The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

This was originally written in response to Ckun's comment, but I decided to give it a post of its own. Thoughts and comments welcome.

I wouldn't call the writing bad, exactly, it was just...uneven. Some parts were extremely well written, others showed a distinct lack of polish and clarity. Still, if the story is compelling enough, uneven writing is a flaw I can easily overlook. Especially when it's in a first novel, which The Eyre Affair was.

If I graded every author on the quality of his first published novel, not many would make the cut. Charles de Lint's Harp of the Grey Rose (although that may be his second, I don't remember), Tad Williams' Tailchaser's Song, Anne McCaffrey's Dinosaur Planet (again, that may not be her first, but it was an early one), and Sharon Shinn's The Shapechanger's Wife are all books that are, at best, unevenly written, and certainly not model examples of good genre fiction. Still, in each of them I can recognize the seed of what made them good writers, what made that manuscript stand out of the thousands of others in the slush pile, why that novel was selected to be printed.

Without Harp of the Grey Rose, we wouldn't have The Onion Girl. Without Tailchaser's Song we wouldn't have the Otherland books. These are the reasons why uneven writing doesn't impact my relative enjoyment of a book, when it's one of a writer's first published works (and sometimes even after that).

As a general rule, if I don't specifically address the writing, it's because it didn't really make an impression on me (see: CJ Cherryh, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Lois McMaster Bujold for examples of authors who write so well I feel compelled to comment on it). If the writing so bad it distracts me from the story, that's a different issue altogether, and usually results in an overall negative impression of the book (books I think are poorly written I tend to drop in a pile somewhere and forget about them, I don't usually spend any more time thinking or writing about them than I have to). However, if the writing is merely unpolished or uneven, and the story is sufficiently compelling, it doesn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Vandals! And Huns, too.

People get worked up over really odd things, sometimes...

Ok, I'm as anti-lawsuit, RIAA, and stupid lawsuit as the next person, and perhaps even more so. However, there are lines I draw. When you indulge in illegal activity, don't pretend to yourself it's anything but. Certainly it's not a First Amendment issue.

Stupid people make my head hurt. Some gems for your amusement and edification:

"i collect fansubs, which are files produced by fairly recording Japanese tv, then working over a period of weeks to translate and subtitle it to allow loyal fans in other nations to enojy those works which are not available to them. There are many nations which have their own fansubbers, and their translations could be easily argued to be works on their own."

*cough* no comment

"In the case of anime, however, there are companies in the united states which license the material for eventual release on DVD, the preparation for which often takes years, through which loyal patrons must suffer waiting."

Pain leads to anger, anger leads to suffering!

"Boxtorrents.com contained an irc chat server, forums, databases, and a bit torrent tracker for users to upload torrents of fansubs to share with others.
It could most certainly fall under the definition of a third party host or carrier under the DMCA and be ruled free of liability because its maintainers did not participate in or encourage any infringing activity."

*cough* Common carrier, did not encourage infriging activity, riiiiight.

"If copyright infringement is to be alleged, it should be formally laid out in a suit or criminal charge, but apparently they are allowed to simply govern independently of our justice system and determine themselves what is "permitted" to exist as a webpage."

Right, lawsuits and criminal charges are so much friendlier than cease-and-desist letters.

"When a hacker invades your webservers and destroys your site you're allowed to pursue criminal charges, but these people are allowed to do the exact equivalent and more simply because they figured out how to avoid courts."

Well, except for that whole "legal ownership" thing.

"I urge you to boycott AD Vision's products, and to contact congress regarding preventing this scenario from happening again as it has played out."

I say simply W! T! F!

( Gems from the comment sections: )

Comparing ADV's actions to the actions of the RIAA is ludicrous in the extreme.