Attention: Everyone
I have abandoned this account temporarily, although not fanfiction.net. I will perhaps continue these stories, although later. For the meanwhile, please visit my new account here: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1699474/Yoshino_in_the_Moonlight

While you are at it, if you could do me a favor, I am trying to start my own online discussion board, at 28chan.org - if you would come and help start the community, I would appreciate it very much.

My stance on cruddy stories:

I think that the idea of fanfiction on this website is not to make a masterpiece which is good and of great worth, but rather as a matter of experimentation to share with others. Fanfiction is a matter of at least trying, so that anyone who has the will can make a go at it, and not worry about it being good enough. Fanfiction, to me, is not an endeavour of being great. Rather, it is a community thing about sharing with others, which would benefit more with people joining into the community rather than leaving out those those who worry about not being good enough, or are not good enough writers. After all, not everyone can write a masterpiece on their first try. To say that crud is overall a bad thing is, to me, elitism.

See Henry Jenkin's weblog for more: http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/02/in_defense_of_crud.html

I think that any story may have value short of those which are either unintelligible, unoriginal.

Messages are important thing, but not the essence of art. If a message of an artifact is: "slavery is an unjust institution", I'm glad to see it. But if you tell the message in words, it's while still also a good thing but it's not art. I enjoy fully the stone age cave paintings. In the same time, there are wild guesses and fierce discussion, what - if any at all - the message is. I don't know which one is true. But my enjoyment is totally independent of that. It's works out some deep layers of my brain like a ping-pong match - I guess. I even enjoy Assyrian reliefs which glorify war - wrong message.

A Socratic dialogue: amateur philosophizing upon the value of art and its place in society in the modern world and in the future world

Writer: I have seen much art in my life. I have also seen much science in my life. Science is here to stay. Ideas and philosophy can be accepted only as long as it acknowledges science. Science has value. It is to be for the truths of the world. And art? Where does art lead us?

Thinker: I have thought about this question much. I have for much time asserted that art is meaningless. Only science is good. What if all of art is gone, replaced by work and study? Life would get so much more boring. And yet that does not matter, for if we shall be bored or unhappy thereby, it shall be only of our own fault, and none other.

Writer: And so you have thought. Do you still think so now?

Reader: If I may interject here, I would want to add that I have read in many places articles which tell that science indicates that the human faculties of reason and emotion are the same. I think what Thinker was saying was he was also suggesting that emotions be eliminated. If emotions are here, then art is certainly valuable, for it is here to affect our emotions. And yet since reason is the same as emotion, then art too affects our reason. In short, it perhaps allows us to think more, to question, to inquire.

Thinker: This is precisely what I have been saying, Reader. Yes, Writer, I still think so now that this idea that art is meaningless. But to address the concern of eliminating emotions, I do say that I do not think that eliminating emotions is a good thing. But still, the elimination of art is thereby still not much of a loss, if there be any loss at all. If it is to affect our emotions (and thus our reasoning), to convey ideas, and to make us think more, or to present ideas or questions, then why does it need to be presented in art? We should be suspicious of any rhetoric that comes about, because it is dishonest. If people want to honestly affect our reasoning, then they should tell honestly why that alternate mode of thinking is better. It is true that the ignorant masses do not want to reason and are either too stupid or too lazy to reason properly, or too irrational to think impartially, and are thus usually vulnerable to propaganda and logical fallacies. But such mass ignorance and irrationality is precisely what needs to be eliminated, and along with it, art.

Writer: Thinker, I think you may have missed something. Whereas art perhaps is not best for conveying ideas one already knows to others to spread one's own ideas, and even worse may be dishonest rhetoric for propaganda, that perhaps is not the actual usage of art. Indeed, though it may not be best for conveying ideas, it may be good for thinking about things which we do not already know as exposé of the current understandings and misunderstandings, inquiries, and questionings. It is for an exposé of questions or problems still yet unsolved for which we know not how to completely articulate the question. In other words, it is a means to articulate that which we cannot already, to show the nature of things we already know not, and an inquiry furthermore upon that which we have yet to know.

Thinker: While you may be completely right that art can express things which cannot be expressed otherwise, there is an element of imagery and diction that is particularly bothersome. Imagery and diction seems to be precisely the embodiment of the faults of the reasoning of humans. Imagery there is especially to affect people's emotions in a way that is unthinking and irrational. There is no reason why imagery should be there to show things impartially.

Writer: Why cannot imagery be impartial?

Thinker: Imagery is essentially a way to stir up human emotions without getting them to think. It indeed is an exposé of certain things, but they are only there to convey a certain emotional reaction to something. That something could be shown still, without imagery, in a complete manner. Imagery is not necessary. When imagery is used, people no longer think of it calmly. To calmly think is to be skeptic and cautious. To be passionately stirred up by imagery is to be an irrational fanatic. The fact is that much of art is based upon imagery (and, by extension, diction as well). And being that the case, most of art is thus to rouse our emotions.

Writer: Thus you say, it is hedonism?

Thinker: Exactly. Art is hedonism. It usually is not an attempt to honestly explore the things as they really are.

(This Socratic dialogue is not yet complete.)