Web Video / The FanFiction Critic

"I'm the FanFiction Critic, and this is what you do with a B.A. in English!"

"In the future, if I happen to review your fanfiction, I'm not doing it to insult you; I'm making fun of your poor writing skills."

— Episode 1 "Disney Seven"

The FanFiction Critic is a former reviewer on YouTube. Her forte was Exactly What It Says on the Tin, bad fanfics. But not just any bad fanfics, no. She reviewed some of the worst fanfics out there, armed only with her sarcasm and her never-ending fountain of Shout Outs to things much, much better than the things she reviewed.

Her YouTube channel has been closed. She used to have a blip.tv channel, but it has since been deleted.

Not to be confused with The Fanfic Critic, although the two of them are friends.

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The FanFiction Critic provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • In "Human Centipede Double Feature", she admits that "Centipede Crufts" would have been funny if the author clarified whether or not he intended it to be an In Name Only creature feature about a guy entering a giant bug into a dog show. She gives it a D- instead of her usual F as a result.
  • She admits that the opening line to "Oops-a-Daisy" was actually pretty good, as it really grabs the reader's attention (though she doesn't like that it's a sentence fragment).
• Author Catchphrase: Several reviewed fanfics have these to the point where she makes fun of it, especially "ne'er-do-wells" and "furry friends" in The Disney Seven.
  Critic: Stop saying "furry friends"! Because every time you do, I picture this! (Shows picture from Anthrocon)
• Be Careful What You Wish For: During "Face the Strange," Shadow the Hedgehog hits on the Mary Sue, prompting the Fanfiction Critic to be repulsed and ask if they can please have something that's not bestiality. Unfortunately, the fic practically Gilligan Cuts into Dumbledore's incredibly out-of-character pedophilia.
• Berserk Button:
  • Homophobia, see the review of Face the Strange.
  • Most Mary Sue tropes.
  • Run-on sentences really tick her off.
  • As shown in the review of Marie, she doesn't take kindly to plagiarism.
  • And, oddly enough, Breaking the Fourth Wall, unless you're Deadpool or Lovejoy, of course.
  • She doesn't take kindly to writers who can't take criticism, as shown by some of her response videos.
• Big Word Shout: Lets out a big "Why?" during her review of Face The Strange when Jack Skellington makes an appearance.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: Invoked by the woman herself. The sheer depravity, stupidity, and Values Dissonance of the writers she reviews occasionally forces her dispense one of these. Paraphrased.
  Critic: Okay, let's just be clear, sweetie. If your uncle is molesting you, it doesn't count as cheating on your boyfriend.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In episode 39, whilst reviewing Quasimodo and Marie's Baby, pointing out all of the flaws in the author's description of Marie's pregnancy.
  Critic: That's not what a craving is. A craving is when you wanna eat something specific — for example, if you really wanna eat chocolate. Or spaghetti. Or chocolate-covered spaghetti.
• Catchphrase:
  • The page quote.
  • "Oh NO!"
  • I'd like to thank _____ for sending me this fanfiction. I'd also like to kick them in the shin, but we can't always get what we want, now can we?
  • [Musical artist], play me out!
  • Show, Don't Tell!
  • *insert Precision F-Strike here* *Clunk*
  • When reviewing something Harry Potter-related, "Oh, Harry Potter. What can really be said about?"
• Cuteness Overload: Her reaction after finding pictures of cute hedgehogs in her review of "Sonic Fights Robotnik".
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • In all of her reviews, though you can't really blame her.
  • Diane, the text reader, acts like this in the review of several of her reviews.
• Drinking Game: She often starts one up when a fic gets particularly bad, usually when she finds something incredibly repetitive or annoying about it (Purple Prose descriptions of a Mary Sue, run-on sentences, etc). She tells her viewers to join her if they want, but warns them not to drive and to have their hospital number on speed dial in case of alcohol poisoning.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: She was gonna review good or bad fanfiction. Rule of Funny nixed that.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "The FanFiction Critic', obviously, mostly due to the fact that it's part of how she introduces herself at the start of every video. Her real name is Linnie, which generally only her online friends and hardcore die-hard fans call her.
• For Science!: In the introduction of episode 43, 'The Human Centipede Double Feature', she says this word-for-word whilst explaining the premise.
  Critic: It was a shocking horror film about an evil German scientist who wanted to join three people togther, ass to mouth, for the sheer purpose of- um... hang on a minute, it was 'cause he wanted... because of, um... it was... um... h-he did it for... science? Oh hell, do people even need reasons for doing anything anymore?
