Fanfic squickination. (It's a word. I just made up.)

[annerbhp]

So, there's a lot of fic out there that bothers me. Poor grammar, bad spelling, improbable (even anatomically impossible) porn, absolutely terrible characterizations, etc, etc. These bug me, sure, but they don't really upset me. It's just par for course. And it's not like I pay for fanfic. It's a place for experimentation. A place to get better, if

Comments

[miri_d]

Same. And I think that's why we try to pass off their relationship in fic as "not right", because Sam behaved in ways that are only possible for what we know of her character if she was acting the way she thought she should act as a woman. ETA: I think I misread your comment, which takes skill because it was only one sentence. But YES, and then Sam was with him, because of what I mentioned above...is what I was trying to say.

That sentence was poorly constructed. Anyway.

At the same time, when I see people try to address the weirdness/upsetting-ness of their relationship in fanfic, a lot of the time writers make him into a genuine/borderline stalker/creeper, and that bothers me on multiple levels. People can be misguided and clingy without being stalkers or coming back after they've broken up and ~resorting to rape~, and as someone who has trouble with social signals, I always find that ^ resulting treatment of the third party in a love right-angle really upsetting. It's dehumanizing. Secondly, although Pete was kind of weird and buying the house without Sam went really far, I feel like to a certain extent, he was only responding to the information Sam gave him, and is almost as much of a victim of the societal expectations in Annerb's post as Sam was, or as a lot of fanfic is.

But feel free to disagree, those are just my thoughts, and I'm probably the least intelligent and least socially-aware commenter here. (And FWIW, I really hated Pete when that whole relationship arrived on the show, and it continues to rub me the wrong way.)