Oh, frig, I know what I want to say; I just can't figure out how to say it.

[sholio]

I've been reading a bunch of Metafandom links on the Mary Sue concept today, and trying to write a thoughtful and coherent post on how all of this is making me challenge my own core values as a writer (in a good way, I think) and it just ... will not come together. Maybe because I'm still struggling with my own reactions to it.

I particularly recommend reading Such stuff as dreams are made on, and Why the Culture of Mary Sue Shaming is Bully Culture, and on mary sue policing and why i cannot abide it. I am not saying that I agree with everything they're saying, but they've definitely given me a tremendous amount of food for thought, and made me look at the uglier side of my own drive to "write better! aim higher!" with newly critical eyes.

I feel like an idiot for not having realized the extent to which "writing well" is a moral value for me - I'm not saying that I judge people as less worthy for the quality of their writing, or anything like that, but reading these posts and trying to think of what I consider "poor" writing as being just as worthy and worthwhile and fulfilling as what I consider "good" writing - on an intellectual level, I absolutely think it is! But I still feel like a core value of mine is under siege and I'm struggling with that knee-jerk reaction - I know it's irrational and wrong, but I can't seem to make it stop. I've always pushed myself hard as a writer, and I want to keep doing that, but I want to manage to balance that with not being elitist and judgmental towards other people's writing, and I'm not sure how to do that. HELP.

It doesn't help that I don't think I'd had any idea that the creeping expansion of the Mary Sue term is as bad as it seems to be. I had no idea that people used Mary Sue for as wide a range of character types as they do - any OFC? Really? When I say "Mary Sue" I've always meant it in its narrow sense - or at least I thought I did, but then I get to thinking about all the various situations that I've used the "Mary Sue" term, and ... I'm not so sure anymore. But I definitely think of a certain type of character and situation when I hear it, so I'm struggling with both the battle to accept that as a valid character type even though my internal editor is saying NOOOO, and the fact that I think I've just been intellectually convinced that it's not really a useful term of critique but my internal editor wants to hang onto it.

It's interesting to consider Mary Sue a genre of itself, just as deserving of having fans and followers and communities grow up around it as, say, hurt/comfort or any of our other established fannish genres. Non-h/c people may roll their eyes at h/c or mock the more WTF? examples, but I don't think anyone questions its right to exist. I had honestly never thought of self-insertion that way, as a perfectly valid form of indulgence for some people that's just as deserving of its own dedicated communities and fans, but - why the heck not?

And this post is kind of completely awesome: Celebration of Mary Sue, or, Writing Advice I Could Have Used at Age 14. Because yes, this is SO much better than judging and looking down upon new writers - explaining community norms to them and giving them the tools to create their own spaces, so that they can play with the self-insert idea as long as they need to (forever, if need be) in safe non-judgmental places. Isn't that better than saying "Get your Mary Sues out of my fandom"? I'm not sure how to export that ideal to fandom as a whole, but I agree with the bloggers above that something ought to be done, because we don't want to be chasing away new writers before they have a chance to get their writing legs under them.

ETA: And here is another post making similar points. It's foolish and short-sighted to say "Don't write that!" when you can win friends and new writers in your fandom by saying, "Here is how you can take what you already have and make it better."

ETA2: Just in case anyone was thinking about it, please do not link this in Metafandom.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes to just about everything here. I've been reading these posts and they have really made me think.

It's hard for me to say "you should totally write Mary Sues! Yay, Sues!" because to me, a Sue by definition is a type of bad writing. I like this definition (http://almostnever.livejournal.com/252980.html) by almostnever. So I have a real kneejerk reaction to encouraging people to go out and deliberately write something that can't be anything but bad.

But the definition really has shifted so much to include (in many people's eyes) not just every OFC, but most canon characters as well. So I want to say, yes, people should totally write OFCs if that's what they want! (But I still have trouble saying write Mary Sues.)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I tend to agree with this post by penknife (http://penknife.livejournal.com/271594.html?format=light) in which she compares reading a Mary Sue (at its most basic) to watching someone else play with toys all by themselves. It's fulfilling for the person playing with the toys, and certainly not a bad thing, but it's not a social activity. I don't think the Mary Sue concept has no usefulness at all - if nothing else, someone who clicks on a story expecting a story written for mass consumption and gets a 100% dyed-in-the-wool Sue written by someone who is just practicing their craft isn't going to be happy; we need some kind of vocabulary to describe what's in a story rather than throwing them all in a heap and expecting everyone to find what they want. I mean, I like h/c but I don't want to stumble upon 50 chapters of tortureporn unawares, and I don't think anyone else does either.

