lunabee34

*loves on your icon*

Thank you for the cheerleading, sweetheart. This has been a rough week and I needed to hear somebody I like say nice things about me. LOL

I think that you and executrix are right. I think that part of the problem is that when people say they want concrit or welcome it in fandom, a lot of time what they mean is, "That abstract idea you have that doesn't affect me? It is nice."

I also think that you are right in pointing out that sometimes people just don't have the vocabulary to articulate what they think about a story, or even if they do they just don't know what to say. I sometimes don't know how to articulate what I think about a story and I have multiple degrees in talking about literature.

I also think it's partly what you allude to here in your comment:

I myself, have a hard time leaving really *good* concrit. I have a hard time articulating why something doesn't work for me, and i also have a *very* hard time separating valid concrit from 'it's not how i would do it', you know? So i tend to shy away unless it's a friend, 'cause then i can ym them and really hash things out.

In terms of sga_talk, there is no such thing as invalid concrit or invalid commentary. We are a strange mixture of squee and concrit and literary analysis and reader response which means that *any* comment on the fic, including I'd have done this differently is valid and interesting. We get comments that are mostly focused on aspects of the show that the fic raises with very little comment on the fic itself. Or comments about characters or comments about writing habits or the nature of such and such a fic genre. I think that maybe sometimes people aren't aware of the wide range of possibilities for comment in this kind of comm and shy away because they think we're looking for only one kind of thing.

As for femslash - i love me some femslash if i like the characters. I invest more time in the boys, it's true, and i think a lot of that is because i get bored with women. I *am* one. I don't like the stereotypes and i have a hard time being interested in a lot of them. I think, too, that it's a lot easier to get called out on 'mary sue' ing when writing a female character, even when you're not - and i know that i want to make them more like 'me', rather than more like them. And i don't want to do that. So, i dunno.

I don't think that's copping out. I know we've had conversations about fictional characters and desire before and I remember you saying one time (and I am so paraphrasing you badly for this was literally years ago) that you didn't want to sleep with Spike or Xander and you didn't fantasize yourself as a superhero put into their world. Instead you'd rather be the person living next door that's, you know, YOU that gets to be their friend. And I remember you saying that you shied away from writing that because it was just too Mary Sue.

I also remember talking to maybe cathexys (aaack; I hope it was her and I'm not talking out of school) and she said something along the lines of, "I am not all that interested in reading BDSM in het or femslash because I am a woman and some of the issues it pings are just too close to home for me." So it makes sense that some women don't want to read about women having sex because it feels too close to their own experience and they don't want that for whatever reason (which is not really what Cath was saying but I am extrapolating here). Heck, I have admitted publicly in this journal that I have problems writing femslash sometimes because it feels like I am exposing myself.