Hell, there’s hella sues in boys’ fic now (see every protagonist of every harem fic out there) and for a very brief moment in time, Gary Stu almost got as much use as Mary Sue did. And then it fell out of favor again with ‘Mary Sue’ being either aggressively reclaimed or applied no matter the sex of the character and sometimes I feel crazy mentioning it because fewer and fewer thinkpieces on Mary Sue mention the male equivalent by name. (Slightly off-topic but still on-topic: once again consumed with feelings of “you can write a thing, are justified in writing a thing, and should not be yelled at for writing a thing, but I am not obliged to read and enjoy it if it is not a thing I usually read and enjoy” with regards to certain fic tropes. Also consumed with faint resentment every time my favored tropes are shit on by the same people that demand I validate their self-insert fics. Fuck offffff it’s fine and I’m glad you’re enjoying writing it but I am not going to read it and I am not oppressing you by failing to give it kudos.)
(Oh hell no. There’s a difference between having a healthy amount of self esteem and pride in your work, and feeling entitled to other people’s time and high opinion. I do feel like there are plenty of people (not you, more like people who write grumpy think pieces about why millennials suck or how participation trophies for youth sports are destroying our country) who don’t see a difference and Must Crush.)
Why would you write a crossover where you apparently hate all of the characters and the entire canon of one of the fandoms? Isn't the subtext point of a crossover to lure people into the opposite fandom? (okay, and also inflicting the opposite fandom on the characters. There's that too.)
I've absolutely encountered quite a bit of Hella Sue dudefic, including professionally published (see above re: Starkiller). A lot of where the misogyny comes in is that when dudes do it, people treat it as cheesy, fun schlock, but when women do it, it's the ultimate, most dire, most damning offense.
Can we move the mary sue discussion to a different thread? This tangent has gone on for a long while.
yeah, that’s fair. https://kintsugi.seebs.net/threads/a-boy-named-sue.8306/ quote yourselves, oxycodone and admin login don’t go together.
Learn. To write. Dialog. Involving. More. Than. One. Character. Author. Also, this is an action scene, not an outsider pov scene please use the pov character for more than reaction shot since he just saw Yoruichi streaking across a hallway naked in human form to get to Ichigo. Also also, Yoruichi is not going to break cover that much. Talking cat yes. Human shaped when she's supposed to be a familiar no. You missed some great possible lines where Ichigo goes "of course she can talk. She wouldn't be a very good teacher if she couldn't communicate with me" and so on. But this is the fic where I also complained that the writer seemed to be slamming on at least one of the fandoms involved. (It's a Harry Potter/Bleach crossover. Writer does not like seem to like most of the characters in Potterverse or maybe just finds Bleach that much more superior.)
If one is gonna write a crossover to trash one of the fandoms involved, can it at least be done in a funny way?
I'm still reading the fic because the concept is interesting, and the writing isn't too bad, but the characterization is off and again, the writer is slamming on the HP worldbuilding instead of fusing it.
"Slamming on the HP worldbuilding" is a whole, like, genre of fic, but I'm still surprised by seeing that crossed with Bleach, of all things.
Speaking of wierdass HP crossovers I feel like the last thing that Harry "Ron Weasley's BFF" Potter is gonna hate someone over is being...taller then him. Also in what possible world is teenage Cor Leonis not the grubbiest little disaster shit, whats with this "he's CLEAN and I'm COVERED IN MUD" shit from Harry
*takes the mass effect fandom by the ankles and shakes it* give me the non-shepard ships, please. There are so many good/interesting ships in the parties, please us them I will sail all these rarepairs myself if I gotta but please make it a little easier....
A while ago YOI Badfic Friend sent me a screenshot of some truly amazing tags from a Game of Thrones AU fic. There was a lot going on there, but for some reason the one I couldn't get over was "Ghost is a cat in this." Ghost is a direwolf. AT LEAST MAKE HIM A DOG.
it’s hard to find a harry potter crossover where dumbledore doesn’t get shouted at and thrown out. i think a lot of people kind of had the mother of all fridge horror when they grew up enough that “only the kid your age can save the world” was no longer plausible. suddenly a beloved and cozy world was rotten at the core, and they felt betrayed. they’re working out their anger by writing ichigo or xander or whoever scolding and humiliating the characters they feel most betrayed by — which is usually dumbledore. i’ve felt the temptation. it would be cathartic.
Re: Dumbledore, I feel like a lot of the time he gets turned into a Watsonian outlet for the ficcers' frustration with all of the series' fridge horror/fridge logic. Which, like, a lot of it is warranted even putting aside "this is a kid's book, so the adults will not solve the problems without the kids"- e.g., the fact that he left his boyfriend doing his Wizard Hitler thing as long as he did doesn't strictly reflect well on him. And JKR's inability to keep her damn mouth shut does keep making it worse ("Dumbledore totally knew about Lockhart but thought a terrible teacher would be a ~learning experience~"). But there's a lot of fic that's very "Dumbledore is an outright malevolent schemer who doesn't even pretend to have morals" and blames every single thing that's wrong with anything on Dumbledore deliberately making things worse, when even the most uncharitable reading of canon will tell you that he's really really good at spin-doctoring to make other people see him as the good guy. And I... get the fantasy of taking down the person who pretended to be your friend while putting your life on rails with the goal of turning you into a piece in a machine that will ultimately use you up (and why that's probably particularly compelling to a lot of people in the generations that grew up on HP), but. I dunno, maybe it's just that not-particularly-good people who've convinced themselves their horrible decisions are the best and only way forward is a thing I like reading about, and a supervillain openly plotting the best way to ensure a child is adequately abused is not. But those sorts of fics often leave me feeling like they're using demonized strawman Dumbledore as an easy scapegoat to avoid engaging with all the complicated ways the wizarding world in general has to be hecked up for Dumbledore to be in the position he's in, and all of his choices to seem to him like the most logical ones.
