I finally figured out what has been bothering me about that "fluff AUs are a symptom of creeping fascism" post. You could only believe that that's true if you are ignoring everything going on culturally right now that isn't a very, very thin slice of Western fandom.
The trend right now in book land is "unhinged" "eeevil" "weird girl" protagonists- people want to read about women who have something Very Wrong With Them, and are 'crazy' or otherwise social outcasts. A lot of the most popular books right now, particularly in literary fiction/literary speculative fiction, are in this category- we're talking Bunny, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, All Fours, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, etc. This genre makes me feel approximately the way Orlando locals feel about summer vacation- I don't like the way it treats mental health struggles, I don't like the way people talk about it, I'm glad it's there for the people who want it but I have to live here, you come in and rubberneck and leave? But if what the OP of that post was saying was true, ~Evil Weird Girl Fiction~ would not be nearly as prominent a genre as it is right now.
Similarly, the two most popular requests, by a mile, on gaming suggestion subreddits are "I want a cozy game I don't have to think about too much, [explicitly because] I'm exhausted and need a break"... and "I want a game that makes me have big, fucked up feelings." A lot of posts in the second category is people who just got done with Slay the Princess or Mouthwashing or Outer Wilds or SOMA, and loved the awfulness of it, never want to play those games again, but want a similar experience. People want games like this, and people are thoroughly happy to recommend more.
...The feelings yakuza are a problem and no one is saying they aren't, but I don't think they're an example of a broader societal trend in the way that post was trying to say they were. If they were, I wouldn't be fucking inundated by people telling me to read Bunny.
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Arcane has replaced Dragon Age as the fandom that's put the wankiest in-universe political discourse in my dash, and I don't know how to feel about that.
I think a lot of the arguments people get into about Fandom Reading Comprehension could be... maybe not resolved, but smoothed over... if we acknowledged that people can engage with a text from Self-Indulgent Reader Brain or Analyze-y Writer/Critic Brain, that these ways of engaging with the text have fundamentally different goals, and that you can understand the text just fine but still like to engage with it from a self-indulgent perspective for fun.
So I follow a lot of people who post a lot about OC/self-insert positivity. And that's genuinely great. I love people's OCs and self-inserts. But occasionally, I will see someone, in an attempt to Defend The Honour of OCs and self-inserts, defend a particular kind of writing mistake. And that pisses me off, because it does everyone a disservice.
There are plenty of people who write OCs and self-inserts who do not make this writing mistake, and equating the two is unfair to every OC writer who works hard at their craft. There are also plenty of people who write canon-character-only fanfic or original fic who do make this mistake-- and that hurts both them and their potential readers.
The mistake I'm talking about? Writing a sort of character I'm going to call an Author's Darling.
I'm going to talk about what Author's Darlings are, why they're bad, how you can avoid writing one, and what an Author's Darling isn't. I put a cut in this post, because it's long.
What is an Author's Darling?
An Author's Darling is a character who cannot fail at anything that matters to the author of their story.
What this looks like in practice depends on the author-- different authors prioritize different things. Some authors think their Darling should be stone-cold badasses and never lose a fight. other authors are fine with their Darlings getting knocked out every time they try to throw a punch, but would be very upset if their Darling got rejected romantically.
Plenty of characters succeed at most things they try. Superman wins most of the fights he takes on, but he's not necessarily a Darling. But if you look at a character and you can say, "oh, this character would never lose a fight", or "everyone loves this character and would never get mad at them"? You've got an Author's Darling on your hands.
And- especially in fandom- a character can be a Darling in the hands of one author and a perfectly fine character in the hands of another.
Steve Rogers/Captain America is an example of a character who gets Darling-ified a lot. Captain America is supposed to be a shining example of The Best that humanity has to offer- he's virtuous, strong, brave, and oh so pretty. It's easy to fall into the trap of making him incapable of failing at whatever you want him to do, whether that's "punching a lot of Nazis" or "supporting Bucky in his recovery". But a lot of writers manage to thread the needle and write Cap as the lovable, flawed person he's supposed to be.
Why are Author's Darlings bad?
Well, two reasons:
Writing an Author's Darling is a really good way to give yourself writer's block, especially when it comes to the plot.
If your character can't fail at anything important, this means that it's really hard to build tension. If your character is going to automatically succeed at anything that's important to the plot, all you're writing is "and then they win, and then they win, and then they win". It can get pretty monotonous pretty quickly, especially if you're writing genre fiction. You can run out of ideas, or your inner critic can go "this isn't how stories work???? the FUCK???" and block your creative flow.
If your character can't fail at anything- important or not- it's hard to come up with a good story for them at all. You know how sometimes you get a character rattling around your head but you can't get a plot for them at all? One of the first steps in fixing that is making sure you're not writing an Author's Darling.
Writing an Author's Darling makes people not want to read your work.
