HI. (I'm Reena.)

[reenka]

Okay, now I want to have a post just like Sara's, where I'm all upfront about fannish stuff (friending/defriending policies, what secretly bugs me, etc), but the truth is, my biggest thought when people who I don't have friended or know well defriend me is 'oh... I guess I don't write that much fic anymore, huh' or alternately 'oh... I guess they never did read those long rambly meta posts, huh'. Alternately, I'd made one anti-fanon!Draco comment too many. C'mon, YOU ALL KNOW I HAVE :D

I think I start from the assumption I confuse and fail to entertain people and work upward (therefore, if you do comment, it's a nice surprise-- otherwise, you have my longstanding bitterness and self-recrimination about my being too lame/long-winded/confusing/etc to excuse you). I guess that just sounds hideously passive-aggressive, but I honestly do realize the sorts of posts that 'reach out' to people and the sorts of fics that people want to read (funny smut, plotty smut, popular pairing) are the ones people will comment on, and it's totally normal. No pressure.

Of course, it bothers me if I know the person to defriend me that well, but usually I can guess why it happens, and also it doesn't happen very much.

On commenting: eh. I like lurkers, I like comments. I really -desperately- want to think I'm read, especially when it comes to my fics (don't we all-- though I love thoughtful crit better than honey), and I get pretty insecure about only 2-3 comments per fic, and also I'm more into it for the interesting conversations and new connections than pure blogging-- I mean, I don't post about my real life 'cause I don't feel inspired like that. But at the same time I know I don't necessarily invite comments a lot, with fic or meta. I'm amazed as many people as there are have me friended, and pretend you're not actually reading so as not to freak myself out. Like, DUDE. DUUUUUUUUDE. That's. That's... 297 people who usually don't say anything. Even my friends, generally, because there's only a small circle of maybe 5 people who tend to comment regularly at any one time-period and then go into 'sabbatical' (this circle shifts every few months or so)-- except for the perennial sistermagpie. Yes. That's only the people who have me on their flist. I mean. WHY??! If I thought about it too long, I'd be very confused (and possibly paranoid).

It can't be that 95% of you don't read or don't care (wouldn't you have defriended me?? ack! *hides & tries not to think about it*), but that's what I have to assume, right? The more positive option is that I'm confusing and/or you generally have nothing to say, but, uh, in a good way. Um.

No, seriously, if I consciously addressed all of you-- you-- out there-- yeah-- all the time, I'd totally freak out, so in a way it suits me that most people don't comment. I guess it's not that I'm a private person, exactly, in the sense that I want to control who reads or knows what-have-you about me, but. I -am- pretty shy, and only babble in a vaguely dissociated way, because this is 'online' and I'm not really there to have to look at everyone and be aware they're all paying attention right then. So there's that sense of disconnect/delay at the very least which allows me some breathing room.

Anyway, about the Defriending Amnesty thing: go ahead. If a whole mass of you rushes to defriend me, I'll know you were too embarrassed or whatever to do it before, and I won't be surprised, I suppose. It's not that I don't care, but it's also not that I want people to be tired or irritated by me or have to filter me out, y'know? I understand interests change, and I understand most people don't get to know me that well through this lj so they don't have a sense of personal connection, probably, so no personal feelings, right? Okay.
    As for me-- I usually don't defriend, but if I do it's only 'cause the person hasn't posted in a really long time, or our interests have -really- heavily diverged. Sometimes I prune 'cause I get overwhelmed with how long it takes for me to read my flist (I'd much rather spend time on the net reading porn, for which it was invented. Hey, straight up.) It has never once been 'cause I didn't like them. Simple, yeah?

Trying to be more entertaining: meme, by way of furiosity!
    You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section. (examples: "Top 5 Reasons To Like Draco Malfoy" or "Top 5 Crack Bunnies"). Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me.

Comments

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

OK, I can see the difference, where someone just doesn't comment on a series of posts. It's hard for me to compare directly, because I post so seldom, although I guess there are certain people who I talk to mostly who tend to comment more often than not when I do post, and sometimes I think "where did they go" if they pass it over. I would probably be more conscious of it if I posted more.

But on the other hand, I guess I tend to shrug it off because I know there are such bizarre patterns in my own commenting that aren't patterns, really, in the sense of having any logical reason for them. I go through phases where I don't read LJ much at all, just skim the flist; or phases (especially around the holidays) where there's lots of fic and I just read fic, not the meta, because I can't read it all. Or days where everyone in the world seems to be into manga, which, for whatever reason, just doesn't do anyting for me at all. :) Or if I have one intense conversation going across a couple of days sometimes I just don't comment elsewhere while that's in progress.

And most of that is just about time, as in, who has enough? I try to at least skim my entire flist every day, and one of the reasons I get so conflicted about fandom is that it seems like doing it properly, really doing everything I might like to do or be interested in as a meta-person or reviewer or commentator or, god-help-us, to try and write fic (which I've tried to do), would be such an enormous commitment that I couldn't even imagine being able to do that. So I'm resigned to sort of being one of those hit or miss backbencher types, who attends sessions now and then, and chats with whoever happens to be in the house, and how many ways can I mix this metaphor? :)

The weird thing is that perspectives and measurements are so different -- I think of you as one of the people I talk to most frequently on LJ, one of probably less than a dozen people that I can say, in any sense, that I talk with them "regularly", and yet I know there are long gaps where we don't cross paths at all, so to someone whose standard of "regular" might be that they chat weekly or daily or even "twice a month" it would just seem bizarre to suggest this.