But I think these posts have sold me pretty firmly on the idea that Mary Sue doesn't mean what I thought it meant, that it's a term with a whole host of problems associated with it, and that I need to examine my own attitudes towards the concept and how it is applied in fandom. And they've totally sold me on the idea of Mary Sue writers being able to have spaces in fandom where everybody else won't get all judgmental at them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

I am so glad you posted this roundup! I missed the whol thing, being largely offline, and find the whole topic fascinating...

*settles in to read*

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :) Hopefully you'll find good food for thought. I certainly have!

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I've been uncomfortable with the fandom anti-Mary Sue policy for well decades (trufact: my first ever fan fic, written in total isolation as a noobie fan in the 1970s in a Star Trek group, involved two female characters based on my room mate and me zooming off in our own Trek startship, um, with a cat).

I go around saying "Gene (EUGENE) Roddenberry created Mary Sues all the time [or Gary Stus if we have to have anatomically correct name] -- i.e. James Kirk, Wesley EUGENE Crusher), and he gets adulation out the wahooney. And yes, fandom has extended the Mary Sue definition even to CANONICAL female characters being written by fans in fan fic (SOME parts of fandom, not all, but some).

And I make jokes that all writers create Mary Sues, i.e. self-inserts, but some of us have the craft to make it not look so obvious (or our readers LIKE our takes on the characters).

I also am a creative writing teacher, so I know that everybody starts out writing crappy fic or poetry. Everybody starts out writing cliches (ooohhh, I could give you such a list). Everybody starts out writing derivative stories, stuff they're cobbling together/copying from their favorite works (that is NOT plagiarism, btw). (Hell, go back to the early notebooks by people like Byron and you'll see that they learned by 'imitatio,' imitation--early writing instruction was imitating--the "original" theory crap came in with the Modernists--and even at that TS Eliot "alludes" to a metric fuckton of British poetry and literature in his 'original' poetry).

I don't know if I can help you other than to say that the idea that good writing is morally superior has been in the English grammar/literary studies for ever (and is I believe a totally bankrupt position--especially since the moral judgment often carries over onto the writer, not just the text--as you note, you do not do that, but many people do). It's an ideology that preserves the elitist view that only a "few" people can/should write, and that they require extensive education in order to be able to do so (I forget which modernist said that nobody could write poetry before learning five languages, one of them non_Western--AHA, Ezra Pound). (And that elitist ideology was all about only straight, cis, white, elite, MEN doing the writing that was "good.").

*wipes up after self* This is a major hobby horse of mine, something that involves me not only as a fan writer but a teacher (think about the pain and harm that such attitudes can cause when held by a teacher--I had friends leave graduate programs because they were told by one white asshole that they were BAD writers).

I think it's Diane Duane who says you have to write a million words to become a good writer......and I'd say she's right. But if you're told early on how bad and wrong your writing is, then why keep writing? (When I was in first grade, I got into trouble by reading at the fourth grade level--I was told I was doing it wrong. I stopped reading! Luckily my dad was a white male professor who had status and privilege, and even luckier, my best friend introduced me to OZ, so I had to start reading again, but it was a close thing, and I was a child of privilege).

I know there are fans and fan communities who like to read and mock bad fic. I never could get into it. I have to read a lot of bad fic and poetry, and give constructive criticism and help students improve their work. I understand the impulse, but, well, every writer has been there. We've all written crap (and having published a lot or even being a BNF doesn't mean we don't write crap again.).

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

See, I agree with you! But! The big issue with me is that I'm shooting for pro quality with my own writing. I'm hard on myself; I set the bar high. And I read with an eye for craft, and on how to apply it to my own craft - sometimes by design, but more often because I have trouble shutting off that part of my brain. I've internalized this as part of my own value system because I want to end up good enough to make a living selling novels, and because I love the feeling of challenging myself and then succeeding: the wind in my hair, etc, etc. I'm definitely not there yet, but I want to be -- I want to make those fucking words sing for me.

The problem is not being able to turn it off. The problem is switching back and forth between working my ass off to make myself better, and then reading a story that's where I was 20 years ago and being as polite and supportive as I'd have hoped other people would've been with me. Flipping that mental switch - from making myself hyper-aware of cliches and lazy writing in my own work in order to root them out, to making myself unaware of the same things in someone else's writing - is hard for me! I think one reason why so many published writers are egocentric jerkwads is because of that problem - you have to push yourself so hard that it's difficult to shut it off when you're dealing with other people.

