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

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

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.

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--ack, that was me - lj'ing from work on no sleep, forgot to log in! ^^;

if they're worried about being flamed, that's one thing; but if all they're afraid of is that some reader might think that they made a Mary Sue...here I lean more on the side of a reader is entitled to their own opinions, and if you're going to post publically you should have the strength to ignore those opinions if you disagree with them. Letting perceived fan opinion sway you to the extent that you won't even try to write something (as opposed to trying and getting attacked for it, which is a different story) is a problem an individual author must surmount, rather than fandom as a whole.

Hmm, yes and no. Yes, it's necessary to have, or to cultivate, a skin that is at least somewhat thick in order to participate in fandom. To some extent, you've got to be able to ignore what people are saying about you just to be involved in social interaction, period. But I think there's a big difference between that, and having a significant number of fans being afraid to write because they fear a social climate that encourages finger-pointing and mocking.

Using h/c as an example again ... since that's largely what I write, it stings a bit when I run across someone remarking on how they can't stand h/c, even though I know it's just their opinion and not something that should matter to me. It stings a lot when I see one of my stories brought up in a negative way, although it doesn't happen very often. But that sort of thing is rare enough, and I have enough community support, that I can just shrug it off. I think that being told repeatedly that h/c isn't something a serious writer would want to write, and running across "how to write" posts that frequently mock it or explain how good writers don't do that would put me off, though, and make writing less fun for me. I don't know how much it would put me off because, frankly, I can't imagine anything stopping me from writing as long as I'm still capable of it. But I can only imagine how offputting it must be, and reading testimonials of fans who stopped writing or never started or don't write certain kinds of fic because they're afraid of the reaction is ... sobering. Yes, it's a perception on their part, and for most of them, their worst fears probably wouldn't come to pass. But just having that perception out there is a problem, you know? It's something that maybe we fandom old-timers should try to do something about. :)

(But you do have a point about different fannish contexts, and the fact that it certainly varies from fandom to fandom, subgroup to subgroup. And this is useful to keep in mind too! It would be interesting to hear from fans who still openly write Sues, or participate in Sue-friendly segments of fandom, if such places exist, as they almost certainly must - we may just be getting stuck on our own corner of fandom's mores, and failing to take into account other places.)

But that sort of thing is rare enough, and I have enough community support, that I can just shrug it off. I think that being told repeatedly that h/c isn't something a serious writer would want to write, and running across "how to write" posts that frequently mock it or explain how good writers don't do that would put me off, though, and make writing less fun for me.

*nods* That's a really good example. As a reader of h/c I know this would bug me tremendously, and turn fandom into a much less fun place.

The anti-slash sentiments of past fandom were disturbing not only because they were looking down on other fans' kinks, but because they were often homophobic, and that's harmful outside of fanning. When it comes to fans mocking fans for strictly fannish things - I don't know that it's always harmful.

Also, to paraphrase

astridv and take her point a little further - homophobia in fandom is bad because it reflects negative attitudes directed at LGBTQ people in RL, and marginalizes queer fans, right? Anti-kink sentiment in fandom marginalizes kinky fans and implies that there's something wrong with their sexuality. And so forth. But the anti-Mary Sue sentiment in fandom is doing the same thing to (some) fans' identities as women and girls, isn't it? Self-insertion characters are personal avatars by their very nature, maybe more personal than anything else any of us write. This is something I had not thought about until reading this round of links, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like mocking a person's fannish self-insert character and pointing out how juvenile and stupid it is, is one of the nastiest things a person can do.

