Yeah, I don’t exactly approve of the snobbery toward other posters. It generally makes me feel bad. This place can be really insular and alienating to others at times.
When you’re getting paid to write, though…
I’ve never read much fanfic but my understanding is that 50 Shades was a fanfic spin-off of Twilight fanfic. I respect fanfic as a genre/thing with an important societal function, but I’m pretty harsh on what I consider to be bad prose. Nothing will make me drop a story faster.
To have an opinion? No. To have a fully informed opinion? Yes, I think so.
Most of the time, this doesn’t matter; my uninformed opinion, based on reading a plot summary, is sufficient for me to know that I probably would not enjoy God’s Not Dead. It’s even enough for me to know that a student who writes an essay arguing that the movie is a completely accurate representation of the college experience should be pushed to think more critically about certain plot points (true story, this actually happened). But I would definitely need to watch God’s Not Dead for myself if I were going to write an analytical essay of my own about how it represents the college experience, or to argue that it’s a pernicious enough movie that it shouldn’t be available at all. (Well, actually I already know I wouldn’t make that argument, even without seeing it, which complicates things now that I think about it? I dunno, I feel like you need to be very informed to express the opinion that other people should be kept from reading or watching something, which is the real problem with the YA example in the OP, whereas the bar is much lower for ordinary, non-censorious opinions.)
Yes, it can.
Participating in an online community should not require novelist-level skills, and someone whose writing is less than stellar can still have valuable insights and something interesting to say.
Yes again. And isn’t that something editors should be addressing?
I have heard this too.
A lot of people look down on fanfic, but it’s a nice way for beginning writers to get started and develop their skills. There’s a whole community with a ready-made audience, beta readers to give feedback, and other writers who can give advice. There’s plenty of dreadful stuff out there, but since it’s written by amateurs who are still developing their skills, I’m generally more forgiving of bad prose. Some fanfic is actually pretty high quality, though, and I’m sure would be publishable if not for copyright issues.
My favourite fanfic writer is now a published author, who still writes fanfic just for the love of it, and there are many others who are also good writers. It’s finding them that’s the challenge!
It’s not a binary, it’s a spectrum.
Years ago, I hit this when Dave Chappelle started his anti-trans comedy tour. I said I thought it was a gross thing, based on the jokes I’d read. Others told me that unless I saw the jokes performed, my opinion was worthless.
That seems absurd to me. Obviously I might get even more information by watching the jokes, but the text, IMO, gives me enough information to make a judgement.
This is exactly the one that I had in mind with this comment:
That said … in a discussion with a group who have seen it, assuming I don’t have pre existing cause to think them transphobic or hateful themselves? If they expressed an opinion that in context the jokes were somehow not hateful? I’d be skeptical, need to be explained to how those words were not hateful in context, still not be convinced enough to want to see it myself, but open to their direct knowledge as well.
In the Chappelle case the only argument I heard was that being offensive, being gross even, was funny and that it should okay to say offensive things (without concern about the impacts on at risk marginalized groups being the target). That “we” are too sensitive; comedy is supposed to be edgy and offensive is funny. Nothing that argued from personal experience with the material that it was not offensive or gross in context.
I’ve never found it that impressive when comedians just say offensive things and call it comedy.
I’m not a very uptight person but I expect more effort from my comedians. I can enjoy what some might find offensive if it’s actually funny, but humor needs to be the first priority. There’s also that punching up/down thing, which affects how funny I find something.
The comedian Gianmarco Soresi is currently straddling that line between funny and offensive, and he does it pretty well.
I ended up seeing a few clips, when Facebook was feeding me standup reels. Chapelle was very good at saying thoughtful, nuanced things about trans folk–and then with a sly smile, saying something really shitty as the punchline. He drew the comedy from the dissonance between his compassionate monologue and the shitty punchlines. He also drew on the comedy of “allow me to reinforce your stereotypes.”
It sucked. It did nothing to change my initial impression.
This is also something that is a spectrum, not a binary. Turning marginalised groups into sacred cows about which you must never joke is bad, and kind of alienating in itself. Part of acceptance is being able to poke fun at a group. But if you’ve read the the jokes and feel they cross a line, that’s valid too.
I just saw a thread about this self-published ‘gem’ on Twitter:
Do I need to read it to have an opinion?
Probably not. I read a romance about a gorgon, it wasn’t very good, and another one about a spider, that wasn’t very good either. I didn’t finish either. I wouldn’t write off weird creature romance as necessarily without literary merit, but if we’re judging a book by its cover, I can tell you I probably wouldn’t like it. And I think I can say with at least 80% probability it’s not very good.
(My initial thought was this person really cares about the book because they spent so much on cover art, but then I realized AI probably destroyed that industry. Good commissioned cover art used to be $1,000-$2,000 a pop, I’m not sure how AI image generation has changed that.)
What is hard about this?
You can clearly make an educated guess about it. That guess may have an “at least 80% probability” of being correct.
But if there was a discussion and there was someone else whose track record I respected and they said they read it and it was hilarious, and also with some bittersweet, and even some social commentary, mixed in, in ways that landed? Theirs is more of a real opinion.
Then we are not really having a very valuable opinion regarding its contents. (Sure we are often to decide about whether or not to bother reading the book based on the cover. Marketing matters.)
No, actually I originally meant that comment to be about the quality of the cover = the author’s seriousness about the project, at least in terms of how much money they put into it. But the AI factor makes it harder to judge.
But that is all based on my experience as a writer and what little I know about marketing books.
