angst or fluff?
*shrugs* guess I'm in the mood for posting a lot lately or something, mostly 'cause facebook is an awful media for this kind of stuff. So I was reading fanficrants today and a poster was ranting about lousy reviews to her angst fic. What I found mystifying was that everyone seemed to agree that angst and fluff are two separate and distinct genres of fic, because I think of them as descriptors of the tones or moods of a fic. So you can have a fluffy or an angsty romance fic, but romance is the genre. In the same vein, it's totally possible to write a fluffy-angsty friendship one shot 'cause the genre is friendship fic. When I see a fic that's called an "angst fic" I take that to mean that the predominating mood of the fic will be angsty, but I assume that the genre is drama unless otherwise noted. Fluff is assumed to be romance because happy romances lend themselves to fluff, but the genre itself could be humor, friendship fic, or even action-adventure. The other thing that amused me is how many people were totally in favor of one or the other, even though the best pieces tend to have both (in addition to lots of other themes) because that gives a fic lots of realistic mood shifts and good balance.
A lot of the disrespect for fluff is due to some insane belief that OMG!drama is somehow inherently more intelligent and therefore harder to write. Good characterization is always difficult, and good moods don't make it any simpler 'cause people don't magically do a 180 just 'cause they're happy and plots don't move that fast when everythings all right. (Hell, bad stuff makes people change more, and crazy plot twists are easier to sneak in when bad stuff happens.) Doesn't help that so many of authors throw out bad fluff as a one off and think seriously about their (sometimes equally bad) angsty stuff (as if author intent is the sole criteria for judging how good a piece is) and take that to mean that all authors are the same. There's just as much atrocious angst as horrible fluff floating around the web, 'cause both are kind of extremes on the mood scales and nothing facilitates author laziness quite like extremes.