Obviously there's a difference between that, and how most of us relate to Mary Sue fic. I don't think I've ever pointed and mocked a Mary Sue, especially not to the author's face. But I've certainly tossed off the Mary Sue phrase as a shorthand for bad writing, bad plotting and so forth. I don't think it should necessarily be thrown out entirely - like I said, um, somewhere, I *do* think it's a useful concept in editing and critiquing one's work. But I also think that it might be a term that's become so trite that it might be far more useful (and less prone to potential problems) to say what one really means - not "That's a Mary Sue" but "Should this character really have won so easily?" or whatever is appropriate to the situation. And maybe it's useful for us to look past our knee-jerk "Mary Sue!" reaction (when it happens) and try to figure out what's causing the reaction and why it bothers us so much. (There's an interesting thread (http://friendshipper.livejournal.com/260131.html?thread=5530659#t5530659) elsewhere in this discussion that talks about that a little bit.)

But the anti-Mary Sue sentiment in fandom is doing the same thing to (some) fans' identities as women and girls, isn't it?

Hmm. I actually don't think this is the case - if anything, it's the opposite. A Mary Sue (at least traditionally) is not merely a self-insert - it's a glorified self-insert, an idealized version of oneself. Consider the traits of a classic Mary Sue - the violet or sapphire eyes, the flowing hair, etc etc. To mock Mary Sues is to reject this model - to reject that a girl needs to be perfect and amazing and gorgeous to be worthy of love and loyalty. The Mary Sues that are most often mocked (in fanfic and in canonical works, too) are those which are the most fantastic and unbelievable and perfect - the standard litmus test for Mary Sueism is if the char has any real flaws. The more flawed and human a char is, the less likely fans are to cry Mary Sue.

Actually, this may also be one reason why Mary Sues and self-inserts are targeted more than other fannish tropes - because they are self-evident examples of authorial hubris, and pride past a certain point is still considered a sin, or at the very least a character flaw.

The lack of flaws in Mary Sues I suspect is often just a result of them mostly being written by inexperienced and younger writers - and it's not limited to self-inserts; many writers will make canonical chars overly perfect as well. It is a more juvenile element of writing - not that juvenile means bad, but as many people judge writing, complexity = quality, and hence the Mary Sue trope by its nature is never going to be considered quality writing by most standards. And as such, it's always going to be mocked by the contingent of fans who are into such fanning styles.

A Mary Sue (at least traditionally) is not merely a self-insert - it's a glorified self-insert, an idealized version of oneself. Consider the traits of a classic Mary Sue - the violet or sapphire eyes, the flowing hair, etc etc. To mock Mary Sues is to reject this model - to reject that a girl needs to be perfect and amazing and gorgeous to be worthy of love and loyalty.

I do get what you're saying here, and 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!

haven't even had my first cup of tea yet, but I have to reply first...

A Mary Sue (at least traditionally) is not merely a self-insert - it's a glorified self-insert, an idealized version of oneself. Consider the traits of a classic Mary Sue - the violet or sapphire eyes, the flowing hair, etc etc. To mock Mary Sues is to reject this model - to reject that a girl needs to be perfect and amazing and gorgeous to be worthy of love and loyalty.

I could not disagree more.

Yes, Mary Sue is a gloriefied self-insert, that's the point. I spent many of my teenage years making up stories of that great, totally awesome version of Me who was having adventures with the crew of the Enterprise in a Star Wars/Star Trek/my fave YA novel amalgamum. I was super-cool, I'm telling you. Confident and multi-skilled. Totally unrealistic, and very unlike my then-shy real self.

I think that Sue helped me develop a sense of self. I believe it's actually a healthy thing in a young person's development.

Dream big. What is wrong with that? And like I said, boys get to do it all the time; your entire graphic novel genre is based on the concept of superheroes! Superman, if we're talking Sues, is one of the biggest of all. Kids will imagine themselves to be heroes (or heroines) and that's a good and natural thing. That is not something we should reject.

Or at least leave it to the individual. Maybe not all people are dreamers like that. But I was. And I loved it. These fantasies were precious to me.

It's not up to us to police other people's fantasies.

eta: Not to mention, Mary Sue is a way for girls and women to write themselves into stories and main roles that are all too often reserved for guys. A female fan can identify with the guy in the main role, and that's of course what many fans do, and there's nothing wrong with that... or she can write herself into a main role, and there's nothing wrong with that either.

