If you just luuuv the babbiiies in fanfic and can't stand to see anything said against the little darlings, then skip this.

Attention authors who write little children in fanfic:

Judging from the fic I've been reading lately, this will likely be a revelation to many of you, but do try to grasp the concept despite the overwhelming shock it gives you. Here it is; ready for it?

Unless a child has some sort of physical deformity or speech impediment, most children do not speak with a lisp! Not if they've been raised correctly.* I understand that this may be a hard thing for you to comprehend, but not every toddler out there uses Ws in place of Rs or THs in place of perfectly good Cs and Ss. When a child does so without any good cause it's not ooohhh soooo cwuuuttee, it's f**cking annoying!

I want to take a spork to a story -- or better yet, the author -- every time that lisp appears, because it's never there for any purpose but a misguided and ineffectual attempt to endear the pronunciation-challenged screeching sproglet precious little angel to the reader. All it ends up doing is making me want to grab the brat and duct tape its mouth shut until it learns to drop the baby-speak.

Yes, it is actually possible to write dialogue for children without resorting to stupid dialect to make them "sound" like kids. If you weren't aware of this, then please, for my sanity and the greater good in general, stop writing kiddy dialogue until you've actually heard a child speak outside of a speech rehabilitation center.

So very much no love,

Me

* Taught to enunciate instead of encouraging baby-speak simply because the idiots parents think it's "cute."

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