Mary Sue, that Gal

[lunabee34]

Apparently there's another round of Mary Sue debate going around, and I wanted to weigh in on the subject.

This is mostly in response to friendshipper's very cogent response and is in parts a verbatim repetition of my comment to her post.

I'm a professor of English. Writing's my gig. I teach the next generation of newbies how not to sound like complete dumbasses when attempting to communicate an idea. Literature's my thing, too. The good stuff. And not just the old dead white guys. I'm a canon-busting broad.

So please understand me when I say what I'm about to say next.

Go to ff.net. Go to Wraithbait. Type in some search term to delicious. And I guarantee that you're gonna get a hit count of fics that don't live up to your (for general and random senses of "your") standards. And I also guarantee that a preponderance of those fics will have the kind of comment count that makes you go, "Hmmm?"

And here's what I have to say about that (in all my inarticulate, studying for my comps glory):

We Many of us* come to fanfic for other stuff than we come to profic. (And this isn't a discussion of quality either. The best shit I've ever read ever is fanfic and the worst dreck I've ever read was sold on the shelves of a bookstore.) Because fanfic for a lot of us* is about conversation: with the source text, with each other, with ourselves (especially if we choose to write in a fandom more than once). I find myself adoring stories that are about tropes that emotionally resonate with me regardless of the quality of writing. There are narrative arcs that mean something to me (often something quite profound), that satisfy something within in me, that grip me, completely independently of writerly skill. And often Mary Sues are the avenue of exploration for those ideas.

And a lot of us fans are still in our formative years. Who are we? What do we believe? What are our possibilities? And some of us who are past that time in our lives traditionally devoted to experimentation and questioning are also opening to new possibilities, to new scripts. If fanfic is for a lot of us a safe way to think about and explore sexual permutations that we've not had the opportunity to explore in Real Life, who wants to shit on that parade?

And so for me... that's the bottom line. A Mary Sue story isn't necessarily going to be my favorite. I may back button out of that sucker two paragraphs in. But when I realize that this might be someone's id fic in the best sense: his, her, hir struggle to understand him/her/ze self, who the fuck am I to cry foul? It should be celebrated.

(And I'm not trying to ascribe to fanfic powers outside its purview, but I've known too many people, myself included, who as fans who read fanfic were able to explore their sexuality or other avenues of their personalities that weren't otherwise available for exploration in their current lives.]

Does that at all make sense?

[*ETA: I wrote this really late last night after reading an undue amount of Victorian literature and did not mean to imply any such thing as a One True Fandom.]

Comments

[ariadne83]

I find myself adoring stories that are about tropes that emotionally resonate with me regardless of the quality of writing.

Yes, exactly!

(According to the litmus test I am a Mary Sue of the highest order LOL)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeeee.

I think to a certain extent, all writing and reading is about self insertion. (Which I know that some people don't agree, but it's difficult for me to understand either process any other way. Which is also not to say that I'm Right and people who disagree are wrong.) And then fanfic becomes even doubly more so.

[tabaqui]

It makes complete sense. And this - this line i adore!
Because fanfic is about conversation: with the source text, with each other, with ourselves (especially if we choose to write in a fandom more than once).

Hell yes!

I don't know if i've ever written a Mary Sue. Is Mama Lena in my latest fic a MS? Is Dean's dog? Is *Dean*?? I don't know!

I have often said that *Spike* is my Mary Sue, as i give him some of my own likes and dislikes and quirks, but maybe i'm just being twee. :)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

BWHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I always invest so much of myself into everything I write. Take Shadowlands for instance. I make Xander go to Spain because I'd been there and I could write about the area. I invent a plausible scenario in which Xander reads Victorian lit because I love it. I use Ryan Adams songs as examples of Spike's poetry because RA is my favorite singer. Spike and Xander eat Asian food because I like Asian food. And yet, their characterizations are from canon. And I'd venture to say this is what you do in your own writing, Tabi. I've never looked up from anything you've written and thought to myself, "There goes Tabi again, Sueing up the joint." LOL

I wonder if the Mary Sueness really starts where the self-insertion obscures the canon characterization.