• Henpecked Husband: Discussed in her review of a bad fanfic of The Twilight Zone (1959). She shows an example from "Time Enough At Last" and takes pity on the husband in question.
  Fanfiction Critic: Why would you marry that? Just why?
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After reviewing her own fanfic, which follows onto the beginning of her review of Back to the Frollo, where she's plastered/recovering from a hangover.
  • The beginning of the second The Human Centipede fic.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • During her review of legolas by laura.
    Critic: It's five-O'-clock somewhere, right?
  • Reappears in several subsequent reviews, usually of particularly heinous fanfics. She often makes a Drinking Game out of it when there's something repetitive and annoying, encouraging her viewers to join in but to also have their hospital on speed dial, and not to drive.
  • The Mary Sue in Forbidden Fruit is so ridiculous that she eventually just comes back from Diane's reading already draining her flask.
• The Long List: In one review, she gives a list of warrior goddesses (complete with pictures) to comment on how she always saw nice, fluffy Incorruptible Pure Pureness goddesses in fanfic and actual mythology wasn't like that. Sometimes her explaining what's wrong with a fanfic can go into this territory as well, because most of the stuff she reviews, well, does have a lot of things wrong with it.
  • In her review of "Sonic Fights Robotnik", she starts off by listing every art form that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has managed to dominate, concluding by saying that she wouldn't be surprised if the series was eventually adapted into a full-length feature film^note the OVA doesn't technically count.
• Noodle Incident: In her review of the Labyrinth/The Chronicles of Narnia crossover "Something in the Eyes", she does something offscreen that apparently gets her banned from her local church. The only detail we get is that it involved David Bowie.
• Old Shame: invoked The Fanfiction Critc Reviews Her Own Fanfiction. This Fic in Question.
• Older Than They Look: Even though she says in every episode that she has a B.A. in English, people frequently mistake her for a teenager due to her youthful appearance. She's actually twenty-seven.
• Orphaned Series: It's starting to appear this way since she hasn't updated in over a year. Confirmed on Twitter.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: Has this for Jareth.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Done on multiple occasions, most notably with "Face The Strange" and "Back to the Frollo," where she calls the writers out on their homophobia and misogyny.
• The Rival: Whenever she sends a bad movie to They Made Me Watch This, he sends her a bad fic.
• Running Gag:
  • The Cube of Profanity becomes this in some reviews.
  • In Episode 18, referring to the illustrations of girl!Harry, girl!Ron, etc. "You can never un-see that. Ever."
  • Every time the stuffed wolf plush appears, it has a different name (examples include Smoopykins, Mister Snickerdoodle, Fluffykins, and Grumpytumpkins).
  • When reviewing If I Was Your Nazi, because she's never played Kingdom Hearts, her inability to distinguish between the two characters named Riku/Rikku becomes one (not helped by how nobody has characterization here).
  • Playing "Twilight Time" by The Platters whenever she reviews bad Twilight fanfiction.
• Sanity Slippage: During the worst of her reviews, she edges into this.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: A rare humorous version. She feels dirtied by quoting a racist fanfic and begins scrubbing her mouth with a toothbrush. Overlaps with Shower of Angst below.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Has one in the form of Detroit.
• Shout-Out: All of her reviews include several.
• Shower of Angst: FanFiction Critic had to keep on taking showers because she was reading a fic involving Bella Swan getting raped by Edward Cullen and Bella was okay with it. Later parodied, as she leaps up for showers repeatedly over the course of a single review. Eventually, she has a toothbrushing of angst after quoting a racist fanfiction, claiming it made her mouth "feel dirty."
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Diane the text reader in the review of "Seven Years Later"
• Special Effects Failure: In-universe, the Fanfiction Devil's Horns.
  Critic: They look like steampunk goggles painted red.
  Devil: They're just filed down like in Hellboy!
  Critic: Oh, the costume store was out of horns?
• The Swear Jar: She uses the Cube of Profanity. She mentions in one episode that once it fills up, all the money will be donated to the Red Cross.
• To the Pain: Her descriptions of what she'd like to do with the author of Back to the Frollo get vivid, especially when she dresses up as "The Fanfiction Devil" and begins describing the center of Fanfiction Hell. It's a running trend during the worst of her reviews.

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