stuff

You know what annoys me, is when people don't seem to grasp this fact: It is possible to perceive a problem, and to understand the problem thoroughly and in depth and without excessive bias, and yet, to be unable to come up with a solution.

This isn't directed at anyone on livejournal. It's actually about an argument that's taking place on an email list, about the Middle East situation. One group of people keeps pointing out the serious, ancient historical basis for the animosities between Jews and Arabs and Christians; and these people similarly point out the many reasons that peace efforts have thus far failed, and continue to fail. And then a second group of people comes in and says "okay you damn liberal commie freaks, here's what I say we should do to fix it!" and then a detailed, fairly well-reasoned (if fascist *g*) explanation of their proposed solution. But then the first group says, "here is a detailed and logical explanation of why your plan won't work." And the second group goes, "well fine, then what's YOUR solution?"

And they just don't get that we (the first group) don't HAVE a solution. That's what makes us so sad about the whole thing. We just can't see how to rearrange things in the Middle East so that everyone will be happy, or at least accepting. (Or at least so everyone will stop trying to kill each other.)

But our lack of a solution doesn't make us idiots. It doesn't mean we don't understand the issues; it doesn't mean we're hopelessly biased; and it doesn't mean we don't have a right to express our opinions on the situation. Just because you can't fix it, doesn't mean you lose the right to say it's broken.

( In other news... )

Next up: a friends-only post about Plan G. Yep, there's new stuff to report. I know you're thrilled. ;)

and another thing

Since I'm already being snarky today, here's another fanfic pet peeve. I hate it when a fanfic writer just pulls a sentence out from the story and slaps that into the "Summary" field. You get something like: "Summary: 'So he sits there thinking, as the sun goes down.'" Dude, that's not a summary. That tells me NOTHING about the story. (Except that there's a guy, and the sun sets. Maybe that's all that happens, you say? Yeah, but you see this kind of thing on long stories that actually have plot.) A summary should tell me generally what I'm going to get when I open up the story. It should, you know, summarize the story? You know?

I know (believe me, I do) that writing summaries can be hard for us fanfic writers. Especially when you're really concerned about not giving away what you think of as the important plot points. But come on, give it a try, for goodness's sake. You're a writer; be creative. Just lifting a sentence from the story is lazy and unhelpful. You might as well just not have a summary at all.