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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2a2lOsW:unicornduke replied to your post “This anon has made up their mind, Norasol is an abusive character and…”
that’s rude of them. if they don’t like Norasol as a character, they don’t need to read the stories where she’s featured. simple as that.
I mean– I do appreciate the initial message on the first story, where they were like ???? this character is being treated as Good by the text but their actions are highly questionable??? and I was like oh good point, but trust me and in chapter 2 it’s resolved, I promise, and they were skeptical, but at the end of the story agreed that yes, she was redeemed. It was a good exchange of comments and I appreciated it a lot.
Like, that’s a thing. Those are good reactions to get, as an author. I’m really stupidly oversensitive to criticism, I’ve never been graceful about it, and it’s been a multi-decade process for me to try and make myself be able to take that sort of thing in the spirit in which it is (or ought to be, in a perfect world) intended– to improve– and so I worked really hard each time to come up with a good, rational response, and it took a lot out of me. It just does; it’s not a skill I have, and with the mental health issues I have, it’s even harder for me to get it right. But it’s important to learn from that kind of thing, and I really do try to, even if I can’t always be graceful.
(I still lie awake sometimes about a terrible interaction I had probably two months ago, so, like. Work in progress here. Christ I could verbatim quote you some of the things that person said that I took badly, still; they’re seared-in, you know? Stupid, I know, but I can only do so much!)
So this one, I was surprised to hear from them again because Norasol’s only in it as a secondhand slightly flippant aside, with no actual direct quotes, but I still made myself be chill and deconstruct it, and they were like oh, okay, nuanced, and then wrote back the next day to be like no never mind you’re wrong and it’s that last message that’s just flipped me right over the edge of being able to cope with it. Like, I guess I could see still deciding after all the debate that no this person’s full of shit and just isn’t aware of what they’re writing, but in that case, I’m clearly delusional, right?? so it’s just– why bother writing back? Clearly you don’t respect my point of view as the author of the fucking thing, so why are you here at all? If you’re going to hateread, don’t fucking say so, isn’t that what anonmemes are for???
That’s the line I’m finding troublesome, I guess. And they were like “this is the last time I’ll write but I just thought i’d better tell you what I decided” but like, mate, you said yesterday that you were done bugging me, you should have stuck with your earlier resolution, because I was thinking about the whole debate like oh that was useful and constructive and I’ve really solidified my thinking on this, that’s great, and now I’m like my position on this matter is now fuck you, which is not constructive and also there’s no fucking way I’m getting any writing done like this because clearly I’m terrible and nothing I intend matters!!
Ugh. I was thinking of this as a Watsonian vs. Doylist thing, but on Googling I find that’s not what it is, I was thinking about literary criticism and Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author, where he argues that readers must separate a text from its author in order to escape narrative tyranny, and that’s all well and good but you don’t message the author to achieve that, you know? Either the author’s intentions matter or the text stands alone in which case don’t ask the author her intentions.
Because in this case, the author is a pretty fragile woob and can’t fucking handle it, apparently.
that’s rude of them. if they don’t like Norasol as a character, they don’t need to read the stories where she’s featured. simple as that.
I mean– I do appreciate the initial message on the first story, where they were like ???? this character is being treated as Good by the text but their actions are highly questionable??? and I was like oh good point, but trust me and in chapter 2 it’s resolved, I promise, and they were skeptical, but at the end of the story agreed that yes, she was redeemed. It was a good exchange of comments and I appreciated it a lot.
Like, that’s a thing. Those are good reactions to get, as an author. I’m really stupidly oversensitive to criticism, I’ve never been graceful about it, and it’s been a multi-decade process for me to try and make myself be able to take that sort of thing in the spirit in which it is (or ought to be, in a perfect world) intended– to improve– and so I worked really hard each time to come up with a good, rational response, and it took a lot out of me. It just does; it’s not a skill I have, and with the mental health issues I have, it’s even harder for me to get it right. But it’s important to learn from that kind of thing, and I really do try to, even if I can’t always be graceful.
(I still lie awake sometimes about a terrible interaction I had probably two months ago, so, like. Work in progress here. Christ I could verbatim quote you some of the things that person said that I took badly, still; they’re seared-in, you know? Stupid, I know, but I can only do so much!)
So this one, I was surprised to hear from them again because Norasol’s only in it as a secondhand slightly flippant aside, with no actual direct quotes, but I still made myself be chill and deconstruct it, and they were like oh, okay, nuanced, and then wrote back the next day to be like no never mind you’re wrong and it’s that last message that’s just flipped me right over the edge of being able to cope with it. Like, I guess I could see still deciding after all the debate that no this person’s full of shit and just isn’t aware of what they’re writing, but in that case, I’m clearly delusional, right?? so it’s just– why bother writing back? Clearly you don’t respect my point of view as the author of the fucking thing, so why are you here at all? If you’re going to hateread, don’t fucking say so, isn’t that what anonmemes are for???
That’s the line I’m finding troublesome, I guess. And they were like “this is the last time I’ll write but I just thought i’d better tell you what I decided” but like, mate, you said yesterday that you were done bugging me, you should have stuck with your earlier resolution, because I was thinking about the whole debate like oh that was useful and constructive and I’ve really solidified my thinking on this, that’s great, and now I’m like my position on this matter is now fuck you, which is not constructive and also there’s no fucking way I’m getting any writing done like this because clearly I’m terrible and nothing I intend matters!!
Ugh. I was thinking of this as a Watsonian vs. Doylist thing, but on Googling I find that’s not what it is, I was thinking about literary criticism and Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author, where he argues that readers must separate a text from its author in order to escape narrative tyranny, and that’s all well and good but you don’t message the author to achieve that, you know? Either the author’s intentions matter or the text stands alone in which case don’t ask the author her intentions.
Because in this case, the author is a pretty fragile woob and can’t fucking handle it, apparently.
