This is what it sounds like when Lorraine whines; it apparently involves sentence fragments

[lunabee34]

I am a little disappointed.

And a little annoyed.

In no small part at myself, but also at fandom at large.

And so I come to you, dear friends who are wiser than me, for advice.

I dropped the ball on the last sga_talk discussion. This whole new assistant professor, teaching five classes, QEP, SACS, why yes you have to finish your Ph.D. right now or we won't give you tenure gig is a little exhausting. And stressing. And I forgot to do a reminder post for this last discussion. And I forgot to drum up participation once I saw that I was, again, the only commenter. And I forgot to assign a new piece to read for the 1st of September.

So, yes. Culpability, I own you.

But here's the thing, y'all. Here's the thing.

I think sga_talk is awesome for a lot of reasons. I love to write. I am a writer. I become a better writer when I talk with other people about writing. And I like having a structured place to do this. I love to read. I am a reader. I have made reading and nattering on about it to other people my life's profession. I love literary analysis of fanfic. I also love reading outside of my comfort zone. I have so little time to hunt for fic now that I pretty much exclusively read the flist or large challenges like Big Bang. I find the good stuff through sga_talk that I would never find otherwise. I also like to meet people and I have met through sga_talk some really cool people with interesting ideas about SGA and writing and fandom. I think sga_talk is poised to be a vital segment of fandom.

And yet, it saddens me that I have to beg and grovel for participation in what other fans say over and over again that they want.

Believe me when I say that I understand there are obstacles to participating in a comm of this nature. RL is in the way; you have no time to read this week; you hate the featured pairing; you vowed never to read amnesia fic again; you're too wrapped up in Big Bang. All valid reasons not to participate.

But a significant portion of fandom says over and over again that it wants constructive criticism. A significant portion of fandom says over and over again that it thinks of fanfic as having the same kind of value and interest as published works and that it wants literary analysis of fannish works. And yet, in a comm with 69 members, I can count on only four other people besides myself and lyrstzha to regularly comment.

So what am I doing wrong? What am I not getting?

And while I am showing my ass, as we say in the South, let me also make this complaint. Why oh why is it that we fans criticize again and again the source material for giving short shrift to women and fanfic for doing the same; why is it that we lament the representation of women and of queer female relationships both in our source texts and in the fannish works we create but when it comes time to read and talk about femslash, everybody disappears? Even in its honeymoon phase when participation in sga_talk was at its highest, the femslash selections received the fewest comments. This makes me angry, particularly since there is an AWESOME and truly unique femslash fic sitting in sga_talk right now that no one but myself has commented on.

I am having a really hard time reconciling what I think I hear fandom say that it wants and needs and what fandom actually ends up doing.

So, help me, y'all. I think sga_talk can be an amazing community, but I don't know how to get it to that point. What can I do (besides, oh, getting my head out of my ass and doing my modly duties like I'm supposed to; *is embarrassed*)? What are your suggestions?

Comments

Re: The comment limit? Yes, I hit it. (2/2)

[havocthecat]

Erm. And you really, really don't want to hear me talking about representation of women and queer female relationships in fandom. (Er, also, what? There are non-femslashers who say they're interested in queer female relationships? Seriously? Where? I hang with the het and femslash crowds mostly, and I don't generally see that from non-femslashers.) I get even more bitter than I was in the rest of this comment. (My journal has a bunch of flocked posts, which you can now read as I've just friended you, about the subject. The more bitter ones are locked further, and if you're interested in reading those, I'll add you to the filter.)

So, um. I think this came out more bitter than I'd intended. (Two series' worth of bitter, really.) I hope you don't regret us just having friended each other. I'm a very big advocate of speaking my mind.

And for the record, I really do appreciate all the things you said about my fic. I just felt awkward replying and discussing my own fic. But the fact that you do enjoy it so much? I really, really appreciate that.

Re: The comment limit? Yes, I hit it. (2/2)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think I have a very unique group of friends on lj in that most of my flist members each write a wide variety of kinds of fic--gen and het and slash and femslash. I have only maybe one or two people friended who only write male slash. So maybe I'm hearing a skewed version of The Way It Is?

Also, I'd love to look at those posts. Even the most bitterest. So filter me up. :) Are they tagged in a certain way?

Lorraine does not mind bitterness. Or the speaking of one's mind. If you can handle my penchant for speaking of myself in the third person, I'm sure we'll get along just peachy.

And finally, I completely understand feeling awkward about discussing your own fic. I'm just glad I got the chance to read such a wonderful piece.

Re: The comment limit? Yes, I hit it. (2/2)

[havocthecat]

Maybe? I have a few multipairing people on my friendslist, which is nice, but a lot of one or two pairing people. I tend to flutter between het, femslash, and gen writing myself. I read slash, but tend not to write it. I get the occasional plotbunny but suffer from crises of confidence with it, not to mention the nigh constant desire to write female characters in depth.

I recognize a couple of your flisters, and even have a couple of them friended myself. :) I like the multipairings, or people who, even if they don't write other things, will read almost anything. It's nice.

My bitter posts are tagged as snark filter (eta: which I've just added you to), and my non-bitter (mostly non-bitter?) posts are either at discussion: sga or discussion: gateverse.

I do warn you, my bitterness runs pretty damn deep when it comes to the Gateverse. :) So it's good that you don't mind that, or speaking one's mind, since I've got such a penchant for both. Mostly I don't talk about myself in the third person, but since it slips in there now and again, I can't particularly object to it, now, can I?

I'll reply eventually. Once I get over feeling a little awkward.
(Oh, yeah, try [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] for het fic. Though check with Miera before pimping things out. She's particular.)

Re: The comment limit? Yes, I hit it. (2/2)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I looked back over my fic masterlist post because I was curious about my writing breakdown, and while I predominantly write m/m slash, I write a fair amount of gen in any fandom in which I participate and a lesser amount of het and femslash. I think Die Hard is the sole fandom in which I've only written m/m slash and I've written at least one piece of femslash for every fandom I've been involved in except for Die Hard and Harry Potter. And within my m/m slash writing and reading, although I generally enjoy the "dominant" pairing of a fandom, I tend to seek out and want to explore the rare pairings. I get McShep fatigue.

*off to click the snark tag*