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FanFic Critic
Among the things that Doug Walker and his site, That Guy With The Glasses has to answer for, and there are many, it would seem that he is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the rise of the ‘Internet critic’ phenomenon.
Lulz historians have oft-noted that the JewTubes are clogged with a veritable stinking sewage backlog of aspiring video game reviewers and YouTube commentators – pudgy, dysfunctional aspie shut-ins who haven't spoken to a normal person in years and, forever ostracized from the adult world, are trying (and failing) to carve a profitable little e-career for themselves in the open trench full of other unattractive neckbearded autists doing exactly the same thing and ruining the Internet in the process.
However, as Charles Darwin theorized and the later research of Jeff Goldblum proved – faggotry will find a way, and the latest evolutionary variation to drag its writhing, misshapen carcass from the primordial ooze that is YouTube is the concept of the Internet critic.
These are the bold young pioneers who, having seen all the success that Doug Walker has had with his character, the Nostalgia Critic (who is basically just a more abrasive version of Walker wearing a hat) and all the money that he's managed to make armed only with a camera, some video editing software, some VHS tapes of shitty old '90s kids films that nobody cares about and some very meagre comedic talent, shouted “Me too!” in a million nasal, whiny voices.
As well as giving these unemployable, unlikeable basement-dwellers a new hobby to fuck up the Internet with (as well as bronyism, weeabooery and the furry fandom), it has also fostered in them a delusional belief that, for some reason, merely by taking up the station of Internet critic they are henceforth immune to and above critique themselves. As a result of this, these self-proclaimed 'critics', despite being more than willing to share their vitriolic hatred of anything they deem as less than perfect in their sight, are more often than not among the most thin skinned people on the Internet.
There can be no better example of this sort of hypocrisy than one, Megan Wessels, or as she is better known on the Internet, The FanFic Critic.
Who Is The FanFic Critic?
The FanFic Critic is a fugly, stringy-haired, bug-eyed spinster that yaoi fangirls across the Internet tremble at the mere mention of the name of, clutching their Kingdom Hearts mpreg fic to their breasts in a terrified hush.
As the toughest and, in her own words, the craziest critic in the world of cultured, highbrow literature that is fanfiction, the FanFic Critic has made quite a name for herself as a force to be reckoned with... Although quite why she felt there needed to be a serious critique given to fanfiction, of all things, is anybody's guess. At least the losers reviewing children's movies from the '80s and crappy old video games for obselete consoles nobody plays any more are typically reviewing what is supposed to be a professional product deemed ready for mass consumption. That's part of the humor and makes them even more deserving of ridicule.
Most fanfics, however, are written by neckbeards and teenage girls, often with one hand on the genitals and the other on the keyboard. Bad regular fanfics are typically written by young teens or mentally stunted autistic types making what the FanFic Critic does the equivalent of doing serious reviews of a kindergartner's art, pointing out shit like flawed perspective and bad anatomy.
Videos
It is assumed that the Fanfic Critic wanted to start a show wherein she would criticize the work of her fellow aspies so that she might look normal by way of comparison. This is something that she, of course, fails miserably at.
The FanFic Critic's videos start with a long, boring, self-indulgent introduction sequence that sometimes takes up a good minute and a half, which shows the FanFic Critic wandering through the hallways of her sister's house as the theme music from Sweeney Todd (her favorite movie) plays in the background. It is thought that this segment is intended to make the FanFic Critic look creepy and deranged, but it fails in this. It does highlight what a fat ass she has, though.
The FanFic Critic reviews that most beloved of Internet classics, Sonic-Chew.
After a brief intro, the FanFic Critic proceeds to read bad fanfiction chosen by herself and her subscribers verbatim and attempts to be witty as she offers her own criticism, pathetic attempts at sardonic humor and often very bad, inaccurate grammar advice, all the while blatantly ripping off the Nostalgia Critic (complete with an opening catchphrase of "Hello, I'm the FanFic Critic! I read it, you listen!" and even going so far as to wear a black blazer in her latest episodes). While dramatic readings can be very entertaining if done correctly, FanFic Critic fails to put any emotion or life into her voice as she reads, droning on and on and on in a monotonous voice for what feels like forever. Episodes typically run somewhere within the forty minute mark, but have been known to last up to an hour. Actually reading the fanfiction she critiques is about a thousand times less excruciating and awkward than hearing her read it aloud, particularly if there is weird sex stuff involved (as there should be in all truly good fanfiction).
