Now, I think the Allegory of the Cave is a useless bit of self-congratulatory twaddle, when it comes to models of human perception in general, but it does seem to have some particular applicability to written fiction.

As convenient as it would be for authors, if a detail in a story disrupts willing suspension of disbelief, the flaw is not in the reader.

As I see it, there are 3 differing but related definitions for "Mary Sue":

It's hard to take a principled stand on behalf of semi-literate terrible writing, but I honestly don't see why it's worse to write a dreadful LOTR story *with* Frodo's violet-eyed raven-tressed cousin Sparklesilver Baggins (third cousin! so it's OK for them to get married!) than *without* her.

Excellent summary of the issue.

The thing is, it's not enough to say "oh, but we also wanted these straight characters reduced/cut out/etc" and then think that it's enough. Because it feels a lot like the intention argument and the "but I did this to a [insert privileged group] person, too!" arguments I am beyond weary of.

Everybody and their cat posted a link to the Genreville post about two authors being asked to de-gay a character in a YA book.

Here's some reactions and resources from the internet epoch that has passed since that post went up:

The unnamed agency in our previous post has chosen to present their perception of the exchange. We confirm that it was the agency we referred to. We stand by every word we wrote in our original article.

We did not wish to name them, because we preferred to focus on the larger issues. We did not spread rumors about them, and we don't know who did.

Sherwood Smith and I have a post up at Genreville, about how an agent offered to represent a YA novel we'd written on the condition that we make a gay character straight or remove him from the book.

A place to info-dump the cool stuff you learned researching a piece of fiction.

There are a number of issues involved in why a lot of properties fail the Bechdel Test, but on the mechanical front I think two major issues are 1) Stock Roles and 2) Need for Contrast.

Muses. Imaginary Friends. Characters.

Daniel Jackson/Cameron Mitchell
writing on the body

I guess my point is that I think "id fic" is a good description of what doesn't work about Stephanie Meyer's work, on a literary level and even for a lot of her fans who are disappointed in Breaking Dawn-- but I also think it sort of unfairly maligns the id, which is a really important element in fiction and which should be listened to. Just not obeyed implicitly, yanno? You should write from the hips, but you shouldn't stop there; you should write from the hips on up.

Just know, from here on in, when someone says their show isn't science fiction when it obviously is, what they mean is their show isn't good. Lies do not become us, gentlemen.

Certain words and phrases are like little genetic markers for scammers. Here’s a non-exhaustive list, non-exhaustively explained

I write fanfiction because story-telling is too important to leave in the hands of the professionals. Because Ianto lives, Milady was the most interesting character in ‘The Three Musketeers’, and people are still telling the Epic Love Story of Kirk and Spock forty years later. Because actions have consequences, emotions don’t reset a week later, and I’ve never seen someone piss on network TV. Because queering mainstream media is good for the soul, and there’s just not enough good character-driven kinky porn in the world.

Something I've been mulling over for many years now, is how the lizard brain influences writing. Over the last few months several things have fallen into place, and I can finally express my ideas about the power of clichés and the importance of the id.

This document is an ambitious attempt to help reduce the number
of putrid fics by some small but noticeable amount. It started
off as a series of threads in the "Other People's Fanfiction"
area of my discussion forums on Yuku.com.

My point is, the idea that a piece of writing is isolated by the boundaries of its page or its volume is completely untrue on the web. And writing a connected, unbounded document requires a different way of organizing your thoughts, an assumption that people aren't going to read what you write in isolation, or straight through, or only while holding a vague idea in their head of what happened that other time you're kinda sorta dancing around.

interesting point about the differences between fanfic and profic

There are three main categories of style that spring to my notice, when I read how fans write lemons, though it does extend to general style, too.

You can write a long-term relationship that still has the romantic and sexual tension you need to keep the sex sexy. Not many people do, but you can.

The Girl Cooties Theory of Genre Literature, as applied to sf and fantasy.

citations

Excellant, clear summary of fanfic and how it differs from plagarism

"Christianity would not be notably improved by inclusion of a gospel where Jesus turns into a teenage girl with a telepathic unicorn pet."

Self insertion in early writing

There is obviously a sadistic streak in writers, and it's kind of scary how fun it is sometimes, when you feel you've really earned it.

Fictional charecters and identification

Because pro writers either have some shame, and relegate the purest, most cracklicious iterations of those stories to drawerfic that their workshop buddies will never see, or else they're shameless. But they usually have to be shameless alone-- and so their versions are written so solitarily that they don't have any voice of restraint, to pull them back from the Event Horizon of the Id Vortex when it starts warping their story mechanics.

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