one blink and then my heart wasn't there no more

[hope]

writing female characters always makes me anxious. ah, i miss the days when writing fanfic was just pure visceral joy instead of having too-many-thoughts. yaknow? ah well.

that said, here's a fic i just puked out after re-watching season 2's 'christmas in saigon' with clizzle and squeeing our weasely black guts out. 21 jump street, of course, if you had any confusion in your mind.

i heart this show so. i'm not particularly fond of the way this fic turned out but i'm trying to la la la turn off my thoughts so i can just write and enjoy it without cutting myself off before i even begin.

anyhoo.

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Why does writing female characters make you anxious?

Is it the charges of Mary-Sue that can be levelled at them that won't be levelled at male characters?

[hope]

i think part of it is mary-sue... i'm always hyper-conscious of putting too much of myself into a character, i don't like doing it and like to pretend that i don't. with jump street, the female characters are so banal and flat that it just makes me all the more conscious that *any* characterisation i give them in fic is coming from me, you know?

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I don't know the show, but it stinks that you feel inhibited (and you didn't create that inhibition--it's socially foisted on you) in ways that a male writer wouldn't be. See, I'm getting more and more militant against the use of the term Mary-Sue in fandom. It just seems to be used more to police women against identifying with and writing cool female characters than as a useful trope for helping people to write better. The fact that it's women who tend to wield the term against other women doesn't make it any less misogynistic. Besides you *should* be putting parts of yourself in all your characters--it's just that your male characters won't be subject to such scorn--just one more double standard. Sigh.

Sorry for ranting in your direction--it's meant to be an encouraging rant *to* you, not *at* you--to help you say screw it to those worries you're having. (-: I guess I need to work up a good rant in my LJ about it.

[hope]

don't apologise! i feel your rage.

though a lot of the anxiety is my own; i'm quite obsessively self-conscious of cliche and archetypal characters and whatnot. i don't know why my brain has to see things like that as a cop-out. and i don't think it's just female writers of fanfiction... i can't stand reading mary-sues (or gary-stus) in 'original' fiction either. my tolerance level has lowered since i've become so hyper-aware of the 'tricks of the trade', as it were.

the female characters in jump street don't really have personalities - they function only as archetypes. ie. "black" and "female", or "pure girlfriend" or "ditzy" or "interfering mother". you know? whereas the male characters actually *do* have characters that i can play within. i'd probably just as conscious of it if it were male characters that were so shallow on-screen that i was writing.