Ahhhhh, a breath of fresh air.

Right now, I *heart* jacquez (admin of criticaledge) so, so much. She is unafraid to say things like this:

"I'm axing this on the grounds that it is (a) boring (b) repetitive (c) boring (d) repetitive (e) boring (f) repetitive (g) boring (h) repetitive."

and

"Anyone who continues responding to the thread after reasonable propagation of this message will be placed on moderated status for the high crime of boring me to death."

This is a goodness, as the discussion has involved the tinhat in one corner refusing to accept anything anyone else says (complete with thinly veiled insults), while half of the list explains things patiently to her at great length, and the other half insults her. Technically many (though not all) of the participants in the discussion have done nothing wrong. But really, it's all incredibly boring. And clearly no-one is going to convince anyone else. I'm glad that, for LauraJV, boring is a crime. Thank heavens.

Although now they'll probably move on to something else. Like whether or not kink (meaning BDSM) automatically makes a story bad, because of course a kink story is only written to get the author off, and doesn't have anything to do with characterization, that being the tinhat's other (current) bugaboo. Sigh.

(She also believes that "the author of a long story is more likely to actually have something to *say,* and to have taken time to develop it in all its complexities." Honestly. Most good authors can do a better story in 5k than most people do with 600k words. And most 600k stories seem to be, um, under-edited. To put it politely.)