Dear every manufacturer of women’s clothing, ever:
Faux pockets are an abomination. If you’re going to bother putting pocket flaps on something, add the G-d damn pockets.
No love,
Jilli
Word! It is so annoying that many women’s pants don’t have pockets! Fake pockets are worse. DX
"Ladies Ladies Ladies" - Holly Black
I have heard a bunch of discussion going around about the term “Mary Sue” — a term often used by reviewers to dismiss characters that they feel are too perfect, too awesome, and too favored by their author. Zoë Marriott gives a really good breakdown of its definition and a point-by-point analysis of the problematic way she’s been seeing it used over on her journal. I thought it was a really great post about a very overused term and made me consider the Mary Sue a bit more. Then Sarah Rees Brennan made a fantastic post about flawed characters and female identification with awesomeness and her call for flawsomeness.
Fantastic piece on the overuse and misogynistically overuse of the term “Mary Sue” in non-derivative works. Sadly, not even fictional females can get a break. What boils my blood is when the readers drag in the woman writers into the mess and rip them apart. Do we say that Aragorn was too perfect and Tolkien was writing a self-insert fantasy where everything revolved around him, and how Tolkien’s clothes look awful? No. So why do we go around making all these awful comments about the way, for example, J.K. Rowling dressed in so-and-so event? What does her (and any female writers’) wardrobe have anything to do with her writing? Let’s discuss the author’s writing, not her and not her female characters as though they are vermin that poisoned her stories.
Being a writer myself, this kind of mentality sickens and worries me.
I actually do think there’s way too many Gary Stu’s in fiction as well. But I do agree, that term gets thrown around much too often for any female character.
I do, however, think there’s quite a few poorly written female characters because they’re seen as female first(usually as a mother or love interest) and character second. Sadly, if they don’t need to be female, the writer usually defaults to male.
(via bob-artist)
(Source: thelaughingmagician, via renakay)
(via clientsfromhell)
Whatchya Want?
The last year or two have been a really trying time for me, particularly with life’s bigger questions around who I am, and what I want out of life. I struggle to define either, really. For the latter, I thought of something that seemed helpful in trying to define it. I think people like the idea of comfort and security, which sometimes keeps them from their true passions. I thought of it this way… if money weren’t an issue, what would you be doing? And I’m not thinking of taking a vacation or shopping sprees.. I’m thinking if you had to “work,” but you didn’t have to worry about how much money you were making, what would you do?
I’d love people to reblog with their answers, or put their thoughts in my ask box. :)
