Ten Unpopular Opinions

[valarltd]

1) Profic is not canon.

2) I reserve the right to not write minority characters. I would far rather write a 6-legged hermaphrodite from Regula, because there I won't get jumped on as a racist for "failing to properly portray the ethnic experience." Falls under the "making stuff up" research method.

3) Contrary to postmodern thought, words do have meanings. They have denotative and connotative meanings. I cannot, for example, call my evening meal "anthracite" and be taken seriously. The word is "dinner" and while it may mean spaghetti for one, prime rib for another and celery juice with melba toast for a third, it is still the evening meal.

Any time I hear the "words don't really mean anything," I am overcome with a desire to announce: "Master of All Masters, get out of your barnacle and put on your squibs and crackers! White-faced Siminy has got a spark of hot corkalorum on her tail and if not doused with podalorum, soon all High-topper-Mountain will be on hot corkalorum!"

4) Kink is just that: kink. My kink is OK. Your kink is OK. Yours may not push my buttons and vice versa, and that's OK too. It's a big sandbox and surely we can all play nice.

5) You do not hold the patent on the characters. If my interpretation does not jibe with yours, that's because it is mine. I don't hold the patent either.

6) At base, Star Trek is a morality play. At base, Star Wars is mythology. Comparing the two is a disservice to both forms. Both do what they were constructed to do, and that's very different things on each part.

7) Never apologize. You meant it when you said it.

8) If you're going to writre a sex act, try it. Even if it's outside your orientation.

9) Original characters have a place. But it should be for the canon characters to play off of, not one that upstages or deforms the canon characters.

10) Actors are not characters. Slashing a character says nothing about an actor's sexuality, only that the performance has an ambiguous sexual preference. Many fine actors have played gay characters and are straight in real life.

If I write Luke as gay it no more makes the good Mr. Hamill gay than his current Broadway show (in which his character, Michael Minetti, is gay) does. He still goes home with his lovely wife every night. If I decide to write a horrendous crossover in which Rooster Cogburn, Dirty Harry and Robert Thorn (from Soylent Green have nasty tough guy sex, it doesn't make John Wayne, Clint Eastwood or Charlton Heston gay.