Today's bad idea

[browngirl]

Please tell me not to write a post on Tumblr entitled "If you want that story so badly write it your own goddamn self".

I just get so tired sometimes of the exhortations not to write X trope or theme (because it's overdone/often badly done/has fallen into a general rut/whatever) but instead write Y trope or theme which is underused/underexplored. I usually want to see more of Y myself! Sometiems X is something I'm not fond of ! But I know that different people have different reasons for writing what they write and some people really want to write X, that the treatment for badly written X is to write X better rather than giving up on the writing of X at all and having X scoured from the face of the earth, that no amount of exhortations to write Y will work as well as raising interest in Y and that in the end if one wants to see more stories about Y because one is interested in Y, instead of making people feel bad for their writing so that they will just plain write less and/or stop, use one's interest in Y to fuel one's writing about Y! Hell, that writing may inspire others to write about Y! Which is what one wants in the first place!

I kind of want to toss that up on Tumblr.

I don't actually want to get flamed to hell and back like I would be if I did.

To say nothing of all the reasons people write what they do. Someone writing X may also have a Y idea but just not have written it yet. They may have a lived experience concerning X they really want to put into fic. We all have limitations of time and skill and energy on what we'd ideally like to make. And so on.)

Argh.

*takes a deep breath*

I know that people write these essays intending them for the general blob of fandom they're looking into (hell, that's what I'm doing here, writing about not one particular essay on any given X or Y, but the whole trend), but they can't be responded to by a blob-of-fandom. They can only be responded to by individuals, with our individual lives, from our individual viewpoints.

One of my favorite fannish experiences ever was where_no_woman in Star Trek Reboot fandom. Instead of just exhorting people to write more about women, and/or scolding people for not doing so, the community's creators made a space for writing about women, put out prompts and ideas and thoughts, invited people to do stuff, gave people stuff to build on. The results were marvelous.

But, anyway. Rather than put that up on Tumblr, and get myself flamed to hell and back, I should use my ragged bits of free time to write as much of X, Y, Z, and theta as I can manage.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Curtseys. :o)