Kitty's Smarm Ratings for QL Zines
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Kitty's Smarm Ratings for QL Zines is a 1991 essay by Kitty Woldow.
It was printed in The Imaging Chamber #7.
The topic is smarm, a term Woldow popularized that refers to hurt/comfort and a non-sexual emotional intimacy in fan fiction between two characters.
The essay includes Woldow's ratings of ten Quantum Leap zines with a focus on their level of smarm as it is illustrated by "Al cries. Sam cries. They hug."
The Zines Reviewed
- Green Eggs and Ham #1
- Look Before You Leap #1
- Oh Boy #1
- Outatime
- Out of the Blue
- Out of the Frying Pan
- Play It Again #1
- QL+ #1
- The Temporal Times #1
- Tunnels: Different Realities
From the Essay
By now, most of you reading this have figured out that I’m pretty fond of smarm, and a small percentage of you are even aware of just what smarm is. It should come as no surprise that my opinion of a zine's desirability is directly related to the amount of smarm it contains. However, since I am not perfectly representative of the zine buying public, publishers don't rate their zines on smarm content when advertising, nor is there any universal system for determining what that rating would be. The prospective buyer has to guess by titles, knowledge of author tendencies, and word-of-mouth just how good an investment any particular zine is likely to be. It's a tolerable condition for those of us who*ve been in fandom long enough to know what most of the authors are likely to produce and who have a lot of friends with the same tastes who can provide a reliable guide to what’s worthwhile, but hardly anybody starts out with these advantages. Neofen have earned a perhaps undeserved reputation for indiscriminacy, brought about more likely from their ignorance of the field than their actual lack of taste. I propose to create a ratings system which will help out that small group of you who are new to fandom, are looking specifically for smarm, and can't afford to buy everything in print on the off chance it's what you really want to read. Those of you who are not so fond of smarm may also find this rating helpful, in that you will know which zines to avoid, or at least when you'll need to have a barf bag handy while reading.
How does one rate smarm? The physical indications of smarm occurring are pretty easy to spot, but there are a lot of gradations also. Since a detailed survey of every slightly smarmy moment in a zine’s entire contents would be prohibitively complex and time-consuming to generate, I have chosen a very simplistic set of parameters which give a basic indication of emotional intensity. Smarm level, for the purposes of this system, is based on (1) the number of times Al cries (2) the number of times Sam cries (3) the number of times Sam and Al hug each other. Even these basic activities aren't always so easy to quantify as it might seem. Does an arm around the shoulders count as a hug? Does artful tearing up and then regaining control count as crying? I had to make a few judgement calls on those. On the whole, I regarded meaningful looks, the occasional tightening of the throat, and Sam hugging anybody but Al as simply remaining in character with the broadcast series and not a smarmy incident worthy of reporting on. Artful tearing up was tougher, and I generally credited such incidents as one half of an actual cry, although if a zine came out with a half point at the end I would round downward rather than upward on the total count.