Post
by BishounenStalker » Fri Aug 29, 2003 9:41 am
Something tells me I was a bit misunderstood here. I'm not calling yaoi/shounen-ai/slash fic bad in and of itself. I'm more open-minded than that. It's just that most of the yaoi I've seen was, for all intents and purposes, poorly written. The characterization was wretched (the way the less dominant male was portrayed, he might as well have been a woman. And an annoying one at that. Or alternately, both parties involved had no love at all and just screwed like gerbils until one of them slit his wrists), and the plot (if any) was the same horse being beaten into the ground (example: A loves B, B's not sure, C wants to see A and B happy, crisis happens, A and B finally wake up and smell the pheromones, C throws a party).
But I have come across the occasional shounen-ai fic that actually portrayed the characters believably (that is to say, without the gay stereotype of a macho-weakling pair. A very old, tired, and somewhat false stereotype), and actually had a besides-the-obvious plot going. And those were actually enjoyable.
It's just that for some odd reason I've seen less character assassination in het fics. And by character assassination, I mean "Male Has Obvious Female Love Interest Or Hits on Any Woman in Sight and Shows Absolutely no Interest in Men, But He MUST Be Gay Because I Can't Stand Het Couples" (as opposed to the perfectly reasonable "Male has no Female Love Interest and Shows No Interest in Women Whatsoever, Therefore the Possibility of His Being Gay Actually Exists"). However, that doesn't mean I'm calling ALL yaoi fic bad. It just means that I haven't found as many good reads in yaoi as I have in het. But the worthy reads I have found in yaoi I do acknowledge as being good fics.
But I'll shamelessly admit that I've come across a great deal of bad het fic, too. The kind where the characterization sucked (strong-willed female badass is suddenly a weeping virgin while passive, mild-mannered male turns into Ahhnold clone), and the plot rivalled that of a grocery store romance novel for triteness. I lump those and the aforementioned bad yaoi fics into the same category of bad fic in general. But for some odd reason, I've come across just plain bad characterization more in yaoi than I have in het. But it could be that I was looking in the wrong places (and no, Fanfiction.net doesn't count. I don't think I've read ANY fic from that site in the last three years unless someone rec'ed one to me).
Bottom line is that fanfic has gone downhill even faster than AMVs, simply because fanfic doesn't require complicated software or a souped-up computer to create (I write mine on a 3-year-old Compaq with Wordpad, for crying out loud), nor does it require very much time to upload (no fanfic I've ever seen tapped out at 40MB). But in a sense, the Org is like the Fanfiction.net of AMVs. Quantity, not necessarily quality. While the Donut is a godsend for poor creators who can't afford hosting, it's also a Pandora's Box that's let the influx of newbies post really bad AMVs.
In the same way, Fanfiction.net has done the same thing with fanfics. Back in The Day, we had to actually get webhosting, update a website, and advertise it in order for anyone to find our fics and give feedback. Now with Fanfiction.net, those are no longer a worry. There's no site to manage and no advertising to be done because the service does it all for us. It actually takes the WORK out of fanfic. Unfortunately, it also takes out the effort. Hence, it's become easier for new writers to post bad fics.
But once in a while, there crops up a gem of the story that somehow makes things worth it. Even if those onces-in-whiles don't occur as often as I'd like.
-- Rachel the Demon, Resident Quoter of Obscure Nostalgia
"Great. He can pick his teeth when he's done with us!" - Marina,
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
Current AMV:
Somewhere On This Night
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