Personally, I think you should at least pick a much-recommended deathfic and try it. Sometimes you have to take a chance on something you are positive you will hate.
That's a very good point, Hasini. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to stick my nose in once again and defend Carol, for two reasons. One, because she defended me, and two, because I think I understand what she means.
Imagine a TV show that doesn't exist in the real world. We are going to assume that it stars two characters, one white and one black. The show generates quite a lot of fanfics, and a small amount of the stories are deathfics.
Now imagine a black woman who is a fan of this show. She has watched all the episodes and she has read a ton of fanfics. But she has discovered that almost 70% of the deathfics are "black character deathfics" and only a little more than 30% of the deathfics are "white character deathfics". Moreover, there is no obvious reasons for why this should be so. Usually the person who dies in the deathfics does so for completely random reasons. The two characters suddenly find themselves in a rain of bullets, and the black person is killed, while the white one survives. It could just as easily have been the other way round, but it wasn't. Or the two heroes' car flips, and the black man is killed while the white one survives. Or a lunatic sends mailbombs to the heroes, and the black man's bomb explodes while the white man's bomb is a dud. It could just as easily have been the other way round, but it wasn't.
When our black fan has realized that almost 70% of the deathfics in question are "black character deathfics", even though there is no really good reason for why such an imbalace should exist, she feels deeply offended and decides never to read a deathfic inspired by this show again. Is her decision justified? Perhaps not. If she never gives a deathfic a chance again, she is going to miss out on any deathfic that gives us a thoughtful and well-considered reason for why the black character might indeed run a greater risk of being killed than the white character. And even among the deathfics that ask themselves no such questions, there may be some that are very well written and very moving. It is not at all impossible that our fan might have liked some of these stories if she had given them a try.
On the other hand, it
is also possible that even the well-written stories would have angered, saddened and depressed her. Does she have a right to those feelings? Does she have a right to stop reading these stories and still brand the popularity of death-of-blacks fics versus the relative non-popularity of death-of-whites fics as deeply troubling? (Does she, at the same time, have a right to dislike
all deathfics?)I think she does. Does she have the right to raise this question, maybe again and again, when she talks to other fans of this show? Heh. You know what my answers must be, Hasini. But will the other members of that fandom appreciate her tenacity? It ain't necessarily so.
Ann
P.S. Like the hypothetical fan I have described in my post, I won't read the "death-of-blacks" fics - eh, I mean that, like Carol, I won't read the death-of-Lois fics. However, I'm not implying that 70% of the LnC deathfics are death-of-Lois fics, because I haven't counted.
