Subject: I still disagree. ^_~
Author:
Posted on: 2021-02-18 14:01:23 UTC

...if we're a kinder, gentler PPC than we were in the past, then it makes sense for people's overly perfect personal fantasies to be less acceptable targets, and as a result, for us to take aim at more things that are objectively horrible.

I don't think focussing on things which are objectively horrible is the way to go, because... they're objectively horrible! Everyone can see that squicky smut and ultra-gore are nasty; there's no value added from having a character standing there saying "yuck".

I think the space the PPC works best in is the things which are non-obviously horrible, or subtly wrong. If Legolas is doing the urple nasty with a Suvian, that's horrible; if the scene changes imply that Aragorn and Galadriel are having a chat in the same room, that's non-obviously horrible.

I like to think of "Rambling Band" at this point: it's not obvious that the Suvian must be playing terrible music, but by applying logic, J&A were able to realise that Led Zeppelin wouldn't actually work on the harp. They spend a good half-page of writing exploring the consequences of that; they don't spend any time at all on the horrible injuries Laurel sustains while jumping a van through a movie screen, because the badfic knows about them, and we all know too.

Which isn't to say squick can't contain those things: badly-written smut can be a whole heap of logistical mishaps! But that's while being obviously horrible, not because of it.

I emphatically do agree, of course, that the PPC should always be fun. ^_^

hS

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