Lemming, that's me

[katallison]

There's something rather paradoxical about following the crowd under the banner of posting unpopular opinions, isn't there? In any event --

1. musesfool said this first, but I'll endorse it: humor is much harder to write well than tragedy, angst, etc. (You will notice that I do not write humor. My mama may have raised a lazy child, but she raised no fool.)

2. Just because fan A, whom you don't know from Adam, posted criticism of a story by your good buddy fan B, or publicly disagreed with her, does not mean you are obligated by the laws of friendship to rain down anathema upon fan A's head, post nasty comments in her LJ, or bad-mouth her throughout fandom. You are not doing your friend a favor by acting this way; you're making her look bad.

3. It is entirely possible to have no opinion or strong feelings whatsoever about RPS one way or the other.

4. While having a story beta-read is in general a good idea, it is not always necessary. Some of the finest stories I've read in fanfiction have been entirely unbeta'd.

5. Slash stories do not need to have any sexual content whatsoever. Nor is explicit sex necessary to create an atmosphere of skin-shivering bone-melting erotic tension; in fact, the former can often work against the latter.

6. There are people whose idea of fun is having analytical, theoretical, meta-type discussion. The fact that they enjoy this in no way whatsoever affects your ability to have fun in other ways. They are not engaging in these discussions merely to make you feel bad. They are just having fun, and it is truly no skin off your nose.

7. The fact that someone has a big name in fandom does not mean that she is ipso facto an egomaniacal diva.

8. The people who write the episodes can make mistakes in characterization (to say nothing of continuity), just as fan writers can. Just because something happened on the show does not obligate you to treat it as holy-writ immutable canon.

9. Bad fiction may be displeasing to me, may make me unhappy, but it is not morally wrong or evil. I have yet to be convinced that bad writing actually *hurts* anyone. There is no moral onus upon me to condemn it, mock it, or do anything whatsoever about it.

10. In general, fandom tends to overvalue clever snark and to undervalue compassion.

Comments

[destina.livejournal.com]

While having a story beta-read is in general a good idea, it is not always necessary. Some of the finest stories I've read in fanfiction have been entirely unbeta'd.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Kat. It so totally depends on the writer. In 99.9% of cases, I'd say a story can't be hurt, and can possibly only be improved, by a beta. Even if it's just to weed out the typos.

Number 10 is my favorite on your list, tho. Most definitely.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Oh, no question that getting someone to read a story over is almost never harmful and almost always helpful. But there's, like, this article of faith in fandom, it's like a moral imperative, that if you *don't* use a beta you are a bad, bad, writer who doesn't care about her work. Which I don't think is always the case.