well, they do for my stories -- I can just imagine what they'd say about hers. And if we consider the number of stories posted as a rough indication of the size of the fandom, then proportionately, my stories are a lot more popular than hers. Which is probably more than anyone needs to know about the Wandering Critic's other identities. So, on to the snark!

Snarker's Note: I won't bother to mention the punctuation, or lack thereof, unless it's particularly amusing. As always, she's got issues with commas. Dearie, if you're reading this, maybe it's you who needs to do your homework.

This was the first thing that hit me:

A young merchant Marine Corporal had been found dead at a warehouse on the waterfront.

The Merchant Marine is the commercial shipping fleet and the crews thereof. They certainly don't have corporals. One has to assume she's referring to the Marines, who are something else entirely. But then what is "merchant" doing in there? In any event, "corporal" shouldn't have been capitalized. I guess Middle-Earth isn't the only world she doesn't know much about.

One comment I do need to make on punctuation: mrsphan has defeated me for the world title in Ellipsis Over-use. I never thought I'd see the day.

Taking the stairs he raced toward the Forensic Scientist as fast as he could.

More random capitalization. Also more lack of commas where appropriate. She needs to bring a few over from the places where they're not appropriate.

Her face that was normally pale, was nearly bloodless now…

Whereas her face that was normally lavender was a particularly delicate shade of puce.

And this, my friends, is why commas matter. "Her face, normally pale, was nearly bloodless now" would be correct (just in case the perpetrator is reading this).

They’d gotten back from the warehouse district late, but she was still
around having discerned that her beloved machine was sick and needed
constant supervision that night…he’s family, Gibbs!

"Sick" machines don't need to be nursed, they need to be fixed. You don't sit up with them; you send for the repair tech. What's she doing, wrapping that mass spectrometer in a blanket and making it a nice bowl of chicken soup?

I don't know NCIS, so I don't know if Abby is the kind of person who just freezes in a dangerous situation, or if she does something about it. Has she been shot at in canon? Our dear author gives us the following:

She heard a strange popping noise and felt an ice cold sensation hit
her belly with enough force to knock her to her knees. “Wha…?”

For those of you who have never fired a .22 pistol, while it's a pissant little gun, it doesn't make a "strange popping noise", especially not indoors. It's a gun, not a slingshot. In a quiet office, or in this case a laboratory, it would be loud. Think small firecracker, not popping bubble wrap.

Thrusting through her doorway he was brought up short at the sight of her sprawled in a pool of her own blood

Thrusting through her doorway? I'd post that over in the Unerotic Sexual Euphemisms topic, but apparently the author is trying to describe Gibbs going through a doorway (if the door was open, how come nobody heard that gunshot?). Bursting through her office doorway, maybe, but thrusting through her doorway ... no, the images that brings to mind have nothing to do with the actual situation.

Abby must have some really unusual anatomy. First we have this:

blood that still gushed from a gunshot wound low in her abdomen

And a few sentences later we have this:

Her breathing grew ragged as her lungs began to fill with blood

Okay, maybe I'm weird, but my abdomen is full of intestines; I keep my lungs in my chest. I thought everybody did it that way.

By the way, while you never say never when it involves gunshot wounds, blood "gushing" from the abdomen from a .22 shot is a little improbable. Abdominal muscles tend to clamp down around that sort of thing, and most of the bleeding will be internal. I pity whoever has to reassemble her guts, but she's probably not making that bad of a mess on the floor.

Speaking of which, we're seriously lacking in description here. I'm sure if I was an NCIS fan I could envision the room this is in, and I know that the fault is mostly on my side, reading a fic outside my won fandoms, but some mention of the surroundings -- say, whether she's bleeding on carpet or linoleum or something else -- would be nice. We know the room has a mass spectrometer (wrapped in a blanket and looking at a bowl of lukewarm chicken soup, I imagine), drawers (in desks, maybe?), and file cabinets (which, unlike mine, apparently do not sit flat on the floor, as Abby looks under them), but that's all.

