I would like to say:
1) I’m fully aware that my opinions and analyses are not congruent with a majority of fandom. I have always been, and probably always will be, on the margins of public/fandom opinion, and I’m content with that.
2) However, I do not believe that “there are only a few people who agree with you” is an acceptable or appropriate response to my (or anyone’s) arguments. Aesthetic and moral analyses are not a democracy, nor does that particular answer actually engage with my thoughts. Instead, it avoids them (actually, just like saying “it’s an adaptation, of course it has to be different from the book” avoids the question of “well, why is it different in this specific way”). And that doesn’t seem like very good logic to me.
3) If I post (and I usually do) something that you think is not worth commenting on because there are only a few fans saying it – why not just leave it alone? If you do want to talk to me about it, show me why I’m wrong, not that I’m saying something that isn’t popular. I promise you – I know it’s unpopular. I’m saying it.
4) That being said, I do respect and admire a lot of you who are disagreeing with me – that’s why I’m so frustrated when I feel like I can’t engage with you on an equal footing. I want to talk to you, not be dismissed by you. I want to see where you’re coming from, and know if I’m possibly wrong. I have been convinced of things that I’ve been vehemently against through conversation – and I would love for that to happen again.
5) But I don’t think that can happen if the primary response is, “Only you care about that, Ian.”
I have a few things I would like to say as well:
1) I love reading and following Ian. His views, even the ones with which I disagree, are expressed interestingly, fairly, and with a kindness toward those who think differently that I admire, and wish I could achieve myself. In fact, let me just upgrade/simplify this item to: I love Ian. (Feel free to ignore any inappropriate meanings that might attach to the term in this context. English is stupid.)
2) When I previously said (in effect) “only a few people think this thing compared to the number who think this other thing,” it could have been taken to mean I was saying that since few people believed it, that thing must be untrue. I don’t believe that. I still think it’s interesting that the viewpoint I was flagging as a minority viewpoint is a minority viewpoint, and I think it’s worth thinking about what that might mean. But it’s okay for people to hold that view, and it doesn’t automatically make that view wrong. And especially when we’re talking about subjective aesthetic judgments, I don’t think there actually can be right vs. wrong opinions. Indeed, it was my sense that the original poster was arguing that there was such a dichotomy, and that those who think LBD is a worthy adaptation of P&P are on the wrong side of it, that motivated me to write what I did in the first place.
But #2 is secondary to my main point, which I covered in #1.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/42591636323.
