"This is, btw, one reason why, by policy, I don't spork badfic; some of it is by potentially glorious writers, with astonishingly fertile minds, who may direly need to learn control and style and restraint and research and all that stuff that you CAN, with a bit of application, learn, but my god, they have guts and the guts are often splendid stuff."
Flow being what it is today, no sooner do I answer someone's inquiry about yaoi and its realism (or lack of it) with a long screed about how it's individual fantasy that matters, whatever form that takes, than someone else emails me with piteous thanks for writing the defence of Mary Sues article at Aesthe. I still maintain that whatever you want to say about Mary Sue fics, they have a sincerity and energy that shines like a beacon or, more like, a huge blinking neon sign. Whatever, it's a quality I too often find lacking in carefully composed and utterly irreproachable fics by BNFWs. If you won't take risks and you won't be honest, your writing will show it sooner or later.
Of course, to judge by various rants, there seems to be a general liking for carefully composed and utterly irreproachable fics, and consequent dismissal and/or mocking of anything that's rough, personal and revelatory. But aren't the people who think like this, in the end, little different from young readers who only want perfect OCs they can identify with snogging the hot guy? I don't think 'I know what I like and you should provide it' is excused just because one of the things you like is proper spelling, formatting and grammar. Those are virtues, but they don't make a good fic by themselves. Energy, ladies, let us have energy. Spell-check will take care of the rest.
