Quotes / Dear Negative Reader

Anime & Manga

For those who didn't properly read it: You are free to attack the work, but please read it properly before you review it. And does it really matter if the author is old or young? If you're going to attack the author's character, shouldn't you first reflect on your own poor character?

— Onryo-san, The Unpopular Mangaka and the Helpful Onryo-san

Film

"Okay this next song goes out to the guy who keeps yelling from the balcony. It's called 'We Hate You, Please Die.'"

—Crash, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Live-Action TV

"For 'fans', they sure do complain a lot."

— Dean Winchester, Supernatural ("The Monster At The End Of This Book")

"Dear sir, I wish to complain about all the complaints featured on this programme."

— Monty Python's Flying Circus

Music

Well, here's a song I've written, specifically for you
Who sit down in the audience and talk through all I do
I cannot understand it cause I'm pretty good, you see
So there must be something wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with me!

—Eric Bogle, "Bloody Rotten Audience"

Podcasts

"I don't know Ronda Rousey that well, but I do know that she kills women. And obviously THAT'S SOMETHING I LOVE LOLOLOL MISOGYNIST MAFFEW"

—Maffew, OSW Review on WrestleMania 21

Guest: Here's the reason why I still say it's undercutting. I don't think that was your intention. The reason I say it's undercutting is because at the end of the day when you're having a discussion like that— having a thematic discussion like that, what you end up ending on is usually the one that's considered the "correct" position, especially if that one that you end on doesn't get countered in any way. And while I would argue the arc itself should be a counter, when we end up getting to, like, #43, #44, where Sonic is reflecting on everything and still just decides to say, "I'm standing by my positions instead of getting into my fear", you can, like— I get that they're supposed to be counter-arguments [and] they're supposed to be two sides of that argument, but when one basically gets a page and the other one gets an entire half of the chapter, and that half of the chapter is never given a proper direct counter argument, how is that not undercutting?
Ian Flynn: I can see where you're coming from, but at the same time, this book is not meant to be a balanced moral debate.

— August 23rd, 2022 BumbleKast episode, discussing fan criticisms towards how Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW)'s main character and themes of mercy and justice are handled

Video Games

"This is like a free dessert after a luxurious meal that was prepared free of charge. In a restaurant with this type of service, I don’t think there’s anybody who would say, “Change this to a meat dish!!” Yet, I’m told [to do that] about Smash Bros. But, I guess since a lot of them are children, it cannot be helped."

—Masahiro Sakurai, Nintendo Everything

Web Animation

"The Brawl review brought in an unprecedented — and yet not entirely unexpected — amount of negative feedback, and I thought rather than just dispense bile all the time, it would be nice to sample some for a change...So without further ado, go Team Retard!"

—Zero Punctuation, "Mailbox Showdown"

Web Original

But then again, what do I know? Sean Young herself dropped by in 2011 to voice her opinion of this article. I’ll let her have the last word:

Dear Mr Lebeau, you actually must be full of it, or just another member of the psychopathic community. You have no idea what you are talking about as far as it concerns descriptions about me. What is it about you psycho’s? You are the one spreading toxic waste, not me, as evidenced by your meaningless dribble here on your pointless blog. Get a life! Sean Young

—Le Beau, "What the Hell Happened to Sean Young?"

The thing about the stupid is that they think they're just like you and me. As far as they know, they're clever and observant. And when they think they smell hypocrisy, they are on the case!

For a guy bent on putting down wow players you sure do know a thing or two about the game.

Beastmaster hunters and 25 man raids: Things that players would know. Are you a dick or an Idiot?

Yes, over the course of an article describing my experiences playing World of Warcraft you spotted that I've played it. I hope the soft spot of your skull held up to all that brain throbbing, you first term abortion.

—Seanbaby, "10 Species of Angry Commenter You Encounter on the Web"

Matt: We should probably be careful in just how we talk about this movie, though, else director Uwe Boll will haul off and challenge us to a boxing match. We will lose.
Chris: That more than anything else is what I think defines Uwe Boll: A guy who trained himself as a kickboxer so that he could literally fight anyone who said his movies sucked, because he knew this was exactly what was going to happen. In a way, I admire that Batman-esque sense of preparation.

