The Lj-sphere has got stupid again

[farla]

It's mindboggling.

There is actually debate, still going on, about if Aooo should allow original works. In a reprisal of the "omfg how can my hits counter be higher than my comments!!!!!" stupidity, one point brought up in all seriousness is WHAT IF THE ORIGINAL STUFF DROWNS OUT THE FANFIC OMG OMG OMG. Hey guys, remember back before Fictionpress, how there was totally way more original stuff being written, and how it was impossible to find fanfic? Because original fiction will totally dominate that oppressed minority, fandom. Kind of like how all that gen on Aooo is just making it impossible to find anything shippy.

If you check out the debate, you may be momentarily fooled into thinking there is a decent argument to be raised that they want to focus on fanfic. This will last until you realize what they're defining as fanfic. So fanfic = a thing you do in groups on Lj.

I think my favorite part is how jaw-droppingly stupid the entire concept is. If you're trying to get people to take fanfic seriously as writing, of course you should make sure to keep it in its own ghetto! Of course you should make sure that any author who doesn't approve should never be let near your precious archive, because that'll sure help change their minds! Of course making sure authors can't post both fanfic and original works will convince everyone that fanfic is a legitimate form of writing and not something people do because they're unoriginal hacks! Of course making a huge deal of the distinction between the two is the best idea ever if you're trying to make people think fanfic deserves to be treated as actual writing.

Meanwhile, in another, related corner, the fuckwittery with sues is back again, now with even more misogyny accusations. Remember, everyone: if it was a guy doing it, you wouldn't mind. Really. The term mary sue exists only to SHAME AND OPPRESS WOMEN. Because women are such horrible writers we have to applaud any attempts they make lest their delicate souls be crushed under the terrible burden of standards. Just because they're bad characters doesn't mean you should say that! God, don't you know anything?

Comments

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Some of my friends run an interesting panel at cons called "Anime Fight Club." It's that traditional "who would win a fight, Superman or Batman?" It was listening to people do this for hours, trying to come up with the cleverist/funniest answer, that I realized something important. There is no right answer. Some characters (Superman) are much easier to write winning against another (Aquaman), but in something that doesn't have quantified D&D rules, the person who win a fight is who the author wants to. No one ever sits around writing two characters having a fight and wonders "who wins?" Even with the minimum of outlining, they know who wins to advance the plot in what way, so they might sit around and wonder about how. Characters are not people--they are tools of an author is storytelling.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the stat-up-characters-and-see-who-wins tends to infinitely less entertaining than trying to use...reason (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/08/27/episode-591-hypothetically-speaking-again/) to work it out. And conversely, making one character win just because they're the favorite, rather than because it makes sense or there's a clever solution, tends to get tiresome even to fans.

There was an interesting thing I read a little while back about constructing fight scenes, using DBZ as the example (http://mike-smith.livejournal.com/202315.html#cutid1).