So the basic thing is that I agree with you totally - putting a moral judgment on good writing is stupid, and backwards, and counter-productive. Doing anything other than encouraging a newly fledged writer is a total dick move. But knowing that is one thing; the hard thing is gearing so much of my life towards being the very best I can possibly be in this particular area (*disclaimer: am not anywhere near there yet), and not doing that around other people. Especially in a social climate that encourages it. I am aware that it's something I need to fix about myself, and I've certainly heard enough stories from people who were discouraged from writing by teachers and friends and relatives that I absolutely do NOT want to be that person! But again, I'm not there yet.

I think it was reading these essays that made me decide that getting there is also a priority for me, and one that's not any less important than honing my writing skills.

[water-soter.livejournal.com]

The thing is that, for me, growing as a writer is a must. I work hard to learn new things, new tricks and styles all to become a better writer. So I tend to assume that everyone would want to become better, and I comment on their stories to that extent, because that's what I would want people to do with my stories. It tends to make me read a story with more of a critical eye than one of enjoyment. It's a bad habit. I know what a good story looks like (I may not yet be able to write one :-P)so I do a lot of comparison.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yes, this, exactly! This is the issue I'm having -- growing as a writer is something that's tremendously important to me, and something that I struggle to do every day. So for me, it is difficult to recognize that a) it's not that important to everyone, and b) other people are at different points along the road than I am (some farther, and some not so far). And the absolute last thing I want is to be the person who kicks down someone else, and makes it harder for them to keep going. I think that reading these posts made me more aware of some of my blind spots in that area.

[calcitrix.livejournal.com]

Dang. I read a similar post recently that linked to a "mary sue test;" it recommended you take the test as yourself or answering for someone you know well and see how you score. It was hilarious. The poster also scored several characters from movies--Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc--and they were WAAAAY up on the mary sue scale. Ooh, I found it. (http://seeallywrite.blogspot.com/2010/03/oh-mary-mary.html)

Anyway, I followed links to more links and what bothered me in and amongst the mary sue bashing was this:
Sure, you can claim to be a Draco fan. You can have seen and bought every film Tom Felton was ever in. You might have all the figurines, the posters, the desktop background, and even all the Harry Potter books and movies with his face pasted over Daniel Radcliffe's.

Doesn't mean you are a Draco fan.

Especially not if you're publishing fan fiction where for no reason he is in love with Hermione and dressing in Hot Topic clothing.

Why? Because it's not the character. You may like Tom Felton but you obviously know shit about Draco Malfoy.

You are not a fan. This is Fan Fiction. Do the things you supposedly love some ruddy justice. If you have to change the character you supposedly love in order to make them "fit" into your story, then you obviously don't "love" them as much as you think.

And the 60+ comments of "right on!" that went along with it, just *shudders* Wow, that crap wouldn't fly in SGA fandom! *Goes to happy place*

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link - and ooh, wow, ouch.

I've read things like fanficrants and fic-sporkings and found them funny. But it's usually with a little squirmy underbelly feeling of "... what if the author saw this?" And I think that the Mary Sue links were a pretty good wake-up call for me, that yes, the authors do see it, and while I certainly think that every fan is entitled to his or her opinion, maybe laughing at other people in public isn't the greatest thing to be doing.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I've always pushed myself hard as a writer, and I want to keep doing that, but I want to manage to balance that with not being elitist and judgmental towards other people's writing, and I'm not sure how to do that. HELP.

I know exactly where you're coming from. I'm a professor of English. Writing's my gig, yeah? I teach the next generation of newbies how not to sound like complete dumbasses when attempting to communicate an idea. Literature's my gig. 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 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 is about conversation: with the source text, with each other, with ourselves (especially if we choose to write in a fandom more than once).

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.

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 rain on that parade? 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?

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Just a quick comment to say, lovely stuff!

Although I'd say it applies in various ways to original or lit fic as well--and if I weren't so zonked I'd love to talk more about.

[sgatazmy.livejournal.com]

Huh, this is really something I hadn't thought about. I definitely don't apply Mary Sue to any OFC. I always had a narrow definition, but I can see how my judgments don't fit that definition.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

*nods* I think that the way I use Mary Sue is narrow enough that I hadn't realized it's such a broad term. And yet, the way I apply it has been creeping slowly outwards for years. I think this whole thing was a very good wakeup call for me! Like I said in a comment above, I don't think it's a completely useless concept; it does describe something that people do, that there wasn't a word for. But I'm going to be very careful in applying it in the future.

