[Babbleon]

Heheh, I just saw kaiz's post on meta-analysis fatigue (which I share), and it was nice to realize I'm not alone. And yet...
    I still get tempted to rant about the very ficcish pet-peeves I'm sick of seeing rants about, sometimes, because while I'm here to read/write fic, yea, there is never quite enough fic I find exciting/enthralling/satisfying, and it's that frustration that often leads me to want to complain. I think that's the main thing people who say 'just enjoy your fic and lemme enjoy mine!!1' are missing. I guess a lot of people are easy to please on a gut level, or at least their kinks match a large enough percentage of fandom, but what happens when next to no one writes the way you like anymore?

...Well, in my case I realized it was me (and my burnout), not them, but-- fact remains that I don't tend to analyze what I like (and why I like it) so much as I analyze what I don't like, in an attempt to purge myself somehow. Though I admit I feedback fics/art I love in great detail too, but that's not the same as meta, which I find to be more of a general analysis. It's like this: to be a fan is to care, and to care is to be pissed at things not measuring up to the past standard of enjoyment, that's just all there is to it. I simply can't be like "omg I love fanfics and adore Draco" and not be like, YOU KILLED KENNY MADE DRACO KISS HUFFLEPUFF ASS, AGAIN!!1 What I'm saying is, I don't really get the idea of pure fannish enjoyment without caring enough to notice/whine when something stinks. It's like imagining a true-blue Star Wars fan who didn't cringe at the prequel movies. I mean. You care, you cringe! Even if you don't really care, you cringe! It's just... the more one's invested, the more one notices these things.

That's really why I'd kept ranting about my least favorite kind of fanon!Draco-- not because I really think he's an abomination and should be eradicated from the minds and hearts of fangirls everywhere, because I do possess some common sense, but just because I'm easily annoyed by awkward/fake-seeming writing, and above all too-good-to-be-true characterizations seem fake and I can't suspend my disbelief, not with my fandom burnout at the time, blah-blah-I-whine. During the worst of my burnout, I didn't stop when reading fic wasn't fun anymore until I couldn't go on even if I wanted to, partly out of sheer inertia.

I remember being really sick of negativity, where every pet-peeves list and canon-snark post just drove one more nail in the coffin into my fandom enjoyment, and I was literally unable to tolerate any more bashing of like, anything. Not even characters I wasn't that invested in; I remember becoming really distraught over some 'Sirius is better than Snape'/'no! Snape is better than Sirius' post last fall. That was probably my deep fatigue speaking, at least in part; it's always easier to tolerate dissent when you're generally satisfied with your fandom experience, to me anyway.

However, I think it's false to imply that critique has to be divisive or disruptive. This probably has something to do with my never intending to tell anyone what to do or how to write or interpret anything whatsoever; basically, I think you can theoretically remain positive when critiquing something, it's just that most people get carried away with their irritation.

Bottom line: I don't think I can ever quit meta, per se, 'cause that'd mean I quit thinking. I could think about frivolous or inconsequential things and I guess that's still meta to me, though I don't think it fits the label if by 'meta' you mean 'linear analysis'; perhaps I'm exempt because I never did linear analysis in the first place? I just babble. I still babble. I will always babble. I live, therefore I babble. The babble is dead; long live the babble!

( For the sake of nostalgia, cue unrelated babble about Naomi Wolf's article on porn-- yes, I said PORN-- and some extreme brow-raising on my part. )