[Fic] "Cobweb Maze: Dinner Date" -- original, Ithaca Paranormal

This is a snippet from some point in "Cobweb Maze," an original... well, it's either paranormal romance or urban fantasy. In other words, it is based around a heterosexual love story, but there's a lot of other stuff going on, and Lia Reynard and Takeshi Fitzroy don't fit a lot of paranormal romance relationship stereotypes. (Also, I am never sure quite where the line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance is.)

Anyway, this takes place sometime after In the Still of the Night, the snippet I previously posted from this story. Aileen Stearns is the main character from another novel set in this world, wherein she meets a guy named Joey Malinowski and they try to clear a mutual friend from a murder charge. Aileen and Takeshi dated a while ago, but mutually broke it off and became close platonic friends. Kari, who is mentioned in passing in the following snippet, is Hikaru Fitzroy, Takeshi's little sister. (550 words)

( Dinner Date )

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Hmm. Takeshi is awfully cute when he's flustered. And I am very fond of Aileen as well. I wonder if I should try writing one of their novels for NaNo this year...?

wherein Liz thinks about Mary Sues

metafandom (or metafandom) has recently been linking to an ongoing discussion about Mary Sues -- about whether the term has any remaining use as a description of a particular type of bad writing (character development failure plus plot warping, mostly), about whether the term's inherent gender bias ruins it, about whether people have expanded it to mean 'any interesting female character ever,' about various kinds of internalized and expressed misogyny, about people using Mary Sue accusations as a bullying tactic, and so on and so forth.

Which, okay. Clearly the term Mary Sue has gender baggage, especially since there has never been a single agreed-upon male equivalent. Also, male Sues seem to get written differently and reacted to differently, which is self-evidently problematic. (For example, if I had a dollar for every time I have seen a canon male character turned into a completely OOC plot-warping, ultraviolent, superpowered, girls-at-his-feet, jerkass karma houdini who makes every opposing character into a whining, ineffective, jealous loser, I would... well, I'd have at least a couple thousand dollars, that's what -- and people love those stories, which is beyond me. And if you want to talk pure male self-inserts, go poke around various anime fandoms for a few hours. They are not in short supply. You can start with Carrotglace and Skysaber, for two of the most over-the-top examples.)

Um. Where was I?

Right, so there are deep issues with the term, and if somebody can come up with a good, short gender neutral descriptor for 'character who warps the universe around hirself to the point where ze coopts all stories as hir own, and is also unrealistic -- ie, has skills and attributes without the effort and consequences such things would require and bring -- and generally badly written to boot,' then I would be very pleased. (That, incidentally, is what I mean when I say 'Mary Sue.')

( The bullying, shaming, and self-censoring aspects of the Mary Sue phenomenon are more interesting to me, though, because... )

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Okay, back to state income taxes. *beats head against desk*