(And I hope you're not going out of your mind with the bed rest thing! That's got to be hard to take. *hugs*)

[ratcreature]

I think to see Mary Sues as a genre could be really helpful. I can like Mary Sue stories, but many I don't. I think what makes me dislike some of them is not so much how many awesome qualities she has, or how much it is self-insertion/wishfulfillment, but whether the characters I like end up like idiots to warp the story around the Mary Sue or not. I mean, I have read a bunch of Mary Sue stories that were intentional, and met plenty of the checkboxes (competent with tragic past, romantic relationship with the hero etc), and yet not parody. They weren't the pinnacle of craft but competently written. And they were fun. I think the ones I enjoyed most were of the type where our regular world with an average yet awesome self-insertion character meets with the heroes and then stuff happens. Like time-space plot device strands a Jedi in present day earth where he meets our heroine and they try to get the Jedi back were he belongs, and the displacement makes the ordinary person know a bunch of relevant stuff in a believable fashion that the Jedi doesn't etc.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

*nods* The more I think about it, the more I actually love the idea of Mary Sue as a recognized genre, no less valid and self-affirming than any of the other stuff that we do. In fact, I'm wondering if it might be fun to have some kind of self-insert fest, or OFC-fest, or something similar to that. It's certainly been done, but I wonder if it's ever been done seriously, as opposed to being done in parody.

[hollow-echos.livejournal.com]

I'll add it my own thoughts on this because the whole Mary Sue thing is a particularly interesting topic for me.

My first fandom, the very first one, probably 6 years ago, was teen titans. My favorite type of fic actually was OC's. Now a good deal of those were Mary Sue's with way too much power, no weaknesses, they got the chick, nailed the bad guy, and rode off into the sunset on a pretty regular basis.

I don't know what caused my interest in reading other people's OC's, I think it was partially I was just floored by all of the amazing super powers people came up with for their OC's, there were the stereotypical ones, and then there were the amazingly original ones.

I also wrote an OC. I don't know that mine was a Mary Sue, he was pretty angsty. At this point, I didn't know my tastes were called angst and Hurt/Comfort. All I knew was that I liked my characters to take a good beating, hell, I'd never heard of the word "whumping" before. And so I set out with my own OC. He was probably a Mary Sue in that it was my insertion into the teen titan universe. He spoke as I speak, and acted as I act, most often as a quiet observer in a new situation. I was also a horrendously angsty teen, so that also probably greatly impacted my writing. I'd like to think I've matured since then.

But the insertion into the universe, it's about fantasizing that your life is something more than it is. Forget this mundane stuff where we go to school or work, come home, and do the pretty same activities every day. These characters in our favorite fandoms, they do amazing things every day and they are the type of people we aspire to be. It's about being noble, being a hero even in the face of great adversity.

And it is my belief that these trends don't die out as we mature within the fandom, they change, they become less pronounced, but these underlying ideas are still what motivate us to write and read to our specific tastes.

I'll again use myself as an example. My current fandom is SGA. I read H/C because for me, it's about feeling loved and appreciated and having someone so dedicated to you, that they would love you so much, as to protect you from the world and it's evils, comfort you when you are hurting, and sometimes even protecting you from yourself. I see in Rodney McKay so many traits that I see in myself. I am a geek, I am sometimes a little caustic, I'd like to think of myself as pretty smart. And then you take these traits and build on them, Rodney is a genius, he is not ever afraid to speak his mind, and he saves people with his brilliance on a regular basis. I associate with Rodney in the same way that I would associate with my Mary Sue that I created. The difference is that Rodney is a character in the show, he is canon. He is the reason I love the show, without him, SGA wouldn't be my current fandom. I can take him and whump him and put him in horrific scenarios, but I can also have the people who love him come rescue him and care for him.

That relationship - that people care enough to track him down, save him, and take care of him, is something so special. I would hope that I would have people in my life who feel the same way. I empathize with Rodney, I see myself in him, and when he is whumped, in some odd way, I could see those people caring about a person like me too.

I originally wrote Mary Sue's because I picked the universe I wanted, teen titans, and I molded the universe to my liking by doing a self-insert with an OC. Now I pick my fandoms differently, I chose SGA because there is a canon character that I associate very strongly with.

And for the super powerful, super successful OC's, that's about fantasizing about what we want to be. In real life we may be reclusive and timid, and so terribly mundane. With a self-insert authors can dream about what they would like to be, brave and anything but mundane. I also read Sheppard-centric fics. I am a quiet person, I am a follower instead of a leader. But there are times where I wish I would be ready to take charge. It's not the person I am, but in my associations with Sheppard, I can follow along with his bravery and sacrifices he makes for the people he loves as if it were me there in his shoes.

