SA, I suspect I don't want to know what you found.

Although- I do have a kind of morbid curiosity.

• delurking*

It's funny how much more sensitive to this I've gotten since being immersed in fandom. I was rereading a book the other day that I've always really liked. Not great literature by any stretch but something I was fond of. I hadn't looked at it in a few years, but this time I couldn't get away from the extreme MarySueness of the female lead. I ended up basically skimming through all her scenes to get to the ones that featured other, more real characters. Kind of a bummer, actually. I don't know that I'll be picking that one up again.

Yeah, that happened to me with the Alanna books by Tamara Pierce. I loved the first one when I was 14, but when I went back and re-read them a few years back, all I could think was, "Good God! This chick is *perfect!*"

that happened to me with the Alanna books by Tamara Pierce.

Also the series after that, with the next young girl who wants to become a knight, and the series about the bird-woman, and the other series with three Mary-Sues and a Marky-Sam in, and...

She's a good writer, don't get me wrong. But there are some cases of Mary-Sues there.

I think it's more acceptable to write Mary-Sues for the young adult market, who as an audience tend to be able to get more whole-heartedly into a protagonist who is perfect. I mean, I'm speaking from my own experience as a young reader here. :-)

it's more acceptable to write Mary-Sues for the young adult market

That is the case- although I'm not sure it's an attitude I like. I suspect it contributes to the number of Mary-Sues at ff.n and suchlike places.

Wrod, Hobgobble, and also wrod, Theo.

Although my main urge, when I come and reread the Pierce books that I recently bought for my ten-year-old sister, is to write Pierce and ask her for a lesbian character.

Of course, it'd never happen, so I never even started writing the letter, but it amused me on the walk home from the train station for a few weeks. "Dear Ms. Pierce-- your books are so begging for it!"

My niece is way into Pierce right now. She loves them because, as she says, "they're not scary." Unlike the stuff I give her, which leans heavily towards Ursula LeGuin and Garth Nix.

Thirteen-year-olds love comfort-reading. And the Pierce/Lackey/McCaffrey novels supply that in spades. I guess I'll have to track down a copy of the Harper Hall trilogy for her now...

I've met Tamora (and her husband) at Boskones and Worldcons, and she's mentioned how hard she's had to fight to get intimations of unmarried het sex into her books! Alas, the fight for same sex relationships on an other-than-symbolic basis doesn't sound like it would be likely.

"Dear Ms. Pierce-- your books are so begging for it!"

coughfanfictioncough