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Mar. 30th, 2010 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8Sometimes I think we're too hard on the fanfic writers out there.
1. Nothing shall surpass the awe-inspiring piece of purple prose that Ron Miller crafted. It is frankly beyond belief, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vandonovan made a hilarious, well-linked post about it--here it is. Fanfic writers--they're good with purple prose, but they can't match that. I hope.
2. There are approximately five bazillion posts on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants , centering about the dearth of warnings and tags placed on stories, because they're triggery or kinky and people don't want to read it. That's a good thing--I'm glad they're there and that people read them. But most published works don't come with a massive "LOTS OF VIOLENCE DON'T READ" warnings over the covers. I picked up Stardust by Neil Gaiman (lovely book, lovely movie) with no idea whatsoever that there was a graphic eye-stabbing. Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz had no warnings about nightmarish clowns (!) and subsequently kept me up all night. The title looked so innocent! Same with the Outlander series.
3. The critics that occasionally ravage books (justly or unjustly) are not on par with flamers. At least critics read through the work, offered their opinion, and can be identified. Random trolls that scream in all cAPS about unrelated pairings, or simply spam the entry, are not the same as those critics.
4. For published writers, there are editors, copy-editors, and people who are specifically schooled in making pieces of literature. No such structure exists for fanfic writers (except possibly betas, who are expected to do all of the jobs normally taken on by the editing department) and all of those little nitpicky details that you rage "They SHOULD have known this," are made by published and fanfic writers alike.
tl;dr: Go easy on them, for once.
1. Nothing shall surpass the awe-inspiring piece of purple prose that Ron Miller crafted. It is frankly beyond belief, and
vandonovan made a hilarious, well-linked post about it--here it is. Fanfic writers--they're good with purple prose, but they can't match that. I hope.2. There are approximately five bazillion posts on
fanficrants , centering about the dearth of warnings and tags placed on stories, because they're triggery or kinky and people don't want to read it. That's a good thing--I'm glad they're there and that people read them. But most published works don't come with a massive "LOTS OF VIOLENCE DON'T READ" warnings over the covers. I picked up Stardust by Neil Gaiman (lovely book, lovely movie) with no idea whatsoever that there was a graphic eye-stabbing. Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz had no warnings about nightmarish clowns (!) and subsequently kept me up all night. The title looked so innocent! Same with the Outlander series. 3. The critics that occasionally ravage books (justly or unjustly) are not on par with flamers. At least critics read through the work, offered their opinion, and can be identified. Random trolls that scream in all cAPS about unrelated pairings, or simply spam the entry, are not the same as those critics.
4. For published writers, there are editors, copy-editors, and people who are specifically schooled in making pieces of literature. No such structure exists for fanfic writers (except possibly betas, who are expected to do all of the jobs normally taken on by the editing department) and all of those little nitpicky details that you rage "They SHOULD have known this," are made by published and fanfic writers alike.
tl;dr: Go easy on them, for once.