(my post was too long, continued in comment below)

[hollow-echos.livejournal.com]

Mary Sue's are the first stage that many novice writers start at - they want to fantasize about some aspect of their life that they wish were different or amplified. And writers continue to do this even as they write more and read more and understand the nuances of the fandom culture more. But they learn to bend a plot line and established characters to the same end by finding existing characters with those traits already in place and relating to them instead of an OC. Readers prefer this method because they too can feel an attachment to the canon characters, a Mary Sue is much more personal to the writer.

Mary Sue's aren't bad, they aren't wrong. It's the same thing we all (or at least I) do in a different, more novice form. And like everything else in fan fic culture, the fans can think what they like, but the wonderful thing about the fandom is that there is no limit on what you can and cannot write. The shows and characters are the raw materials with which we forge an image of the world as we desire it to be, and if a little piece of ourselves gets caught up in that creation, perhaps we too have been immortalized in the culture alongside the heroes of the shows we love.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing your story! :) I do think one of the problems with the ever-expanding definition of the Mary Sue (like some of the posts I've been reading have pointed out) is that EVERY character we write or create is in some sense a self-insertion. When we're working with existing characters, we typically either pick the characters that have qualities we can relate to, or write things into them that we can relate to. Everyone does that, whether it's intentional or not. I think that as we gain skill as writers, we also gain skill in making our characters less obvious analogues for ourselves, but there are still pieces of us in them and will always be. One thing I had honestly not realized before my little spate of meta-reading today and yesterday is that many people have taken the anti-Mary Sue sentiment in fandom to be a rebuke against putting bits of themselves in their characters, and I think that's awful - that's what writing is!

That relationship - that people care enough to track him down, save him, and take care of him, is something so special. I would hope that I would have people in my life who feel the same way. I empathize with Rodney, I see myself in him, and when he is whumped, in some odd way, I could see those people caring about a person like me too.

ha. That is exactly what I get from writing Rodney h/c too! :D I don't view him as a direct analog of myself - I think the character I come closest to seeing myself in is Teyla, actually - but for some reason writing h/c for Rodney is a direct shot to my id; for me it's a cheerful fantasy that no matter who you are, you'll still have people who care about and accept you.

[calcitrix.livejournal.com]

Totally unrelated to the other comment: It's odd that as readers of novels, we want to read stories about original characters, but the moment anyone tries to insert one into fanfic everyone moans about it. Why is that so bad? And as a writer, doing so in fanfic is a good way to practice writing skills by developing a character not created by someone else.

As for levels of skill--I'm mostly big on knowing grammar and POVs and whatnot. I do try to keep that in a separate box when I read fanfic, but I often skip stories that show early signs of trouble in these areas. But I do read plenty of fic that teeters on the brink. Sometimes it's fun and I can ignore the odd commas and sentence fragments and sometimes I want those fifteen minutes of my life back. But I think it's just as important to see what doesn't work for you as what does. Speaking from a critical standpoint, anyway.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Regarding the original characters thing, I do think it's a matter of expectation to some extent. I tend to go to fanfic because I fell in love with the characters and wanted more of them, and to resent original characters for overshadowing the canon characters. But some people enjoy original characters; it's how they relate to the canon, by putting original characters in it. I've written them myself but they were never my reason for being in fandom, because I had original fic for that - but I can see how, if someone didn't have that original-fic place to go to, it could be a necessity (I would shrivel up and die if I didn't create original characters *g*). So, yeah. It's a prejudice (and one that I've been guilty of), but like you said, fanfic can be a great place to develop an original character with a familiar backdrop to place them in.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have those posts bookmarked; haven't had time to do anything but skim them yet, but even so I was nodding furiously. I'm glad fandom is finally catching on to the fact that this whole Mary Sue shaming culture is damaging.

I think Mary Sue is a natural phase of a young writer's develepment. Not even writer, person. When I grew up a had this Mary-Sue of sheer awesomeness that I wrote stories about in my head for years, and I wouldn't have missed that for the world. (Wouldn't have shared it with the world either; it felt very private.)

Even if someone writes Mary Sue, dear lord, have the writer have her fun and get it out of the system.

It's interesting to consider Mary Sue a genre of itself, just as deserving of having fans and followers and communities grow up around it as, say, hurt/comfort or any of our other established fannish genres. Non-h/c people may roll their eyes at h/c or mock the more WTF? examples, but I don't think anyone questions its right to exist.

Yes, exactly. That kind of fic actually finds its fans. Fandom, what happened to don't like, don't read? Your kink is not my kink? I don't like Mary Sue fic either so I skip it.