Because serious and debilitating mental health disorders are the coolest thing ever, The FanFic Critic tries to cultivate an image of being a barely-restrained psychotic, frequently mugging the camera, gurning and making exaggerated 'ker-azy' faces. Sometimes she menacingly plays with a straight razor, presumably because Sweeney Todd had one and he's teh sexx. However, because, like most internet reviewers, she is an incredibly bad actress and because she is completely unable to emote through her eyes her attempts to look sinister and intimidating instead have the complete opposite effect, making her look like a spastic.
To date, the FanFic Critic has produced ten series of her show and, at the present time, has over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube further proving the old adage that you can never go broke by appealing to the lowest common denominator. It is speculated by some that a significant percentage of the FanFic Critic's fanbase consists of the following two camps:
- Fanfiction writers cosying up to the FanFic Critic so that their crappy fanfics will be ignored.
- Fanfiction writers who use the FanFic Critic as a hired e-thug with which to attack the fanfiction of other writers that they have personal feuds with.
Given that the world of fanfiction is predominantly female dominated and how bitchy broads get over dumb shit like that, this doesn't seem too unlikely.
Reaction Toward Criticism
Mortal minds cannot fathom how incredibly vast an understatement it would be to say that the FanFic Critic reacts poorly to criticism.
The FanFic Critic's message to the haters.
In an incredible and beautiful irony, the FanFic Critic, despite revelling in her status as a self-proclaimed 'critic' and being only too happy to point out the flaws and faults in everybody else, will not tolerate criticism of herself in any form, however minor, and has been known to block users from her channel at even the slightest implication that her output is less than perfect. She sees no difference between constructive criticism and trolling and has, on multiple occasions, blocked entirely innocent people on the assumption that they are trolls.
Because of her thin skin, lack of self-awareness and complete and total inability to laugh at herself, however, FanFic Critic is, ironically, extremely easy to troll.
Personal Life
The FanFic Critic lives with her fat sister in Massachusetts, although this is a fairly recent development and, previously she lived with her parents. Indeed, in a few of her earlier videos, if you listen very closely, you can hear the FanFic Critic’s mom telling her to keep it down and be quiet on several occasions – truly, saying what we were all thinking.
Despite being in her early twenties, the FanFic Critic is aging very badly and looks as though she’s in her mid-thirties. She is, by her own admission, still a virgin - as if this wasn't evident by several spurious claims made by her in her reviews (among them that penises do not throb and that it is impossible for a woman, however aroused she may be, to become 'sopping wet'). She apparently dated a guy for two years, but it never went anywhere - something we can take to mean 'I am frigid as fuck' – and likely spends her evenings alone in her room, fapping to Johnny Depp posters.
-
Derrr... -
Hurr durr... -
-
Nearly there!
She does not appear to be studying, in any sort of training or higher education and, instead, works a nametag job at the fast food restaurant, Wendy's (an establishment which seems to have some sort of sperg quota to fill, given that a couple of other high profile autists have worked there at some time or other).
Todd666
Like any good fanfic protagonist, The FanFic Critic has a dark and sordid past filled with all kinds of dirty secrets that she'd prefer to keep clandestine as their reveal could undermine the reputation she has worked so hard to create for herself.
In the FanFic Critic's case, her dark secret is Todd666, a user profile on Fanfiction.net, last updated on Christmas Eve, 2008, a year before the first episode of the FanFic Critic's webshow was first uploaded in June, 2009. This profile was created by the young Megan Wessels before she embarked down the dark path of fail and faggotry that lead to her rebirth as the FanFic Critic. Attributed to the Todd666 profile is a series of fifteen stories by Ms. Wessels, all of which are, yes, you guessed it, poorly written Sweeney Todd fanfiction, most of which have titles taken from Evanescense songs.
