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Seanan McGuire and Mary Sues
As with Jim Hines, I discovered fantasy author Seanan McGuire's LJ blog via other people's discussions and Metafandom's Delicious account. She first came to my attention when she spoke out in support of another author who pulled out of a YA fiction anthology when she was asked by the editor to turn a gay character straight. McGuire is the author of the Toby Daye fantasy novels, about a young woman who is half-Faerie and half-human, and doesn't quite fit into either world. I haven't read the series yet, but they sound like something that's right up my alley, so I plan to pick up the first novel soon.
Today, I'd like to share a link to McGuire's post on Mary Sues: I know a little girl and her name is Mary Mac: The Misuse of Mary Sue. (I shared my own thoughts about Mary Sues here a few years ago.) In her essay, McGuire talks about how in fanfic, a Mary Sue warps the story around her, but "maybe all Mary really needs to do is fly away home"--that is, to become the heroine of her own story. However, even the female protagonists of published novels often get labeled "Mary Sues" when their male counterparts don't, and McGuire talks about how the term is often used to attack female characters in general. Finally, she asks readers to critique female characters fairly and not to just dismiss them out of hand as a Mary Sue.
I have to say that I have seen this a lot, not so much in my own small circle of fandom, but in fandom at large. (You might expect Snupin shippers to be Tonks-bashers, but the majority of Snupin fics that I've read treat Tonks pretty fairly and make her a more well-rounded character than she is in the books. But I have seen tons of Lily-bashing in the general Snape fandom, some of which degenerated into heated accusations and insults on my Lily essay, which really surprised and alarmed me at the time. I tend to stay far, far away from Lily discussions on Snapedom now.) I find it sad and rather disturbing that most of the hate for female characters seems to be coming from female readers--what does that say about us as women? Why do we put the male characters on a pedestal while hating on the women? Is it some sort of bizarre form of self-loathing?
Which always makes me feel a little guilty that I don't write more stories about female characters. Even though I write mostly slashy stuff, there are lots of strong, interesting female characters in my fandoms: Jill in Petshop of Horrors, and for Haru, there's Shimizu, Youko, and Fuyumi. (Well, actually, I did write a story about Fuyumi, but I have a Shimizu plotbunny that keeps getting shoved to the backburner because there's still so much Kikuchi/Onozuka story left to tell.) For Harry Potter, I mostly stick to writing Snape and Lupin, but I do like writing about Hermione, Tonks, Narcissa, Fleur, and various OCs as supporting characters.
Well, perhaps this Yuletide I will get a chance to remedy that situation if I'm assigned to write for someone who requests the In Death fandom, since the main character in that series is a female homicide detective (Eve Dallas), with another woman (Delia Peabody) as her aide/partner--they are both awesome characters that I would love to write!
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I don't think it's self-loathing, though; it's mostly because the female characters interfere with slash pairings or detract (in their view) from focusing on teh boyz.
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