Fandom Rant
There's a 'fic' that's been recently published in the Beyblade section of ff.net. I say 'fic' because, well, to clue you in, its title is "The Beyblade fandom is turning to shit" and I've spent the last couple of days trying to figure out why it's irritating me to the point where I can't look at it.
Because, you know. It tells the truth. The fandom is dying; it's full of bad fics with bad OCs and OOCness and bad writing. I can admit that, this isn't some stupid uberprotective knee-jerk reaction along those lines. Fandom is dying. It haemmorhaged all its best authors a few years back and now it's on the equivalent of dialysis. It's not a fact I like but it's a fact I accept. I said a long time ago that I would be in it until the end.
About the only thing said that I 100% stand behind is people need to review more. Including me. Especially me. I don't read that much anymore, but I don't review even a fifth of the paltry amount I read. That's a reflection of me though, as opposed to the fandom, I've always been a lazy reviewer, but there's no doubt that the fandom would be more active if people reviewed.
I just look at this thing and see all the reviews it's had - some of them from authors I respect, some from people who've been on the site for longer than I've even been reading (2004, fyi) all from people agreeing with it wholeheartedly - and think, what are you doing? Why are you not writing fics and reviewing fics and doing your bit to save the fandom?
What we've got at the moment isn't really a load of -bad- writers. It's a load of young writers, and they're making the same mistakes that we all did. I mean, I can look at that index of future topics in this fic and match them, one by one, to fics I wrote when I was 13/14. And yet, at the time, I loved what I wrote! I was so proud of it! If a fic like this had come up when I was 14 and still churning out quite a bit of shit, I know I wouldn't have paid it any attention. If I had managed to recognise any of the cliches in whatever I was writing/had written, I would have flared up in defence of it!
That's where they're going wrong. They're portraying all these things as instrinsically evil, the murderers of the fandom, as opposed to what I believe they are, which is a generation of writers who love the fandom just as much as we do/did and expressing this as best they can. They aren't doing it well because we're not showing them how. We're not writing as much and we're definitely not reviewing as much. Where will they get the examples from, to be absorbed and subconsciously processed like I know I did with, oh, too many authors to name?
And these days, I look back on some of those amazing fics that inspired me and realise, I can do better than that. That's a journey. That's positive. It's not negative - it's not that one day I realised I was writing crap and magically metamorphosised into a better writer. It's positive. Learning and adapting - and growing up, too. Finding a style.
I feel I repeated myself, but never mind.
I'm going to try and review the next thing I read. And what's more, it's going to be something with yaoi, OOCness, the works.
Because, you know. It tells the truth. The fandom is dying; it's full of bad fics with bad OCs and OOCness and bad writing. I can admit that, this isn't some stupid uberprotective knee-jerk reaction along those lines. Fandom is dying. It haemmorhaged all its best authors a few years back and now it's on the equivalent of dialysis. It's not a fact I like but it's a fact I accept. I said a long time ago that I would be in it until the end.
About the only thing said that I 100% stand behind is people need to review more. Including me. Especially me. I don't read that much anymore, but I don't review even a fifth of the paltry amount I read. That's a reflection of me though, as opposed to the fandom, I've always been a lazy reviewer, but there's no doubt that the fandom would be more active if people reviewed.
I just look at this thing and see all the reviews it's had - some of them from authors I respect, some from people who've been on the site for longer than I've even been reading (2004, fyi) all from people agreeing with it wholeheartedly - and think, what are you doing? Why are you not writing fics and reviewing fics and doing your bit to save the fandom?
What we've got at the moment isn't really a load of -bad- writers. It's a load of young writers, and they're making the same mistakes that we all did. I mean, I can look at that index of future topics in this fic and match them, one by one, to fics I wrote when I was 13/14. And yet, at the time, I loved what I wrote! I was so proud of it! If a fic like this had come up when I was 14 and still churning out quite a bit of shit, I know I wouldn't have paid it any attention. If I had managed to recognise any of the cliches in whatever I was writing/had written, I would have flared up in defence of it!
That's where they're going wrong. They're portraying all these things as instrinsically evil, the murderers of the fandom, as opposed to what I believe they are, which is a generation of writers who love the fandom just as much as we do/did and expressing this as best they can. They aren't doing it well because we're not showing them how. We're not writing as much and we're definitely not reviewing as much. Where will they get the examples from, to be absorbed and subconsciously processed like I know I did with, oh, too many authors to name?
And these days, I look back on some of those amazing fics that inspired me and realise, I can do better than that. That's a journey. That's positive. It's not negative - it's not that one day I realised I was writing crap and magically metamorphosised into a better writer. It's positive. Learning and adapting - and growing up, too. Finding a style.
I feel I repeated myself, but never mind.
I'm going to try and review the next thing I read. And what's more, it's going to be something with yaoi, OOCness, the works.