Now, let us apply the FanFic Critic's own standards of critique and examine her literary endeavors. Let us see what happens when Encyclopedia Dramatica attempts to out-FanFic Critic the FanFic Critic.
Characterization and Accuracy to the Source Material
Ms. Wessels appears to ship the characters of Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett and most of her stories feature the 'Sweenett' tag - fans of the musical and fans of the film will note that this pairing is actually quite out of character and not at all accurate to the characterizations of the original story; Sweeney Todd, pining for his dead wife, Lucy, was, at best indifferent to the character of Mrs Lovett, viewing her as a convenient way to dispose of the bodies of his victims and little else. Indeed, later on in the story, he even openly expresses disgust towards her and, when the true extent of her deception and manipulation of him is revealed, murders her by locking her in her own oven - quite a different outcome from the lovey-dovey romance that the FanFic Critic imagines. Also, OMFG SPOILERS.
Lack of accuracy to the source material notwithstanding, if one holds these stories up to a level of literary critique it really opens up a window into the mind of the author and it becomes obvious that, like many fanfiction writers (and a few hack professional ones) Megan Wessels appears to be living vicariously through the character of Mrs Lovett, imagining a perfect, whirlwind romance with a sexy, dangerous gothic bad boy who looks like Johnny Depp, but where everything is completely safe and on her terms.
Why exactly the FanFic Critic would feel such a strong connection to Mrs Lovett, a reprehensible, selfish and frankly rather pathetic character whose unrequited love for a man she could never have directly lead to the deaths of countless innocent people, which ultimately, she profited from is up for debate.
Interestly, there is one story, Back to the Past! in which Megan Wessels herself actually enters the world of Sweeney Todd and wacky shenanigans ensue! This story has the distinction of being possibly even more self-indulgent than any of the others, as Megan's self-insert is in full obnoxious 'deadpan snarker' mode making pisspoor observational wisecracks about the actions of the cast that the author clearly thinks are incredibly clever and witty. At one point, Sweeney Todd (understandably) tires of her faggotry and explodes into a rage, something that, despite him being a dangerous mass murderer who has coldly slaughtered hundreds of people, Ms. Wessels informs us doesn't intimidate her in the slightest.
—Yeah, them serial killers. What a bunch of drama queens! | ||
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Use of Language and Historical Accuracy
As the story of Sweeney Todd is set in Victorian London, most of the characters have Cockney accents. The FanFic Critic represents this in her stories by having her characters speak in her idea of what a Cockney accent sounds like, a sort of hideous, warped and vaguely racist pidgin English that she spells out phonetically.
—Gor bloimey, Meary Poppins, love a duck and strike a light. | ||
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If we were being generous (why?) we could say that, if anything, the accents in FanFic Critic's stories are actually closer to Scouse or even that of the stereotypical pirate, but both are still nothing like Cockney.
Her Cockney characters even THINK in Cockney accents (because if your accent means you rarely pronounce a letter, you'd spell and think without that letter too, right? I mean, not pronouncing every T in a word means you literally don't know what a T is, amirite?)
In addition, FanFic Critic does not appear to do any form of research regarding the time period she is writing about, as this exchange from her self-insert fic, Back to the Past! shows...
—The FanFic Critic, telling someone from a time where families were so poor they sold their children into sex slavery or as expendable labor in workhouses, just how difficult it is living in New England, circa 2008. | ||
Another good example of the FanFic Critic's ignorance regarding the time period she is writing about is her insistence that Sweeney Todd wears boxers. A massive anachronism, given that boxers didn't exist as a form of underwear until the 1940s. In the Victorian era, the time that her stories are set, men would've worn longjohns or possibly briefs and may even have gone commando in the earlier years of the time, since underwear is a Victorian invention. Women didn't even wear panties until the 1800s.
Which brings us to...
