I hate spicy food. It burns me. It's unpleasant. No one will ever get me to eat spicy food voluntarily. But I don't go, "Oh, Mexican and Thai food *sucks!" I go, "I don't like Mexican or Thai food because they're too spicy for me."
My mother got into an argument with my brother once about musical quality. She does not like Nine Inch Nails. Now, say what you will, but Trent Reznor is an artist who experiments with multiple forms, attempts to expand both his own repertoire and push the envelope of "what is done", and was extraordinarily influential. You may not *like* Nine Inch Nails because you do not like that style of music, but unless you are an expert on music (and my brother is much more an expert than my mother is) or you *like* that style of music and have listened critically to a whole lot of it, you cannot say "Nine Inch Nails is bad music." My mother attempted to make this argument, that because she didn't like it it was objectively bad.
That's the basic problem. Not "Movieverse isn't to my taste" but "movieverse sucks." If you don't read it, you can't say it's objectively bad. If you do read it, and you don't like it because the characters don't appeal to you or because the heavy emphasis on pairings doesn't appeal to you or because the source characterization seems shallow in comparison to comicverse, you still can't say it sucks.
Now, I can say Pokemon fanfic, as a general rule, sucks. Because as a general rule, it violates most of the rules of good writing. it is full of misspellings, poor punctuation, egregious lack of characterization, AND WRITERS SELF-INSERTING THEIR SUPPOSEDLY AMUSING ASIDES IN ALL CAPS AND THEN LAUGHING AT THEMSELVES, TEE HEE! *All* Pokemon fanfic isn't crap-- there's some I very much like. But as a general rule, it's crap, because it's written by 12-year-olds.
This is not true of movieverse. To argue that movieverse is crap, you'd have to say it's generally poorly written, *not* that the themes it generally uses or the characters it uses don't appeal to you. And that's why this is important.
If you say "Peanut butter sucks!" when what you really mean is, "I don't like peanut butter," well, peanut butter has no feelings to get hurt. But, in fact, the correct thing to say is "I don't like peanut butter." If you are a connoisseur of peanut butter you could say that Skippy sucks, because by the standards you judge peanut butter quality it is objectively bad. But you cannot say *all* peanut butter sucks unless you're judging by an objective standard for food, such as "It is too fattening" or "It is made with little attention to quality" or "It has too many preservatives." (And then you'd have to apply the same standards to chocolate, which you like.) Still, when talking about peanut butter it doesn't matter if you mix up "objectively bad" with "not to my taste." It *does* matter when talking about fic.
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Because there's a difference between "this is crap" and "I don't like it."
Date: 2002-10-30 07:07 am (UTC)My mother got into an argument with my brother once about musical quality. She does not like Nine Inch Nails. Now, say what you will, but Trent Reznor is an artist who experiments with multiple forms, attempts to expand both his own repertoire and push the envelope of "what is done", and was extraordinarily influential. You may not *like* Nine Inch Nails because you do not like that style of music, but unless you are an expert on music (and my brother is much more an expert than my mother is) or you *like* that style of music and have listened critically to a whole lot of it, you cannot say "Nine Inch Nails is bad music." My mother attempted to make this argument, that because she didn't like it it was objectively bad.
That's the basic problem. Not "Movieverse isn't to my taste" but "movieverse sucks." If you don't read it, you can't say it's objectively bad. If you do read it, and you don't like it because the characters don't appeal to you or because the heavy emphasis on pairings doesn't appeal to you or because the source characterization seems shallow in comparison to comicverse, you still can't say it sucks.
Now, I can say Pokemon fanfic, as a general rule, sucks. Because as a general rule, it violates most of the rules of good writing. it is full of misspellings, poor punctuation, egregious lack of characterization, AND WRITERS SELF-INSERTING THEIR SUPPOSEDLY AMUSING ASIDES IN ALL CAPS AND THEN LAUGHING AT THEMSELVES, TEE HEE! *All* Pokemon fanfic isn't crap-- there's some I very much like. But as a general rule, it's crap, because it's written by 12-year-olds.
This is not true of movieverse. To argue that movieverse is crap, you'd have to say it's generally poorly written, *not* that the themes it generally uses or the characters it uses don't appeal to you. And that's why this is important.
If you say "Peanut butter sucks!" when what you really mean is, "I don't like peanut butter," well, peanut butter has no feelings to get hurt. But, in fact, the correct thing to say is "I don't like peanut butter." If you are a connoisseur of peanut butter you could say that Skippy sucks, because by the standards you judge peanut butter quality it is objectively bad. But you cannot say *all* peanut butter sucks unless you're judging by an objective standard for food, such as "It is too fattening" or "It is made with little attention to quality" or "It has too many preservatives." (And then you'd have to apply the same standards to chocolate, which you like.) Still, when talking about peanut butter it doesn't matter if you mix up "objectively bad" with "not to my taste." It *does* matter when talking about fic.