—Chris Sims and Matt Wilson on Bloodrayne

"Oh, my God. You are so right. If you ignore the bad parts of shows, then they'll be good! Because then all you have left is the good parts! How come no one else is doing this? Holy shit, literally every show in existence is a 10/10 now, this is revolutionary! ...Why haven't we thought of this before? Oh, because I'm not a tool, that's why. I forgot. And for a minute there I thought I might be able to fit in."

— Demolition D+ on Aldnoah.Zero

...I attended a convention recently where a former Big Finish employer recognised me and went out of his way to make me feel uncomfortable, making jibes about the nastier side of fandom and hack blogs (whilst looking directly at me in the audience). I heard him discussing the blog in the foyer in a negative light; fair enough. It's not to everybody's tastes. It's something that I am used to. You cannot please everybody all the time and I have had some pretty damning things thrown at me, both by people who create these stories and those who enjoy them. I've developed a pretty thick skin. But after the convention I thought to myself what is the point of this if you are just annoying the creators of this stuff?

—Joe Ford

Laura: I’d also like to note that there is literally only one scene where any female characters appear in either of these issues, and this is it. Naturally, they do not speak.
David: OOH LOOK AT LAURA HUDSON AND HER RADICAL FEMINIST AGENDA. There you go, commenters. I saved you the trouble!

—Laura Hudson, "The Complete and Utter Insanity of Batman Odyssey"

Around these parts, we have a soft spot for Andrea Tantaros, the Outnumbered host who gave us our new site mantra: 'a bunch of angry chicks that just hate on really attractive women.' But according to Tantaros, who is now criticizing Chrissy Teigen for being vocal about her own opinions, pretty women should shut the fuck up too... So, just so we're clear: unattractive angry women should be quiet and beautiful stupid women should be quiet. Where does that leave Andrea Tantaros?

—Jezebel, "Fox News Host Thinks Both Pretty and Ugly Women Should STFU"

Every single one of those correspondents received a detailed response from us explaining why they were mistaken. To date, we haven't received a single apology.

—snopes

"I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!" cry the critics, usually [anons], whenever RW says something they don't like. For how can a site that calls itself rational not see the obvious superiority of whites, the efficacy of homeopathy, the advantages of libertarianism, or the truth of the Bible?

—Rational Wiki

Note: Now comes the part where I preemptively defend my argument against potential criticism. Your high school English teacher no doubt taught you to do this when writing a persuasive essay to make it as air-tight as possible, but you also probably went to high school before internet writing flipped this concept on its head. After all, the more glaring errors and idiotic arguments in an online article, the more people will rip it to shreds in the comments section, inadvertently driving up the number of page views and the ad revenue earned by the website.

—Wrestlecrap, "The Piñata on a Pole match – Vince Russo, Pendejo Extraordinario"

Multiple times in his rants, Dylan claimed negative reviews are the mark of a horrible person. You’re wrong, Dylan. Negative reviews are the mark of somebody who didn’t like your work. That’s all. They are not abuse. They are not attacks. And they are not indicators of society’s impending collapse. Get over yourself. Taste in literature is subjective.

—Adam J. Whitlatch, writing on Dylan Saccoccio's meltdown after a one-star review of The Boy and the Peddler of Death

There is this guy, Noah Berlatsky. He is one of these writers that has made a living being a professional The Only Righteous White Man Alive. Much of what he publishes amounts to an attempt to represent himself as a beacon of political morals shining out from a fallen gender and race. In order to play that game, though, you have to constantly be identifying others who share that identity in order to assert your superior morality. So Berlatsky is one of those critics of mine who reads my work with manic attentiveness, poring over my tweets, looking for something to seize on for one of his goodness performances. It seems exhausting, but I guess it’s a living.

—Frank deBoer

Web Video

Jordan Shanks: I don't think he understands that he is not in a physical realm. Or the fact that he is on my Facebook page. Can you imagine if that was the physical world? He walked into my house and said, "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?! FUCK OFF!!!"

— Friendlyjordies, "WHEN BOOMERS ATTACK"

"Oh, and as a little side-quote for all those fucking brainlets out there who like to chime in with insightful commentary like 'The Drinker is just a hateful, toxic misogynist who can't stand anything with strong female characters, diverse casting or non-heterosexual representation,' well, you can go ahead and suck my big, hairy Scottish balls, because first up, you're clearly missing the entire point of my channel, which is hardly surprising, considering most of you have an IQ roughly equivalent to a soft-boiled egg. And secondly, according to whatever ridiculous mental gymnastics passes for logic in your case, Arcane should be the very epitome of everything I hate most in life, and yet here I am, fucking loving it."