When I watched the movie "Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous" it triggered a very happy elaborate series of daydreams in which I kicked Remo out and wrote myself in instead. And years later I realized that that was one of the main reasons why I took up martial arts. Martial arts was something that gave me pleasure, confidence, friends, and many things more. It made me discover the joy of working out (after years of playing ball games in school sports which I loathed with a passion.) Thank you, Remo, is all I can say. :)

Edited 2010-04-13 10:09 (UTC)

And my avatar when I was a pre-teen rode a Pernese dragon who could take me between dimensions to different fictional universes (and conveniently became a spaceship for my Jedi smuggler Star Wars alter ego!)

I'm not arguing we should police fantasies! Fantasies are awesome! And more than that, as I said outright above, I believe Mary Sues are a perfectly legitimate fictional trope. And that some of the mockery of them goes too far. Especially when it's targeting kids.

OTOH, sometimes the criticism (of the concept, generally, not targeting specific fans) is an acknowledgment that self-insertion makes for somewhat juvenile fiction. And that as adults we often look for more and different things in our fiction. And sometimes fantasies subconsciously play into socialized gender constructs and other things that we want to move beyond.

The criticism I've seen against Mary Sues is not against the idea of self-insertion fantasies, but against written, posted stories about those fantasies. I wonder if part of the reason Sues set many fans off is because they're personal fantasies given text, and there's something almost, hmm, obscene about that. I didn't write anything with my own personal Sue but I drew her a lot - but I never liked showing people the drawings; it was so personal to me. It's not the fantasy but its publication - not that fans are writing the stories, but that they're posting them, when they're meant to be private.

(The above, btw, is not me saying that I think the anti-Mary Sue folks are all correct and justified - fanfic is largely about id-satisfaction, and self-inserts are id-tastic, so more power to them! But at the same time, I feel that "Mary Sue" is important as a critical concept, and that should be examined and questioned and yes, maybe mocked a bit.)

You know, it doesn't really sound to me that you guys are arguing positions that are that far apart. I mean, you both agree that self-insert fantasies are natural, healthy, and nearly universal; that fanfic is full of the id and that Mary Sue stories are another expression of that; that mocking and bullying kids is nasty; and that fangirls of whatever stripe should have the right to their own spaces with their own social values, right?

Yup, that's a succinct summation!

I think I'm mostly arguing from the position that fantasy != fiction, that cricizing fiction is not the same as criticizing fantasy. And I feel that Mary Sue is a legitimate fictional trope but also a legitimate critical concept. And I feel that mocking can be a legitimate form of criticism, and that publically posted fanfiction should not necessarily be off-limits from criticism (though what limits there should be I really can't say, it's an area I seesaw on all the time...) So fundamentally...I don't think all Mary Sue mocking is inherently bad. Even if some of it is.

I think I agree up to a point but not beyond that point, if that makes any sense. I mean, I've long believed that you need a thick skin to get by in fandom and in life, and I still think that. But ...

fantasy != fiction, that cricizing fiction is not the same as criticizing fantasy.

... I think fails to take into account humans-as-emotional-creatures. It's one thing to know, intellectually, that it's okay to like what you like, and that other people can't take your fantasies away from you. But in actual practice, we're so close to our fantasies, and we have so much trouble separating ourselves from them, that criticism of a Fannish Thing (a story, a fannish love object) feels like criticism of us, and I don't really think that's going to change. Especially since the line between pure fantasy indulgence, and guilty, unhappy, ashamed fantasy indulgence is so very narrow in most of us. There have definitely been times that I've talked about beloved personal things with other people and ended up feeling as if their scorn or criticism had tarnished my enjoyment of the original. (Heck ... SGA, in some ways.)

