Okay. Okay. I’m not one to take criticism personally. I’m not. I’ll listen to you until you’re blue in the face, respecting your opinions and thanking you for your thoughts at the end. Sure, I might disagree with you and argue about it, but I’ll respect you the whole time. That just makes me so ticked…

Now, I need to rant. Those of you whole don’t want to read a rant, stop now. There’s not a thing in this journal but powerless ranting.

Ready? I freaking am.

I got a PM on FFN a bit ago for one of the stories I am working on called ‘Family’. Dunno how many of you have read it since I haven’t uploaded any of it here, but it’s a Danielle/Vlad fic that’s centered around their lives. It’s full of horrible things, not the least of which is child abuse.

A fact that I freaking STATE IN THE SUMMARY then RESTATE at the top of the chapters that it directly involves. If you don’t want to read it, you’re more than warned. Right?!

Anyways. So I got this PM, which I’ve copy/pasted for you here with just a bit of editing to make it post-able. I put in the asterisks, deleting the words that should have gone there.

You evil **. I hate you. Y did u wrote that? Child abuse is not a ** thing to write about! Its not good. Vlad did not abuse Dani and he sure as ** hell didn’t get abuse as a kid. Hes a powerful adult and really famous and popular. Hes not abused and u don’t know what ur talking about. Ur gonna make pplz want to abuse kids when u write this **. U shold delete it and go **. Ur ruining the show and destroying canon.

Okay, I do give this person a certain amount of credit. Why, you ask? Because he or she sent me a PM rather than an anonymous review on the story. Either they are confident enough in their thoughts to risk a rebuttal from me (which they so got. SO got.) or they were too ignorant to think it through before they sent it. But, on the off chance they were willing to risk the scathing rebuttal I sent and were trying to be strangely honorable about their review (which I’m not sure about, based on the language and grammar… but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt), I’ll not state their name here. I’m not sure if this person is a DA-er or not, but if they are I hope they read this since it’s a bit more well-stated than my reply.

First of all, I figure I’m pretty open minded about reviews and criticisms. I know we’re all different and we all have different opinions on various topics. I’m good with that. You can think however you please as long as you don’t force your thoughts on me. BUT.

It took me years and years and years to get to the point where I truly thought I deserved respect. I’m finally at the point where I refuse to disrespect myself and I’m sure as cookies not going to let someone else disrespect me. I’m willing to listen to you backwards and forwards but do not swear at me and disrespect me like that.

The instant you swear at me I go from a person interested in hearing your thoughts to staring at you like you’re a crazed lunatic. I grew up in one of those homes where that review would have gotten my mouth washed out with the most disgusting soap available. Repeatedly. I don’t do well when sworn at (when you mean it – I get jokingly sworn at all the time and that doesn’t bug me).

Second – don’t you dare send me a review, criticizing how I write, when you can’t put together two sentences without falling back on TXT lingo. At least that the TIME to SPELL OUT your words! There’s no way that I’ll EVER listen to you if you can’t bother to at least do that. If you can’t respect your own opinions enough to use actual ENGLISH, I can’t for a moment believe that you could possibly respect my story or my thoughts. It’s hard for me to conceive that you UNDERSTAND what I was trying to SAY in MY story when you can’t take three seconds to use WORDS.

This, however, is not really what got my hackles raised. I can take bad grammar. I can handle bad spelling. I can handle swearing (although I’ll lash back at you). I can even take criticisms. Normally, I’d laugh at this PM and delete it.

What got me ticked to the point of TEARS was the IDEA that I CONDONE CHILD ABUSE!

Let me set this VERY straight for anyone reading this EVER. Child abuse is a heinous and evil crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I see child abuse every day – I’ve worked with kids who have suffered through some of the worst our ‘civilized’ society can throw at them – and I come down hard on abusers. They should be locked up and forced to pay for top-quality therapy for the kids whose lives they’ve ruined. Too often I saw kids that were abused, beat-up, angry, helpless, and left out to dry… and living with people too poor to send them to a counselor to try to get over it.

I hate child abuse. It’s WAAAAY up there on my list of evil crimes. I’m writing this story IN PART to try to educate people ABOUT child abuse and the problems that come with it. Believe when I say I know some of what I’m talking about. No, I’m not a psychologist or a therapist or a counselor or anything, but I’ve looked into those kids’ eyes and seen the torment and the helpless anger reflecting back at me. I’ve worked with them, watching helplessly as young kids spiral into rages and tears at something I can’t understand. No one who has done that could EVER in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM believe that abuse in any form is an acceptable thing.

Yes, I agree that you can’t pigeon-hole child abuse and my story doesn’t fit most cases. Not all abuse follows the same patterns. But the story I’m writing IS possible and not as out-in-the-ballpark as this person would make it sound. Quite a few children that come from abusive homes think it’s their fault. That’s one of the marks of abuse. It’s more than plausible that Danielle thinks that it’s her fault that Vlad had to hurt her.

