Board Thread:Site News and Announcements/@comment-24486926-20140105192505/@comment-24486926-20140109033154

Chromatic Wasp wrote: Firstly, I'll get this out of the way; yes, this is partially because I've got a BEN pasta in the works. There, putting it out in the open.

But more to the point, while I was thankful for the blacklisting of Sonic.exe (let's face facts, that pasta was the reason a lot of cliches became popular, and the only reason it gets away with all of its faults is because it was "first"), and I agree that "X the Killer" stories are an uninspired formula, but I don't see the problem with BEN stories. I mean, besides the obvious fact of the Internet; the bigger the fanbase, the more crap it'll churn out. But I feel like that blacklisting a pasta category is a tricky thing. Although I agree that Ben-spinoffs are very touchy sometimes, I think that, similar to the "X the Killer" formula, the problem is pastas stealing the Ben Drowned formula. Weird game = Bad things happening = much spooky, many scary, such doge. It's been done to death. But I feel like blacklisting an entire category is a bit of overkill. If you want to eliminate lazy, cliched or uninspired writing, believe me, I'd love you for it, but I feel that more cautious steps should be taken.

But hey, what do I know? -shrugs- My primary issue with not blacklisting is that without that, we can't slow the traffic. I do think we need to get specific about it (For example, not the entire Jeff-Inspired, but the specific ones that are following too closely to the Jeff-formula) but the issue lies in the fact that people don't see how closely they end up following it.

I admit, I most certainly didn't when I wrote my first pasta back in May. The only reason I didn't delete it is because the remaining series wouldn't make sense, and it had original elements.

It's a big dilemma.