THE BORE
General => The Superdeep Borehole => Topic started by: recursivelyenumerable on May 24, 2009, 03:38:43 AM
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http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004188.html
"Mary Sue literary theory has changed my professional life. Before, when discussing manuscripts with my colleagues, I had to say things “You know, one of those books that keeps telling you how wonderful and talented and perfect the main character is and how much everyone loves her, but aside from that there’s nothing at stake and nothing really happens? No logic, no causality, no narrative development, just that character being wonderful every barfy step of the way?”
Generally they knew what I meant; we see a lot of books like that. But those conversations have gotten much easier now that I can say things like “See if the author will agree to rewrite it from another character’s point of view—that main character is a screaming Mary Sue.” Or: “I sent it back. The agent was all excited about how the author’s ‘expanding into a new genre’, but it’s just a Mary Sue with jousting scenes pasted in.”
So yay for the fanfic universe for putting a name to that. They came up with the idea of formalizing the role of the beta reader, too, which is another piece of really useful literature-generating technology. If that surprises you, recollect that the primary characteristic of fanfic isn’t that it’s amateurish or derivative; it’s that it’s legally unpublishable. Some very smart people read and/or write fanfic.
(Someday, not today, I’ll tell the story of how, years ago, Joanna Russ and I used Star Trek fanfic as a sort of Rosetta Stone to decipher recurrent themes and motifs in fantasy and SF written by women. It’s often easier to see underlying patterns and mechanisms in amateur fiction than in slicker commercial work. This started when Joanna identified and described some recurrent narrative motifs she’d spotted in the Trek slash of the day, of which the inverse relationship between incidence of explicit sex and liebestod denouements was the most obvious and least important. There was much more to it. She laid out her entire description; and I, considering it, said “Which is not to say that The Left Hand of Darkness is a specimen of Star Trek slash fiction.” Joanna’s jaw dropped, and we stared at each other in wild surmise. The patterns not only fitted; they explained some otherwise inexplicable plot twists in that novel. We were on to something. And—hey! What about thus-and-such story by Zenna Henderson? And that one by Leigh Brackett? And so forth and so on, ever onward. For the next few weeks we were stoned on literary theory and the codebreaker’s buzz of seeing a seemingly knotty puzzle resolve into plaintext.)"
so there. you were missing out
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I read that back when it was posted! I remember when they had their own individual blogs! E-cred!
Also on the topic of Mary Sue, I just watched Twilight.
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How bad was it? I only watch bad movies these days.
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'mary sue' sounds like it should be a gay subcultural term for -- i don't know -- something
i'm taking it back
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lol that's exactly what i tought when i heard it. like it should be a name for a lesbian housewife or something
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'mary sue' sounds like it should be a gay subcultural term for -- i don't know -- something
i'm taking it back
You're gay, too?
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Some very smart people read and/or write fanfic.
very smart people
write fanfic
Uhhhhhh
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It really boggles my mind that stuff like Twilight and Eragon are so accepted these days, when they're clearly works of wish-fulfillment Mary Su fanfic.
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You're gay, too?
working on it -- besides my total physical and mental aversion to other dudes, i think i'd make an excellent homosexual
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How bad was it? I only watch bad movies these days.
Aggressively, comprehensively bad. I thought it was going to be terrible and it still crushed my expectations. Acting dialogue, cinematography, special effects, score, everything.
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isn't it made by basically the same creative team behind Thirteen, which was supposed to be good?
also, drohne and I are 90% okcupid matches :heart
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isn't it made by basically the same creative team behind Thirteen, which was supposed to be good?
also, drohne and I are 90% okcupid matches :heart
When you're kissing someone who's too much like you / It's like kissing on a mirror--Jenny Lewis
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isn't it made by basically the same creative team behind Thirteen, which was supposed to be good?
Checking imdb, yeah. Same director, cinematographer, editor. Haven't seen Thirteen so I can't say whether they just suck or were mailing it in.
I mean, the guy who did the score is a long time collaborator with the Coen brothers and his work as as bad as anyone's. When the bad guys show up there's a ridiculous guitar lick that made my friend pause the DVD and yell "GEE-TAWR!"
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When you're kissing someone who's too much like you / It's like kissing on a mirror--Jenny Lewis
awesome, I dig mirrors.
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isn't it made by basically the same creative team behind Thirteen, which was supposed to be good?
I mean, the guy who did the score is a long time collaborator with the Coen brothers and his work as as bad as anyone's. When the bad guys show up there's a ridiculous guitar lick that made my friend pause the DVD and yell "GEE-TAWR!"
Woah, wait a second here. The guy that did the awesome music for Raising Arizona worked on that turkey? SMH
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When you're kissing someone who's too much like you / It's like kissing on a mirror--Jenny Lewis
awesome, I dig mirrors.
:teehee
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You're gay, too?
working on it -- besides my total physical and mental aversion to other dudes, i think i'd make an excellent homosexual
to quote my brother: "i'm 98% homo -- it's just the 2% where i stick my dick in women and not dudes that keeps me from a perfect score"
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You're gay, too?
working on it -- besides my total physical and mental aversion to other dudes, i think i'd make an excellent homosexual
to quote my brother: "i'm 98% homo -- it's just the 2% where i stick my dick in women and not dudes that keeps me from a perfect score"
so he's fine with having dicks stuck in him then?
:teehee
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actually, he has also said it's not homo if you're NOT the one getting the dicks stuck in you, because it's all just a hole in the dark
the wilde homo is a thing of contradictions :-\
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actually, he has also said it's not homo if you're NOT the one getting the dicks stuck in you, because it's all a hole in the dark
the wilde homo is a thing of contradictions :-\
Is this your rich brother?
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yes
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iObGIkqhJJw