(no subject)

[keiliss]

Okay, so yet another well meaning person has told me "Doubt is a great story. You know, if it was Erestor/Glorfindel it would be much more popular, people just don't usually bother to read pairings like Glorfindel/Gil-galad unless there's a lot of smut."

From which I gather that I am wasting my time, and if I'm not prepared to either write E/G or else go the 'less plot, much more smut' route, I should find another fandom or something. I am just so SICK of this!!!! This is meant to be the LotR fandom but it isn't, it's been turned into the E/G fandom. Doesn't matter how badly written, doesn't matter how weak the plot, how two-dimensional characters, as long as a story features The Couple....

I don’t get masses of fb – well, it’s been 17 chapters so far, fb drops off after a while, I know - and what I get tends to be from people I very much respect, who really encourage me, but then I meet people online who go "You're a writer? Oh, what have you written? Oh, Elrond/Glorfindel, Glorfindel/GG? Oh, sorry, I haven't read any of your fics but, well, I really only like Erestor and Glory - just love Erestor...."

Maybe I’m shallow to get insulted and upset and angry when people tell me that, as though my characters are somehow *less* than their adored OMC, but that’s how I feel tonight. What I hate is the implied lack of respect, when ability takes second place to choice of character, when I am made to feel useless as a writer not because I'm no good, but because I don't write a specific pairing. That's like saying you will only read detective stories, and only by one author, or only with stories set in west Yorkshire....In any other genre this would be laughable.

Not reading a pairing because you've tried them and really don't like it is fine, only reading one pairing, and regarding anything else as unimportant is an insult to those of us who write outside that little comfort zone. And you know what? Sometimes, when it gets said oh so casually – ‘Oh, I only read Erestor/Glorfindel’ – it hurts. It actually hurts. Those words dismiss all other characters, including mine, who I happen to love, as inferior and not worth the effort of even glancing at.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t one of those rants that ends with a threat to not finish the fic, leave the fandom, etc…I would write Doubt if no one was reading it except me, I write because I love doing it, I love whatever story it is I am telling and get very involved with my characters, and this is the only fandom I am currently interested in writing in.

*goes back to writing a tense, emotional scene, which has been built towards for the last nine chapters, and which will probably be read by all of fifteen people”