Words do (not) mean things
Mar. 20th, 2010 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaSo someone posted a character on oc_analysis to get validation.
It sort of reminded me of an ongoing issue I have with a lot of fandom communication. We tend to have a lot of terms that are clearly positive or negative, but rarely any consensus on what they actually mean. Generally, everyone is against flames and in favor of some level of concrit. People are in favor of good characters and against bad ones. Generally, everyone has a long list of exactly what traits cause them to draw the line.
See, the person on oc_analysis had decided people disliked her character because they were OC haters. So she came to a place for OCs to get validation and, getting something other than "she's awesome! you're right, totally not a sue!" just decided everyone there hates OCs with a passion. So she's made this thing up about being "Original Character Reviewier Cancer Free" and her description of it basically amounts to "I'll judge OCs fairly based on the information I get rather than making a snap judgement". Which is, you know, completely indistinguishable from something someone who actually meant decent OCs might say, after they'd seen people unfairly calling good OCs sues.
Which is why I can like OCs, write OCs, and still react to hearing people talk about how unfair it is people have prejudices against OCs by immediately looking to see if they're talking about their OC Rainbow Sparkleraven. I remember hearing all sorts of how to write a good OC advice back in the day that basically amounted to how to lure readers in by things like pretending the story was mostly about the canon cast and keeping the OC in a supporting role, and then a couple chapters in making it all about the OC. And I can hate marysues but these days do the same to see if they're talking about ICKY ICKY GIRLS ARE GETTING IN MY CANON. And I demand extensive lists of exactly what we're talking about for any type of feedback discussion.
Meanwhile, and I finally figured out why this pisses me off so very much, you've got the people saying that it's possible to write marysues well. And it's because the term mary sue means "a character who is bad in a particular sort of way". If the fact she's a princess isn't a problem, it's not a mary sue. If you define mary sue to cover good OCs too, then you're taking away a word used to mean something so we can have a synonym for a word we already have, and the insistence than marysue and OC are identical just creates other groups that bash all "marysues" using the same definition. People doing this often tend to be using odd definitions of marysue to start, like it meaning specifically self-inserts. Only again, we've got a perfectly functional way of talking about self-inserts, namely by using that actual word. Instead of actually communicating what they usually mean to say (not every last self-insert/OC romance/long lost sister/etc character is a sue, which you can at least talk about), they say that sueishness is a neutral trait, and discussion starts tying itself into a pretzel as people struggle to work out what exactly the bad type of character is.
Oh, and those inscrutable tags that were bothering me on AooO? Support did get back to me and explained I can look stuff up on their wiki to figure out what tags mean. Except my problem is with tags that have vague/conflicting/overlapping definitions, in large part because they get used differently across fandom, and all their wiki does is tell me that yes, I was right and they're used differently across fandom and so are basically useless for anything specific, and all the cross-fandom tags are doing right now is making that even worse.
I don't even know why it always works out this way. Fandom and culture at large both regularly invent new terms, but fandom seems unable to ever set solid definitions (see "drabble"), and people seem to hate just making up a new term for a new idea if they can stretch an old one to fit.
In sum, I hate how if I don't already know exactly what someone means when they say a term, I have no idea what they're saying and have to either find multiple examples to get a decent baseline or else the whole thing might as be about how I really need think about how I zorphle when tendgo, and stop the rampant grenie of aewd. It renders any attempt at agreeing or disagreeing based on the actual arguments largely moot, especially any time when there are two arguing camps and they both insist the good words belong to what they're doing and the bad ones to their opponents. If I wanted this kind of thing I'd follow politics.
It sort of reminded me of an ongoing issue I have with a lot of fandom communication. We tend to have a lot of terms that are clearly positive or negative, but rarely any consensus on what they actually mean. Generally, everyone is against flames and in favor of some level of concrit. People are in favor of good characters and against bad ones. Generally, everyone has a long list of exactly what traits cause them to draw the line.
See, the person on oc_analysis had decided people disliked her character because they were OC haters. So she came to a place for OCs to get validation and, getting something other than "she's awesome! you're right, totally not a sue!" just decided everyone there hates OCs with a passion. So she's made this thing up about being "Original Character Reviewier Cancer Free" and her description of it basically amounts to "I'll judge OCs fairly based on the information I get rather than making a snap judgement". Which is, you know, completely indistinguishable from something someone who actually meant decent OCs might say, after they'd seen people unfairly calling good OCs sues.
Which is why I can like OCs, write OCs, and still react to hearing people talk about how unfair it is people have prejudices against OCs by immediately looking to see if they're talking about their OC Rainbow Sparkleraven. I remember hearing all sorts of how to write a good OC advice back in the day that basically amounted to how to lure readers in by things like pretending the story was mostly about the canon cast and keeping the OC in a supporting role, and then a couple chapters in making it all about the OC. And I can hate marysues but these days do the same to see if they're talking about ICKY ICKY GIRLS ARE GETTING IN MY CANON. And I demand extensive lists of exactly what we're talking about for any type of feedback discussion.