The summary of the hospital scene in the next chapter is somewhat bewildering:

Around 2100 hrs. the surgeon, Dr. Sanchez, finally emerged to give
Gibbs the news that Abby had made it through surgery. “She has grit,
I’ll give her that. She fought like hell to pull through, coded on us
three times Gibbs…” he rubbed his hands over an exhausted face. “I
dreaded having to come out and tell you I failed. She has a long road
ahead. Her condition is critical right now…and we will have to monitor
her closely for the next forty-eight hours.”

Mostly, I'm trying to figure out just what is going on inside her abdomen. She should be in fairly good shape if they get enough blood into her to keep her BP up while they're repairing the mess that bullet left. Given the specific location, the lower abdomen (one assumes that people in the business of investigating murders would be referring to the specific medical term here, not its colloquial meaning), the only thing I can really see it hitting that would cause that much of a problem is the common illiac artery. Even then, it's mostly a blood volume issue, and should be fairly easily managed in a good hospital. Personally, I think the author really needs to replace that .22 with a bigger gun.

The actress who plays Abby is 40 years old, so I have to question whether people would refer to her as a "little girl" and a "young lady". If that's canon, I sit corrected.

"Sweetheart"? "Little bird"? "Cupcake"? I'm gonna wind up diabetic if this continues!

This author has some of the most awkward phrasing I've seen. This line, for instance:

She was literally shaking by the time she was finished with both fatigue and weakness.

"...with both fatigue and weakness" is seriously misplaced. That sentence is the equivalent of "She was full by the time she was finished with both the cake and the ice cream" except I don't think mrsphan meant that Abby was finished with fatigue and weakness. That's what she wrote, though.

This is just one example of the kind of writing that continues throughout the story. Like this:

Darnell Williams, age 36…hired to be on the maintenance crew on the
second. Francesca Monterey, age 29…hired to be a secretary on the
third, the day of the attack,” his voice cracked and he had to pause to
clear his throat. “and Michael Jameson, signed on as a visitor on the
third.

"Hired to be on" or "hired to be" are awkward versions of what is normally written as "hired for" or "hired as". "Signed on" doesn't mean the same thing as "signed in". This person claims to be an educated adult, but her writing is full of that kind of awkwardness, stilted phrasing, and sometimes no apparent understanding of the meaning of some of the things she writes.

It looks like she gets her background on Paganism from Jack Chick tracts. The guy who shot Abby has a house full of defaced Christian icons "for their magical properties" and Ducky claims that Druidism and Paganism have their roots in Satanism. Now, wait ... this guy was screaming "there is no God" ... that leaves out him being a Satanist, since they share the Christian cosmology, just worshipping a different power within it. If he was a Pagan who didn't believe in the Christian deity, then symbols of that deity would be worthless to him, defaced or otherwise.

There are a lot more misspelled or misused words than anyone who claims mrsphan's age and education should have. "Here" instead of "hear", "alright" instead of "all right", "drug" instead of "dragged" ... that one in particular is a child's mistake. "Sight instead of "site", there's another one. "Your" instead of "you're". "Mussad" instead of "Mossad". "Lead" instead of "led".

I don't know the canon, and I have no clue what Gibbs is like ... but is he really that much of a woobie? This thing is turning into freaking chick lit, with Gibbs starring as Chick With a Dick.

I'm getting really weirded out by references to Tony sleeping in a crib. I think I've been around this place too long, and read way too many snarkings of way too many stories with weird fetishes. Way too weird fetishes, if we want to keep the parallelism going.

Ah, Chapter 7, and an author's note:

*Richard-the dead man-will be explained further in the next chapter,
so don't lose too much hair scratching your head! lol And the identity
of the mystery person? I haven't decided which of the 'perps' I will
use from the show...you'll find out when the plot bunnies tell me!

Richard-the dead man-will? Would he be some relation of George Will? Okay, okay, I'm kinda reaching there, but the use of hyphens instead of dashes and the lack of spacing around them really did throw me when I first read it. Good job of deflating what little suspense the author has managed to generate, though.

