New people aren't the only ones afraid to post on JHP
I was originally going to post this to a certain thread, but my comment was too long even after I started abbreviating, and I realize that I can't very well mention spelling and grammar while using abbrevs.
I hate to add fuel to the fire, but as one of the "elitists" and "old fogeys" (even though I'm only 19), I think someone should speak up for this POV. I'm speaking for myself, but I bet abromeds et al. would agree.
I actually left this community, although I check back every so often (jhp obsession, & Beatles obsession, dies hard). There were several reasons for this:
1. When I started here, there would be 100-200-post discussions on various psychological topics. Someone would share a fact & the rest of us would try to figure out what that said about John and Paul, and it would get very deep. I enjoyed that. Eventually, the discussions started repeating themselves. It's understandable, new people haven't had a chance to participate in the old ones or read through the archives. And maybe older people ran out of ideas or got busy. But still, it's harder to find something to contribute, especially when I no longer had the time to look for more Beatles facts to theorize about.
2. While there have always been new writers with good fics, & there still are, there have been many that I simply don't want to read. Here's why:
a) I've seen the plot many times before, & the new fic doesn't seem that different. (Writing about an actual episode, like the Scissors Incident or the first LSD trip, is one thing. But how many times do we need to see John and Paul angst about whether they should be having feelings for another man and eventually decide to sleep together anyway?).
b) there's no consistent characterization (if windowscreen's still around I'm sure I'll get slammed for complaining about this).
c) the characterization doesn't seem right to me--usually in the case of George.
d) the spelling & grammar are so bad that it's literally impossible to do more than skim;
e) there are anachronisms everywhere, like the Beatles using condoms or wanting to get married in the 1960s;
f) the Beatles talk & act like 13 year old girls (come on, they were WAY too sexually experienced to be giggling about sex).
Thankfully, it almost never happens that all of these appear in one story. But a very large proportion of stories has at least 1 of these. It's very hard to do constructive criticism for the following reasons:
a) So I'm bored with the plot. The author's clearly not, and neither are a lot of other people, so why bother complaining about it when they have every right to write about what they want?
b) Consistent characterization seems like the bare minimum, but I'm still gunshy from a huge controversy about that earlier this year.
c) If I mention characterization, people will just dismiss that b/c it doesn't match their theory of what the Beatles are like, so what's the point? That's if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky, they will say something more like "How dare you criticize my conception of X Beatle."
d) I realize I'm going to get a lot of flak for complaining about spelling and grammar. I know a lot of you aren't native speakers, & that's great. I wish I had as much courage as you all do. But in a community full of people who want to beta read, why not take advantage of it? If I'm too distracted by these mistakes to enjoy the story, it doesn't just mean I'm a grammar nazi, it also means someone along the line forgot that someone would actually be reading the story.
e) Again, how hard is it to do some basic research? And why aren't our betas catching this?
f) I read fic on JHP because I love John & Paul & their relationship. That means I want to read about John and Paul, not giggly teenagers. I already know what giggly teenagers are like, I've been one. Again, I understand that that's the life experience a lot of our writers are working with. But I'm young too & I want to understand the Beatles from a more adult perspective, and it's hard to do that with some of these fics.
I haven't complained about this before for several reasons.
1. People will take offense. I'll get called an elitist old fogey for daring to say something other than "OMG, this is the best fic ever, it made me cry."
2. It will start long, nasty debates (just look in our archives, we have a lot of those)
3. there's a widespread attitude in fandom that because we're doing this for fun, there should be no standards. We're not really publishing our work, so why worry about what we learned in English class? I understand why people think this, though I disagree. But how am I supposed to give constructive criticism when this is the attitude people have about it?
MANIFESTO.
1. It's not a good idea to call people elitists whose opinions we don't like.
Maybe the reason they're lording it over us is their writing actually is good, from their characterization to their grammar. Maybe they have a legitimate point, and we could learn from them instead of complaining that they actually want to read fics with decent characterization and grammar. Since when are legitimate standards elitist?