And what always bothered me about the Mary Sue hunting comms is that it's essentially older fans, grownups even, bullying young writers, often kids and teenagers.

Then there's of course the part where the term has been watered down to mean something like 'every female OC'. And every canon character who doesn't come equipped with a penis runs danger of being called Mary Sue which is then used as a way to legitimize dismissing her, or worse. People who argue in all seriousness how Sam Carter deserves to be called Mary Sue but Rodney McKay doesn't... loose about 100 respect points in my eyes.

And now we're at a point where writers - and not just fic fic, original as well!- are so concerned that their OC will get called Mary Sue that they rather change her gender to avoid that issue. I have seen that sentiment uttered by *dozens* of authors over the past years. And we end up with even fewer female characters than before. Awesome, fandom. That sure backfired.

I was pondering an original comic, and as I was thinking about the plot I noticed that I'd made my hero default male. I was thinking, why did I do that. No reason they can't be female. More female heroes ftw! Oh shit, but then people will call her a Mary Sue. How do I avoid that?? *frets*

^ that was my train of thought. And then I though, screw them all, I'll make her female for sure and the haters can shove their unchecked misogyny and go to hell.

I have no more patience for this stuff.

[ratcreature]

How do I avoid that??
Non-gendered anthropomorphic animals? But then the fantasy Mary Sue characters in my head as I was a kid were never human but on the furry spectrum (and it's not like my online avatar isn't still...) so maybe that wouldn't help.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

"Here is how you can take what you already have and make it better."

Do the writers in question really want this? Every now and again, I get those sorts of vibes from slash writers - though less often these days.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's certainly a point too! And especially with something like self-insertionism, where there is a community norm that's different from what most people in that sub-group are doing - it is important not to try to push other writers into doing things "my way" when they are perfectly happy with how they're doing things to begin with.

I believe that point was taken up in the links above.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I'm of a divided mind on this. On the one hand, as a rule I'm against passing judgment on fic. Among a host of other issues, not only is it discouraging to a writer to be told that they're writing badly - it also can be painful for a reader to be told that what they like to read is considered to be crap, by some wacky subjective definition of "good writing". And since there are definitely people who enjoy reading as well as writing Mary Sues, and they're not actively harmful, then I say more power to those who like them.

On the other hand...for all that some fans are very anti-Sue, and there are folks who flame over them and complain about them and comms devoted to sporking them...I don't know if this is really such a terrible thing as all that. A lot of us don't like 'Sues - they're just not what we read fanfic for, or aren't anymore. And yes, some fans can be bullies, targeting those fans who write what they personally dislike, but that's not news; the cult of mean and the quality control fans are always going to be here. For all that Mary Sue is oft-targeted by such, she's hardly an endangered species. There are plenty of places where Sues are written and posted and welcomed (much of ff.net!) There are tons of young and some older writers writing them, and even if some of them stop, there will always be new writers writing them. The reason we have the phrase "Mary Sue" is because it's a phenomenon that's been going on, well, as long as humans have been storytelling, I imagine, and will keep going on whether or not that word for it falls out of disfavor.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah; you and I have generally tended to come down on opposite sides of the concrit debate in the past, with me being on the pro-crit side. I think I'm starting to heavily question my own position in those debates, though, and to agree with you about crit being more of an opt-in thing than an opt-out thing. And for similar reasons - because anything that drives people away from writing and makes them miserable "for their own good" can't be a good thing. If someone wants it, then sure. And I do think that the general Mary Sue concept can be useful at the Writing 400 level, especially for figuring out why a story isn't working or seems to be impacting beta-readers in a way it's not intended to - I think that's why it got picked up among profic writers, because it's a useful term for something that we never had a word for before. But at a Writing 101 level, and especially carrying with it the overtone of shame and bad writing that it's come to, I think the above-linked posts have an excellent point that it does far more harm than good.

I don't know if this is really such a terrible thing as all that. A lot of us don't like 'Sues - they're just not what we read fanfic for, or aren't anymore.

Well, yes, but (devil's advocate here) - what about hurt/comfort? Or slash? Or kink Y, or pairing Z? There's a ton of different stuff in fandom that's not Individual Fan A's personal cup of tea, but I think as a general rule fandom has tended to move (slowly) away from shunning or shaming fans for their personal kinks - remember all the "Slash! Please don't flame me!" disclaimers that you used to see? You'd see them because people used to get flamed for slash, which is almost unthinkable in most fannish circles today. I know that a lot of people don't like hurt/comfort as a genre, and avoid it, but I don't think there are very many who think it shouldn't exist, or sit around mocking people who like it as immature, bad writers. I certainly think they're entitled to have that opinion, of course, and I'm sure a fair amount of that goes on under flock, but as a general rule, fandom tends to look down on insulting or mocking groups of other fans in public for their personal kinks. But self-insertion fic is the big honkin' exception - they're like furries in the Geek Hierarchy (http://www.brunching.com/geekhierarchy.html), the one category of fans that other fans in every walk of fandom enjoy feeling superior to. But it amounts to policing other people's fantasies.

