"Combeferre, Our Time is Running Short..."

Edit: WARNING: Pretentious Directly Ahead. Mind Your Head.

We are having an influx of bourgeoisie fanfiction at The Pit. It's all very mediocre; nothing exceptional, either badly or splendidly. A lot of it seems to be Cosette/Marius, which is another reason it feels bourgeoisie.

We were all so concerned about Eppie-Sues and Canon-love!hate and we got on our soapboxes and wrote our parodies and did our daring breakthrough fics where we gave Cosette a personality, and now that's just standard fare. Those parodies and the novelties of those fics are pretty much routine and also inherently pointless now. The fandom, at least over at ff.n, seems fairly self-satisfied and harmlessly pretentious, and they're also preaching to the choir to some extent. It's vaguely depressing.

While it would wonderful to see some beautifully-written Cosette/Marius, at the moment there's loads of it on the market, all mostly so-so writing, nothing special; but the reviewers are still saying Hey, look! It's C/M! You're not some misguided E/M shipper! More love to you! when what the authors really need is the same kind of constructive criticism E/M should get. Before long, plain C/M-romance fic is going to be as big a cliche as the other extreme (this phrase being a contradiction in terms, really, since the sort of C/M we're seeing is not exactly an extreme).

Amislash has gone mostly the same way, too. We have our greats, like mhari, petronelle, tiamatschild, but, perhaps sensibly, they've gone away from The Pit, and we're left with a lot of other people who are scattered converts trying to emulate the greatness, but using only the concept and not the style. Of course, everyone knows about E!/R, and it's lack of novelty at this point; but the same thing is going on to happen to Jehan/'Ferre or /Bahorel, 'Ferre/E!, Courfeuilly, 'Ferre/'Feyrac, and &c (confessedly, some of my favourite Amislashes, like Jehan/R, Feuilly/Bahorel, Courfeyrac/Enjolras, or R/'Ferre, remain mainly untouched), while at the same time Bossuet/Joly is Just Like Canon Comic Relief Pairing. Joly/Bossuet/Musichetta, however? One can't find it.

I never wish that we had our Good Old Days back, as I've no desire to relieve Eppie/Marius and hideofying parody fics from hell, but a wretched Eppie/Enjy could stir things up nicely. What I'd really like, though, is to have actual good fic. Bad is fun, but mediocre is boring, and good would be absolutely fantastic.

In the meantime, I will get off my own pretentious little soapbox and go back to writing MED and Eighty Days fic. Fandom, I renounce you. The nice thing about Jules Verne is that his fans are so nonexistent concentrated that they all seem to be sensible and good writers.

...

Yes. Smack me now, please. I need it.

Only a week until I see lillieoz! *jumps up and down on her toes happily*