But none are lamer than what passes for fanfiction in the Beautiful Thing fandom.
Now, this is not uninformed ranting by yours truly here. I have put in the time. I have read the whole of the BT archive *and* the BT spin-off archive. I know of what I speak.
And even though I learned that lesson in the past, I went to the archive yet again thinking, 'It can't be as bad as I remember it being.' Oh, but it was.
Even if one were to ignore the flagrant and abusive use of Marty Stu's, the complete ignorance of basic English grammar, spelling, and narrative form, and the total lack of anything resembling an actual story in the stories, there will always be the forward slash/backward slash girl.
This is a girl whose story was basically a smutty PWP. Now, that's not a thing I have any sort of problem with because, well, boysex. This girl, though, according to her in media res parenthetical note, does not like the word 'penis' or any euphemism for same. In order to solve her dilemma, yet remain able to foist her idea of 'writing' off on the world, she decreed that one character's penis would be referred to as '\' while the other character's would be '/'.
No, she wasn't joking.
LeLe, one might ask, if the story was so bad, why did you keep reading?
To which I must reply, Shut the hell up.