Meanwhile, and I finally figured out why this pisses me off so very much, you've got the people saying that it's possible to write marysues well. And it's because the term mary sue means "a character who is bad in a particular sort of way". If the fact she's a princess isn't a problem, it's not a mary sue. If you define mary sue to cover good OCs too, then you're taking away a word used to mean something so we can have a synonym for a word we already have, and the insistence than marysue and OC are identical just creates other groups that bash all "marysues" using the same definition. People doing this often tend to be using odd definitions of marysue to start, like it meaning specifically self-inserts. Only again, we've got a perfectly functional way of talking about self-inserts, namely by using that actual word. Instead of actually communicating what they usually mean to say (not every last self-insert/OC romance/long lost sister/etc character is a sue, which you can at least talk about), they say that sueishness is a neutral trait, and discussion starts tying itself into a pretzel as people struggle to work out what exactly the bad type of character is.
Oh, and those inscrutable tags that were bothering me on AooO? Support did get back to me and explained I can look stuff up on their wiki to figure out what tags mean. Except my problem is with tags that have vague/conflicting/overlapping definitions, in large part because they get used differently across fandom, and all their wiki does is tell me that yes, I was right and they're used differently across fandom and so are basically useless for anything specific, and all the cross-fandom tags are doing right now is making that even worse.
I don't even know why it always works out this way. Fandom and culture at large both regularly invent new terms, but fandom seems unable to ever set solid definitions (see "drabble"), and people seem to hate just making up a new term for a new idea if they can stretch an old one to fit.
In sum, I hate how if I don't already know exactly what someone means when they say a term, I have no idea what they're saying and have to either find multiple examples to get a decent baseline or else the whole thing might as be about how I really need think about how I zorphle when tendgo, and stop the rampant grenie of aewd. It renders any attempt at agreeing or disagreeing based on the actual arguments largely moot, especially any time when there are two arguing camps and they both insist the good words belong to what they're doing and the bad ones to their opponents. If I wanted this kind of thing I'd follow politics.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 12:53 pm (UTC)As you were saying, some words have more generally accepted meanings, like Mary Sue=a character (usually OC) that is bad in one or more of these numerous ways, but people just keep trying to re-appropriate them when someone gives them a litmus test link and they realize that OMG my character got a 100! (Though it's always disconcerting to run a character through two MS litmus tests and get Borderline on one and Irredeemable on the other.)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 03:20 pm (UTC)Or, on lj-fandom, define concrit as pointing out no more than three grammar errors at one time or something else ridiculously coddling. I've been following the discussion and it's a mess. One person was making this big deal about the distinction between concrit and unsolicited criticism, except the issue wasn't that good concrit was solicited, it's that they personally didn't like concrit that had to do with storyline, and presumably never wanted to hear it unless they explicitly asked someone. Instead of classing the stuff as "grammar and canon related" and "storyline related" or something useful that actually covered what they meant, the focus was put on the fact they just didn't like a barely explained category of comment and you were a bad person if you did it without being asked by the author. Concrit ends up meaning "exactly the type of review I most prefer". It might be related to the fandom meme that good writers take concrit, so in order to be a good writer, concrit has to only mean advice they're willing to take.
With marysues, I can certainly understand people disputing that their character is a sue, in the same way people would dispute that they wrote badfic. And debate over what makes a sue is perfectly reasonable. But once you start arguing that there is no such thing because you don't agree with all the traits, then there's no longer a word for "an OC who is bad" and we can't discuss whether a given character is done well or not. And when people say "okay, she's a sue but that doesn't mean she's a bad character!!!" I want to start stabbing and never stop. It's like saying "okay, it's a bad story but that doesn't mean it's a bad story!!!"
The OC_analysis poster's bit about original character reviewer cancer (http://sedia.livejournal.com/3847.html) suggests she's is near or at the "there's no such thing as a sues" area to the point she created her own anti-litmus test. Which means that any talk about judging OCs fairly becomes empty, since if there's only one proper response then there's no need to judge anything in the first place, and it's virtually impossible to discuss whether or not a character has bad traits.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 03:55 pm (UTC)The key is to get into the habit of defining the words you use right at the beginning and asking others to do the same. It's kind of tedious, but not as tedious as a two page debate over nothing. A thread of definitions would help reduce this kind of thing, though never eliminate it, but it'd take a while to percolate.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-22 02:51 pm (UTC)To make it even better, sometimes they'll define the word on a compromise basis so that it's halfway between the two meanings, and declare this ends the argument and it's time for cookies. And why are you being so mean and trying to drag the argument out?!?! Don't we agree???? Isn't agreement the most importantest thing in the world?????????????????????