A Thought About FanFiction
I made the mistake of going through the posts at anon_trek, which I knew better than to do. I don't care for fandom wank. I understand the need to vent (which is exactly what I am doing), but doing it in a public forum? Most of this was more than "It really annoys me when *this* happens", but some of them were rather humiliating. Authors who were fairly popular were called stuck up and the works they produced "mindless peices of crap".
This wasn't just one person. This was a COMMUNITY of people doing this. One person took a work from a fairly popular Jim/Bones author, and literally ripped the thing to shreds sentence by sentence. A few latched on to "Switch" and started ranting about how it's only popular because it's "long" and "full of angst and cocktease." and "has no real characterization" (At which point, I blinked and thought "have they even read this story?" No, they probably haven't.)
People who do this baffle me. Is everyone going to like every piece of fiction that is ever written? God no. I for one don't care for things such as BDSM, dub/non con, and anything along those lines. There is a handful of parings I don't care for. And that's all fine and dandy. I'm sure there are a ton of people out there who hate sappy romances, anything with angst, and a billion of the other things I like to write on occasion. I personaly don't care for the Spock/Kirk paring. But I would never dream of going toverizonhorizon and tearing their story apart simply because of that. (On that note, she writes amazing fic. Read it :D *pimps*)
Whatever happened to just pressing backspace? Why is there a need for "Your story suck, and this is why"? Constructive criticisms are one thing, but outright flames are another. I fully admit I went through there to see if I appeared. I know the story which introduced the character "Maggie" wasn't exactly the most popular in terms of fiction. I'm kinda surprised it wasn't mentioned.
I think the majority of readers forget one thing: The majority of author's don't write for the fandom. They don't write for the readers, or to please anyone. They write for themselves. It's an exhilarating feeling for me to get a story out of my brain and on to paper. And I love it when people find that same tale just as fun. To take a work that someone had worked on, and loved, and poured their hearts into and rip it to shreds is nothing short of heartless. It shouldn't matter if you don't like it. No one deserves to have that done to them.
What are your thoughts?
This wasn't just one person. This was a COMMUNITY of people doing this. One person took a work from a fairly popular Jim/Bones author, and literally ripped the thing to shreds sentence by sentence. A few latched on to "Switch" and started ranting about how it's only popular because it's "long" and "full of angst and cocktease." and "has no real characterization" (At which point, I blinked and thought "have they even read this story?" No, they probably haven't.)
People who do this baffle me. Is everyone going to like every piece of fiction that is ever written? God no. I for one don't care for things such as BDSM, dub/non con, and anything along those lines. There is a handful of parings I don't care for. And that's all fine and dandy. I'm sure there are a ton of people out there who hate sappy romances, anything with angst, and a billion of the other things I like to write on occasion. I personaly don't care for the Spock/Kirk paring. But I would never dream of going toverizonhorizon and tearing their story apart simply because of that. (On that note, she writes amazing fic. Read it :D *pimps*)
Whatever happened to just pressing backspace? Why is there a need for "Your story suck, and this is why"? Constructive criticisms are one thing, but outright flames are another. I fully admit I went through there to see if I appeared. I know the story which introduced the character "Maggie" wasn't exactly the most popular in terms of fiction. I'm kinda surprised it wasn't mentioned.
I think the majority of readers forget one thing: The majority of author's don't write for the fandom. They don't write for the readers, or to please anyone. They write for themselves. It's an exhilarating feeling for me to get a story out of my brain and on to paper. And I love it when people find that same tale just as fun. To take a work that someone had worked on, and loved, and poured their hearts into and rip it to shreds is nothing short of heartless. It shouldn't matter if you don't like it. No one deserves to have that done to them.
What are your thoughts?