When I find a worthy accolade who will not fail me again.

Accomplice? Acolyte?

So she stripped down to the bare essentials, pulled off Anthony’s shoes and socks; and put them both under the covers.

Isn't that going to be lumpy? And maybe stinky?

Why do these men all growl in bed? Is that the author's fantasy, to have some guy growling at her? Or two of them?

We even get a "weeping entrance of her sheath" in there (it's right before "the scalding tightness of her channel"). As I think someone brought up over in the unerotic metaphors thread, or its predecessor, "weeping" in relationship with a body part makes me think of a three-letter word, all right, but it's "pus" not "sex".

One leg was shattered, the other had a broken femur that protruded
through the skin and had punctured the major artery, resulting in
massive blood loss.

Compound fracture of the femur? Torn femoral artery? So sorry, love, but you've killed off Ducky. He might live long enough to make that phone call, but not nearly long enough for Gibbs to get there. Hell, Gibbs probably wouldn't have had time to get there if he'd been pulling into the parking lot when he got the phone call. Someone with that kind of injury bleeds out in minutes. A very, very few minutes. Note to all writers: if you're going to put in medical details -- or any other kind of technical details -- remember that there's a high probability that some of your readers will know more about that field than you do. Research matters.

And one last bit of stupid before we reach the last of the current chapters:

“Agent Gibbs, if you are receiving this it means that my accolade has done well.

I'm pretty sure she means "accomplice", since that's what it means from context, but the thought of an award running around beating people up ... well, I guess I need more sleep.

This isn't really godawful. It's just garden variety bad. Like her godawful Lord of the Rings story, it's sloppy, careless, and slipshod. The fellow who provided the corpse that started all of this is never mentioned again. The pistol disappeared the day before Abby was shot -- where was it (and the shooter) all night? According to the story, Abby was shot on the 3rd. That meant the shooter got his hands on the gun on the 2nd, which would make him Darnell Williams, the maintenance guy -- but she implies, at least, that he was Michael Jameson. Little stuff like that. Like she couldn't be arsed to do a decent job.

So, yeah, it's not really worthy of a full-scale snarking. I guess this is a twisted sort of fanservice. I just keep reading her email and chuckling. I know what she is, and I know who I am ... and the contrast between what she thinks she knows and the real truth is funny enough to make my day, at least for a rather dull day like today.

Any bets on the actual age of this person who claims to be a 41-year-old mother but writes like a 14-year-old child?

Since you don't know the fandom that well, I'll clear up a few things for you (just so you can realize how bad this author mangled it).

First off, in regards to your question about whether Abby has been shot at before, the answer is yes. A rogue Mossad agent shot at her while she was in her lab a few hours after he shot and killed NCIS Special Agent Caitlin "Kate" Todd. Abby has also had a crazy stalker ex-boyfriend plan to kill her and make appear to be suicide, and was targeted by a hit-man so that she would not testify in a trial.

In regards to Gibbs being a woobie, the answer to that question is no. Gibbs can in no way be classified by that word in canon. He is the type of person to keep things close to the vest, as one could say, meaning he would not cry or have an emotional outburst for no good reason.

As for the things that you brought to light in regards to this fic, I don't want to think about it. There's just so many things wrong with it that it makes my head hurt.

Finally, I am not going to try to guess how old the author actually is. I want to maintain some small hope in humanity, even if it is futile.

If this person is a Marine, wouldn't the proper rank be Lance Coporal? Or however you spell it. I don't think you have regular Coporals in the Marines. That's an Army rank.

karmyn31 wrote:

If this person is a Marine, wouldn't the proper rank be Lance Coporal? Or however you spell it. I don't think you have regular Coporals in the Marines. That's an Army rank.

The Marines have both corporals (E-4) and lance corporals (E-3). To confuse matters further, though, this particular stiff is referred to as "Corporal Lance Davidson". Is "Lance" his first name or part of a backwards attempt at "lance corporal"? Between that and the Merchant Marine reference, I'm totally baffled here.

