Meta rec

[marguerite_26]

I've known for a long time that faithwood is a special kind of brilliant, and her meta posts make my brain orgasm, but I think she's outdone herself this time.

Quality Writing and Comments is a wonderful look at fandom's mentality towards writing, reading and comments and how we interpret quality.

This is not a fandom specific meta. It's relevant to everyone, imo, because I'm very been in a fandom where I haven't seen people look at one story (possibly their own) and say "Why no love, fandom?" and then looked at another (so many pages of comments!!!!) and say "That's because people are stupid."

Quote from Quality Writing and Comments
I think everyone, more than once, read a popular story and ended up loathing it, or they've read an unpopular story and found it brilliant, or a popular story they loved just like everyone else, or an unpopular story they hated just like everyone else. The first two scenarios anger or confuse us and the latter two make us feel validated. Neither scenario means we're right.

And I think (hope) most people are aware that while they rage about the popularity of some shitty story and celebrate the popularity of a brilliant one, at the same time, somewhere else in fandom, another person rages about the popularity of the story you thought was brilliant and celebrates the popularity of the story you found terrible.

Both individuals have friends who agree with them — and at least one of them is definitely someone who works in the publishing business in Real Life and therefore speaks with authority, because such is the internet — and together they wonder what the hell is wrong with that other group. Why would they like that story? Why would they hate this one? Why do people have such shitty taste? What sorts of machinations enable this injustice? Why-oh-why people can't recognize QUALITY?

eta: MORE THOUGHTS! because I'm procrastinating I was feeling thinky after I left my comment on that post.

What I like most about this meta is that it's not preaching 'STOP COMMENT COUNTING!!' it's about the concept of taste and preference. I know I sometimes read something that was funny and hit all my kinks and therefore I don't care that your favourite character (in your opinion) was nothing like canon. The fic was AWESOME!!! *recs it all over the place*

And yet that 'perfectly crafted' story that someone else recced I thought was so fucking YAWN. Or the 'hilarious crack' from yesterday was so ridiculous it gave me second hand embarrassment for that author. But you, who I agree with most of the time, thought it was god's gift to fandom. Are you blind???

We like what we like!!! We like some authors more than others and sometimes a lot of people like those funny authors or perverted authors and sometimes the risk takers or the rare pair lovers get no comments and well... that's not fair. *nods*

But it's fandom. And no one is setting out the 'steal' anyone's comments. No one controls fandom's reaction to things. All you can do is accept that fandom isn't fair and deal with the choices you have (get better, write stuff that people love, write what you love, accept that you'll never ever be happy if you stress about the popularity of your fics) or you need to get out, because fandom isn't going to ever be fair.

Comments

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of time we think she never thinks about stuff like that... but we all have tender underbellies. Just various levels of skin thickness. :)

When it's about other people's opinions and how we all know that people are just different and very unique in their tastes, it makes me feel better. IDEK - it's about taste and you can't change that, and you really don't want to cater to it.