just to cure it, 'cos i can't ignore it.

[damkianna]

That Diana Gabaldon thing that's exploded all over the place (and made F_W, of course) distracted me like whoa from studying for my Bio final this morning. Fortunately, everything I felt like saying when I first read the OP has already been said, and probably far more articulately than I would have said it.

Somewhat amusingly, I ended up in a half-fight half-discussion with M about the relative merits of original fiction vs. fanfic yesterday, too - probably not the best day for it, considering that I started out already jacked up and full of fandom pride. (For the record, I think of them as pretty much even; each one can do things the other one can't, and they are valuable in equal measure precisely because of those differences. Talking about fanfic as a stepping stone to original fic won't drive me into a frothing rage, but I don't much care for it.) I guess I shouldn't be surprised, though; M doesn't really engage with fandom on a meta level, she's still in a dragons-and-self-inserts kind of place. Which is fine, obviously, but it also makes it kind of hard for me to really have heavy discussions with her about the worth of fanfic. :P It doesn't help that her grasp of feminism is kind of shaky, that she never caught any of Racefail, and that she's not a terribly sex-positive kind of person. Sometimes I have trouble remembering that my IRL friends have not necessarily ever thought about those things.

Fortunately, the Bio final was somewhat less than taxing - it took me about twenty-five minutes to answer forty multiple choice questions and write a short answer about the immune system. And now I'm freeeeeeee. \o/ And will almost undoubtedly spend the rest of the day writing ladiesbigbang fic in my notebook.