Andrew Troy Keller

Who's on first? This fucker right here.

You may think fucker is a harsh way to refer to him, but by the end of this article you'll know I went easy on him. Yeah yeah yeah, maybe he's Humanitarian of the Year in RL. I don't care if he's the Pope. If I met him in RL, I don't know what I'd do first: Punch him in the face or spit in his eye. The English language, a battered child if ever there was one, is lesser by the fact that he publishes his "work" in it. Were this the 1980s and I a CIA operative, I would suggest teaching him Russian so that he could write for Soviet audiences. I might be convicted of crimes against humanity, but at least the Berlin Wall would fall just a little faster.

There used to be such a thing as serial writers. Each month, you'd get a new chapter in a book by Charles Dickens. ATK is not that kind of serial writer. ATK is a serial writer like the Hillside Strangler was a serial killer. And ironically enough, I'd rather read a book by Kenny and Angelo then A...T...K. Yes, I just compared his "fics" to brutal murder-rapes. That's the most apt metaphor you'll ever find without cracking open some Shakespeare.

Being in fandom while he's writing is kind of like being in Washington while a sniper's at large. Even if you don't know of him, I'm sure you get headaches, nightmares, anxiety, climaxing in the dreadful feeling of either relief that he has written in a fandom you do not share or the agony that your writing stands side-by-side with this aberration of literary merit. The world is a poorer place because he's writing. If he were to get run down by a car, the sun would shine brighter, the air would smell cleaner, and it's possible that cancer would finally be cured.

Strong words, I know, I know. Why is this man such a horrible writer?

Read any one of his stories (or Exhibits A-Z, as I like to call them). This one, for instance. Congratulations. You've read them all.

It's a basic tenet of writing that characters should be different. They should have different voices, but more than that, they should actually be different. You wouldn't write Superman diving through the air firing two guns simultaneously like Chow Yun-Fat. You wouldn't write Indiana Jones saying "You're my bitch now" to Marion Ravenwood. You wouldn't give Darth Vader the same dialogue you'd give Will Smith. That's because you're a writer. Maybe not a good writer, but you at least *write*. This man Copy-Pastes. And possibly defecates. The Ctrl-V-Shit keys on his keyboard are probably worn to nubs by now.

Somehow, by some perverse miracle of bad writing, ATK has managed to miss this basic truth of fiction. It is possible that he has similarly missed that solid matter is impenetrable and spends his time walking into walls before "writing", if you can call it that. All he does is plug different characters into the same sex scene, with a little half-hearted... no, tenth-hearted characterization before it. Sometimes, just for variety, he throws in some rape. Not that I'm saying that non-cons is wrong, but not even rapists deserve to have their act written about by ATK.

The tender act of lovemaking is forever sullied by this man's virginal attempts to approximate it. Not that I mind virgins writing smut either, but at least they've put some thought into it beyond penis + vagina = fun. Or vagina + vagina = fun, which may be the worst thing to happen to the gay community since Anne Heche turned straight again.

I don't know why he keeps writing. Surely, there's only so many characters who can experience "pure, untamed erotic" and enjoy every minute of it. For the first time in their lives. You'd think by now, given how many literary dumps he takes, that one character would have experienced PUE twice, but I would rather pencil in more time for my root canal than go through his work to find out. The only conclusion I can reach is that the first time he wrote something, someone, probably his mother or someone he keeps locked up in his basement, gave him encouragement and he's just been plugging away at that tiny nugget of feedback ever since.

It is also possible he is just an attention whore trying to get exactly this response. For clogging up the internets with that much shit, sir, you deserve it. Joke's over. Please stop. Bye-bye now.