You know why I love the internet? Because the internet is full of niches. I'm all about the niches. and the pr0n

Over on Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels (All of the Romance, None of the Bullshit), Candy writes about a growing "dicussion" about peer review and reviewers in the Romance Novel Genre.

It seems that Brenda Coulter thinks that Romance writers are "very sensitive" and shouldn't be critised as harshly as other people. See, they can't take it, they're too sensitive. She keeps quoting Terry Teachout, who says that we need to remember that we're critical of real flesh and blood people, and that they can be hurt.

(He also goes on to say that critics probably should have some experience in the areas they're critisizing, so they know just how hard it is to get a play off the ground. I'll just leave that for the Jurisimprudence people to think on.)

As Brenda puts it: "If you haven't tried writing a romance novel, you can have absolutely no concept of how difficult it is to write even a bad one."

Karen of no-url-or-email tells her that her view is incredibly short sighted, because it means that reviews by readers aren't as valid as reviews by writers. Brenda doesn't like this, and tells her that she's missing the point.

Then, Candy (of the Trashy Bitches) comes along and points out that she's a writer of technical manuals, and she has to put up with this shit, too, and just take it like a woman and grow up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Romance Novel blogosphere, Booksquare wakes up in a crabby mood, reads this "delicate flower", and decides to hurt her feelings while talking about herself in the first person plural.

Best line:
We do not agree that women need to play nice due to some misguided sense of sisterhood (for the zillionth time, we will note the viciousness that only sisters can exhibit; brothers simply don’t have the inner strength to go that low).

Of course, Brenda comes along and makes comments.

Somewhere else in the limited Blogosphere, the way there thinks that if Romances were held up to any sort of review or standard whatsoever, they wouldn't be the trashy tripe everyone enjoys to read.

If we had critical peer reviews back in the day, would 95% of romance writer’s feelings have been too hurt to write the shit y’all know and love best?

I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

My thought? We definately shouldn't let these people anywhere near Pottersues.