— The Critical Drinker on Arcane

"'How much fun do you think you'd have watching Emile play this game if this got a remaster?' NO. NO! Don't wanna do it! No! Don't wanna do it! Ignoring the parts that drove me insane about the Prime 1 playthrough, I can't stand the comments on the Prime 1 playthrough. I can't do it. I can't fucking do it. Half the comments in the Prime 1 comments fucking forget the fun of just exploring shit, so when we lead Emile on a different path that still leads to something, they get mad. I'm just sick of it. So... So, no! I'm good. We're probably never doing another Metroidvania again, unless I'm in charge, uh, on TRG."

— ProtonJon, on the comments of the Metroid Prime collab on The Runaway Guys

Real Life

Wow, I guess you're right. It must be fiction.

— Dwayne McDuffie, responding to criticism of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien.

"With American Gods, I found myself having written this peculiarly divisive book. I really hadn’t expected the idea that it had a solid audience of people who really didn’t like it for one reason or another, and who were incredibly vocal and articulate about why they didn’t like it."

— Neil Gaiman

"One thing that I just had to bust up on was, I saw one translation in which the whole game, it must have been a thousand pages long, all done in the Japanese syntax with the verb at the end. So like, 'I you and they want and have a good time to go'...I think nobody really knew at the time the degree to which these games would have a life of their own and the users would come to own them and be very defensive about them. And possessive."

—Ted Woolsey on translating Final Fantasy VI into English

"Now people will come up to me, thinking they’re keeping it real, and they say, 'I hated you in that last movie!' And I’ll look at them and go, 'Well, I think those extra 20 pounds look good on you.'"

—George Clooney

My pal and writing partner Rob took almost a perverse pleasure in going on IMDb.com for months before the opening, and seeing all the vitriol lining up against the movie. I’d rather take an acid bath, myself, but… one theme he kept seeing from the Comic Book Guy-types there is that this isn’t an original idea. Quite right, actually. It wasn’t wholly original, like just about everything else, ever.

—Bill Corbett on Meet Dave

Goodnight HULKAMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks

—@Hulk Hogan, 10.16.11

"Boy! We got a lot of shit about that, you know? Why does it look more futuristic than Kirk’s ship? I guess something bad happened, like the economy took a downturn in the Federation, because Kirk’s ship looks like a jalopy. I don’t know, must have been some cut backs there. Who cares? You’ve got to at some point take some license."

—Brannon Braga on Star Trek: Enterprise

"It was only later that I realized that the older fans had reacted badly to it. So I went, 'Well, it's a shame that they have, but it wasn't meant for them.'"

—Matthew Graham on Doctor Who, "Fear Her"

"My very brief acquaintance with Tumblr is that it's a place where people who hate me gather."

—Steven Moffat

If the story I want to tell isn't the story you want to read, there are no hard feelings on my part.

— Krakro, writer of Spinnerette!

"Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

— George Lucas on selling Star Wars to Disney

"Look, anytime you throw a punch at the audience, there are going to be people who appreciate it and love it and want more. There’s going to be other people that are going to try to hit back. What bums me the most is that people who are reacting negatively are not responding at all to the craftsmanship and to the incredible performances and dedication of my actors, because they’re undeniably great. It’s funny, those are the same people who also write about how there’s nothing ever new going on in film. Suddenly, you do something really new and some people don’t dig it."

— Darren Aronofsky on mother! (2017).

"The weirdest thing about getting a death threat from a male body builder-slash-stripper on Facebook is when you click on his profile and see that you have one mutual friend, and then having to hit your friend up and say, ‘Hey man, can you tell your buddy to stop saying he’s going to murder me?'"

—Hannibal Buress

There’s a lot of people I love on Twitter, but unfortunately you can’t read those without reading deranged neocons telling you you should be buried under a pile of rocks.

—Lena Dunham, executive producer of Girls, on quitting Twitter

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

—J. R. R. Tolkien, introduction to second edition of The Lord of the Rings

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