2. You're trying to tell a story. That means readers have to believe in what they're reading. Bad spelling and grammar, anachronisms, poor characterization, etc. all take away the believability.
(Some of these are worse than others. Bad spelling and grammar are just distracting. But if John and Paul don't act anything like John and Paul, then there's no way I'm going to believe in what you're telling me, and I'm going to give up on your fic.)
3. Being bothered by anachronisms =/= "being stuck in the past."
The Beatles themselves lived in the past. If we want to actually imagine what they did and said and thought--which I thought was the point of Beatles fic communities--we need to avoid including things they could NEVER have done or said or thought.
4. You're not just writing for yourself.
There are 2 acts here: the act of writing and the act of publishing. When you're writing for yourself, all that matters is what you think. You can write whatever you want and no one who stumbles on your writing has any right to complain about it. But once you publish something, whether online or through a publishing house, you have implicitly given people the right to say whatever they like about your work. Once your writing is in the public domain, free speech applies. Therefore, if you post something online, you must be willing to accept that other people may say things about it that you don't like. That doesn't give them the right to be obnoxious about it, but that's another issue.
5. Corollary to the above: if you're writing something, you should have some sort of audience in mind. You should try to make what you want to say as clear to your readers as possible.
That, in turn, gives you a reason to write well. If your readers can't understand or believe in what you're trying to say, then that's a problem and you need to rewrite.
6. Conclusion of points 2-5: complaining about plot, characterization, spelling, grammar, dialogue, anachronisms, etc. is legitimate, not elitist.
7. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion, but they have the responsibility to do it kindly and constructively.
"I don't agree with your characterization of Paul because I think he would say Y, not X" is constructive criticism. Saying "That's stupid, Paul would never do that, go read some Beatles books and learn to write while you're at it" is not. Okay, so my antisocial example is a little extreme, but do you see the difference? In the first example, the worst thing the receiver can say is "I don't like hearing this." In the second, s/he can legitimately call the critic mean. Don't make the mistake of calling the first sort of criticism illegitimate just cuz you can't stand hearing it. Also, don't defend the second by saying you have the right to free speech. You have the right to free speech, not the right to be an asshole.
I hate to add fuel to the fire, but as one of the "elitists" and "old fogeys" (even though I'm only 19), I think someone should speak up for this POV. I'm speaking for myself, but I bet abromeds et al. would agree.
I actually left this community, although I check back every so often (jhp obsession, & Beatles obsession, dies hard). There were several reasons for this:
1. When I started here, there would be 100-200-post discussions on various psychological topics. Someone would share a fact & the rest of us would try to figure out what that said about John and Paul, and it would get very deep. I enjoyed that. Eventually, the discussions started repeating themselves. It's understandable, new people haven't had a chance to participate in the old ones or read through the archives. And maybe older people ran out of ideas or got busy. But still, it's harder to find something to contribute, especially when I no longer had the time to look for more Beatles facts to theorize about.
2. While there have always been new writers with good fics, & there still are, there have been many that I simply don't want to read. Here's why:
a) I've seen the plot many times before, & the new fic doesn't seem that different. (Writing about an actual episode, like the Scissors Incident or the first LSD trip, is one thing. But how many times do we need to see John and Paul angst about whether they should be having feelings for another man and eventually decide to sleep together anyway?).
b) there's no consistent characterization (if windowscreen's still around I'm sure I'll get slammed for complaining about this).
c) the characterization doesn't seem right to me--usually in the case of George.
d) the spelling & grammar are so bad that it's literally impossible to do more than skim;
e) there are anachronisms everywhere, like the Beatles using condoms or wanting to get married in the 1960s;
f) the Beatles talk & act like 13 year old girls (come on, they were WAY too sexually experienced to be giggling about sex).
