OK, I need to come back and address some of this at more length tomorrow night, but far too briefly:
I've been online since the Arpanet days, but only in fandom for two and a half years, so my online experience is much more than my fandom, which is almost solely LJ. However, here, I can't agree with you that criticism is divorced from its topics as you see it.
I'd LIKE it to be, and I think it would be better in general for people if they saw it as being so. For me personally, critique of my work in any field is not a comment on my value as a person, only on how well I conveyed that work to that critic. And sometimes the critic is quite wrong in their response, too (I've both misread and been misread in turn.)
However, I do think that there is a difference in the spheres of consumption for which authors open themselves up. And while I am happy to have a dead author for works in a fully public environment, I disagree that every fandom author considers their works as going into that environment. For a great many, especially on LJ, their work is written as a dialogue within a closed community, and I do think they have some say over its treatment, which includes the ability to opt out of a critical response.
The right of the individual to ask for a degree of authorial privacy is not, I think, negated by the offering up of a text for reading, just as an actor appearing on stage does not give away their right to have a private life free of paparazzi. It's not the same right, note, but it is one that has been similarly culturally negotiated within this fandom long before I arrived here and one that I respect.
Within that context, it actually is necessary to say 'I'm fine with whatever you have to say about my work', as you yourself have done, since that is not the default position.
And while anyone is at liberty to think as critically as they like on the work of people who ask that their work not receive concrit, I'm less convinced of the 'right' to insist that those people receive te results of the critical exercise.
I think that were it all along the lines of 'this doesn't quite ring true here', then I'd be tossing out the old Australianism of Harden the Fuck Up, but sometimes the wailing that things are personal attacks is justified. More often it's not, and some hardening could be done in some quarters to good effect, but then who am I to tell people they need to be tougher? It's their decision whether they want to enter into that arena. There's no difference here to saying that people ought to be fitter, as we were discussing the other day. In both cases there is a clear-cut case that a bit of fortitude, mental or physical, does you a world of good. But there are myriad reasons why people may not be able to or ready to embrace it. Insisting its good for you is not going to make those reasons go away.
no subject
OK, I need to come back and address some of this at more length tomorrow night, but far too briefly:
I've been online since the Arpanet days, but only in fandom for two and a half years, so my online experience is much more than my fandom, which is almost solely LJ. However, here, I can't agree with you that criticism is divorced from its topics as you see it.
I'd LIKE it to be, and I think it would be better in general for people if they saw it as being so. For me personally, critique of my work in any field is not a comment on my value as a person, only on how well I conveyed that work to that critic. And sometimes the critic is quite wrong in their response, too (I've both misread and been misread in turn.)
However, I do think that there is a difference in the spheres of consumption for which authors open themselves up. And while I am happy to have a dead author for works in a fully public environment, I disagree that every fandom author considers their works as going into that environment. For a great many, especially on LJ, their work is written as a dialogue within a closed community, and I do think they have some say over its treatment, which includes the ability to opt out of a critical response.
The right of the individual to ask for a degree of authorial privacy is not, I think, negated by the offering up of a text for reading, just as an actor appearing on stage does not give away their right to have a private life free of paparazzi. It's not the same right, note, but it is one that has been similarly culturally negotiated within this fandom long before I arrived here and one that I respect.
Within that context, it actually is necessary to say 'I'm fine with whatever you have to say about my work', as you yourself have done, since that is not the default position.
And while anyone is at liberty to think as critically as they like on the work of people who ask that their work not receive concrit, I'm less convinced of the 'right' to insist that those people receive te results of the critical exercise.
I think that were it all along the lines of 'this doesn't quite ring true here', then I'd be tossing out the old Australianism of Harden the Fuck Up, but sometimes the wailing that things are personal attacks is justified. More often it's not, and some hardening could be done in some quarters to good effect, but then who am I to tell people they need to be tougher? It's their decision whether they want to enter into that arena. There's no difference here to saying that people ought to be fitter, as we were discussing the other day. In both cases there is a clear-cut case that a bit of fortitude, mental or physical, does you a world of good. But there are myriad reasons why people may not be able to or ready to embrace it. Insisting its good for you is not going to make those reasons go away.