It is unbelievably rude to post misspelled, badly punctuated, ungrammatical  stories to newsgroups.  There are rules in the English language (strange as they are) for a reason.  Their reason is mutual  intelligibility.   If your method is to write something down and post your first draft as soon as you finish, - STOP- step away from the keyboard - take a firm grip on your knickers - and DON'T DO IT!  Then no one will get hurt.

Proofreading GOOD.  Mindless posting BAD.

A cliché is called a cliché because we've all seen it a million times and NEVER NEED TO SEE IT AGAIN, ok?

Get a plot or at least some character development, PLEASE?

Don't rewrite Titanic, or Gone With the Wind, or Ice Castles, or Love Story, with X-Files characters and expect anyone not to be nauseated.  Get an original thought  in your head, please, you're supposed to be done with plot regurgitation by 6th grade.  Educational theory says so. 

If you have ANY QUESTION WHATEVER about the meaning of a word -  DON'T USE IT!

A Thesaurus is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the untrained. 

Get yourself a good dictionary.  Use it, and don't rely on Microsoft Word's thesaurus function.

Verb tense.  It's important. 

POV shifts need to be signaled so we don't all go mad.  So then Mulder looked at me and said, "Why yes, Scully, "My Heart Will Go On" IS my favorite song."   And he was kissing her and she tasted like a yummy, yummy banana split with cherry sauce on top.  Scully could feel his tongue shoving down her throat until we all gagged because we couldn't tell what was going on or who the viewpoint character was!

"The Ice Queen" was invented in fanfic.  It's not really part of canon.  Don't use it.

All serial killers are NOT drooling, and very stupid, maniacs.  See Ted Bundy.

Understand human anatomy.

Mulder's nearly 40, see understand human anatomy.

Being prolific is not the same as being good.

Apostrophe's have no place in plural's. 

For the sake of Pete, people, figure out ahead of time what you want to say.  Loose is not a valid substitute for lose.  Nor is quite for quiet or throws for throes.  These are not just spelling mistakes.  They're big blinkin' neon signs that the author doesn't give a wet sneeze about the reader.  Oh, this angers the Great Arctic Witch.

If you DO indeed respect your audience and wish to give them the gift of your words, you must:  Think first, write second, and proof third.   None of these steps are negotiable. 

Ice Queen is NOT canon.  Neither is a physically abusive Bill Mulder.  Or a pill-popping Teena.  And Bill Scully is NOT an asshole, he's a concerned older brother, anguished over the destruction befalling his family.  Mulder and Scully never met before 1993.

With the exception of an occasional moment of ass-kicking ("Just make it happen!") Dana Scully is a soft spoken person, even when excited, and does not use exclamation points.

Interpret it however you like, but get the *facts* straight:  Krycek kissed Mulder on the CHEEK, not the lips.

People, C.G.B. Spender is NOT Mulder's father.  The scene in "Amor Fati" in which Spender tells Mulder he's his father was PART of the dream.  The lights went down after Teena left the hospital room.  What more could the director have done to signal the end of reality for Mulder?  Put up a little caption that read, "Warning:  Dream Sequence Begins Now"?

If you don't know how to spell a character's name, LOOK IT UP.  One more "Krychek", Frohicke", "Langley", or "Buyers", and I'll turn all of you into toads. 

Fanfic is a plain text world.  Deal with it.  Eschew &@5Smartquotes&@5, auto-ellipses, and file://weirdo formatting//.

Strunk and White are not deities, but they did have a few very good points.  Read up.  It's called "The Elements of Style", people, and it may be old but it's the frikkin' BIBLE on style issues.  (Here's a good example:  Run your latest story through the "find" feature of your word processor, and if the words "rather", "quite", or "very" show up more than once apiece, you need this book.  Just trust the WW of the Y on this one.)  You are always free to depart from the guidelines every now and then, for expressive purposes, but you have to adhere to the rules first in order to depart. 

Mulder has never listened to Sarah MacLachlan in his life.  Thusly, it would never occur to him to quote song lyrics to Scully, saying "This is how I've always felt!" Not even if they ended up in a vanilla scented bath together.

Just because your spellchecker, didn't catch the poor punctuation and
mis-Capitalization doesn't make; it OkaY.

Scully is not a virgin.  Scully is not a virgin.  Mulder is not inhumanly enormous.  Simultaneous orgasm, every time, as choreographed by a man who apparently watches erotica without even masturbating, is nearly IMPOSSIBLE.