If he's a corporal, his given name should not be Lance, for exactly this reason. Real life isn't always so tidy -- I used to know a fellow named Dean who worked for a university, but not as a dean, which caused him some chaos in his life -- but fiction is, or should be, less confusing, unless the confusion is a plot point. Not that it particularly matters in the case of the stiff, as we don't see him again after the first page, but it's still sloppy writing technique.

Jewel, thanks for the canon information. It seems we can add Felony Mischaracterization to the list of charges against mrsphan.

The sad thing is that this story could actually have been good in the hands of a competent writer. There is the seed of a good story in here. It's unfortunate that seed fell into the hands of someone who thinks "the weeping entrance to her sheath" is arousing rather than nauseating.

Wandering Critic wrote:

The sad thing is that this story could actually have been good in the hands of a competent writer. There is the seed of a good story in here. It's unfortunate that seed fell into the hands of someone who thinks "the weeping entrance to her sheath" is arousing rather than nauseating.

Oh, eww.

Is it this douche again?

*checks profile*

She just wanted to come back for more? What the hell, wasn't she the one who was all WAH I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANYMORE WAHHHHH YOU DON'T CRITICIZE ME RIGHT

Gtfo, lady. Jeez.

Oh, now I'm feeling jealous. I didn't get a smug, condescending e-mail from her. Oh the woes of not getting the graces of our favorite 41 year old fanbrat. I must not have made her hate me enough.

This scene made me lol:

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Nightmares. Endless corridors of darkness spread out before her, growing grunts, groans and eerie laughter. “There is no god…THERE IS NO GOD!!!!!!!!!”

Finally something we can both agree on.

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Running, always running and screaming his name…Gibbs, Gibbs, help me!

Because Gibbs is God, doncha know?

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Turning a corner and seeing him, solid and reassuring. Racing toward him, throwing herself into his arms…having those arms fall away and looking up to see those eyes cold and hard.

Zombie!Gibbs, this is new.

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What do you mean lost it?! Goddamn it Abigail, are you so irresponsible that you can’t keep track of evidence now? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire your ass!!!! I can’t think of one either! Look again, and pray to god you find it before I come back!!!

And think me up a doughnut with them sprinkles on top!!!!!!

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Tears flowing freely now as she ran from him down another hallway…no rescuer there. He was lost to her. She was alone…truly alone here in this wasteland of dreams and pain.

So she turned up the Evanescence and slit her wrists.

Yeah, I didn't get any follow-up messages from her after she dismissed us all as nerds and went off bawwing either. How come WC gets all the love?

I checked out some of her other fics after that whole wankfest, including this CSI one. I think I'm beginning to see a pattern: the female leads in her fics are always ludicrously abused, weepy, useless bundles of angst and moe (warning: TV Tropes link) who the insanely patient male leads are only too happy to hug and kiss until it's all better.

mrsphan wrote:

Nick Stokes goes hiking in the Rockies on a journey for the soul.
Little does he know that he will find what his soul has always longed
for.

A plotline centred around him that doesn't involve him being buried alive?

Nick meets the nine-months-pregnant Sue OC, who for some reason is sitting in a car in a remote part of the mountains.

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“I’m…my name is…Em…Emily…Trenton…” this was said through gasps and moans as she clutched at her belly. Oh, boy. Are you serious? Nick thought

"What kind of crazy ass name is that?!"

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Emily heard the man’s voice rise in anger and felt a frisson of fear
make its way down her spine. Before it could grow into a full grown
panic attack a strong tightening heralded another contraction in her
womb, and she let out a groan of agony. This ceaseless ebb and flow of
pain took her mind off of the fear of meeting this new man, and the
possibilities of what he could do to her…hadn’t she found out what men
were like, what they are capable of, early on in her life? She had to
stay focused, had to stay strong for her child, she had run for so long
and was so tired.

The angst factor is OVER NINE THOUSAND!