Thankfully, it almost never happens that all of these appear in one story. But a very large proportion of stories has at least 1 of these. It's very hard to do constructive criticism for the following reasons:
a) So I'm bored with the plot. The author's clearly not, and neither are a lot of other people, so why bother complaining about it when they have every right to write about what they want?
b) Consistent characterization seems like the bare minimum, but I'm still gunshy from a huge controversy about that earlier this year.
c) If I mention characterization, people will just dismiss that b/c it doesn't match their theory of what the Beatles are like, so what's the point? That's if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky, they will say something more like "How dare you criticize my conception of X Beatle."
d) I realize I'm going to get a lot of flak for complaining about spelling and grammar. I know a lot of you aren't native speakers, & that's great. I wish I had as much courage as you all do. But in a community full of people who want to beta read, why not take advantage of it? If I'm too distracted by these mistakes to enjoy the story, it doesn't just mean I'm a grammar nazi, it also means someone along the line forgot that someone would actually be reading the story.
e) Again, how hard is it to do some basic research? And why aren't our betas catching this?
f) I read fic on JHP because I love John & Paul & their relationship. That means I want to read about John and Paul, not giggly teenagers. I already know what giggly teenagers are like, I've been one. Again, I understand that that's the life experience a lot of our writers are working with. But I'm young too & I want to understand the Beatles from a more adult perspective, and it's hard to do that with some of these fics.
I haven't complained about this before for several reasons.
1. People will take offense. I'll get called an elitist old fogey for daring to say something other than "OMG, this is the best fic ever, it made me cry."
2. It will start long, nasty debates (just look in our archives, we have a lot of those)
3. there's a widespread attitude in fandom that because we're doing this for fun, there should be no standards. We're not really publishing our work, so why worry about what we learned in English class? I understand why people think this, though I disagree. But how am I supposed to give constructive criticism when this is the attitude people have about it?
MANIFESTO.
1. It's not a good idea to call people elitists whose opinions we don't like.
Maybe the reason they're lording it over us is their writing actually is good, from their characterization to their grammar. Maybe they have a legitimate point, and we could learn from them instead of complaining that they actually want to read fics with decent characterization and grammar. Since when are legitimate standards elitist?
2. You're trying to tell a story. That means readers have to believe in what they're reading. Bad spelling and grammar, anachronisms, poor characterization, etc. all take away the believability.
(Some of these are worse than others. Bad spelling and grammar are just distracting. But if John and Paul don't act anything like John and Paul, then there's no way I'm going to believe in what you're telling me, and I'm going to give up on your fic.)
3. Being bothered by anachronisms =/= "being stuck in the past."
The Beatles themselves lived in the past. If we want to actually imagine what they did and said and thought--which I thought was the point of Beatles fic communities--we need to avoid including things they could NEVER have done or said or thought.
4. You're not just writing for yourself.
There are 2 acts here: the act of writing and the act of publishing. When you're writing for yourself, all that matters is what you think. You can write whatever you want and no one who stumbles on your writing has any right to complain about it. But once you publish something, whether online or through a publishing house, you have implicitly given people the right to say whatever they like about your work. Once your writing is in the public domain, free speech applies. Therefore, if you post something online, you must be willing to accept that other people may say things about it that you don't like. That doesn't give them the right to be obnoxious about it, but that's another issue.
5. Corollary to the above: if you're writing something, you should have some sort of audience in mind. You should try to make what you want to say as clear to your readers as possible.
That, in turn, gives you a reason to write well. If your readers can't understand or believe in what you're trying to say, then that's a problem and you need to rewrite.
6. Conclusion of points 2-5: complaining about plot, characterization, spelling, grammar, dialogue, anachronisms, etc. is legitimate, not elitist.
7. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion, but they have the responsibility to do it kindly and constructively.
"I don't agree with your characterization of Paul because I think he would say Y, not X" is constructive criticism. Saying "That's stupid, Paul would never do that, go read some Beatles books and learn to write while you're at it" is not. Okay, so my antisocial example is a little extreme, but do you see the difference? In the first example, the worst thing the receiver can say is "I don't like hearing this." In the second, s/he can legitimately call the critic mean. Don't make the mistake of calling the first sort of criticism illegitimate just cuz you can't stand hearing it. Also, don't defend the second by saying you have the right to free speech. You have the right to free speech, not the right to be an asshole.