Rather a Story

Due to some recent anon comments to my fanfic that were downright rude/possibly someone trolling me and other commenters in the entry, I am now screening anon comments AND forcing anon commenters to verify that they're "real" with CAPTCHA.

This sucks, because I know a couple of people do comment here who don't have LJ accounts. You can blame the internet trolls for this extra level of hassle in your lives. I will NOT have people coming in and being rude to me and to my friends in my own space.

Even if you think my fanfiction is utter shit (which is your right), I will thank you to mind your manners. If you can't manage that, I will delete your comment with extreme prejudice. Fair warning.

*scratches head*

So it's not exactly a secret that I am usually pretty happy to get plot bunnies/prompts from people, with the caveat that 1) I may not be able to write them if they don't strike the right cord, and 2) I may not get to them right away. In fact, sometimes it's months before I can get to a prompt.

( tl;dr I cannot write ALL the prompts, okay? )

Okay.

Some of you may have heard about the latest... *looks for a polite word* disturbance in fandom, which on the surface was a discussion about the creation of a Gen Big Bang, which would focus entirely on gen fics. Not as an alternative to the current Big Bang, but simply as an extra one, if you will.

WAIT! Before you go on to tell me everything that was wrong with the OP's post, you can stop right there. I know what was wrong with it, I agree, and that's NOT what this post is about at all. It's tangentially related, at best.

I saw this last year when the deancasbigbang was created too, and it caught me entirely by surprise.

Why are people viewing the creation of separate, smaller, more specific Big Bangs as an either/or proposition?

No, seriously, I don't understand. It's not like having an extra BB suddenly prevents the other one from existing, or prevents people from participating in it, right? There are lots of people who can't participate in the main BB (the spn_j2_bigbang) for myriad reasons. (Timing is a big one, especially for people in school, since it coincides with exams and papers and such. Having another large-ish challenge later in the year is a great way for those people to write their long fics and get art for them, if they want it.)

For others, there's no reason they can't do both. I got all excited about it last year, and participated in both, and wrote genfic for both (shocking, I know). I didn't feel like the DCBB people were in any way forcing me out of their sandbox if I didn't have a longish Dean & Cas story to tell (I did, as it happened, but if I didn't I simply wouldn't have signed up). In fact, I was pretty excited about the Big Bangs that proliferated last year -though I will admit that, being newish to fandom last year, I wasn't aware that this wasn't standard practice- because there are few things as thrilling for an author as to get art done for their fic.

So I'm confused about the whole argument about segregating the fandom, or that if there's a separate Gen Big Bang no one outside of gen readers will go read the stories. I mean, aren't people going to cross-post on communities? Maybe not everyone, but those interested in sharing will do it, right? If people have a long, plotty fic, slash or otherwise, that doesn't fit in with, say, the Dean/Cas Big Bang, then they can still write it during that time, can't they? And post it anyway? And maybe, if they're less self-conscious about it than I am, they could ask if someone out there would be willing to do art for them. Maybe. I know I get all twisted in knots about that sort of thing, so I'd understand if it's the same for others. :P

There are other arguments against multiple Big Bangs that make more sense to me. Like, because of the huge amount of work that an author puts into their fic, and because they have to respect their posting date, they often end up producing less fic during the Big Bang season. Same with exchanges and challenges. So that feels like a more valid argument to me: that people are leaving aside ideas because they're too stressed about ongoing "big" projects which have looming deadlines.

What I don't get, like I said, is the notion that somehow this is some sort of twisted, underhanded ploy to divide fandom.

So can someone explain this?


:::ETA:::
...

It occurs to me that this might possibly attract attention. So. As usual, the rules of healthy debate apply here. Please avoid flaming, ad hominem attacks, and the like. Feel free to comment anonymously, but I will screen/delete anonymous replies that are deliberately wanky. JSYK.

I sometimes wonder what show people are watching.

Clearly, it's not the same one I am.

If you need me, I will be over here in my happy bubble that is free of ship wars, character-bashing, and show-bashing in general.

Made the mistake of peeking at my BB thread on the anon meme, and am sort of... I dunno. "Depressed" is too strong a word, because so many lovely NON-anons have come around and given great feedback, a lot of it specific.

The anon meme, OTOH, seems to have had two responses to it. The first was "OMG I had the basic concept therefore the fic cannot be good and I'm not even going to bother!" And the second one was "But she never resolved the mystery!" And apart from one person who enjoyed it, the overall response was "meh."

Damned with faint praise, in short.

The sane part of me is telling me I shouldn't go read that thread at all. The not-so-sane part can't look away, and I keep having to tell myself to sit on my hands because I keep wanting to actually engage in discussion. Like, how resolving the "central mystery or gimmick" as they put it was so very much not the point of the fic, for instance. (One commenter accused me of trying to set up a "cracky spin-off.")

So much for my poor one-off exploration of the relationship between Cas and Dean. ;)

I read a few other reviews out of curiosity, and it really feels as though the anon meme reviewers are determined not to enjoy anything they read. "Damned with faint praise" seems to be the default mode.

There's an expression in French for that, which is "Bouder son plaisir." I'm not sure exactly how to translate that, except as the willful denying of pleasure to oneself. That is, even if you liked something (and I'm not saying the anons liked my story, it's just a theory based on my perception of maybe a dozen or so BB threads), you purposefully seek out the flaws in order to hand in a final verdict of "meh."

And of course, the REALLY paranoid part of me is having conniptions about my fic actually being really terrible and all my friends being too polite to tell me. Which I KNOW is BS, don't worry! It's not rational, and I'm actually very proud of the story. But MEEP!

Okay. I'm going to make breakfast, and try not to obsess. Today's project is the spn_reversebang. Wish me luck!


:::ETA:::

I am kind of weirded out that this post has now made it into that thread. It's my LJ, folks! I can bitch about authorial intent if I want to! What you do with it subsequently is your own affair, but I get to voice my opinions any way I want to! :P

/end random pseudo-rant

( Further ETA, behind a cut because it's 3am, I'm cranky and thus I'm being petty )