As for Vlad, yes, I made him a victim of child abuse as well. That’s gonna make some people mad, but I don’t care. This person has implied that Vlad can’t be a victim and that I’m ruining canon.

My biggest rebuttal for this is that I DON’T CARE. I’ve made it very clear that I don’t WATCH this show. No offense to Butch Hartman, he created a great idea, but I don’t want to watch a kids’ cartoon. I don’t care about canon and I don’t care that I butcher it on occasion. I write my stories from the characters that are in MY head, not from HIS show.

Even after writing DP fanfics for… almost two years now, I guess… I don’t know a lot of things. I didn’t know until recently that Lancer wasn’t married. I still don’t know all the canon characters… and I never will. That’s possible because I don’t care to find out. I write my characters and I couldn’t care less about Hartman’s characters or how he created them.

THAT SAID. Oh, it’s sooooo possible and fits into canon that Vlad’s somewhat tormented and abused. Don’t come back at me and say different, there isn’t a hint of Vlad’s past on the show (that I know of). Vlad is a vindictive, tyrannical businessman with few ethical boundaries. He gets whatever in the world he wants and will get it however he pleases. He’s willing to possess others, ruin their lives, and destroy decades of work in order to get money or power for himself. He tortured Danny (a kid) on at least one occasion that I know of, used Valerie as a pawn to kill her friend, and was more than willing to kill Danielle to get what he wanted. And that’s just what they showed on a CHILDREN’S CARTOON.

Many kids that suffer from child abuse have trouble forming attachments and being empathetic towards others. It’s truly creepy to look into the eyes of a kid with an attachment disorder – you can see the darkness in their eyes. These are the kids that go out and kill squirrels, kittens, and puppies and laugh about it while the innocent creature screams and dies. These are kids that cannot trust, will never have a true friend, and only think about themselves. Every thought is for what would be best for them.

That’s what I see in MY version of Vlad. I see him having suffered as a child and not knowing how to act in society. He can’t have real friends – he doesn’t know how – and will never have a true family. When I think of Vlad and his attachment to Maddie, I cry for him. Here’s a guy that finally met someone who TRULY cared for him (maybe not loved, but truly cared), perhaps after decades of being ignored and mistreated, and he instantly attached to her. He loves her because nobody else loves HIM. He can’t imagine that anyone else would ever like him or care for him, so he follows her with a mindless obsession. In his mind, he needs Maddie.

I cry for Vlad. I pity him. I don’t hate him – although you’ve got to wonder, after all the junk I put him through.

Torturing, killing, manipulating, friendless… those are all earmarks of a kid suffering from an attachment disorder and probable abuse as a child who grew up to an adult without any sort of help. And believe it or not, those ruthless, do-or-die, will-do-anything-to-better-myself-and-my-business, unempathetic people make GREAT businessmen. They often don’t have emotional or relationship-based successes, so they build themselves around MATERIAL successes. Money, buildings, things… football teams…

Also, This is MY VLAD. Not your Vlad. Not Butch’s Vlad. Not whomever’s Vlad. MY VLAD.

As for Vlad abusing Danielle… a lot of people who were abused as children turn around and abuse as adults, merely because they don’t know how else to act. In my story, Vlad seriously doesn’t know how to be a father. His parents abused him to the point where he ran away as a young teenager to live with his grandparents. He wasn’t ever given a good role model of how to act. He’s got no choice but to act how his parents did, even if he knows it’s not the best thing in the world to do. He’s trying to do the right thing. Danielle isn’t following his directions, his rules, so in order to keep her safe, he hurt her. It doesn’t make sense to you and me and, I’m sure, it doesn’t really make sense to Vlad either. But it’s the only thing he knows how to do!

Either way you cut it, in my head, Vlad had a bad past. It’s the only way you could possibly EVER justify the things he’s done on the show. Maybe not abuse – that’s my addition – but there’s no way he had a sparkling happy childhood. A ‘normal’ person wouldn’t torture Danny, possess others to steal their things, obsess over people, or leave their ‘clones’ to die a painful death without a tear or a care. SOMETHING happened to him, and I believe that in my story – as it unfolds – I’m making a good case towards abuse. Not the only idea, but it sure as hell is AN idea. My idea.

And I’m sticking to it.

Go ahead and hate me – stop reading my fics. Quite frankly, I won’t miss you. After all I’ve been through and the YEARS of work I’ve done to turn my life around from a shy withdrawn ugly duckling that would have accepted (even agreed with) that PM that I’m not worth anything to a confident and powerful young woman that can bite back as good as I get, and I will not be sworn at. I will not be yelled at. I will not be disrespected like that. Do not ever imply that I agree with abuse in any form.

I can’t believe that I’ve just wasted the past hour+ being ticked furious about this stupid PM.

*grr*

-Cori

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