[tabaqui]

YES. This exactly. It's why Spike likes Lemon Drops and why he listens to the occasional Alice Cooper and why i had, had, had to put the J's in the Vietnam War.... It certainly makes writing easier.

Heeeee! I'll have to work harder on Sueing up things. :)

I think the Mary Sueness starts when you assume anyone wants to read your self-insert wank fantasies. I'm all for boy on boy wanking and demon on human or whatever but when you start putting Becky-the-fangirl-who-is-actually-called-Lorraine-tee-hee into your fic, well....

No, thank you.
:)

*though i'd probably read your self-insert wank and enjoy it. yes, i'm that fickle.*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwwwwwww. You're a sweetheart. *hugs*

Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

[executrix.livejournal.com]

...they just like to kick it around. (It's a Cole Porter song.)

That is to say, not all readers like Literature. Many of them like Stories, which is why Dan Brown has more money than you do even though your cat is a better writer than he is. And of course there is Literature that has wonderful Stories. Nevertheless, some readers always want Story and never want Literature, so if you tell them a Story they like ain't Literature, they don't give a flying whoop.

I think this makes a lot of sense! (Although I don't agree with much of it...)

Re: Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think this makes a lot of sense! (Although I don't agree with much of it...)

Which is why I love you always. :)

That is to say, not all readers like Literature. Many of them like Stories

What's the distinction between the two?

Re: Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Degree of ambition? Maybe it's a distinction between Manner and Matter? I recently rented the mini-series of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and watched the whole thing, even though I thought it went past mediocrity and was actually *badly* written--I kept watching the damn thing because I wanted to find out what was going to happen.

Also, sometimes the satisfaction of What's Going to Happen consists of Knowing What's Going to Happen. Sometimes you want to read something that has a happy ending, no matter how implausible it is that the protagonists would win through.

Re: Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

As much as I disagree with Nina sometimes about the repetition with difference thing, it's true that sometimes I really do value fanfic for the predictability. It's not usually the happy ending I'm angling for but the non-con slavery situation, but still. Same diff. LOL

I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'd say things like "first times" and "happy endings" and "sex pollen" are things that are central to fanfic and highly valued by many fans, but they're not ALL of fanfic. Stories that don't use those tropes aren't "non-fanfic," they're just other ways to practice fanfic.

Re: I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

And the more out there and weird and experimental, the more I tend to like a fic. (in direct contrast to the way I like my music LOL)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

As you know, I totally agree with much of what you say, and will happily blather here a while during my lunchbreak.

I think all texts are in conversation with source texts, with each other, and with the writer's--the conversation/dialogic is so strong that not even the most negative elements of literary studies as an academic field can shut that down (I have this hate/love/hate/hate relationship with Harold Bloom who I am queering for a project on slash elements in "original" sff by women, the one thing I love is that he sees writers in conversation with each other--what I hate of course is his elitism, snobbery, insistence upon injecting his penis into the discussion and claiming it's only MEN MEN MEN who do this, and it's not at all sexual khhanksbye).

Writers know this--if you go into the pre-internet days, reading letters written by writers to writers about writers, and reviews, and review essays show this to the max (so do the publications of their journals).

Fanfic just brings readers into it more directly and perhaps in a somewhat different sandbox (the internet) (although look at all the pro writers who are on LJ and interacting with readers in ways that could never be achieved in the old fan letter days--I started writing fan letters early on in life, one of the earliest to Dorothy Dunnett and OMGF I got a reply).

But despite all the work to make out that fan fic and original fic are these totally different critters, I see more similarities than differences.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think all texts are in conversation with source texts, with each other, and with the writer's

*nods nods nods*

Oh, yes. I always laugh when I see the term "original fiction" because I think it's incredibly disengenuous. You write a sci-fi novel and you're either subverting the conventions of the genre or you're upholding them, but in some way (and often in very pointed, specific to other texts ways), you're participating in the discourse on what we call sci-fi by writing your novel. And every good writer's manual ala King's On Writing is gonna be very upfront about how all writers are thieves.

Fanfic just brings readers into it more directly

And this is the difference for me. Fanfic makes that conversation transparent and visible to all participants, writers and readers both.