Later a doctor wanders in to explain what WGW thinks of Mrsphan's fics:

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He walked quickly into the hall and flagged down the doctor to ask
what the prognosis for Emily and baby was. What he didn’t count on was
being slammed against the wall in a fit of rage.“You want to know what her prognosis is you son of a bitch! I saw what you did to her!! Those scars…my god man, I ought to fuckin’ kill you myself!”“Whoa…whoa! What the hell?! Hey man, all I did was deliver a baby! What are you talkin’ about scars? I didn’t touch her!” Nick was furious. She’d been abused? And they thought he did it?

Nick apparently didn't bring his badge with him.

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On his way, he happened to glance up as he passed Emily’s doorway. He
saw her face as she watched him leave, silent tears tracking down her
white cheeks. Ah damn he thought ruefully. He never could
resist a pretty lady, and this one seemed…special. Besides, he thought
with a grin, he’d get a two-for-one on this one, remembering the small
little face with the too big eyes. Yep, they’re both keepers, he’d take
bets on it.

Does this sound creepy to anyone else? Elsewhere, Catherine plots to shag Jim Brass (" Damned if I won’t get that man in my bed at last!"). Mary Sue gets randomly assaulted by thugs and rescued by Warrick:

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Suddenly there was a bright light that lit up the dark like mid-day.
Like most vermin Bobby Ray and his ilk deplored the light and they
threw up their hands and howled their indignities in the unique and
local colloquialisms. Fear of consequence should they be caught had
them scurrying back to their particular hole in the ground. Shielding
her eyes from the brightness, Emily missed the scattering of the
parasites and was still awaiting the horror of what would come, when
she felt an unexpectedly gentle touch on her hand,“It’s alright now, they’ve gone. You need to follow me; we have to get you outta here.”She looked up and found her gaze upon a very tall, very handsome black man. He smiled a lovely smile and held out his hand.“Hello,
Emily. I’m Warrick, a good friend of Nick’s. You can trust me…I
promise. He’s looking for you. You’ll be safe with him, he’s a good
man,” here his eyes twinkled kindly down at her, “and I must say, his
taste in women has gotten much better! I am impressed. Please, Emily…come with me. Nick is looking for you.”She drew a deep breath, do she dare? My god, what is happening to me? What is going on? His
eyes remained fixed on hers, and in them she saw peace and an inner
strength. She placed her hands in his and followed him out of hell.

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Emily was so weary that she was literally falling over her own two
feet as she tried to keep up with Warrick’s much larger strides. He
looked back repeatedly to make sure she was still behind him, but he
didn’t slow his pace. If he noticed her steps falter, he would reach
out a steadying hand to guide her to safety. It seemed as though they’d
hiked for miles when, suddenly, he turned to her and said it was time
for him to go. She panicked.“What? Wait…go where? You’re not just going to leave us out here in the middle of nowhere, are you? What was that about trust?” She couldn’t help it, her voice rose in alarm. “Please mister…I’ll…oh, god…I’ll do anything you want. Just please don’t leave us here. My baby will die…”His
eyes were kind, tender, and filled with quiet understanding. “Hey,
girl. Simmer down now. There are some people coming up that street
right there…” here he pointed to a cross street dead ahead of them.
“They’ll look after you, I promise, and you can trust
them. Go on honey. Hurry, before they pass by!” His tone was so urgent
that she found herself running down the sidewalk, staggering,
hesitant…until she heard a gloriously familiar voice call out her name.

I'm not sure what I can say to the sheer, awful, overpowering melodrama of Mrsphan's prose, except that it plunges my soul into depths of despair hitherto unplumbed by man, demon, god or angel, sinking hooks made of red-hot depleted uranium into my heart and then twisting them, bathing my literary sensibilities in burning hydrofluoric acid, and makes me laugh the deranged, shattering laugh of a hyena possessed by Nyarlathotep.
The lovers are reunited:

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“Shhh…it’s ok honey. I know you’re scared of someone, and I hope that
soon you’ll trust us enough to tell us about him. We can and will protect you if you are innocent of any wrongdoing. You just need to learn to trust again." he whispered tenderly.

