Ah HA!

[blamebrampton]

FANFICCERS!

Worried about lack of reviews?

Sad that everyone is reading everyone who is not you?

Depressed to see teenagers who don't know how to spell frottage and cannot accurately gauge the bendability of the average penis with thousands of ffnet reviews while your finely crafted and beautifully edited masterpieces are lucky to garner 23?

FRET NO LONGER!

THE SECRET IS REVEALED!

''People say it isn't good quality but you have to remember Fifty Shades started as fan fiction and as fan fiction you have to have action,'' Hayward says. ''You have to have a sex scene in every chapter because that's how you get your reviews. The amount of people who review per chapter shows popularity, that's how your ratings get up. In fan fiction every chapter has to give you something to keep you reading it.''
(From an SMH interview with Amanda Hayward, the really rather brilliant publisher of the not as brilliant book.)

So there you go! You lot who've been telling me to porn it up were right all along! (I mean, obviously I'm not going to, but that's for the best. The Bad Sex Awards longlist is already inches thick.)

I thoroughly recommend the article, which is interesting and respectfully written, without being actually nice about bad writing. It includes this gem from The London Review of Books' Andrew O'Hagan, which I had previously missed: ''It's not that Fifty Shades of Grey and E.L. James's other tie-me-up-tie-me-down spankbusters read as if feminism never happened: they read as if women never even got the vote.''

Comments

[chantefable.livejournal.com]

I think the readers who respond in this case primarily appreciate the writing, and not the 'and then they had sex'. Of course wish-fulfilment and fantasy stimulating body responses can be immensely satisfying. The refined writing is naturally a) awe-inspiring and leaves people humbled and unable to type a review, b) may have a smaller audience - more people are looking to unwind with a light story than are seeking deep and meaningful prose. I reckon.

Ah, I am sick and not eloquent. I JUST WRITE TO SAY I LOVE YOU.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I'm good, darling! We've had two things conflate in the comments here because fragrant was having a perfectly reasonable grumble elsewhere and was sniffily informed that was not encouraged to grumble on such topics and that she could take that grumble elsewhere, thank you!

Here is a grumble welcoming zone! I think it's perfectly fine to want to have a grumpy mutter or even a full-on whinge about things now and then.

One of the big problems with doing that in fandom has been the trigger-happy responses you sometimes get. A lot of these are based on philosophical errors, like false syllogisms.

You know: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man.

Socrates is mortal = true syllogism
All men are Socrates = false syllogism

I've lost track of the times I've seen this happen in fandom. I remember one big witch hunt that came in response to someone saying 'Bah, I've had it with all the bloody fests, I miss it when people used to post their own stories regularly and there were big ongoing things being written by more than one or two stalwarts.'

This was whipped up into 'She hates fests! She hates all the people who write for fests! She thinks that fest writing is totally inferior! Boo! Hiss!'

Which was not only inaccurate, but totally failed to address the underlying issue: how many fests can one reasonably sized fandom handle? Put-upon first person was 'Fuck it, I'm a-going over here and you can just play by yourselves'

About six months later, a lot of fandom went 'Gee, there's a lot of fests, maybe we should rationalise the numbers?'

As for me personally and reviews: I love the people who like my stories and would not have things any other way! I love you loads! GET WELL!