Don't leave a voicemail, seriously.

I keep seeing lots of commentary *about* the commentary on the 4th wall comic by counteragent but none of the original commentary. The discussions must be going on in metafandom which I no longer read for my sanity and the sanity of ALL.

Mostly the secondary tier of commentary on the commentary (which I, again, have not seen any of) seems to be a visceral nature dipicting the primary commenters as fangirl haters and intolerant assholes who Just Don't Get It. I'm sure some people are actually intolerant assholes, however, I think the reactions to the comic are actually far more complex than that.

There's some generational rifting happening here that plays into the fact that The Kids Today grew up w/ the internet and people who are older than that come from a different culture, essentially.

However, I've banged on about that ad nauseum, so how about I go for the feminist critique this time?

When I read the comic my personal reaction was that the dynamic portrayed in the art was the old fashioned male-female binary where the woman's life is internal and secret and subsumed by the demands of the family/spouse/parents/work/whatever. I think that the intellectual schism going on with people's varying reactions to that break down like this: people who say "omg, yes, this is SO TRUE" and the people who say "while this portrays the real life of some people, I reject the paradigm inherently and think that living your life in this manner is unacceptable to me." I think the second reaction is a positive thing and indicates that women *can* and *do* choose themselves first in increasing numbers. Not everyone *can* make those choices for a whole host of social reasons, but there is nothing wrong with putting yourself first. And I think this is an idea we should be more sensitive to considering the fact that we're JUST NOW in 2010 on the cusp of women choosing themselves first being *acceptable*. Because the fact of the matter is that most of the time it is still *not* socially acceptable to do so.

No one is right or wrong here. We just all have different life experiences that color how we interpret art personally.

And the internet is for mocking people with different opinions than you. I see a lot of "these people are indicting my entire life and invalidating me as a person" going on in the secondary commentary of the primary commentary I'm not seeing. Really? Does "zomg hysteria!" = "traditional hetero-normative relationships where the man is valued primarily are undertaken only by women with no self-worth who value cock over self-respect and this is all predicated on gay porn" ??

The entire reason we all even know each other is that we like to discuss interpretations of art...???