Seriously....
Mar. 16th, 2008 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zinnithIf the only thing you can do is find fault with the show, why watch it in the first place?
"Hi, I don't like the way the show is progressing. I will now mock it and call the writers stupid."
Newsflash for you, people. You hold no claims whatsoever to Stargate:Atlantis. It doesn't matter how many excellent fanfics you have written or how many fans you have - it is not your story. I bet if someone left comments on your fic telling you how very wrong it is and how you're mangling the characters and how your plots are stupid you'd go through the roof. What makes you think you have the right to do the same thing to the writers of the show? Without those writers and their work, you wouldn't have anything to write fanfiction about in the first place!
I feel like the underlying message is: 'I would do a much better job writing the show than the actual writers'. Well, tough luck. You're not one of those writers. If you want a say in how the show is written, you do what the rest of the world has to do - apply for the job!
Good writers don't write what the fans, what you want them to write. They write what they want to write, and you have the choice to read/watch/listen or not. It's your right to like the result or don't like it. It's not your right to claim that the writers are writing the story wrong. It's their story. It's their ideas, their characters, their plot. Borrowing those ideas and building on them does not give you the right to critizise when the actual, canon on-screen plot doesn't go in the direction you want it to go. You know those bad ff.net wips you also love to mock? The ones where the writer keeps asking what the readers think should happen in the next chapter? Is that what you want the SGA writers to do? I you don't like the show anymore, why don't you just shut up and stop watching it? It's as simple as that!
*steps down from soapbox*
(This is not directed at a specific fan, but rather to a group of fans who have been irritating me a lot lately. You know the type - the ones who take everything that happens on the show personally. Come on, it's just a tv-show! It's supposed to be fun, not life and death!)
(Yes, I'm a little cranky today.)
"Hi, I don't like the way the show is progressing. I will now mock it and call the writers stupid."
Newsflash for you, people. You hold no claims whatsoever to Stargate:Atlantis. It doesn't matter how many excellent fanfics you have written or how many fans you have - it is not your story. I bet if someone left comments on your fic telling you how very wrong it is and how you're mangling the characters and how your plots are stupid you'd go through the roof. What makes you think you have the right to do the same thing to the writers of the show? Without those writers and their work, you wouldn't have anything to write fanfiction about in the first place!
I feel like the underlying message is: 'I would do a much better job writing the show than the actual writers'. Well, tough luck. You're not one of those writers. If you want a say in how the show is written, you do what the rest of the world has to do - apply for the job!
Good writers don't write what the fans, what you want them to write. They write what they want to write, and you have the choice to read/watch/listen or not. It's your right to like the result or don't like it. It's not your right to claim that the writers are writing the story wrong. It's their story. It's their ideas, their characters, their plot. Borrowing those ideas and building on them does not give you the right to critizise when the actual, canon on-screen plot doesn't go in the direction you want it to go. You know those bad ff.net wips you also love to mock? The ones where the writer keeps asking what the readers think should happen in the next chapter? Is that what you want the SGA writers to do? I you don't like the show anymore, why don't you just shut up and stop watching it? It's as simple as that!
*steps down from soapbox*
(This is not directed at a specific fan, but rather to a group of fans who have been irritating me a lot lately. You know the type - the ones who take everything that happens on the show personally. Come on, it's just a tv-show! It's supposed to be fun, not life and death!)
(Yes, I'm a little cranky today.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-16 04:32 pm (UTC)The way I see it, it's my right as a reader/watcher of tv-shows to interpret what I see. It's also my opinion that the moment a writer turns her/his story over to the public, it belongs to the public. (Well, not the rights to the story, but the right to form an opinion about the story, if you get what I mean.) It is, however, not my right to claim that my interpretation is the only right one. It's also not my right to assume that the writer's interpretation of the story is the same as mine. I know nothing of what was going on in the writer's head as s/he wrote the story. I can only say what was going on in my head as I read/watched it and that has to stand for me. I can't put those opinions on the writer, because it's my opinions and not the writers'.
Gah, I can't seem to stop ranting today, sorry ;-)
I don't remember that much from the HP-fandom. (I honestly didn't stay there that long because all the shipwars scared me.) But I agree, many SGA fans seem to expect a lot from the show that it it just doesn't have any obligation to provide.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-16 05:00 pm (UTC)Oh, don't worry. You're in your own space here. :) I just meant that when I see these people making specific comments, I'd like to answer them with a comment, but it's just not worth it.
But yes, everything you said. :)