a note on wish fulfilment
y’know, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the real reason so many men object to women writing self-indulgently awesome, so-called “Mary Sue” characters is because deep down, they think that women ought to fantasise about being worthy of a powerful, exceptional, amazing man, and not about being powerful, exceptional, amazing themselves, so that even when those female characters do end up with spectacular dudes, they literally cannot fathom it happening in a context where the relationship is of equal or lesser narrative importance than the woman’s awesomeness, or where the guy is presented as being worthy of her, instead of the other way around
because there’s literally so much media where the beautiful, disinterested woman has to eat crow and realise she was wrong, that the boring everyman who secretly pines for her really is someone she wants to be worthy of, and even when the story frames it as “guy proves his worth to girl”, it’s never in terms of acknowledging what she wants and adapting his behaviour or approach to fit her desires - it’s always about some random event or lightbulb moment allowing her to realise that he was awesome all along, and him being gracious enough to forgive her for not realising it sooner
but stories where the woman is extraordinary from the outset, and knows it, and the guy has to show himself to be genuinely attentive and exceptional in order to earn her affections, only those affections were never guaranteed because we’re in her perspective and she doesn’t think of herself as the hero’s reward because she’s the hero? some dudes just cannot fucking handle it, and so they say it’s a bad concept from the outset because that’s easier than admitting that they don’t want to identify with an awesome male character if the female characters are still allowed to express preferences beyond him.
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
dededos
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
