sometimes things are awesome
Oct. 28th, 2011 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhSo here's a great thing that happened today.
On a post from The New Yorker's book blog, The Book Bench (which I highly recommend) I was linked to a post on Hairpin called "How to Write a Romance Novel." And I thought, "oh dear."
Now, Hairpin is the sort-of lady-cousin to The Awl, with which I have a complicated relationship as a reader. A pal writes for them sometimes, and at the start I gave them the ol' college try; I have a login there and everything. But I soon realized that their way of talking about things is pretty much opposite to mine, so I stopped reading. Which means, I had every reason to think that this blog entry would be not just annoying and snarky and superior but also the exact same annoying, snarky, superior blog entry that you think it's going to be.
And it was terrible and, which is worse, entirely unoriginal!
Now, usually I don't read comments on these kinds of things, and I'm not sure what led me to them, but part way down there was a comment from "Yahtzi": "I'm going to assume that we're all smart ladies who know that romance novels are actually fucking awesome (and many are well-written), so I'll save the screed." Following this comment was a long string of comments from people proclaiming themselves not just romance novel readers but (wait for it): fanfiction readers! And saying the sort of things that we would say, basically: that sure, a lot of it isn't great, but if you know where to look, there's a bunch that is better than a lot of published fiction.
It's here that I want to note that my aforementioned friend, in writing a post on The Awl that referenced fanfiction, was not entirely dismissive of same because she had some friends who wrote it, including me, and wanted to be respectful. And I felt respected. Now folks are coming out in the comments and saying, "me too!"
My heart, you guys. I feel like we're not so strange after all.
On a post from The New Yorker's book blog, The Book Bench (which I highly recommend) I was linked to a post on Hairpin called "How to Write a Romance Novel." And I thought, "oh dear."
Now, Hairpin is the sort-of lady-cousin to The Awl, with which I have a complicated relationship as a reader. A pal writes for them sometimes, and at the start I gave them the ol' college try; I have a login there and everything. But I soon realized that their way of talking about things is pretty much opposite to mine, so I stopped reading. Which means, I had every reason to think that this blog entry would be not just annoying and snarky and superior but also the exact same annoying, snarky, superior blog entry that you think it's going to be.
And it was terrible and, which is worse, entirely unoriginal!
Now, usually I don't read comments on these kinds of things, and I'm not sure what led me to them, but part way down there was a comment from "Yahtzi": "I'm going to assume that we're all smart ladies who know that romance novels are actually fucking awesome (and many are well-written), so I'll save the screed." Following this comment was a long string of comments from people proclaiming themselves not just romance novel readers but (wait for it): fanfiction readers! And saying the sort of things that we would say, basically: that sure, a lot of it isn't great, but if you know where to look, there's a bunch that is better than a lot of published fiction.
It's here that I want to note that my aforementioned friend, in writing a post on The Awl that referenced fanfiction, was not entirely dismissive of same because she had some friends who wrote it, including me, and wanted to be respectful. And I felt respected. Now folks are coming out in the comments and saying, "me too!"
My heart, you guys. I feel like we're not so strange after all.
