The Mary Sue
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Mary Sue |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Founded by Dan Abrams and Susana Polo |
| Dates: | February 28 2011[1] - current |
| Type: | News |
| Fandom: | Any |
| URL: | https://www.themarysue.com |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
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The Mary Sue is a news blog focused on "geek culture" and was envisioned as "an inclusive, feminist community of people who not only love what they love but care about others who love it and have an intense passion for those who create it."[2]
The title of the site was deliberately taken from the Mary Sue trope that is used to deprecate female characters:
We think it’s kind of funny to re-appropriate a cliche that is closely but only circumstantially associated with femininity on a website for geek girls. There’s so much that’s expected of the female geek: that we not be geeks, that we be conventionally attractive, that we put up with the assumption that all geeks are male because, after all, we’re just the minority. A woman who can manage all of that? Now she’s a Mary Sue. And like I said before, we’d like to laugh heartily and point out the hipocrisy of the whole thing.
And then go back to writing, reading, playing, making, surfing, filming, or coding… just like any other geek.[3]
Controversies
While The Mary Sue is appreciated for covering geek-culture news relevant to media fandom, it has been criticized by both right-wing communities (for being "pro-SJW")[4] and progressive fannish communities for their biases and errors in reporting.[citation needed]
In 2015, they announced they would no longer be promoting HBO's Game of Thrones[5], in reaction to a canonical rape scene. Fannish reactions were mixed.[6]
References
- ^ Happy 3rd Birthday To The Mary Sue: Why I Love Our Logos (And Hope You Do Too), Susana Polo, 28 February 2014
- ^ About Us, accessed 7 August 2017
- ^ Why “The Mary Sue?”, Susana Polo, 27 February 2011
- ^ The Mary Sue at RottenWebsites
- ^ [https://www.themarysue.com/we-will-no-longer-be-promoting-hbos-game-of-thrones/ We Will No Longer Be Promoting HBO’s Game of Thrones] By Jill Pantozzi; May 18th, 2015 - blog post with more than 10,000 comments
- ^ Was the blog The Mary Sue right to stop coverage of Game of Thrones because of the Sansa Ramsay wedding night scene? at Quora