Something that could almost pass for a rant...

[astridv]

Well, it's more of an observation, really.

There's this particular response to fanfic criticism, which seems to be getting quite popular: "You're not capable of understanding this story. You're just saying the characterization/style/whatever is off because you hate [insert pairing of choice]."

I'm tired of hearing this argument (using the word in the loosest sense here.) All the while you could just as well say, "You're more willing to ignore above points because you're a [insert pairing of choice]-shipper."

Just saying.

Comments

[astridv.livejournal.com]

>The lens of extreme shipping seems to distort the pairing, leads to short cuts (Step 1, Underpants, Step 3, True Love!), and leads to forced and cliched actions with the secondary characters, all of which seem even more out of character than the members of the pairing.

At least sometimes. I don't want to generalize; I've read plenty of shipperfic that I thought was perfectly in character. But when it's not, it should be possible to point it out without getting hit over the head with a blunt object. And even when I'm wrong, it would be nice if people could just point out the flaws in the argumentation by giving counter-arguments (like they did on the list itself, in the case of the Ever After discussion...) Everything else just says, "Hi, I'm fresh out of arguments."

>Hmm. I really doubt my coffeeless self is making ANY sense.

Makes perfect sense to my sleep-deprived self.