rodo's journal

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

( That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. )

Today, I got two anonymous comments on two of my stories (Well, one HP fic and the essay about male pregnancy). They weren't flames, they were just rather critical and not exactly polite. I didn't mind that at all. What I did mind very much was the fact that I had no way to reply to the criticism, and that really bothers me. Generally, I reply to all comments I receive to say thanks, to reply to questions asked and to respond to criticism, and to these two I wanted to respond really bad. I am even thinking about disallowing anonymous commenting on my fics now, to avoid something like this happening in the future.

I assume both comments were written by the same author. One of them, the one I got on my essay, made it clear that the person didn't really read my essay but just wanted a place to rant about mpreg. Not all that unusual, most of the readers react that way to it. This one, however didn't even understand that I didn't intend to write a "What is good mpreg?" essay but rather one about the phenomenon and why people write it. It's more about the authors and readers of mpreg fic and less about the fics themselves.

The second comment criticised the first sex scene I ever wrote. I agree that it's not a good sex scene and that I could have done a lot of things better. However, the commenter focussed on the mechanics of sex, which, as I learnt on fanficrants, is different for everyone. The statement "anal sex without lube hurts like hell" is not true for everyone. I really want to tell this to the person, complete with links and all, but I just can't. That's really frustrating.

I always thought the main problem with anonymous comments were flames, but I think they are much easier to deal with. You can get them deleted, or you can delete them yourself (depending on the site). This is something different. Am I silly for reacting this way?