And we learn Emily's twagic backstory:

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The first time she’d met him she’d been fourteen years old. She
was walking to school in her second-hand clothes and tattered
shoes…walking because, at seven thirty in the morning her mother was
already too drunk to drive their ten year old station Taurus. Oh, well. At least it isn’t raining…thunder boomed, and fat drops began to fall…yet. She
hunched up her shoulders and tried to make herself as small a target as
possible as the shower showed signs of becoming a downpour.

It's like a tick-box list of Unhappy Background Elements. Poor, check. Drunken parent, check. Hated by the weather gods, check.

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He asked for her hand in marriage on her eighteenth birthday. He’d
taken her to the diner for supper, and bought her a piece of cake. When
it was brought to her it had a candle…and a ring with a small diamond
in it. She floated home. When she told her mother, a sound thrashing
was all she got, but that was nothing new. Whore and bitch were the
nicknames she’d grown up with all her life.

Physically abused, check. Verbally abused, check.

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That night he’d not been gentle, and she’d been a virgin. When it
was over, she’d curled defensively on the couch and cried while he lay
passed out on the rumpled, bloody sheets.

Sexually/spousally abused, check. Naturally, this hasn't affected her sex drive once she meets Mr. Right:

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Nick was gentle too. She thought maybe he’d be gentle all the time, not
just at the beginning of a new relationship. She tried to imagined
being in bed with him, his hands gentle and caressing…not squeezing and
brutal. His touch inviting pleasure and passion, not fear and loathing.
His mouth…his mouth inciting sizzling desire, not pleas of mercy.

I can't take any more (and this post will probably hit the character limit soon). More to follow, if I don't choke on my own vomit.

Wandering Critic wrote:

Abby must have some really unusual anatomy. First we have this:

blood that still gushed from a gunshot wound low in her abdomen

And a few sentences later we have this:

Her breathing grew ragged as her lungs began to fill with blood

Okay, maybe I'm weird, but my abdomen is full of intestines; I keep my lungs in my chest. I thought everybody did it that way.

To be fair significant abdominal bleeding will have an effect on breathing. Having said that - yeesh what a pile of crap!

tjay wrote:

To be fair significant abdominal bleeding will have an effect on breathing. Having said that - yeesh what a pile of crap!

An effect, yes, but that effect isn't the lungs filling up with blood. Seeing as the author's demonstrated attitude has been "nobody cares about the details", I think what we're looking at here is garden variety sloppiness. Typical mrsphan writing, in other words.

The sad part is that this was the story she directed me to as "proof" that she is really an excellent writer. This story is the one she's the most proud of.

And she thinks we're jealous of her writing ability?

It does kind of feel like the lungs are filling up - although I suspect you're correct and she's pulling this out of her arse.

Wandering Critic wrote:

The sad part is that this was the story she directed me to as "proof" that she is really an excellent writer. This story is the one she's the most proud of.

Admittedly she probably directed you to this one because it has the most reviews. Many of the reviews are from the same people reviewing different chapters (Mrsphan writes really short chapters, which is conducive to getting lots of reviews). Furthermore, many of her stories have relatively few reviews (the LotR one was reviewed only by the three of us, for example); only 4 out of 13 have more than ten.

Moreover, counting the number of reviews on FFN is a very bad way of measuring a fic's quality. It depends on things like what fandom it's in (i.e. the number of potential readers), how many chapters it has, its posting schedule and so forth.

Plus people do review fics they do not like. I mean, you do not judge the quality of a movie by how many reviews it got, right? Usually that is only an indication of its advertising budget.

Yeah, in fact I probably review fics I disliked (or thought were good in some respects but needed some major overhauls in others) more often than I do fics I actually liked. If a fic was pretty good and had no major problems, I usually can't think of anything very interesting to say.

InkWeaver wrote:

Wandering Critic wrote:

The sad thing is that this story could actually have been good in the hands of a competent writer. There is the seed of a good story in here. It's unfortunate that seed fell into the hands of someone who thinks "the weeping entrance to her sheath" is arousing rather than nauseating.