Margaret Scully has probably met Walter Skinner once.  She is not in love with him; she is not interested in marrying him and adopting Agent "Fox" Mulder as a son-in-law, and none of them will give any of them first edition copies of Thoreau for Christmas and kiss, giggling, under the mistletoe.  She is a decent Catholic woman who has her own life, and probably doesn't spend all her time thinking about the fact that Fox and Dana should be sleeping together, and how this is somehow of tremendous import to her, and society in general. 

Walter Skinner has probably met Margaret Scully once.  He is much younger than she is, and is not in love with her either.  He is not a jolly old father figure, nor is he a smarmy double agent.    He is a smart balding man who actually has a life outside Mulder and Scully, and probably does things, frequently, that have nothing to do with Fox or Dana or their respective mothers.

Just because it's okay for Mulder to call Scully "Dana" in the throes of passion doesn't mean it's okay for Scully to call Mulder "Fox".  He's mentioned this specifically.  It's a terrible name.  No one should be burdened with it, and if I ever found myself having to whisper it seductively in bed with someone, I would laugh so hard, I'd lose my dentures.  And I don't even have dentures.

Anthropomorphization of inanimate objects is a powerful weapon and should be used only by those who are licensed to yield it.  If you think the image of objects basking in the glow of Mulder and Scully's love is a good idea, YOU FAIL.  Do not operate heavy machinery.  Not even smiling, sighing heavy machinery. 

Characters who smell like fruit should be packed up in crates and sent back to Florida. 

And I don't care how Gossamer your web is.

My biggest bone of contention is summed up in the word, "Children". 

Good for catching.
Great for eating.
Fun for scaring
But shitty reading.
So of my warning,
Please be heeding...
Fanfic writers....GROW UP!

This is to say, if you write like a child, reserve posting for the local kid's page. 
Save the fanfic for the grown-ups.

If yoo are on a compooter than ya have a spel chekker.  USE IT.

Tense are not just the things I like to bang on to scare lost campers either.  Please, if Scully is talking to Mulder, don't drift between the past present and future!

And speaking of children, SCULLY CANNOT BEAR ANY!!  At least not without a goodly bit of medical assistance.  This means that no matter how mighty the Main Man Mulder's macho manly might may be, he can't give rise to a miracle child in that first blessed boinking with Scully in an earth shattering spurt of love.  Any miracle babies of love conceived in fanfic will be promptly shoved into my gingerbread oven and baked into tiny little adorable saccharin sweet baby cookies for myself and my fellow witches to quickly devour them then vomit back up.  And speaking of vomit, authors who regurgitate the names Fox William or Dana Katherine or Melissa or Samatha and spew them onto the miracle children they create, well those authors will be subjected to tortures most foul!!

Language.  Mulder and Scully are in their 30s, mmkay?  They do not speak in the hip trendy vernacular of today except to mock the hip and trendy.  Scully would self lobotomize before ever uttering the words "hottie" or "babe".  She is a medical doctor and prone to over verbalizing with medical jargon.  This is not "Quantico 90210", mmkay?

Mulder spends his lonely hours musing over his destiny and the upcoming colonization of the world, not mooning over the possibility that somewhere in the world, hopefully in Georgetown, lies his "soul-mate" pining likewise for him.

And in addition to not being children, speaking like children, or being able to bear miracle children, our intrepid heroes do not groove to bubblegum pop.  I guarantee you that if we could somehow catch a glimpse of their respective CD collections, Brittany Spears, Shania Twain, Ricky Martin and Celine Dion would NOT be amongst them.  Hmm, despite the fact that they are always in the car, how often do we see them grooving out??  Gee, hmm, how about NEVER?  References to today's hit songs in fanfic?  They don't impress me much.  If for some reason you are forced at gun point to refer to a song which inspired you, take a quarter, buy a clue and do it with a modicum of restraint.  This isn't American Top 40, it's fanfic.  Don't name the artist and title a kajillion times.

Vis:
Mulder:  "Oh Scully, I have longed to tell you how I feel about you ever since we were partnered together on the Xfiles six years ago.  I just heard a song on the radio that made it all so wonderfully clear.  It is called "Lady" by Kenny Rogers.  In that song, Lady, by Kenny Rogers, Kenny Rogers sings...."Lady...I'm your knight in shining armor and I love you...there are so many ways I want to say I need you...let me hold you in my arms for ever more...."
Scully:  (after shuddering) "Gee, Mulder.  Um, Wow.  You know, I was just listening to the radio while I danced around my apartment in my panties and bra when I heard 2 songs by a band called Nine Inch Nails which finally made clear to me my feelings for you.  The first is called "Closer".  In "Closer" the singer, Trent Reznor, sings; "I wanna fuck you like an animal...I wanna feel you from the inside...my whole existence is flawed, you bring me closer to god..."
Mulder:  (Eyes widen as he begins to get a little pale) "And the second song?"
Scully:  "Oh yes -- the second song, which makes me think of us which is also by the band "Nine Inch Nails" is called "Fist Fuck".  Mulder??  Mulder?"
My point here is not everyone likes the same music people.  Don't lock out readers by assuming M & S share your tastes, whatever they may be. 

