Oh wow! Wendy, you were onto something when you said in Catherine’s story FDK thread that this should be made into a separate thread for discussion and that it would be an interesting read. Because this is such an interesting read! I’ve been scrambling to find time at work to get to the site and see the new posts!

After thinking about this a lot, I realized that I am not passionately on either side of this issue. I have two mentalities – my Archive Mentality and my Boards Mentality. When I go to the archive, I am looking for a story and those searches reflect the types of stories I am interested in. Basically S1-S2 getting together scenarios, adaptations of favorite episodes like BatP, Hol, TOGoM, etc. I definitely don’t go looking for deathfics. So when I’m on the archive, I’m on a mission, and a little more close-minded. I know what I’m looking for, I have story descriptions to guide me and make me think I’ve found something I’d like.

Now... when I go to the Boards, I am not sure what a story is about, but I am always dying to see everyone’s work – see what/how they write and how they tell the story they choose to tell. I don’t read every story on the board, but I do read many. And I definitely read many stories that I know I would never read on the archive. I will find myself thoroughly enjoying a story that doesn’t fit into any of my favorite genres or just wrapped up in someone’s writing and style, even though the story is not exactly my general cup of tea wink

I am the same way with books. I enjoyed so many of the required reading I had at school from grade school through college. But if you put me in a bookstore and told me I could buy any of the books there, those would not be the ones I would buy.

Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense!! I guess what I’m trying to say is the boards allow me to sample other kinds of stories than the ones I stick to, the ones I enjoy the most. I will sometimes not like the stories or if I do, I will only read them once. The stories I love that I’ll read over and over again are pretty much in the archive category for me.

Now deathfics are more complicated, true. And I, too, definitely love the feeling of hope that this fandom provides – that these characters - this classic love story - provides. Seeing one of them die leaves you with a feeling that… well, isn’t that wink So I can understand why there are many people that won’t read these stories. I’ve seen words in this thread like “catharsis” and “escapism” and, well… they mean something different to everyone. We all read for different reasons. To escape different realities, long for different worlds. It's a very, very personal thing, and it should be! It would be boring if we all liked the same stories, if we all read for the same reasons, wrote for the same reasons… So there will be writers who explore something other writers would run the other way from. And for those writers there are readers who will want to read it… and readers who won’t. And like I said before, I am not passionately against deathfics. I just don’t seek them out.

For me, it’s simple: As a writer, I am constantly in search of good writing that I can lose myself in. Learn from. Writing that can evoke real emotions from me. As a reader – pretty much the same smile

So I think in this discussion, I fall somewhere to the middle (I'm a Libra, it's my lot in life wink )

~Nicole