And I will not be entrapped into a dialogue about how intellectual your posts are! You will just have to come to terms with being intelligent, whether you like it or not. :) But FWIW, you certainly don't "sound like an article," whatever that means, and you shouldn't let the know-nothings cramp your style.

Well, on the question of Harry at the Dursleys, I was thinking about your narcissism/solipsism difference. Solipsism seems to me a kind of happy/comfortable thing, even if it's teasable, where someone just revolves contentedly in their own little orbit, but narcissism seems to involve a more desperate sort of self-assertion. Um, this is not DSM-IV, of course. So yeah, I mean, Harry must have told himself continuously that he had value, that he was better than this, even if he had no objective reason for believing it, in order to keep himself from just turning into a worm at the Dursleys. And I think one of the things that makes him an instantly attractive character in PS/SS is the way he asserts himself, aggressively claims what he is entitled to (the letter, his self-respect) even after ten years of abuse. On the other hand, this fucks him up in subtle and not-so-subtle ways in a give-and-take society of his peers, at school. But that's another post!

As for Harry and Draco -- you know, if they didn't have issues, I think they could be friends, just based on personality. I think they have similar senses of humor, a similar sense of the absurd, a strong need for affection. Which is sort of their tragedy and their temptation to writers, really, because the "extraneous" stuff about ego and space and usurpation really isn't extraneous, it's burned into their character and outlook by their experience and isn't going away. They really are their issues more than they are their bare personalities.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Man, for all this awareness of other people, I don't think of my own reading patterns much (like, well, I know who I am and am not talking to 'regularly' if by that you mean 'every few days or weekly', because any more than that and they go into 'inactive' mode). I think I -tend- to comment on some people's posts and not others-- and generally, the less I comment on someone's journal, the closer I get to thinking I should take 'em off my flist. It like, never happens that I think someone's just -fascinating- and yet I have nothing to say (unless I just haven't gotten to that day, but then I'll comment on their next post, probably). I think for me, talking is directly related to interest and a bit with familiarity-- which, I'm gathering, it's not for other people.

Sometimes, 'tis true, I'll read a meta post of someone -not- on my flist & say nothing even if it's interesting-- I'll memory it instead and most likely post in my own journal instead of commenting. I know what you mean about not having time-- and I go through phases where I just skim and never say anything to anyone, but then I'm barely reading my flist at all so I think of myself as being on 'sabbatical' or basically 'not really there'. If I read & like, I'll say something somewhere, even if just on my own lj. The only exception is prolly canon-commentary posts, which I enjoy but don't feel inspired to riff on unless it's something actually new about my pet characters-- so perhaps that's how people feel about other meta. Like they're interested but not -that- interested. Eh.

And it's not like I can't deal with being intelligent, precisely (!haha), but, um, people I respect & stuff tend to say stuff like 'your posts are too rambly and you don't support your points and you really need to learn to write essays more well-structuredly'. To -me-, nearly everyone else writing meta intelligently is doing something somehow really different from me-- like in style & content, too. I suppose, uh, it tends to be more rationalist & less philosophically bent 95% of the time, and I guess those are just different approaches & types of intelligence? My intuition feels awkward being respected as if I'm on to some hard science. Not that I don't think highly enough of myself, but I just feel-- *different*--?

Hee, one of my favorite things about talking to you about H/D is how I can never quite tell if we're disagreeing or I'm just seeing more angles or what :D But I appreciate the burst of optimism :D And yeah, um, I know what you mean about talking 'regularly'-- I suppose if you -like- the exchanges, you'd see a temporal pattern to them even if it's long-term & irregular :>

With the friends thing-- I go back and forth on it; ideally, I love and want to see more H/D friendship (in fic), and am fascinated with reading that in some ways more than the romance/sex part (I really liked the quasi-friendship in one of the Merry Smutmas fics, `A Very Long Misadventure'). On the other hand, I get very frustrated with how people have Draco no longer be a Death Eater or stop saying 'Mudblood' or whatever and poof! Harry has no problems with him & vice versa. It's like, I also doubt the idea that you can 'strip back' history & get to some 'pure' and unsullied version of one's personality & start over. Also, some of the things most natural to Draco-- his bragging & narcissism, etc-- are some of the things that annoy Harry the most, whether or not they're 'like' him. Like, I think he doesn't like people who mock anyone he -likes-, and while Draco may be the same way, the people they like are just fundamentally different kinds of people (meaning, what they are drawn to-- like, I can't see Draco gravitating to the Weasleys even if he is starved for affection). So yes, we, uh, agree :D :D

Also, to strip back one's ego-issues is to lose the tension -and- make it just another boring lovey-dovey relationship. Not to mention all that stuff H/D shippers like to say about how 'Harry needs to love while Draco needs to be loved' is just so much crap :>