My Top 10 Unpopular Fannish Opinions

This was my response to a Livejournal meme that was wandering around a month or so ago.

10) Sturgeon's Law is applicable to every single fandom.

9) If an actress or actor wants something to happen to his or her character, feels that it's in the best interest of the character, works within the development of the character, he or she has that right, and your opinion on it really doesn't matter much in the grand scheme. Yes, you've invested X years of love and devotion and time into a show and into a character. Yes, you think this will ruin the character. Still not their problem.

8) Textspeak (and to a lesser extent chatspeak) has an appropriate medium. Keep it there. It does not belong in email, it does not belong on blogs or livejournals, it does not belong in fic. And yes, you have every right to put it in any of those contexts. And I will keep deleting it unread.

7) If someone takes the time to send you feedback, especially complimentary feedback, it's the barest of common courtesy to acknowledge that effort. Yes, we all forget from time to time, or get busy, but if you never acknowledge feedback, that's just rude.

6) On a related note, baldly stating a refusal to continue writing if you don't get feedback is childish.

5) Fandom is not a wonderful, enlightened community of free-thinkers. Fandom is just like high school.

4) If you write your opinion on something, and you put it online for public consumption, you will get responses. If you write fic and ask for feedback, you will get it. If the responses and feedback are puerile flaming, ignore them. If they are critical and constructive, heed them. If you can't handle either of those scenarios, get the hell off the internet.

3) Stargate really, really, REALLY doesn't need an eighth season. Being the second-longest-running SF show in history isn't always a good thing. Look at the end of X-Files. Also, Stargate isn't strong enough to carry its own franchise.

2) On the other hand, the Star Trek franchise needs to be buried, because it's dead, Jim. Really. When you're recycling that many plots from the movies and previous series, just let it go. The lumbering undead corpse that is Enterprise is starting to smell funny. Let it rest while it still has laurels to rest on.

1) When all is said and done, remember: it's still just a TV show, book, movie, etc. If you can't laugh at yourself, trust that other people will do it for you.