Erotica
Sadly, and frankly rather surprisingly, unlike certain other individuals there isn't a lot of lulzy porn in the FanFic Critic's writing. If her favorites on the Todd666 FanFiction.net account are anything to go by, however, she certainly does read a lot of porn, but sadly, her own canon has but two sex scenes, written in a very vague and non-descriptive manner. While uncomfortable to read, they aren’t terribly interesting or lulzy.
What is apparent after reading FanFic Critic's sex scenes, however, is that sexually, she is what the BDSM community would patronizingly refer to as 'vanilla' and what the rest of the world would describe as 'boring as fuck'. As has been mentioned before, she lives vicariously through her fanfiction via the character of Mrs Lovett and, being as she is still a virgin, given to childish romance novel daydreams of what her 'perfect first time' would be like, both of her sex scenes feature Mrs Lovett being sweeped off her feet 'bridal style' and taken gently and understandingly by a man who truly loves and cares about her. The fact that this same man is a serial killer appears to be immaterial.
With this in mind, it is interesting to note that the very first episode of the FanFic Critic featured the FanFic Critic reading Mrs Lovett's Lesson a BDSM fapfic about Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett, featuring bondage, rape and sexualized murder.
The fic is actually pretty tame by the standards of the average EDiot, but it so rustled the FanFic Critic's jimmies to see the character of Mrs Lovett whom she has so much emotional investment in and whom she uses as her self-insert treated in this way. No, it would not do. Like Annie Wilkes in Stephen King's Misery, FanFic Critic would make them pay for murdering her favorite character.
And thus, a legend was born.
Never mind that this particular fanfic was still much, much better written and more accurate to the source material than hers ever were.
Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation
Considering that the FanFic Critic is only too happy to nitpick at other people's work and tear them a new one over minor grammatical and spelling errors, you would expect her own work to be completely free of any kind of mistakes of that sort, right?
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There's also this, which isn't technically from one of her stories, being as it is from her profile page, but considering her massive overreaction to another fanfic writer forgetting to capitalize the letter 'i' in 'I' seems a glaring and egregious error.
Inteet, some have nodiced dhad dhe FanFic Cridic seems do have a real problem tifferendiading bedween Ds and Ts in her work, somedhing dhad even a small chilt can to! Whad dha fuck, Fanfic Cridic?
Feud with the BLACKbusterCritic, Racism and Getting Kicked Off of Media-Slayer
Last Thursday, FanFic Critic posted an entry to her blog on deviantArt entitled Idiots of the Internet, attacking a fellow YouTuber with the word ‘critic’ in his name, BLACKbusterCritic. BLACKbusterCritic found out and all hell broke loose...
FanFic Critic eventually accepted that she was talking shit and grudgingly apologized, but as soon as the BBC told her that she accepted her apology and the harsh light of scrutiny was turned away from her, she ran immediately to YouTube and thumbs upped and left supportive comments on every anti-BBC video she could find.
Which would’ve been fine, albeit childish, had one of those videos not featured someone calling BLACKbusterCritic a nigger and saying he should die.
As a result of this whole lulzy drama, the good people at Media-Slayer, the site where FanFic Critic posted all her videos turned against her and, quite rightly, sided with BLACKbusterCritic , resulting in FanFic Critic being given the boot from Media-Slayer.
—Regina Novakova | ||
FanFic Critic has since become something of a figure of mockery on Media-Slayer, where they’ve given her the affectionate nickname of Vegan Missiles.
The Net Dwellers
Due to her lack of success in becoming a part of her idol, Doug Walker's That Guy With The Glasses circle-jerk (which is a bit like the retarded kids at school not letting you eat lunch with them) and after the debacle with BLACKbusterCritic and Media-Slayer, the FanFic Critic decided to set up her own site to showcase her reviews called The Net Dwellers.
A much more accurate and truthful name for it would be The Basement Dwellers, however, as the site is a veritable hive of autism with even well known, documented lolcows like former Trollbuster Anthos the Crimson Impulse and man-titted aspiring noise musician, NueGristle87 calling the site home.
