Eyes-Closed Thoughts

I am typing this, with my eyes closed. I’m going to post it, without editing, if I read it and decide I haven’t said something really horrible.

So.


 

The terms we use to discuss media are often years old, with this very consistant problem of not really being able to be up to date with concepts that didn’t exist when the terms became widspread. One of them that is on my mind of late is sterotypical, a term which most often is used to criticise someone as doing a thing or being a thing that reduces them or dehumanises them.

I’ve been thinking about this since I created Aderyn of One Stone, a girl who I was told was stereotypical because she was an assassin, which is a ‘girly’ way to kill things, and she was lithe and delicate and slender, and sort of things, things I don’t ever really remember using to describe her in the narrative. But her sterotype nature blossomed out past her existence. On the other hand in the same story, there was Gael, and Leigh, both of whom were aggressive, violent women who used different methods to Aderyn, which presented the quandrary of what exactly made one or the other stereotypical.

I think the real problem is that right now, you can, if your knowledge of stereotypes is wide enough, can paint literaly anyone as a stereotype of a marginalised character. I made this joke recently when I pointed out that I could paint Aiden PIerce, of Watch Dogs, as a trans woman not yet coming to terms with her gender – which required very little to paint, because the ‘accepted identities’ of stereotypes are so deliberately wide and vague they actually include characters who aren’t stereotypes.

I’m not fond of the term.

I think it’s a word that really means, more and more, flat or dull or I didn’t connect with them. And I think that’s what we really mean when we talk about Maryy Sues. It’s a way to show what the audience didn’t quite resonate with, or what the author thinks should resonate with me. But the use of stereotype is to minimise people – when really, the problem is more that the characters of marginalised people are pushed into these boxes.


Rereading it, I didn’t say anything too vile or weird. Posting.