(why I will never be cool... but at least I'm sane)

Ack! lasultrix! Happy Birthday! If only I could write for any fandom, even HP, I'd try to make something you'd like, but as it is, here's a lame heart: ♥!!1
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You know... I read lj randomly sometimes, and I'm often a bit frazzled... people are weird, people are wacky, somewhat insane and good with grilled cheese, what have you... but I know love when I see it. This quote on how those badfics that spring on you halfway by jacquez is love:

    . . .you read, and you feel vaguely puzzled, like there is something you are not quite getting, and you think maybe the author is being clever and the pieces will come into place, and towards the end you are seized with the horrid suspicion that instead, the author has a view of the world that is so alien to you that you feel as though Cthulhu has just risen up out of your toilet and started making himself a grilled cheese sandwich on the hot water heater.

You know, just yesterday I tried to be fair and said, "well, I don't know if I can be sure the things I think are batshit crazy really are"-- but... hell, who am I kidding? Crazy is when it smells like cheese. <3

PS. Skimming bethbethbeth's post for yet more smartass replies, there's also junediamanti's priceless contribution to the proper fic labelling woes:

    . . .Warning: This story contains abysmal grammar and writing, more canon rape than a teenager's sugar high mpreg story, and concepts so vile that a civilised society would hunt down the author and kill them.

Hahah, I love the 'concepts so vile' part. People kind of get lost in flaming some more controversial ideas/practices and saying they're 'morally wrong' or whatever, but often enough it's not the kink that's the problem but rather the overall view of humanity implied which annoys one. Like, I personally have few to none really ingrained squicks-- I can be sold on most things okay. It's when I feel the dignity of a character's personhood is somehow... ignored for the sake of kink that I get annoyed, especially if this perpetuates some stupid stereotype, like about women all being passive, weepy and in need of a big strong man to rescue them, say. This is an example of 'concept so vile', to me-- that is, I wouldn't want someone to not be able to write it, but I think its popularity is problematic as far as being a reflection on the society that produced it. Though clearly I would hope for education/emancipation rather than hunting down the writer or burning the book... and even there, there are often underlying issues at hand and such.

Seriously now (because I can't help myself), being so judgmental as to call a concept 'vile' is problematic (and yet just human nature). I am amused by the quote because it does mockingly reflect an impulse to reject a certain type of thinking in a fic more than anything. For instance, there's a frame of mind that makes fannish depictions of ukes tolerate emotional abuse from their semes-- and I've seen this in some H/D fic. I'm talking about what's probably my most hated H/D fic ever, but I don't think the writer is at fault, not entirely. The problem is a pervasive emotional issue still plaguing modern society; it's difficult to really deal with it in any one incarnation. It's not simply 'vile'-- it's symptomatic of something bigger, usually, if it's really that offensive.

In some ways, I suppose we can't really disparage stories for the world-views they espouse, because for all we know some of the current old classics were either socially uber-conservative or too progressive-- and thus offensive & vile or 'crazy'-- in their time. This is the kind of dangerous slippery-slope thinking that leads to banned books. And yet... it's a thorny issue, isn't it? If one cares and even feels passionately about one's beliefs, one can't help but collide with opposing view-points that seem not only different but... lame somehow-- badly constructed.

I think the only thing I can say for certain is that a good writer will 'sell' the point of view involved as being that of the character, and it would make sense for the character and their situation; when the point of view becomes more like third-person-omniscient and didactic, that's when problems arise. I've never had a problem disagreeing with a character's world-view-- but the author should either be invisible or a character of another sort so the technique would work. Then again, I always felt like thinking too much about either one's personal philosophy or one's dinner while reading meant the book wasn't engaging enough.