And this doesn't even touch on terminology creep - I'm mildly boggled seeing some of these posts and their comments, because I had no idea that what I think of when I hear "Mary Sue" isn't what people are often talking about. All OFCs? Really? And there are people who are afraid to write any female character (canon or not) for fear of being accused of writing a Mary Sue - that just boggles me. Clearly something has gone horribly wrong!

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, not so much about Mary Sues but what "I" consider good-quality vs. what "I" consider to be bad quality writing. Apparently, it's the bane of being obsessed with writing - wanting everyone to be obsessed with writing. The control freak in me does not tolerate being subject to what I consider to be bad writing.

But I've been trying very hard not to give into said control freak. Yes, I will still occasionally complain on my LJ (under friends lock), but these days I limit any overwhelming need to complain to E-mail and a friend who is willing to listen, because I have anger issues and venting helps. If I don't vent, I'm left feeling ill and miserable all day. But I'm conditioning myself to absolutely refuse to vent in public.

It's very much a reader vs writer thing, I think. The writer in you who understands the need to be able to express yourself freely wants to say "Write whatever your heart desires." The obsessive reader in you who wants to be able to have the cake and eat it, too, wants to scream "No, no! You can't do that!" For myself, there are days when I totally sympathize with writers getting hounded by the "readers," and days I want to slap "writers" upside the head for reminding me that "people have the right to write whatever they want." Which they do, but the reader in me is selfish and irritable, and when really irritable doesn't care.

And it's hard, it really is, sometimes to separate yourself from the "reader."

Hope that made sense. I think I may have degenerated into rambling. It's something I'd been thinking about for a while, but thinking is one thing and putting it into words is always another.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Apparently, it's the bane of being obsessed with writing - wanting everyone to be obsessed with writing. The control freak in me does not tolerate being subject to what I consider to be bad writing.

Ha. Yes! That's exactly what I was getting at above. It's very difficult for me to let go of that. Mary Sues are really just a symptom of the disease - I mean, they're not one of my major bugbears, not even one that I normally think about (though I'm thinking about it lately, obviously).

But I've been trying very hard not to give into said control freak. Yes, I will still occasionally complain on my LJ (under friends lock), but these days I limit any overwhelming need to complain to E-mail and a friend who is willing to listen, because I have anger issues and venting helps. If I don't vent, I'm left feeling ill and miserable all day. But I'm conditioning myself to absolutely refuse to vent in public.

I really don't see a problem with venting under flock, or in email. I know that on the occasions when I've done it (today, in fact!) it makes me feel better and relieves the pressure. I think that venting is a natural human thing and being able to pick the right times and places to do it (i.e. not in the author's comments, and yes, I've done that a time or two, and yes, I felt terrible afterwards) makes us all better fannish citizens. We can't always go around being totally polite even about fic we hate, after all; we're only human. The trick is managing to do the venting in private spaces, including locked journal posts, because what are friends for if not to listen to that sort of thing?

[swordygardener.livejournal.com]

The term Mary Sue is often misused. That much is clear. "mary sue litmus tests", for example, are counterproductive. It's like making a "Hitler Litmus test" and declaring that a character that breathes, has short hair, isn't tall, eats bread and drinks water is therefore having several Hitlerish traits. You cannot do that.

That does not mean that the term itself is a bad one. THere are also a lot of people bullying new fans with "sporking"(GAFF anyone? That's about as bad as 'Mary SUe Policing'), "MST3ks" and general harsh criticism, that doesn't mean critique is bad just because some people grossly misuse it.

The problem isn't the term. It's people bullying. I find it funny that people focus on the Mary Sue, when the real issue is people using online anonymity to find easy targets and bully them again and again. Focussing on the 'Mary Sue' part is focussing away from the actual problem!

Mary Sue itself(as well as Gary Stus, who usually are worse), if taken to what it actually means, is a bad thing. It is indeed something we SHOULD absolutely advise people from refraining to write. But not by saying "YOu are awful for writing this", but by pointing out what the problems are, that many of the traitss ACTUAL Sues have are actually sexist, that the writing doesn't need to be this way. In other words, by helping these writers, not by judging them.

