telophase | (no subject)

(no subject)

Yo,

vom_marlowe, one of your stories got name-checked in a recent column in the Hooded Utilitarian!

Is it me, or does that post read like a non-fannish academic telling fans how they should be properly using fannish lingo? Maybe I'm just grumpy today.

It's part of a series of different blog contributors talking about the Mary Sue phenomenon - I got more of the impression that this author was trying to nail down his definition of a Mary Sue compared to what the other contributors were using, not dictate it.

The overall theme of the blog is comics geeks talking a bit more academically about comics than the usual run, and they admit that they're not familiar with a lot of manga and the fan circles around that, but are trying to understand it. there's one contributor who's more into that circle of fandom who is supposed to be making some posts on yaoi and BL soon. They just finished a group read of Helter Skelter, the josei manga about a fashion model, and reading the thoughts of people who don't normally read this sort of thing but who are open to it was interesting.

Not to me, but I read HU all the time, and grok how most of the contributors' minds work.

This particular roundtable does make me grumpy, but only because I long, long ago came to the conclusion that "Mary Sue" is a mostly useless term, based on a combination of its conceptual flexibility, and the way most of fandom is absolutely wedded to it as a pejorative--you can define damn near anything as a Mary Sue, and Mary Sues are bad by definition. It's lazy, stupid thinking, and so often married to an unjustified snottiness about taste or psychological health or whatnot. It's just annoying, and if you internalize the fandom value system re: Mary Sues, you will spend an awful lot of time looking over your shoulder, worried you might be enjoying something that, le gasp, caters to your fantasies! And we can't have that.

I actually think Sues and related phenomena are fascinating, and am happy to talk about their many functions in fiction, but not with anybody who's operating with fandom's received wisdom about what's good and bad, even if it's secondhand. It looks like the HU roundtable is arriving at some of the same conclusions I hit awhile back, but...man, I've been on this merry-go-round many times before, and the scenery never changes.

I don't think so, but I read Noah pretty often. I think he's trying to convince non-fans that fanfic has some really cool qualities and is doing more interesting things artistically than some people think.

He did that once (actually, probably many times) with some horror movie he really liked. I was left thinking, well, I still never ever want to see that movie, but damn, you make it sound interesting.

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that Noah read and liked Girl Yohji. It just makes me need to go lie down. He just doesn't say nice things without reason. (I would feel the same way if Nick Mamatas said something nice about my writing.) Thanks for pointing me to it!

You're welcome! :D

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