Subject: Religion as an Excuse.
Author:
Posted on: 2012-01-09 13:49:00 UTC

Religon can be used as an unrealistic excuse-for-respect or excuse-for-power in the same way many other things can.

In my first mission, I encountered a Mary Sue that used the excuse that she was a good Christian to tell us that she was a good, morally-superior person... all while she made every other female character act like a terribly OOC, sexually-starved rabid animal (including inventing fake antagonists whose only crimes were 'wearing a bikini and thinking Link was cute', was nasty to Link's friends, and gave a religious speech TO THE LOCAL GODDESSES THEMSELVES, after which the local deities were SO impressed they gave her one of the local items of power. While religion is important to a person and may really BE their explanation for their morality... talking about it out of the blue to people who wouldn't know about it won't make people give you godlike powers...

Her religion isn't bad. Not in any way. But using it as a special coupon to turn in for praise and adoration in the fanfic is bad. It's as bad as using any trait to do it (I'm an orphan, love me! I'm an emo and that's somehow tragic, love me!), it's bad writing, and the PPC shouldn't ignore it simply because it's easier to avoid the issue than dare to even mention religion at all. Which you say in your comment, and I agree with.

Of course, if a fanfic is just going to be a recipe for disaster, there's no point sporking it. I'd have a feeling of dread if I ever tried, which is not great for sporking purposes.

The PPC's job is to evaluate the writing, not the material and certainly not the author writing it, and even bigger no-no not the people reading it. I think that although some topics are controversial, we don't have to avoid them. We just have to focus on the PPC's job in that case, and just... inject our thoughts on the writing and the story like we're supposed to, and not the religion or even any other topic.

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