Now, look. I know everyone says "you should write for yourself, and screw anyone who says otherwise!" But let's be honest here: it sucks to spend hours working on a piece of writing, post it, and then get, like, 2 hits and no kudos, or 1 tumblr like from your friend who likes everything that crosses their dash. It's incredibly demoralizing.
Author's Darlings are one of the big factors that make people stop reading a story. As soon as a reader gets the sense that the protagonist can't screw up- that they're "too perfect"- the tension in the story is gone. There's no reason for them to keep reading, because they know the character's just going to Press The Win Button And Win. So they'll click out without saying anything, and you'll wonder why no one's reading your fic.
What isn't an Author's Darling?
This section is haunted by the ghost of Mary Sue. If you're reading this list and you're new to fandom/young, you might wonder why I'm calling out certain specific things; this is a fandom war you missed, don't worry about it.
An Author's Darling is not a character of any specific gender. Male, female, and nonbinary characters can all be Author's Darlings.
An Author's Darling is not necessarily an OC. In the current fandom climate, it's way more likely that a Darling will be a 35-year-old canon male character the writer calls "babygirl".
An Author's Darling is not necessarily a self-insert, but it's really easy to make a self-insert into a Darling.
There's a reason people recommend that newbie writers avoid self-inserts- it can be really hard to write a character based on yourself that screws up something important. It takes a lot of vulnerability and courage to write, and it's not something you want to show everyone.
An Author's Darling is not an "overpowered" character or a "cool" character. Your character can have sixteen katanas and do air dashes and still not be a Darling- and your character can be a powerless human in a superhero setting and be the biggest Darling to ever Darling.
Having "too many" powers or standing out "too much" in the setting is often a symptom of a Darling- if you don't want your character to fail at anything important, and being The Coolest Person In The Room is important to you, you're going to make your Darling overpowered and good at everything. But it's not the thing that makes an Author's Darling bad.
An Author's Darling is not a 'perfect' character, or a character without flaws. There's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram, don't get me wrong... but you can load up a character with "flaws" that don't matter to you.
A lot of dudebro male writers, for example, will make their Darlings emotionally constipated, mean, and Bad At Relationships. These genuinely are character flaws... but these writers don't give a flying fuck about the character's relationships. They're happy to let their Darling fail at this stuff to prove he's FLAWED!!!- but try and make them write a fight scene their Darling loses, and they'll break out in hives.
Why should I care? Writing is supposed to be fun, and writing characters failing is not fun for me.
Writing is a craft. It is no different from knitting a sweater, making a stop-motion film, or trimming a bonsai. There are ways to do it well, and there are ways to do it poorly.
It can be fun and rewarding to knit a shitty sock with holes in the heel where you forgot how the pattern works and weird lumps in the calf. It is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at knitting that you knit socks you can wear.
Similarly, it can be fun and rewarding to deliberately write stories about overpowered Author's Darlings that are boring to read for anyone who isn't you. But it is more fun and rewarding to get good enough at writing that you write stories other people will want to read.
And you know, maybe you don't care about that. Everyone needs a hobby that they're bad at and have no interest in getting better at; it keeps you humble. Maybe writing is yours.
But plenty of writers do care. And tarring every writer who writes OCs and self-inserts with the same brush- the brush of "this is supposed to be fun! we're writing deliberately bad things! yay!"- is an insult to anyone who writes OCs and cares about their craft.
If you want to write well, you should be aware of what an Author's Darling is, and if possible, you should try to avoid writing them. If you don't care about writing well, that's fine- but please avoid implying that every OC or self-insert character is badly written in this particular way.
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this is your regularly scheduled reminder that being harassed on the internet is actually really fucking traumatic
having randoms show up in your inbox with gun gifs makes your brain react the same way it would if someone showed up at your house with An Actual Gun, especially if you're not Very Online and can't make yourself categorize it as Just A Meme. you feel like you are in danger. you feel like people would like to hurt you or kill you, and even if you rationally know that's not true, feelings are not rational.
it doesn't matter if the person getting harassed is evilbadwrong, it doesn't matter if you're harassing them because they legitimately need to change their mind, people's brains fucking break under that kind of pressure
so yeah, uh, A Certain Author is definitely making an ass of herself, this is the kind of writing that you get out of your system and then lock in a desk drawer and her agent should have told her that
but I am never going to be able to blame someone for writing about things that are genuinely traumatic and that genuinely fucked them up
and I feel uncomfortable with how many people are actively mocking That Certain Author for this, because, like... genuinely, people should have the right to write about their trauma
Saw this post about AO3/OTW swatting, thought you might want to see it (and didnβt see any posts indicating you already knew): twitter(.)com/rahaeli/status/1523385062397423618
I did not know, and though I have not ever volunteered with AO3, if you have you may want to read this thread.
