Aishuu Shadowweaver <mbsilvana@yahoo.com> wrote:

A problem here might be that your readers don't have
a clear idea of
exactly what the requirements of shojo are, or might
have ideas on it
that are different from yours. I've posted comments
on fics a time or
two and had people come back and tell me "But it was
SUPPOSED to be like
that! It was SHOJO!" At least the first part of
which was news to me.

I did tag it shoujo.

You seem to have completely missed my point here, which was that "shojo"
may mean different things to different people, or even nothing at all to
some. (Do you even know which story I'm referring to above? I don't
remember if it was tagged shojo or not, or whether it was yours, and
what was news to me was that whatever I was criticizing it for -- I
don't even remember what that was anymore -- was a necessity of the
genre.)

To take another example, while I haven't read the stories you're talking
about here, I did read "Genma's Daughter," which you mention elsewhere
in your post, and it struck me as a pretty classic example of what I
call Author's Pet Syndrome: a character who will never get into a
situation he/she can't handle, never have anything really bad happen to
him/her, because the author is being overprotective. (Apologies to Ms.
Goldsmith for picking on her fic to make a point.) Now, is this just a
feature of the shojo genre, and hence something I should just leave
alone? If it is, it's news to me. But you may feel that it is, and being
that I don't have a lot of experience with shojo, you could be right.

Allyn IS nice. He spends a lot of time giving out
honest, critical
feedback, and bends over backwards to remind people
that it's only his
own opinion.

*mutters*  I still hate his disclaimers.  I've told
him so, too.

I'm constantly tempted to parody them myself. :)  But considering some
of the more extreme responses I've gotten from C&C over the years, I
understand why he wants to use them.

I was merely stating that I felt there was a distinct
bias, and that as a shoujo writer, I feel persecuted. 

Well, let's consider all the possibilities:

1) People dislike the stories to which you're referring because they
don't like shojo.

2) They dislike them for other reasons.

3) They don't in general dislike them -- it just seems that way to you.

4) There's a vocal minority which dislikes shojo, and a silent minority
which doesn't.

Does that cover everything, or are there other possibilities I haven't
thought of? Of course, it could be (and probably is) a combination of
some or all of the above.

In none of these cases does it do any good that I can see to complain
that shojo writers are getting the short end of the stick. If (1) is the
case, then people are still going to dislike the genre even if you tell
them not to. I'm not going to become a shojo fan on your say-so, any
more than you'll appreciate "Gosunkugi: Spider-man" (for example) just
because I say you should. The best you could do is try to solicit
readers who *do* want what you have to offer. I don't think I need to
even talk about (2) or (3). And if it's (4), seems to me that it's the
silent shojo fans who are at fault for not speaking out.

~ Aishuu

Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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