Oh, eww.

Is it this douche again?

Gtfo, lady. Jeez.

Nthed.
You know a fic is going to be trouble when it has a summary like this one:

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Lucius Malfoy gets the chance for redemption when he rescues a fellow prisoner from a lifetime of hell in Azkaban. Will she also be his salvation? Major OOC, non-canon. LM/OC, DM/LL pairing Don't like, please don't read ;D

Or this one:

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Goren discovers he is not as alone in the world as he thought. Samantha wonders if she'll ever find family she can call her own. Set after his brother's death. B/A L/OC *please read and review kindly*

Why is it the fics that say "read and review kindly" are usually the ones that suck the worst?

quamp wrote:

Why is it the fics that say "read and review kindly" are usually the ones that suck the worst?

Because they know they suck but don't have the balls to admit it to themselves. :redangry:

She's changed her pen name to "Herves vuin". And she's migrating. A bit of quick Googling turned up this -- the details match. ILE, you need to check out the Elvish and see if she's learned anything.

Check out the name of the website. Haldir's Whores?! No, wait, its Haldirs Whores on the site banner. Maybe it means something different, or maybe the person who made the banner didn't bother with the apostrophe. I suspect this may provide a clue as to the average quality of the fics posted on it.

Her notes at the end of the first chapter say:

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whew...I hope you like it. The last time I tried this fic out...let's just say I still have singe marks...

Setting aside the fact that none of us flamed her except for a very generous definition of the term, she apparently hasn't considered changing anything in response to our criticism. No, we couldn't possibly have a point, we're just meanies.

Also, you know... it's a .22. I mean, being shot by any gun is serious, obviously, but a .22? And she's bleeding profusely as well as her lungs being filled with blood... uhm. Well. Hmm. A .22? Really? A .38 or a .45, sure. I would even buy the bullet doing weird bullety things, like ricocheting off her spine or corkscrewing in the body, because, well, weird stuff like that happens. But a .22? Really?

Wandering Critic wrote:

The actress who plays Abby is 40 years old, so I have to question whether people would refer to her as a "little girl" and a "young lady". If that's canon, I sit corrected.

"Sweetheart"? "Little bird"? "Cupcake"? I'm gonna wind up diabetic if this continues!

Yeah, she looks like this though:

Spoiler:

The character's age, according to the website navy-cis.de, is "not disclosed (late twenties)".

This is Abby and Gibbs together... I'm not surprised she would be seen as a "girl" in context.

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Wandering Critic wrote:

She's changed her pen name to "Herves vuin". And she's migrating. A bit of quick Googling turned up this -- the details match. ILE, you need to check out the Elvish and see if she's learned anything.

Wow, it looks like she took my advice. She took her Mary Sue to a community devoted to writing Mary Sues; she's using my name lists and phrasebooks, gave the two 'Sues two different stories. They're still horrendous Sues. And, this place, Haldir's Whores, looks like a 'Sue goldmine.

I assume they didn't use apostrophes in the site title or banner because they might need them to make plurals later on, and didn't want to use them all up.

On a less sarcastic note, if I were going to watch some episodes of NCIS, which of the ones available on Hulu would you experts recommend to get a good feel for the series? There's a plot bunny peeking out from under my desk.

Would someone happen to have a link to where Mrsphan first showed up, or was that on one of the other boards?

That was on the House. I managed to save the snark before it exploded, but I figured mrsphan was done with, so I didn't repost the snark.

The actual fic that was the subject of the initial snark was taken off FFN by mrsphan - the one linked above at Haldirs Whores is a repost of half of it (it was basically two separate stories in one, one about Legolas and a Sue, the other about Haldir and another Sue).

Keith Fraser wrote:

Moreover, counting the number of reviews on FFN is a very bad way of measuring a fic's quality. It depends on things like what fandom it's in (i.e. the number of potential readers), how many chapters it has, its posting schedule and so forth.

By that reckoning, My Immortal would be the best fanfic of all time. :roflmao: