Current mood:

bouncy

Ten Unpopular Fandom Opinions (gacked from vulgarweed)
Mostly for LOTR/Silmarillion, some also from HP.

1) Incest does not squick me. At all. I have complaints with the way the fics are written or how easily the relationship is handled, not "OMG INCEST NO!!!!11" reactions.

2) I take all fanfic as fantasy (with the very slight exceptions of rigorously worked-out AU's or gap-fillers in canon). Thus I can read slash, gen, het, what have you with no problem. I don't think that Aragorn/Legolas slash would ever happen in canon, but it doesn't prevent me from enjoying it as a harmless fantasy. If it bores me, I leave.

3) While we're on the topic, I don't believe that writers are morally responsible for what their audience draws from their fics. So incest fics don't inspire incest, and so on. If someone is influenced by a fictional story to do something like that, he or she has a problem distinguishing fantasy from reality that extends beyond fanfiction.

4) The Draco Trilogy bores me to tears.

5) Poetic Disease is laughable. This is the kind of thing where authors write sentences like: "Arwen's heart is a glass bowl filled with dark water, sometimes shifting with her emotions." If I can't tell what the fanfic is about, or the whole point is to showcase the author's "artistry," then I generally think the author needs to practice clear writing.

6) Preaching any issue with fanfic (Christianity, safe sex, feminism, gay rights) is stupid. Write pamphlets if you want to do that kind of thing; don't make a canon character OOC just to spout your pompous rhetoric.

7) People who take personal offense when someone says they don't like a particular genre of fanfic should find something better to do with their time. (Ban lifted in cases where the other person is comparing the people who write said fanfic to Hitler or the September 11th pilots).

8) Calling Harry Potter "the emerald-eyed boy" or "the raven-haired boy" or "the Gryffindor" constantly, calling Ron Weasley "the redhead" constantly, and calling Draco Malfoy "the cool blond," "the silver-eyed boy," or "the Slytherin" constantly is annoying. Writers who do it should be made to write at least 2000 words of fanfic consistently using only proper names and pronouns.

9) Worshipping people who write Mary Sues when those people are your friends is dumb. What makes their girl-dropped-into-Middle-Earth story so very different? You needn't flame, but I don't see why opinions change like the tide just because someone knows the writer.

10) There ARE SO strong female characters in both Tolkien and HP. People just don't want to go to the trouble of plucking the information about them out of canon.