What little we know of them is called "canon".  This means something is pretty well established and accepted as a given.  We know Scully is a petite redheaded skeptic forensic pathologist.  Please do not beat us over the head with that.  Mulder is a brooding self absorbed red green color blind brilliant Oxford educated FBI trained profiler.  He discovered the X-Files.  Scully was assigned to be his partner to debunk his work.  Sound familiar??  It should.

His first name is Fox but he expressly asked her to NEVER call him that.  EVER.  Scully knows this, having chastised her mother and sister for calling him that.  Oh and Krycek's name is spelled liked that K-R-Y-C-E-K.  Not Krycheck, Crychek, Cryczek or RiceChex.  MMM-kay?

We know Skinner was in the marines and in the 'Nam.  We know he is big bad and bald.

Please don't fire from the "Canon" unless you are licensed, OK?  Children shouldn't play with the big guns. 

And finally, don't make me wash your mouth out with soap.  If you are going to write RST-or "Resolved Sexual Tension" and offer us a glimpse of the heavenly bliss that is Mulder and Scully's first joint sexual foray, try not to copy the tired old words of the trillions of authors who have gone before you in doing the SAME EXACT THING. 

It's called plagiarism, kids.

To help you, here are some words to avoid in describing their miscellany tingly places:  Core, center, special place, or hoo hoo.  For Mulder:  Throbbing anything, bulge, hardened shaft or engorged member.  If you can't take the heat, then write yourself out of the love kitchen.  Let them hold hands and swoon.

As to my rating of cruelty?  Nine out of ten kiddie authors devoured.  Save yourself from this gruesome fate by checking your work, finding a beta and maybe giving a little thought to the whole thing. 

Just my two cents.  

Just because YOU'D like to do Skinner doesn't mean Krycek does.

"Senseless use of quotation marks, she said."

Any mention of anything CELINE DION or any reference that shows the author watched and liked TITANIC.  My heart has moved on.

Any reference where the name "Mulder" could easily be replaced with "Old Yeller" (i.e.: loyal, faithful, true, puppy-eyed, you get the gist).

Any story that hasn't yet been kissed by a Spell Checker or ever once danced with a BETA.  Ask for BETAs!!  People will help you!!

Scully and Mulder did not know each other as children or adolescents.  They just didn't.  Now stop writing that and think of something else. 

Whereas the occasional Christ-esque reference is ok, any reference to Mulder as any form of actual deity in any religion across the known galaxy is *not*.  I don't care if you think it's brilliant to pronounce him the Grand Peener-Weener from the dark side of Uranus, he's a man first.  Start there.

Potty-Mouthed  Scullys and Violent-For-No-Apparent-Reason Mulders.

Keep Buffy and Angel out of it.

CROSSOVERS:  Xena lived 2,000 years ago.  Or 3,000.  Whatever.  She's not going to pick up Scully at Safeway and sweep her away to a life of adventure and Sapphism.  Not gonna happen.  No "JAG" (off) crossovers, please.  No Buffy.  No "Blair Witch Project".  It's just stupid and lazy, kids.

BAD SEX: I gave up reading Penthouse years ago.  (Honest!)  Now I can read about all the throbbing members and heaving breasts I want on the Internet.  Yes, all the "rock hard, ten inch purple helmeted warriors" and "dripping wet, hot tight love clams" a body could ask for are available 24/7 for (practically) free!  Isn't technology wonderful?  The quality is generally as bad or worse, but at least it's written mostly by women.  So now I know what women REALLY want:  David Duchovny.

HARLIQUENISMS: Mulder is NOT a romantic guy.  His idea of entertainment is watching porn videos, ok?  So I don't think we should be reading stuff like, "I love you, Dana Katherine Scully!  We were destined to be together forever!"  If they're destined for anything, it's to be abducted by aliens and whisked off to Alpha Centauri for painful medical experiments.  "The X-Files" is about fear and loathing, death and decay.  Not hearts and flowers and cute little puppy dogs.  That's why I like it.

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