That I can get behind. But the current push to defend Sues, ignoring the equal bullying in other ways? That seems completely wrong.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

To paraphrase myself from some of my other comments, I don't think that the Mary Sue concept should necessarily be thrown out totally, because I do think it can be useful in some contexts. On the other hand, one thing these posts have totally sold me on is the idea that open and vocal hate of Mary Sues is having a chilling effect on new and young authors - there's plenty of anecdata to support it, anyway.

Mary Sue itself(as well as Gary Stus, who usually are worse), if taken to what it actually means, is a bad thing. It is indeed something we SHOULD absolutely advise people from refraining to write. But not by saying "YOu are awful for writing this", but by pointing out what the problems are, that many of the traitss ACTUAL Sues have are actually sexist, that the writing doesn't need to be this way. In other words, by helping these writers, not by judging them.

Okay, here I'm going to disagree with you halfway. I agree that gently helping a new writer who wants to learn to write better, rather than mocking and shaming her, is definitely good! But ... okay, I'm gonna copy-paste from my comment to xparrot above, because she made a similar point to yours (that the basic Sue is a sexist trope), and I said:

I think that a lot of fans who write that kind of Mary Sue will probably realize this for themselves eventually (or else make peace with the problematic aspects of it and continue enjoying it), but I don't think that having other fans come in from the outside, telling them that they're oppressing themselves, is going to help. Or that it's anyone else's business, really. It's like ... I dunno, telling someone who enjoys noncon fantasies that she's contributing to rape culture. She'll probably say "stop telling me what to fantasize about!" ... and she'd be right.

Actually, I think that's probably what was the most valuable for me about reading the posts in this meta-round - to begin to see the Mary Sue as a legitimate fantasy, that a lot of people have and enjoy, rather than a form of poor writing that "proper" writers grow out of!

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

A Mary Sue, defined many eons ago when Trek was about the only thing out there, was when a beautiful blonde character with striking blonde/platinum hair down to her tight ass (yes, this term was used) would basically save the Enterprise with a bobby pin, and have either Kirk or Spock fall hopelessly in love with her. ;)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was the original genesis of the term. But it's undergone a tremendous amount of meaning creep since then. A lot of people use it these days to refer to canon characters (Wesley Crusher is often cited, for example) or any OFC or, heck, any character they don't like!

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Quick heads-up: your post has been put up on metafandom's delicious.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

... maybe I should have made the request not to link in giant sparkly text. Well, thanks for the heads-up; I'll go see if they'll take it down.

[vain-glorious.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I wasn't aware there were Mary-Sue hunters. I don't really get why that'd be...well, even funny. Hell yeah, I wrote epic Mary Sues when I was eleven. Never posted to the internet, but for lack of opportunity not anything else.

I generally don't read fanfic that heavily features OC's. I read fandom for the familiar characters. I also try not to write OC's that much. This is actually hugely problematic in SGA because of absence of any real world building so few supporting characters.

But yeah, from what I've seen the Mary Sue issues is largely about misogyny in fandom. The other niches of fandom - slash, various subdomains of slash with extravagant kink, don't get called out for what is essentially a self-insertion that just happens to be more popular than other forms of self-insertion. (Self here loosely defined as 'author-originated'.)

Sometimes I come across awesome female characters, canon or otherwise. And I often find them totally out of place if they're OC's/totally out of character if they're canon. And that's because female characters in fandom rarely get to be awesome. I marvel at writers that keep canon women in character and make them awesome, because it's usually a feat the character creators didn't manage.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

"The other niches of fandom - slash, various subdomains of slash with extravagant kink, don't get called out for what is essentially a self-insertion that just happens to be more popular than other forms of self-insertion. (Self here loosely defined as 'author-originated'.)"

But that might have more to do with people afraid of being labeled a homophobe for crying out against a slash fic (even though they are crying out against self-insertion, not the story or genre itself).

Plus most slash fic usually involves the pairing of two canon characters, not canon/OC pairings, so no one can say for sure if what they're reading is a self-insertion fic since most associate self-insertion with OCs.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I'm still trundling through the comments here, and really appreciating all the different viewpoints and thought out discussion.

I'm in awe of your determination to learn how to and work towards being a better writer - I allow myself to get intimidated out of putting anything more than a mediocre effort into things, because if I try and then suck it means I really can't write at all. It's a problematic self esteem thing - sometimes I really wish I could afford some form of counseling. XD But that led to my never writing Mary Sues, because I didn't like myself or believe that anyone could want to read about me, and that's just as bad in terms of writerly development, I think.

So yeah - thanks for the links, and the discussion. Really interesting post.