[a rant a day keeps the bile away...]

I was talking to blacksatinrose earlier about why is it people seem to care so much whether whatever fannish opinion [especially ship-related] they have is 'popular' or not... and my idea at the time was that we have a desire for community validation.
    EDIT - Though actually we were talking about why people get psycho bent out of shape about it so maybe that doesn't quite apply, but anyway....
    So um, I was asking myself why -I'd- care whether I have popular or unpopular opinions in fandom-- and I realized that generally it's about subjects that seem to produce the kind of writing/reading environment I don't want to be a part of, maybe. The more popular a certain opinion is-- say 'writing IC isn't important 'cause fun = all that matters' or 'ICness = completely subjective so it's irrelevant as a label'-- the more it'll influence what sort of fic you see. The underlying meta that's around may not directly influence fandom, but it's a -product- of fandom influence, so if I see a lot of discussion that leans a certain way, chances are that's the sort of fic that's out there. If I don't want to read fic written with those meta underpinnings, however well-written, then my problem is more with the meta than with a particular fic, isn't it?

I mean, this is about meta, not a fic, right, and I can't help caring when many people disagree with this: hi, ICness? Is real. It EXISTS.

It's not totally subjective (though neither is it totally objective). It's not an exact science, obviously, it being literary criticism and not biochem, but the problem with literary criticism is actually that people get away with saying 'anything goes' in terms of interpretation. This is why I remember sitting in Tolkien class listening to some academics' interpretations of the books and thought OMFG, ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE ON SO MUCH CRACK. :/ And this is why I was too bloody embarrassed to be an English major, y'know? That much wanking can't be healthy. :/

I mean, hey. It's okay-- I didn't lose sleep over it; I'm okay-- you're okay. Being on crack is okay; I dig it. No hurt feelings; knock yourself out. But it doesn't change the fact that you are, you know, on it. What I care about-- what I can't stand-- is when people dismiss it as an issue altogether.

( ...and now for some gratuitous belaboring of the point, because I'm just a barrel of laughs like that. :/ )

Um, so my 'conclusion' is that I really only get bent out of shape when things are discussed as 'just opinion', popular or not, when I don't consider them to be. Since I don't think the existence of ICness vs OOCness is totally subjective, discussing it as such is just incorrect, the way it would be incorrect to seriously discuss how those funky weird people like their funky e-vo-lu-tion when OBVIOUSLY-- obviously!-- the world was created by elephants. In Japan. These elephants, they sat in Japan at the dawn of time & they thought, hey [they thought], why not create the universe? It already exists anyway, so it's no biggie. And thusly! THE WORLD WAS BORN. Or something. So. Yeah, that kind of opinion rubs me the wrong way, somehow.
~~

Ermm... this is [once again] not the post I wanted to write; the rant just... took me like it always does on this subject.... This is not the rant you're looking for :/ Restart, restart, reboot.... Damn, no energy. I pretty much blew my writerly wad already, but... must-- mention-- actually-- interesting-- subject-- must not-- give-- in....

Oh yeah, I've been reading 'Benighted' by Kit Whitfield, which is based around a what-if: what if 99% of the world was werewolves, with only a very few humans, and those humans took care of the werewolves on the night of the full moon?
    This actually set me off on an interesting tangent 'cause there's a Q&A session and a 'reader's guide' at the back of the book [which I found V. V. ANNOYING, but] where Kit Whitfield says, in response to a question about what genre the book is, that genre is just for bookstore marketing & doesn't describe real books suffiently & keeps people from reading wider and finding things they might otherwise like. All of which is true as far as it goes, but....

( ...blah. )