Ain't it a Shame about Mae

[bookshop]

The levels of straight, cisgendered, white, male privilege are so high this week you could fill not only a knapsack but one of those giant swiss army backpacks, and then have some left over for a couple of rooms in Mad Eye Moody's trunk.

and then there's this, which hits so close to home that i can only opt for the time-tested method of

Comments

[shadowdancer909]

Hey, I don't think you actually know me, but I saw this post and had to comment because I love Demon's Lexicon. And you are completely right about Mae. I wish there were more female YA characters like her.

[bookshop]

*HIGH FIVES YOU*

[scrabble]

What are her character flaws?

[bookshop]

She's reckless and doesn't think before she puts herself in danger, and nearly gets herself killed climbing up that rope, for instance. Also, she's killed someone to get something she wanted, and not immediately in self-defense. and is okay with having friends/crushes who also have killed multiple people, which would weird me out if it weren't sort of a necessity in that universe. Also, she hates her parents and has no problem manipulating them against one another and lying to both of them to get what she wants, which is kind of hot in a creepy manipulative way.

[scrabble]

See, to me these all translate into "spunky," for lack of a better word. It's the sort of heroine you see in romance novels, where she's just so impulsive and argumentative that the dashing man she argues with Must Have Her. The flaws that are "flaws" but really are "intriguing" and add to her good points.

[bookshop]

well, i can see the recklessness being "spunky," but i don't think that either the murder or the parent hate are really portrayed as positives. The last image we see of her in the book is her standing helplessly over the body of the person she murdered looking really shocked and horrified at herself, so i think it's definitely not *meant* to be something that we see as intriguing.

[bookshop]

well, definitely, in order to get out of that ultra-conservative Christian mentality, you have to undergo a personal crisis, absolutely. and if you're like me and completely immersed in that mentality for most of your life, it can take years, even decades, to break out of over time. and leave lots of marks on you well after you have.

[innocentsmith]

Mae is awesome! I am so looking forward to reading stuff in her POV. And I love your theory about her being named for Mary Crawford, too! ♥

What does "spunky" mean, anyway?

I'm fairly sure that it shares its etymology with the word "spunk," which I, uh ... I assume you know what that means. My copy of Slang and Euphemism says a previous term was "spunk-bound - pertaining to a man without vigor" - if you know what I mean and I think you do - and it looks like "spunky" was originally usually applied to men. Which just makes the condescending way it's sometimes used about young women nowadays that much ickier and weird. IMHO.

[loftily]

I think a lot of writers shy away from in their female main characters, because we've been trained to see overt touching and expressions of affection as girly and therefore weak.

To be fair . . . I think this is also often seen as a huge cliche or stereotype about All Women, which is why at least some writers steer away, in an attempt to avoid the stereotype?