being real but mostly being mean, my bad
I wasn't trying to be a dick earlier with that post, but it turns out I was totally being a dick! I am sorry.
I wanted to complicate the original post's assertion about the separation between fiction/non-fiction, because I really and truly think they are more alike than not. I didn't want to posit one as more authentic than the other! Green Day is one of my favorite bands, clearly my authenticity ship sailed a while ago. But I can see how it reads that way. I should have phrased it more like "people intentionally and unintentionally make shit up when they call it non-fiction and intentionally and unintentionally say true things when they make shit up."
I said that I agreed with ourcastastrophe's original post symbolically because I am not literally against memoir. I'm also not against the self, I mean I'm a leo. Real talk: I mostly read and wrote memoir/non-fiction/personal essays in college, I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't something I cared about. But I've had a lot of feelings about it.
Feelings I expressed with unnecessary rudeness! My point in critiquing memoir/perzine/auto-bio comics wasn't because I think they're inherently inferior to ~fiction~ or any other genre. That's seriously not a conversation I care that much about. I don't even have a horse in that race because I don't write fiction and I mostly do auto-bio work. I got all snarky and all-capsy because I've been feeling disappointed and bored by a lot of the things that I've read recently, and I wanted to critique the tropes I've been seeing because I think the genre can be pushed further than it has.
But for real feminist/queer literature has been kind of saturated with memoir. Especially in regards to transgender writing there are so many memoirs, and I can only read about the first time someone tried on a binder so many times. That's partially on me and my reading choices, of course and there was recently a pretty cool anthology of trans fiction. But,
I don't think it's bad to encourage or try to put a spotlight on people doing feminist and queer and indie comix stuff in other genres!
But what I wrote earlier was not encouraging anyone to do anything. That disappointment and boredom I felt with what I'd been reading made me look at my own work in a not so positive light, and a lot of the negativity in my post should have been directed inward and not at other people who make stuff. There is so much that I've done that I wish I had let ruminate a little longer or spent a little more time on before I showed it to people, put it online or printed it in a zine. My rant earlier is a perfect example.
But if I didn't start somewhere, I would never have made anything. And I'm serious when I say that making things is what makes me want to stay on this planet and I think everyone should make things.
Not everyone makes zines/comix/whatever for the same reasons I do. I don't need to shit on people to make things. I also don't need to buy everyone's stuff though.
Pretty sure I wrote all this because of how many comics and zines I've bought out of guilt after walking up to a table and making eye contact with the creator. I'm sure people have done this with my stuff too. Comixland is pretty socially anxious, who'd have thought!
Without being a dick though, can there be room to point out the repetition in a lot of the things that people put out? In terms of aesthetics, writing style, and subject matter. A lot of very similar voices take up a lot of space. My original rude comment about tea and self-care was not aimed at anyone specific, and I do find it a little funny that the example I pulled out of my butt and threw in the air landed on someone who had written something along those lines.
I do think there's a politics and power behind whose stories and zines and comix and blogs everyone shits themselves over, though. Suzy points it out in her take on this argument here, and yeah, it's a lot of white people, straight people, cis people, middle class and beyond people whose stories are most audible. I'm not saying don't make zines if you're not the subaltern, but like maybe think about what you consume and what you put out there, myself included, there's a reason I haven't made any zines since early spring and currently don't plan to. I love zines and the community surrounding them but they also don't need another white guy.
In sum: I still think there are parts of this conversation worth having! But sorry for being mean, I could have and should have made my points without being an asshole. My bad.
