From: Penberriss Wendy S. penberriss@yahoo.com
I'm NOT forcing my opinions on anyone. I'm EXPRESSING my opinions. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, anymore than I'm sure Sally expects everyone to agree with her.
But that is the problem. You're not really expressing any opinion at all, apart from labelling certain areas of fan thought as 'crap' without offering a constructive alternative. By attacking one opinion without presenting a defence of anything that can be recognised as your own counter-opinion, you give people nothing but your name to counter-attack. That makes it personal, and through being driven to counter-attack on a personal level, your original thrust is highly likely to be interpreted likewise. As indeed has happened.
This whole tone reminds me of someone. A short and hairy hedgehog who has managed to get up more than nose in his wretched excuse for a life...
Um... explain please?
Me. I've dealt in pretty much this kind of agit-prop myself, via someone else who posted on my behalf, and as I recall I got vitriolically flamed for it. Not unjustifiably, either. But then I was still in my Angry Young Man phase (I'm a late developer, obviously) . Hopefully I'm now wiser as well as older. Wise enough, at least, to have realised that it simply doesn't work, and it's not the way to enter into constructive dialogue with an opposing point of view. If anything, it creates needless opposition, turning potential allies against you.
Basically, I like a lot of the things you've said over the past month, but I'm not quite so happy with the way you've said them. An a priori assumption that there are areas of fan thought than some people would prefer not to discuss is an easy assumption to make (I've done it myself), but not necessarily a correct one. I don't know how long you've been lurking on Lyst or how thoroughly you've checked the archives, but the matter of h/c and the moral dubiousness of it has been discussed before and not that many months ago. I said almost exactly what Fiona said a few hours ago: Suffering can never be Beautiful. As is typical with discussion on the Lyst, much was said but few if any opinions were significantly altered. If you don't like that, you just have to learn to lump it.
Life's a gratuitously unnecessary pejorative allusion to a female canine.
Neil