It's not black and white because obviously you have to balance every individual fan's need to fan in her own way - I mean, I've generally tended to think of publicly posted work as being open to criticism too. And I don't think it shouldn't be, but I'm starting to really come around on my crit=yay! viewpoint that I've espoused for so long, because maybe we fans, as a group, need to put a little more effort into being kind to each other. I know some people complain about the Cult of Nice in fandom, but it really seems to me more like we've got the opposite problem, a cult of Nasty where we use our journals to attack and tear down each other. Maybe fandom would be a more welcoming place if we (fandom) tried a little harder to keep our more pointed critiques and mocking to private posts/emails/lists. I don't think I would want to go all the way to "critiques should never happen in public!" with associated blaming/shaming of people who dare to criticize each other (... which happens, come to think of it) because you're just getting a different aspect of high school that way. >_> But I do think that it's much too simplistic to say, "Well, critiquing or mocking the story isn't critiquing or mocking the person!" because even for me, it sometimes feels that way, and for something really close to the heart, it feels that way even more - and Mary Sues are about as close to the heart as it gets.

"Well, critiquing or mocking the story isn't critiquing or mocking the person!"

Hmm. This wasn't what I was saying (which I think you realize, but just to clarify) - I was more meaning that to, say, discuss why the Mary Sue construct can make for less sophisticated writing is not to say anything about the act of fantasizing a self insert. Many of us fantasized self-insert, Mary-Sue type chars when we young, but never wrote down or posted stories with them - probably, for many of us, because the Internet didn't exist when we were having such fantasies, so it never occurred to us to even try to share them. But the act of fantasizing is different from writing, which is different again from posting.

And I realize that it can be hard to separate - that once you write up a fantasy into a story, then you are close to the story. All the same, it seems inaccurate to me to say that anti-Mary Sue-ing is the same as being anti-self-insert daydreams - that to criticize Mary Sues is to criticize the ego-actualizing fantasies of young girls. If you are targeting a specific fangirl's story/Sue, making fun of it on a comm, or flaming her for it - yes, that's cruel, and potentially damaging. But to say that you don't care for Mary Sues in general in your fanfic, to write a parody Sue, to use "Mary Sue" as a critical term to discuss a certain type of char - I don't think that's the same as saying girls shouldn't fantasize, any more than critically discussing the problematic aspects of superheroes, or making fun of Superman, is to say that boys shouldn't fantasize.

Maybe fandom would be a more welcoming place if we (fandom) tried a little harder to keep our more pointed critiques and mocking to private posts/emails/lists.

I wonder about this...it seems like it might be even worse, in some ways, if everyone is always snarking behind one another's backs, if no one dares express a negative opinion in public for fear of being considered "nasty." It has the potential to be super-cliquish, as you say. But fans are always going to have negative opinions about fiction and fictional tropes and fandom and other fans, expressed or not; it's part of being a fan, part of being human.

There's got to be a happy medium...I just don't know where!

A pox on logging in! A pox I say!! >.

At this point I pretty much just assume that anonymous comments are you. *g*

Anyhoo...

There's got to be a happy medium...I just don't know where!

Yeah, finding the happy medium is the problem, isn't it? Personally I'd say that a good compromise would be for fandom to recognize Mary Sue as a legitimate fanning style, not a last resort of bad writers or a symptom of immaturity, but just another kink alongside all the others we've got - hurt/comfort and smarm, ship and slash, kink and BDSM and poly, wingfic and slavefic and all the others that co-exist nervously but more-or-less peacefully under the big ol' fandom umbrella. So, yeah, there might be mocking here and there, and there will surely be people insisting that they don't/won't read self-insertions (as they're certainly entitled!) but there wouldn't be the air of moral or writerly scorn that I feel as if Mary Sues are treated with right now. I don't think the term has to be tossed out, necessarily; I think it's quite possible to discuss self-insertionism in the context of a serious writerly discussion without dismissing it or condemning those who like it, just like we can agree that PWP isn't right for a submission to a sci-fi magazine with a PG-13 rating and discuss how to build a porn-free story without dismissing porn as the pastime of people who are such social failures that they can't find a partner in real life. (There are people who feel that way about porn, but I think the general social climate in fandom tends to discourage them from going around ranting about moral degeneracy, and most don't want to anyway, out of respect for their fellow fen. But if everyone around them was doing it ...?)

