e298. Why Does Everyone Hate Mary Sues?

Merry Christmas from VoxPopcast. The thing is, we’ve been doing Christmas special episodes for the last couple weeks already. And we figure you probably have a Christmas episode or twelve in your podcast feed from other places. So instead, since this episode drops ON Christmas we decided to go the opposite way and investigate something non-Christmasy! Options are good, right? Chances are, if you’re listening to our show this isn’t the first you’ve heard the term Mary Sues. You’ve probably also heard the a billion arguments about whether or not it’s a real thing or not and is it sexist and is so-and-so counts or not. But we want to take a slightly different approach? Is it so bad to be a Mary Sue? Why or why not? And why do we think it’s a bad thing? On this week’s episode, Mav and Monica are joined by Sara L. Uckelman, professor of logic and philosophy at Durham University, to discuss the concept of Mary Sues and deconstruct whether they’re actually even a bad thing and if not, what’s the big deal anyway? Listen and let us know your thoughts in the comments below? After all, what else are you gonna do? Sing Jingle Bells? Citations and Links: * “Everyone’s a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of “Mary Sue” Fan Fiction as Fair Use” by Anupam Chander and Madhavi Sunder (academic paywall) * “50 Shades of Skywalker: Or maybe MarySues aren’t that bad after all” by Christopher Maverick * Thank you to Maximilian’s thoughtForm Music for our theme * Follow Sara on Twitter: @SaraLUckelman * Watch Sara’s Dr. Logic videos on YouTube * Follow Mav on Twitter: @chrismaverick * Follow Monica on Instagram: @monicamarvelous * Follow us on Twitter: @voxpopcast * Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/voxpopcast * Subscribe to our YouTube channel * Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever podcasts are found and please leave us a review!