Subject: I dunno, Led Zep not working on the harp is debatable.
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Posted on: 2021-02-21 15:38:08 UTC

For instance, "Immigrant Song" on duet harps is haunting and gorgeous, IMO. It's different, but does that mean it doesn't work? {= )

There's about a million harp covers of "Stairway to Heaven," too, as it turns out.

But, actually, I agree with pretty much everything else you said there. It doesn't work in any situation for the agents to just stand there and go "this is bad!", for starters. A mission at its best shows why it's bad or how it's absurd if you stop and think for a few seconds. The agents' emotional/visceral response and snark can be an important part of that, but only if you take it a step beyond the surface-level "ew!" or "wrong!" or whatever. That certainly goes for squicky fic as much as anything else. In that case, you also don't want to revel in the squick and reproduce all the nasty badfic quotes you can cram in, because yeah, that's obvious, and after a certain point it's redundant, and if that's all you do, it's not creative or fun to read. Trojie and Pads knew this, and they were really good at using the agents' responses to stuff to get what was happening across without quoting it verbatim, and being entertaining while they were at it.

Additionally, I think there's an opportunity to comment on the subtle social wrongness that might lead to the horrible attitudes that tend to show up in godawful smut and the like. There's a lot of horrible that society at large does not yet recognize as horrible, and I think we've cultivated a community that can speak to that better than most. As Mary Sues aren't feminist, so bad slash is often homophobic, and more.

So that's why I say have at it. But yeah, the stuff that gives a PPCer something to work with creatively and entertainingly is always going to be a better choice, regardless of subject material. {= )

~Neshomeh

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