(no subject)

[schmerica]

I've never understood the "we must encourage the newbies!" phenomena, really, myself. Part of it, I think, may just me liking the idea of things being based on merit; part of it might just be discomfort with the mindset that people deserve something, and we have a responsibility to give it to them; part of it might be the fact that I want to think (and hope) that any comments or appreciations I got when I was a newbie was in fact sincere, and not just some "duty" to pat me on the back; part of it might just the simple way I have it sorted in my mind.

Some writers suck. Lots of newbies suck. Of course, established writers suck, too. I don't feel like encouraging people whom I don't enjoy, simply because of their new status, or because of the vague possibility that they may become good someday.

I like good writers, and good writing. Victoria made a comment in her entry about how good fic gets noticed, and while that's not a hard fast rule, of course (dude, there's always way underrated people), it is true to some extent.

I remember getting the email announcement for Koi's "Mercy" back in the summer, and thinking, when I didn't recognize the name, "Hmm. This is probably going to suck, but I'm bored, so. Might as well give it a try." I can easily think of quite a few other people where the circumstances were similar; they wrote good things, people passed around their names, more people read them, and you know, good things happened all around.

I don't know if I actually have a point here or not.

Comments

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the discussion that prompted this has the sort of thing where people say SV fandom has a whole is bitchy and mean and unencouraging. It seems like it's referring more to a lack of cheerleading and streamers than what you're talking about. Like saying "People suck because they only read stuff by authors they've read before, or that's been recced" or "You should comment on stuff by new people, not people who're already around" and all the other stuff -- that seems less like the sort of friendliness you mean.

Re:

[afrai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kind of dumb. Understandable, but dumb. I suppose they have different expectations of fandom.