What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Anonymous asked: Do you have any tips for reviewing/critiquing media? I want to get into it but I find i can't think thoughts of the same depth as you and many other talented writers. it's a little frustrating and i'm not sure how to change it

Honestly, it’s just a matter of practice and paying attention. Critical writing is a skill you develop over time, like fiction writing or art: you have to start somewhere and care enough to work to get better. The more you read (or watch, or play) and the more you engage with the criticism of others, the more you’ll find you have to say and the better you’ll get at saying it. 

When I first started blogging at my current site, I was pretty mediocre; I made a few good points from time to time, but there’s posts from that time I look back on now that make me cringe. For example: I once managed to write a reasonably favourable review of Twilight wherein I completely missed all the sexist, stalkery creepiness of it, because I hadn’t yet seen that aspect discussed by anyone else, and because I wasn’t literate enough on the problem for it to occur to me independently. Hell, I even managed to write a review defending the heinous Avatar: The Last Airbender movie, because again: baby critic, writing from a position of white privilege, didn’t get the context. But a more critically literate friend saw the review and called me out on it over chat; I didn’t agree with her right away, but she was patient in explaining her points, and the conversation stuck with me. I kept on thinking about it, realised I’d been wrong, and started trying to do better in my analysis, in identifying my biases and listening to people who were writing from different perspectives. And here we are.

I’m sometimes tempted to go back and delete those old posts out of embarrassment, but I don’t - not because I agree with them any more, but because I don’t want to pretend that I’ve always held the beliefs I do now; that I didn’t have to work and think and educate myself to improve my criticism. If someone ever digs up those reviews and tell me, “Hey, that was a dumbass thing you said,” I’ll be first in line to agree with them - and that’s the point. The fact that some people might have more experience in a given field than you, or be better than you when you’re starting out, doesn’t mean your voice isn’t necessary, or that you shouldn’t try to develop it - if that were true, then we’d never get any new writers (or artists, or musicians, or athletes) until the old ones died or retired. So give it a go, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes and get better! To quote the wisdom of Adventure Time

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