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I was skimming metafandom, as I am wont to do sometimes, looking for something that was not about strikethrough '07 or whatever silly name they have for general wankopolpsery, and stumbled upon and interesting little ditty about Buffyverse and Angst (two of my favorite things!) by luciademedici.  Besides finding great comfort in knowing that someone else loves to reduce themselves to tears with the season two finale, I found it an interesting claim that angst has a bad wrap.  As a minion and instigator of angst myself, perhaps I have simply been kindly isolated from this abhorrence of angst (or maybe Stargate fans are made of sterner stuff. ;)  But the explanation for why certain people feel the need to hate and/or avoid certain genres/pairings/yada yada is getting really old.  "There is so much crap out there that readers never get past the first inevitable eye-sporkingly bad fics."  Maybe true, but I have seen this used to explain any and all negative reputations earned by any sub catagory.  I refuse to believe that writing good fluff or humor is any less difficult than writing good angst.  And as for pairings, sure by sheer numbers there is a lot more Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel stuff out there than anything else, but pure percentage-wise?  I'd hazard there is the same good to not-so-good ratio of fic in any category be it Sam/Cam or Lorne/Giant Squid.  There are two things to be learned here: 1) There is a lot of crap in ALL types and finding good fic is difficult in all of them, but no where near impossible.  Have a stout heart, roll your sleeves up, and dig in.  2) People are dumb.  There, I said it.  And I do include myself in people, so don't get too freaked out yet.  My point: People will hate things.  People will draw conclusions based on small samples of data (it's called stereotyping and also sometimes 'polling').  Some people will even go out of their way to shriek these conclusions from the top of the nearest comm as much as they can.  You hate angst?  Big deal.  It's your right.  Never going to read any of my fics because I have a 'rep' for angst?  I don't care.  And neither should you.  If you are gunning for universal likeability and approval, in fandom or elsewhere, you're going to discover long, drawn out disappointment (one might even say angst :p).

This all just boils down to one more type of wankery.  Blindly hating anything or getting pissed off that people blindly hate something are really two sides of the same coin.  Because maybe people like to be stereotyped to some degree, it makes us vs. them, and isn't it ever so pleasant to be "us" ?  If you think I'm being unfair to the beleaguered 'us' who are disparaged by 'them', just look how little time it takes for a defense of angst (genre/pairing/yada yada) to turn into a put down fest on whatever is considered to be the opposite camp.  "Who the hell would want to read fluff anyway?"  "Only people with no imagination/wit/sanity would prefer fill-in-the-blank."  Ah.  Community through wankery.  Fandom is such an amazing microcosm of the real world sometimes, isn't it?

And no matter how appealing it is to think "Oh!  I'm so persecuted and misunderstood!  And it's because Angst is ever so much harder to write," I know that is just my own dumb side speaking and I am deciding to ignore it out of respect for my flist, who is in no way from one camp or mindset (thank the gods), and out of respect for myself. To be honest, right now neither 'us' nor 'them' is looking rather appealing.  I think I'll stick to 'me'.

ETA: And don't forget to read the greatest Lorne/Giant Squid comment fic OF ALL TIME.