My Mary Sue issues mostly boil down to two things.
I think "Mary Sue" is a useful term in a setting with mostly-female writers. See: 10 year old girl rewriting Harry Potter to be about Harry's long lost twin sister Raven Moonpearl. Or writing about Harry getting a girlfriend named Sparkle Princess. We know the dynamic.
Except that we also talk about Canon Sues, and Lana Lang is not the same issue as the above 10 year old. But that dynamic there's too, and we need to be able to talk about that also. Mostly I wish we had different terms for them, and I wish that, say, a male writer's inability to write women well didn't so often get fandom loathing the female characters instead of criticizing the writing.
And anyway, if there aren't any female Harry Potters in the library . . . well, why shouldn't Miss 10 Year Old write about Raven Moonpearl?
I hate the feeling that we're collectively talking ourselves out of . . . writing ourselves into the stories we shouldn't be written out of in the first place. Because it's ridiculous and offensively self-indulgent to write SPN fic about a female, Chinese hunter? but all the white boys with magic powers are just business as usual? why? Sure, badly done self-insert wish-fulfillment is boring to read, but the way the fear of Mary Sueing works, I feel like we treat wish-fulfillment itself as the bad guy. That, and writing characters who are like us (in gender -- white girls writing about white men doesn't get called Mary Sueing, natch).
And it's kind of like . . . well, part of the idea of Mary Sues is that they're taking screen time/importance that doesn't belong to them? I think? And when it's (rich, straight, attractive) white boy protagonists everywhere, it's like we're collectively saying the screen time belongs to them and we shouldn't be intruding on it.
I think about Mary Sue stuff mostly in terms of gender -- which is why this is a tangent -- but I think a lot of the issues are applicable to every flavor of identity politics.
And with all that said, I'm still profoundly uninterested in most fic with OCs. My mouth and my money, they are not in the same place.
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branchandroot
tl;dr like the wind
Date: 2007-09-30 12:56 am (UTC)My Mary Sue issues mostly boil down to two things.
Except that we also talk about Canon Sues, and Lana Lang is not the same issue as the above 10 year old. But that dynamic there's too, and we need to be able to talk about that also. Mostly I wish we had different terms for them, and I wish that, say, a male writer's inability to write women well didn't so often get fandom loathing the female characters instead of criticizing the writing.
I hate the feeling that we're collectively talking ourselves out of . . . writing ourselves into the stories we shouldn't be written out of in the first place. Because it's ridiculous and offensively self-indulgent to write SPN fic about a female, Chinese hunter? but all the white boys with magic powers are just business as usual? why? Sure, badly done self-insert wish-fulfillment is boring to read, but the way the fear of Mary Sueing works, I feel like we treat wish-fulfillment itself as the bad guy. That, and writing characters who are like us (in gender -- white girls writing about white men doesn't get called Mary Sueing, natch).
And it's kind of like . . . well, part of the idea of Mary Sues is that they're taking screen time/importance that doesn't belong to them? I think? And when it's (rich, straight, attractive) white boy protagonists everywhere, it's like we're collectively saying the screen time belongs to them and we shouldn't be intruding on it.
I think about Mary Sue stuff mostly in terms of gender -- which is why this is a tangent -- but I think a lot of the issues are applicable to every flavor of identity politics.
And with all that said, I'm still profoundly uninterested in most fic with OCs. My mouth and my money, they are not in the same place.