As administrator of the site, the FanFic Critic rules with an iron fist and, in her eyes there can be no crime worse than trolling. Or, for that matter, any form of criticism whatsoever. Indeed, it would seem that rather than a place where critics can argue and discuss the merits of a piece of work freely and without fear, The Net Dwellers is little more than an enormous hugbox populated by a bunch of coddled, easily offended special snowflakes, where nobody is ever wrong, everybody is always right and any kind of negative feedback or criticism, however valid or constructive is expressly disallowed and met with swift bannination.
Recently, however, this 'anything goes' policy where every retard with Asperger's and an opinion was free to wipe his ass with his webcam whilst screaming into a headset mic and upload the results to the site without any form of quality control whatsoever has lead The Net Dwellers into a series of problems.
It seems that the FanFic Critic was too much of a Jew to purchase an actual URL for her little tardhaven, instead constructing The Net Dwellers using 'free' webspace owned by Webs.com. Apparently, it never occured to her that this 'free' website might have bandwidth caps or otherwise expect any sort of money in return for hosting her shit, leading to Webs.com contacting her on the 6th of June, 2012, to inform her that they would be discontinuing their service to her unless she upgraded to a pay account. According to the Webs.com pricing page, FanFic Critic got like half a gigabyte's worth of bandwidth and 40 MB. That it lasted as long as it did is actually rather impressive considering all the shit flung on there.
Despite it only costing an estimated $3.75 a month to run the site and despite having a shitload of money from working at Wendy's and not paying her sister rent or contributing to any utility bills, FanFic Critic still didn't want to pay it. Instead, she took to YouTube to address her public, announcing with typical detachment from reality, that the whole debacle was simply part of a scam by Webs.com to extort money out of the famous and world recognized FanFic Critic, as opposed to simply a case of her going over her bandwidth caps and being ignorant of how 'free' websites work.
Amusingly, free hosting sites like Webs.com actually explicitly mention the limits of their free packages when new customers sign up for one and even display this information in a handy, easy to understand chart. Which would imply that the FanFicCritic didn't read it. How ironic given that her entire 'career' consists of her reading things.
On December the 3rd, 2012, the FanFic Critic posted the following statement to The Net Dwellers, sealing her 'spergers-addled site's fate:
Well, whattayaknow? Turns out, if you put a muzzle on any form of criticism, you also stifle creativity - and when a site has as little creativity as The Net Dwellers to begin with, that's no good thing. People cannot give honest feedback in an environment that's suffocating to them and where they're constantly looking over their shoulder afraid of being banned because some over-sensitive special snowflake took their constructive criticism personally and got their poor widdle boo-boo feelings hurt.
That and, y'know, who the fuck wants to watch some ugly NEET shut-in manbabbies sperging about inconsequential bullshit? Nobody.
However, every cloud has a silver lining and those who want to follow the autistic antics of FanFic Critic and all her TGWTG-aping pals are advised to look to The Net Dwellers' sister site, Manic Expression.
Conclusion
She wasn't a match for such craft, you see,
And everyone thought it so droll.
They figured she had to be daft, you see,
So all of 'em stood there and laughed, you see.
Poor soul. Poor thing.
External Links
- Her awesome looking official site.
- Her deviantArt page - Complete with screencaps of her 'pwning' people in the comments section of her YouTube videos.
- Her Facebook
- Her Facebook fanpage
- Her Twitter
- Her Tumblr
- Her Reviewers Unknown wiki page
- FanFic Critic’s TV Tropes article (that she wrote herself).
Not To Be Confused With
- The Fanfiction Critic - Another reviewer of fanfics on YouTube, marginally more attractive as well as being much less autistic and lulzy.
Other Internet Critics
Other examples of Internet critics include:
- The Nostalgia Critic - Their spiritual liege whom all other Internet critics strive to emulate.
- All of the other faggots on That Guy With The Glasses.
- The Hardcore Kid
- Rowdy C. Moore
- Cole Smithey - Chris-chan's douchenozzle neurotypical half-brother, the self-proclaimed 'Smartest Movie Critic In The World'.
- BLACKbusterCritic
