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

[sholio]

Ha, no no, not belligerent at all. :) I guess that I get frustrated sometimes by the "all fanworks are [x]" statements (or at least those that read that way to me) and if I seemed at all irritated, I was responding to that, not to any irritation at you. :)

but if I encounter a badly written profic book, I almost always quit reading it. That's not true of fanfic and I think that's because I'm getting something out of reading fanfic that I can't find in profic (and part of that has to do with selection; obviously there *are* profic works out there that emotionally resonate with me and I can and do read them and enjoy them.)

I think I am actually more likely to do the opposite. I read your post on bulletproof kinks but couldn't really answer it, because in fandom, there are few kinks that'll keep me reading through to the end - this is much less true of me in fandoms where there's a true dearth of fic, but in those cases it's less that I'm searching for a particular kink and more that I could only find 2 fics in the whole fandom about characters x and y, so I'm reading them even though the writing is terrible and they contain nothing else I would normally look for in a fic. *g*

Whereas with a profic book, if I suspect it may hit my kinks later on, I'll forge onward (or at least skim). I think some of this might have to do with labeling - in fanfic, I know up front whether I'm reading h/c or whatnot, so I know what to expect from the later part of the book. In original fic, not so much, and for me that's good because so many of my big kinks I simply can't get from fanfic because they hinge on being surprised (characters coming back from the dead, twist endings, surprising and unexpected friendships and sexual relationships).

Actually yeah, come to think of it - I never realized this before typing the above, but my bulletproof kink inasmuch as I have one, is being surprised. I really love h/c and I enjoy the id-indulgent aspects of fandom for it, but coming upon surprise!h/c in a book that I didn't know contained it is infinitely sweeter to me. Being made to believe a character is dead (or is about to die with 100% certainty) and then learning they're not is possibly one of my favorite things EVER, and one of the most emotionally satisfying experiences I can have as a reader, but it's one that I will almost never have in fanfic because we always label deathfics. (I'm not arguing against the practice, not at all! It's pseudo-death that's a kink for me anyway, not the real thing. But labeling a fic "fake character death" strips out the aspect that makes it a kink for me.)

So perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why I feel awkward in discussions of fanfic as a total id zone. It is for me in some ways, and actually, I really appreciate fandom for restoring a lot of the joy to my writing - for pointing out to me that not only is it okay to write id-ful fantasies, but that it is in no way incompatible with being a "pro" author, because a whole lot of authors turn their id-ful fantasies into books and sell them. (I think I had to see it running rampant in fanfic in order to recognize it in a ton of profic that I'd responded to without really understanding why.) And I think that I was also being much too black-and-white above, because I do really love the shared context in fandom - that I don't have to create my own world and spend a couple of books setting it up, but can go straight for the fun bits, the big emotional scenes or the little domestic scenes, and have readers who are already primed to love those characters to go "awww" along with me. That's awesome. But the actual kind of thing I'm writing in fandom isn't qualitatively different than what I'm writing out of fandom, except that it involves different sets of characters - the stories that I write in different fandoms are at least as different as the stories I write in fandom and out of fandom, so for me it's just as meaningful to draw lines between, say, my DBZ fic and my SGA fic, as between my fanfic and my profic, in terms of both its creative elements and its effect on my id.

Which of course is not to say that my way is the only right way, or that other people are wrong. :)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Ha, no no, not belligerent at all. :) I guess that I get frustrated sometimes by the "all fanworks are [x]" statements (or at least those that read that way to me) and if I seemed at all irritated, I was responding to that, not to any irritation at you. :)


Heee. Excellent. I have been so frazzled lately that I am having genuine difficulty determining when I'm being bitchy and when I'm not. Especially since when I get frazzled, bitchy tends to be my default. LOL You did not seem at all irritated. Above reproach, my dear! :)

Actually yeah, come to think of it - I never realized this before typing the above, but my bulletproof kink inasmuch as I have one, is being surprised.

This comment makes me realize that I didn't talk about *my* kinks in that post but just asked other people for theirs. Surprise is a huge one for me too, especially because so much fanfic is about repetition or reiteration of the same tropes. If a writer can take a well worn trope and subvert it, that always makes me squee. And if a writer can take a moment from canon and twist it, shed some new light on it, subvert it in some way, make me go, "OMG, THAT IS WHAT SHE WAS THINKING?" then I'm all a-flutter.

I also like to be surprised by character death and major plot points in fic, but I have the luxury of not being triggered by like anything. This is why in Ideal Lorraine Fanfic World Built For Her to Live in By Herself there would be no warnings on fic. I like to be shocked. But I also like my friends not to be psychologically damaged. So. Warnings. I really like what a lot of writers are doing now by either linking to a warnings post if people wanna know more or whiting things out in the header. That helps me.

It's pseudo-death that's a kink for me anyway

Were you spoiled for Ronon's pseudo-death? Did that hit your kink or was it too short? I believed it and I was all, "WASH!!!!!"

Which of course is not to say that my way is the only right way, or that other people are wrong. :)

Seconded. :)