i mean, i respond to most of my comments. i've stopped responding to the "oh why don't you continue this?" though one of those reminded me of my attempt at a my immortal rewrite.
The other thing that gets my goat is when people comment on completed fics asking for another chapter. Like, it's marked complete for a reason, dude. (Granted, this is mostly for the fic where I have a note at the bottom that says, "it’s unlikely that I’ll finish any further chapters of this, but you may choose to subscribe in case I am further inspired," so maybe that just encourages these people. But still! It's been like two or three years!)
Oh honestly, I know what you mean. I literally just got one of these and I'd marked it completed and stated p blatantly that it was done but they just kept askin for more!
I, too, have gotten the request to continue on one-shots. The problem with "leave 'em wanting more" is that then they want more.
Some people define "platonic" as nonsexual and some as nonromantic. In the latter sense, platonic sex exists. Edit: ninja'd.
But. Words mean things though. It. Auuugh. ... Look, I'm not usually one to get snooty about common usage, but my brain can only stretch so far and "platonic sex" is a goddamn oxymoron. Buh. Ugh. *hed borkened*
*shrugs* I get where you're coming from, but it probably depends on the context you're used to seeing the word in. When I've seen it prior to the last two years or so, it referred to relationships that were clearly both nonsexual and nonromantic. Since I pick up definitions almost entirely from context clues, "platonic" existed in kind of a nebulous place in my brain. I could see other people like me, from context, concluding that the nonromantic aspect was the one the word referred to, and by now the definition is fairly widespread, from what I've seen. It's frustrating that two different concepts share the same word, but it's out there now.
Yeah, I get language shift and all, but "platonic" was being really useful as a word I could look for when I wanted fics that featured two characters interacting but not involved in either sexual or romantic ways, because that used to be the fannish usage of the word. It's a little more annoying because it's sort of a fic label--come here if you don't want a pairingfic; alternately, you've been warned this isn't one--so having it shift meaning is a little...unsettling.
Here are a few: The thing on Tumblr about how hating annoying Mary Sues makes you misogynist. As I said in response to this: "I buy that writing Mary Sues and Gary Stus is an important attempt for young writers to empower themselves. I just don’t think it works. “I’m a strong independent woman who can face any challenge! To prove it, I’ll write a story in which a thinly-veiled version of me faces no real challenges at all, has everything I ever wanted dropped in her lap, and becomes the perfect little wifey to a pretty man who is either terrifyingly creepy if not outright abusive or a complete nonentity. Why isn’t everyone showering me with praise for how awesome I am?”" Mary Sues are obviously attempts at self-empowerment, but tend to come out as some of the most misogynist fiction I've ever seen. The assumption that being queer, disabled, or not white is automatically the same as being interesting and well-developed. I've pointed out that a black autistic female Grignr would still be terribly spelled and stealing scarlet emeralds in a poorly-thought-out Conan ripoff world. I have a fairly high tolerance for epithets, but it can only go so far. If one uses too many it seems like there are several extra people in the scene, and insufficiently specific ones cause problems; my friend ranted about a fic once which insisted on using "the Gryffindor" in a scene in which both characters were Gryffindors. My friend came up with a perfect description of fics where the hero is suddenly overpowered and raped by villains who, if this was real life, probably could overpower them (e.g. Kid Heroes, settings with magic) but in canon have been shown to be no match for them at all: “You’re trying to deal with weighty and sensitive issue X, but you’re doing it in a setting where X can’t possibly play out the same way it does in real life. It leaves critics in an awkward position, because the perfectly valid arguments against X working in the setting bear an uncomfortable resemblance to arguments people use to diminish the importance of real-life X.” All characters suddenly having the same mannerisms and speech patterns and senses of humour, which a) are obviously the author's own, and/or b) make me want to punch them.
I hate the assumption that Empowerment Characters have to be played with as respected (either in fanfic or roleplay) but I also hate the counter issues just as much, which is that if you have any fun at all, you're bad and immature and can't be serious about anything ever. (Also like, I recognize that this ship is sailed, but I will never stop being furious when people refer to canon characters as Mary Sues. Especially canon characters that are main characters operating correctly within the framework of their universe. Of course the attention is on them! They're the main fucking character!)
But yeah, that's part of my major gripe. And I feel like the Mary-Sue roleplay definition got pushed onto things outside of roleplay, and that's part of where this comes from. (I don't like using it in roleplay either, because there used to be terms that fit the behavior much better but I recognize why people use it.)
I do think there's a point to be made in that a) it's a common stage beginning writers go through before they figure out how to make interesting characters, and dragging them over the coals for it is a good way to ensure they don't get the confidence to get past it, and b) the accusation gets hurled at female characters vastly more than male characters (e.g. Rey getting called a Mary Sue for having a skill set and talents, when her big accomplishment was surviving the movie). But yeah, I agree that people trying to redefine "Mary Sue" as "female power fantasy character" have missed the essence of why people were annoyed enough at the archetype to give it a name in the first place, and I want that term so I have a nice, short way to say "warps the entire narrative to make you stare at them constantly." I have absolutely no problem describing canon characters as Sues. If they do everything effortlessly except when they magically don't because the plot says they have to have trouble here, have random ~cool~ traits tacked on to try to score ~cool~ points without earning them, and everything in the narrative seems to be centered on going "WOW, LOOK HOW COOL THEY ARE," I'm going to call them a Sue, whether they're a fanfic character, a cheesy fantasy novel protagonist, or a bad portrayal of Batman.
my issues with mary sues come from reading too much mockery as a kid and therefore utterly melting down and not writing cause if i made a badfic i was obviously terribad awful