So ...yeah ... just recognition of Mary Sue as a trope on equal footing with other fannish tropes that some people like and some don't -- genderswap, for example, tends to come along with a lot of gender-essentialist cultural baggage, but lots of people like it, and you can find themed rec lists and challenge, as well as deconstructions of the problematic aspects of the trope along with people trying to write it better and do non-cliche, non-problematic versions of it ... but you don't typically have fans sitting around ranting about how much they hate it and how it's bad writing and they wish people would stop writing it. There might be a few of those, sure -- I expect every trope has its vocal detractors -- but by and large they're a minority and can be pretty easily ignored by people who are involved in the part of the community that enjoys it. I've run across parody h/c that mocks the tendency of characters in h/c to succumb to statistically unlikely strings of silly, contrived injuries; it was amusing, and I think it's totally cool that it exists (and I sort of agree XD). But having a lot of that sort of thing out there, along with a lot of meta about how immature h/c is and the like ... I think it'd probably make me feel less welcome in fandom, and maybe a little guilty and ashamed of my own fantasies.

So I think it just comes down to treating Mary Sue as another trope on equal footing with wingfic or AMTDI or high school AUs or any of the other silly, fun things that we like to treat ourselves to in fandom. And prior to reading all of this meta, I would never have thought of it that way, but I think it makes perfect sense.

...I love you guys. You always have the most fantastically interesting debates! ^_^ (which provide excellent distractions when I really should be working on the three essays I have due soon...:-p)

Hee! I'm glad it's entertaining for more people than just us! It's a very useful way of working through my own thoughts on the matter, as well ...

(ETA: Have you always had a chibi Lex Luthor/Superman in that icon, and why have I never noticed it before?!)

Edited 2010-04-14 18:32 (UTC)

Well, it is for me at least (course, though I haven't been participating here, Neechan and I have, as usual, been discussing it on our own, so...nice to see follow-ups on some of our own debates...^_-)

For me, personally, no matter the type of fanning practice, I've never gotten the point of flaming or bullying. But as you've both stated above, there's always that question of where you draw the line. And I feel I'm constantly playing devil's advocate to my own points of view the more I consider the issues.

I mean, mockery and critiquing are ways that some people fan. (The show MST3K lasted for eleven seasons for a reason. It was the ridiculously awful quality of the movies in question along with the ways in which they were mocked that so many found so entertaining.) Then again, mocking a movie, or even a fic, in your own space or to other like-minded individuals can be seen as different from directly addressing the creator/author and bashing their work (unfortunately the internet makes the latter faaaar too easy these days :-p)

So on the one hand, I strongly believe "to each their own" and let anyone fan on and in whatever way the choose and not deride anyone for the choices they make. However, to really uphold that, I almost feel that to tell a person they *can't* mock or dis a certain genre or practice, whether it be h/c or slash or Mary Sues, is hypocritically limiting the ways in which others fan. In wanting to respect everyone's point of view, it comes down to letting some of the those other points of view be disrespectful...'tis indeed a conundrum! :-p

Err...also, I've spent the last few hours doing research and my brain is kinda muddled, so the above may, in fact, make no sense what-so-ever and thus feel free to disregard...^_-

(Oh, and no, the Clex pic hasn't always been part of the icon, but it has been for the past year or so...but there are a LOT of images and they go by pretty fast, so, yeah, easy to miss some ^_-)

Yeah, I think that the issue of how people with mutually incompatible fanning styles can all enjoy the same fandom is the basic problem that goes right to the heart of a lot of these fannish debates. ^^;; And add to that our (human) tendency to be clique-ish and to torment each other and to take our fanning very very personally ... the amazing thing is that any of us ever get along at all. XD My own moral attitudes lean very heavily towards a "let everyone do what they want to do" kind of morality (in a lot more areas than just fandom), but then you see what people actually do when they have that kind of freedom ... aargh, so difficult. *hides*

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

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