You can also tell based on the cover that it has explicit sex in it. Notice how he’s shirtless and you can see her cleavage. Combine that with the description, this is probably mostly porn, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and it may well be good porn, but not to my taste.
Now if someone described it as a subversive, thoughtful novel with a lot of heart, I might consider it.
Remember, he’s not a cow, he’s a Minotaur, which means he’s a sentient being with ostensibly his own culture. This is not really a beastiality thing. It’s a “what would it be like to have a relationship with someone very different than myself” thing, which comes up a lot in science-fiction romance too, when humans are paired with aliens.
It’s difficult to judge much based on someone else’s very brief derisive description of it, to be honest. (Remember, I read a lot of romance, I can usually tell what a story’s going to be like based on the way it’s presented.)
Whereas i feel this is a good case of, “you can have an opinion of how the work interacts with the rest of the world, and that might be worth sharing”.
Or, as i said before:
So i think it’s legit to talk about why humor that is cruel to trans people is problematic, even if you don’t know first hand how funny the humor is. I also think some of the criticisms of Poor Things were legit, even if the posters hadn’t seen the show.
I don’t think you can add much to “how funny is Chappelle” or “how good is Poor Things as a creative work”, though.
I can’t believe I’m doing this…
Here’s the blurb.
Violet is a typical, down-on-her-luck millennial: mid-twenties, over-educated and drowning in debt, on the verge of moving into her parents’ basement. When a lifeline appears in the form of a very unconventional job in neighboring Cambric Creek, she has no choice but to grab at it with both hands.
Morning Glory Farm offers full-time hours, full benefits, and generous pay with no experience needed . . . there’s only one catch. The clientele is Grade A certified prime beef, with the manly, meaty endowments to match. Hands-on work with minotaurs isn’t something Violet ever considered as a career option, but she’s determined to turn the opportunity into a reversal of fortune.
When a stern, deep-voiced client begins to specially request her for his sessions at the farm, maintaining her professionalism and keeping him out of her dreams is easier said than done. Violet is resolved to make a dent in her student loans and afford name-brand orange juice, and a one-sided crush on an out-of-her-league minotaur is not a part of her plan—unless her feelings aren’t so one-sided after all.
My take is this is pedestrian-level storytelling and yes, mostly porn, with a gimmick thrown in to make it seem more interesting. (I would expect the quality of the writing to be worse than the quality of the writing in the blurb, which is not a great start. The blurb doesn’t even establish a clear crisis. I’m guessing this book is low on conflict.)
Could I be wrong? Yes. But I won’t be finding out.
You know, if you have a bull kink, it might be fun to read.
Oh, that’s a good point.
LOL I just remembered I romanced the Minotaur in Dragon Age: Inquisition. He was hot but that game did not do romance well. I remember it being super awkward. Otherwise great game.
No one, definitely not me, is arguing that one can’t make very good educated guesses about the quality of a work without actually experiencing it. Odds are great your educated guess about that book is correct.
Point remains though that as well informed as an educated guess may be, it is still a guess as to what the value of the work is, and a very different much lower value thing than an opinion formed from experience of the work.
You correctly acknowledge you could be wrong. I highly doubt you are mind you!
But if you were stating that the book is horrible as your opinion of the book, and arguing about how bad it is with someone who has actually read it and is telling you from their first hand experience of it that it was actually witty and with interesting characters… well I’d guess you wouldn’t be that person, who would argue from that position of relatively vast ignorance.
A spider? 
Gorgon or Minotaur is one thing, but spiders are creepy, and not in a good way. When I was a child I used to have nightmares about a giant spider - bigger than person size - invading my house, and the only way to get out was to run between its long, searching, hairy legs. 
Anyway, it wasn’t the weird creature thing that made it sound bad, but the premise is kind of gross, and the excerpt seemed badly written.
That’s some interesting details I wouldn’t have thought of, though if I had thought about the quality of the cover art I probably would has assumed it was AI.
In this case it seems to be mostly a kink thing. However, I agree the general concept can make for an interesting story.
I’ve been told previously that it’s not acceptable to have an opinion on how a work interacts with the rest of the world just because the Prime Minister was treating it like a documentary, and planning new legislation based on it - unless I first watched the thing.
It all makes me cynical.
An opinion informed by hearsay, which isn’t without value in some contexts, but which is not going to be of value when joining a conversation being had between those who have actually experienced the work and are discussing it.
Not meaning to beat up on anyone here but I will use @DemonTree as an example, in the discussion about the show “Adolescence”. In a CS about the show being had by those who have seen it, comments arguing that the show is unfair to men and to incels made based on what they have heard about the show in forums, and not having seen it, were not welcome, and were simply ill informed.
The same sort of thing happened in the discussion of “Poor Things” when someone who had not seen the movie got on a high horse lecturing those who had over what the movie was, how awfully misogynistic it was, based on hearsay.
This is a different sort of thing than making an educated guess that the work is not worth your time or not for you.
Now no question works not personally experienced can be discussed in broader discussions, but when someone with direct experience contributes that the work is actually other than what you had heard about it then its value as an example to be used by you is … lessened.
As I recall, most of the objections to it that I read (including from people who had seen it) were about how the media and politicians were ignoring real crimes that, in their opinion, demonstrated systemic problems, and were instead declaring changes were needed based on an imaginary one depicted in a TV programme. However, it’s been a while so I may have forgotten.
I expect someone complaining about the effect of Chappelle’s jokes on an unpopular minority, in a thread about how funny his latest tour was, might also not be well received. Depending on audience, natch.