Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?

 
Yesterday, I spotted the following statement — part of a longer post — on someone else’s LJ. I made my reply there, which reply follows the quoted excerpt:

… Fanfic is an inherently teenybopper activity, akin to cutting out pictures from fanzines and pasting them with glitter to your scrapbook. If they’re smart, and good, fanficcers grow up to be real authors. …

And my answer:

I don’t know if you’re citing common opinion while withholding your own, or if you agree with those sentiments. In either instance, I’ll take point in expressing my own disagreement.

Fanfic is typically young-adolescent behavior, in that it’s far more common among pre- or early-teens than in gainfully employed adults with functioning social lives. Is this because it represents immaturity, or just because grown-ups have less free time and more other things competing for priority? Play-acting, too, is more common among children than among adults, but that doesn’t mean all acting falls into the same category. Fanfic is no more inherently immature than is acting.

People who write fanfic do it for many different reasons. Yes, no question, I’ve seen that far too many of them do it for purposes of wish-fulfillment, self-insertion, gooey romanticism, or really awful porn. Some of them, though, do it for love of the fandom, appreciation of the characters, membership in a community, or simply because the original movie/book/series so excited their imaginations that they feel compelled to express the ideas thus generated.

My personal focus is on the Buffyverse. Granted, most Buffyfic is inferior, simply because most fiction period is inferior and fanfic has fewer filters. ‘Most’, however, doesn’t mean ‘all’. There are some really good writers out there, and the best of them turn out material that’s markedly superior to the authorized Buffy/Angel novels currently in print.

I don’t object to generalizations; they’re useful and largely accurate. I would suggest, however, that a prudent person would refrain from applying the generalization to every member of a group, insisting that it pertains equally to all of them merely because it holds true for many of them.

ATTENTION, ALL NEWS MEDIA

 
I do not care about Anna Nicole Smith.

She was blonde. She had extremely large breasts. She married an ancient billionaire, and then killed herself with drugs.

None of these things impress me.

I didn’t care while she was alive, and now that she’s dead, she still won’t go away.

For the love of God, shut up about her.

(And, BTW? same for Britney Spears’ haircut. It’s not important.)