Warning: Tentacles

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.
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