: Sunday, April 11, 2010
- niqaeli: more thoughts on the mary sue thingaside from all the horrible underlying thought processes that inspire Mary Sue policing, there is the fact that it doesn't teach good writing: it teaches one not to write at all.
The questions we should be asking young girls and women who write these avatars are: "Okay. Why? How? - niqaeli: on mary sue policing and why i cannot abide it - So, here's the thing. I understand the writhing shame of having written something of poor quality. Neither of those stories is very good -- the original fiction bore some hope and promise, I think, but was not itself very good. But what I don't understand? Is the shame of having written a Mary Sue. -
- boundbooks: [in science_fiction] Race and Breaking Plausibility - Basically, why do so many sci-fi novels break the expected distribution of race? -
- lea_hazel: [in lfantasy] If Dragons Then Royalty - Do people think non-monarchic systems are too much of a divergence for fantasy, or does it just not occur to them that there are other options? Like the title says: If dragons -- then monarchy? -
- lea_hazel: [in hooked_on_heroines] Let's Solve Problems Using ViolenceMany (most?) of the genres we consume have plots that revolve somehow around a violent conflict; if there is no apocalypse there will be at least a war, and if not a war, then a serial killer, or arsonist, or stalker.
Supposing you have all this, and also the desire to write a character who is something of a pacifist. - goldjadeocean: Such stuff as dreams are made on - Mary Sue these days isn't a criticism of skill. It isn't a criticism of writing ability. It doesn't teach the writer how to build convincing character detail. It teaches her to reduce her expectations for her characters. -
- melannen: On original fic and fanfic - The problem I have with that viewpoint is that the separation between original and fan work *isn't* a wall. It is, at best, a long sloping gradient with something on it that might be an attempt at a wall that has fallen over in places and wasn't very straight to begin with (and has only been there for a paltry few decades anyway.) The boundary between original and fan work is not a hard boundary. People have brought up historical RPF several times already, but as far as I'm concerned, it's only the tip of the iceberg. -