"It's only the End if you want it to be.": gabzilla-z: I like how Gail Simone keeps living down to my...

"It's only the End if you want it to be.": gabzilla-z: I like how Gail Simone keeps living down to my...:

reavien:

Kay, goodish… I know I've only been involved with the comics for roughly a year (and now suddenly all of this is happening), so, I was hoping I didn't sound like that idiot who didn't know what she was talking about.

I think the only real issue I have about the author being on the threads—and this is personally, I can't speak for everyone else—is just…I dunno. It's like sitting in class critiquing someone's art work while they sit there and stare at you. For some people, that's easy, but…for me it's uncomfortable, especially when I know they've put time and effort into something. Especially if I respect the person (seeing you reblog this freaked me out as much as it was, ahaha). Then I feel like I have to force out some positives. …yeah. Those of us who are normally shier feel pressured into not speaking up.

I honestly don't go to a lot of forums for various reasons, so…never heard of CBR until today.

Sucks, and is really surprising. Most of the people I know and pay attention to seem to love both of those books. And not just love them, but—especially in Steph's case—be extremely defensive and passionate about them. 

No, you didn't sound like an idiot at ALL!

CBR is a bit of an exception, in that it's almost always had a larger number of creators participating than any other comics forum of any kind. There's an entire section of the board devoted to individual creators, where they interact with different levels of regularity.  So it's not exactly like Tumblr or most message boards, pros show up to chat on a very regular basis and the posters there are mostly used to it and welcome it.

That's not to say sometimes pros don't get defensive or obnoxious, it definitely happens, I've done it myself.  Like i said, I had a message board there for ten years. Sometimes a reader comes in to pick a fight, sometimes a writer or artist gets defensive and acts like a jerk. They have a LOT of mods and rules and stuff, which is I guess why they felt they had to have rules about not discussing Steph and Cass in that thread.

I get what you're saying about writers showing up on review threads. It might be kind of obnoxious.  There's no real set of guidelines to follow for this, you sort of learn as you go.  It's hard not to be defensive sometimes but I always end up regretting it and feeling like a  dork later, even if it's months later sometimes.Sometimes, it's actually harder to take a compliment than an insult, which seems counter-intuitive.

CBR and Twitter are a little different, people seem to seek each other out to chat about this stuff.  But the CBR posters are not starry-eyed, they're used to pros dropping by and art not exactly star-struck, as a rule. They still in general are pretty willing to say what they think—if you read the thread, there is some serious naysaying going on!  ;)