#could make a whole essay on why this irritates me on a fundamental level but for now i will simply bitch <3

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm kind of torn on the Mary Sue issue. On one hand, I don't care what anyone writes for their own amusement, but writing is still an art that does and should have standards for professionals. As someone who has degrees in writing and does it as a profession, it's a little insulting to be told that the work your poured tons of research and time into is on the same level as amateur self-insert fic. That's why I advocate for different standards for fandom vs pro work.

I feel you, anon. and I have a lot of respect for people like you who got degrees and write professionally, because words are held rather cheap with the internet being around and anyone who can get paid to write words impresses me to some degree. but:

 I’ve always felt like comparing fanfic and original fiction to be not exactly congruous? and 

I think Mary Sue suffers from maligning because she’s disproportionately evoked by the youngest/least experienced of writers.

this got … pretty long … so i’m dividing it up a little for ease.

the concept of ‘standards’

first of all, I also advocate for different standards between published/professional/marketed works and fan works, but I do so because of 1)potential spread and 2)they aren’t accomplishing the same thing.

In general, a fanwork will have limited appeal outside of the fans of the canon the work is based in; they cannot stand on their own without some additional effort. Further, fandom has its own language to some degree or another, and fanworks are frequently best understood in the context of other fanworks, like scientific papers citing other scientific papers in passing because the audience is expected to be other scientists in the field who have read it. In other words: the audience is probably fairly niche and in on the ‘lingo’. its potential damage circle is therefore relatively small. if somebody fucks up their research for a fic, it’s nbd, for instance.

On the other hand, an original work with a professional marketing team will certainly reach a much more diverse audience and probably a much larger one. It’s therefore responsible, imo, to be proportionately aware of the potential impact of the subject material and approach it accordingly (though true fiction will always have an unpredictable effect on any given individual, so there’s only so much the creator can do). I’d expect accuracy where research was done, if for no other reason than to avoid spreading false information to such a big potential audience.

and of course I’d hope that if somebody is being paid to write, their grammar/prose/proofreading will meet a certain standard of readability. (the same cannot be expected of free works done for fun that take a few minutes to post on the internet.)

having said that: standards for quality fiction writing will always be subjective. I’m always going to have questions about why The Sound and the Fury is an American classic (I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I tried).  What gets published can be as simple as having good luck with the slush pile reader that day. I’ve seen fanfiction complimented with incredible research: there’s a Tokyo Babylon work-in-progress with an author who has traveled to fic-relevant locales to nail story and character details. I feel the line is blurring these days, especially because there are people who make a living off writing commissioned fanfiction now (too small-scale to be an IP concern, of course).

I think the fundamental difference between fanworks and original works is not quality of the work itself or effort expended.  It’s related to structure and aim. 

Fanworks, even AU fanworks, are like interior decoration. A 'good fanwork’, even an AU fanwork, works within a pre-built framework to elaborate on or add to or evoke what drew its audience to the framework in the first place. 

Original works build a whole new house, creating a new framework from bare construction materials to draw in and house the emotions of its readers. (and then maybe its readers decorate the house with their own fanfic.)

tl;dr: if an AU fanfic was so different from canon and the characters were so OOC that the author can shave the serial numbers off and repurpose it as an original story, it might be a great original work. But it wasn’t a very good fanfic, was it?

why is mary sue so offensive to us?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the post Mary Sue, What Are You?, but what I keep coming back to is its iconic opening. the author describes an OC at length: orphaned as a child when her parents were killed in front of her, she decided she would dedicate her life to fighting for justice. She grew up to be rich, athletic, beautiful, sexy, angsty, a genius, undefeatable in a battle of wits and agility, and everyone who meets her is instantly lovestruck. In other words, a classic Mary Sue …

but also Batman with female pronouns.

I think one could argue that Batman is not always well-written, but the relevant point here is that Batman - and Mary Sue - might be 99.9% perfection in the shape of a human around whom the universe revolves, but if its their own canon and the universe doesn’t recognize their perfection the way the reader/writer does, it’s not really 'bad’. (And there’s something to be said about why giving this power fantasy male pronouns seems to render it so much more palatable than female pronouns, but for more on that I point you to the referenced essay.)

Your ask is worded to suggest that Mary Sue is synonymous with unprofessional writing. I … kind of agree? Mary Sue is frequently the main character of Baby’s First Fanfic, and let’s be real: Baby’s First Fanfic is often being written by somebody who might be as young (or younger than) 12-13 years old, with all the inexperience, grammar mistakes, and lack of training that suggests. and as far as characterization goes, I think that anyone who takes decent writing classes will be discouraged from writing a Mary Sue. But like Batman, Mary Sue can be a perfect princess and get away with it under certain circumstances.

I posit that Mary Sue characters (or Gary Stus) - whom I will call Flawless OCs from here - are not really a problem on their own. Further, Flawless OC is more agregious in fanfic than original works. Because what makes the Flawless OC so irritating isn’t their perfection, really: it’s what the character’s presence must do to the universe (which is, in the case of fanfic, the universe the reader came to experience in the first place) that’s the real problem.

To show what a good fighter Flawless OC is, they defeat the best canon fighter.

Flawless OC has a backstory more tragic and painful than the most tragic canon backstory, and they cope with the trauma of it better.

There’s no room for Flawless OC because canon wasn’t holding a spot open for a self-insert, so now there’s a 6th Lion or a 10th Fellowship member or a Second Child Who Survived Voldemort.

The entire universe bends to ensure Flawless OC has perfect luck; their enemies are helpless before them. Everything seems to go their way except in the chapter where the their love interest is supposed to rescue them from danger. (the rescue goes flawlessly, of course.)

Depending on the author wish that Flawless OC is meant to fulfill, Flawless OC will defeat any undefeatable enemy, solve the unsolveable problem, be the envy or lust object of any character, etc etc, often without regard for the original context of the enemy/problem or the canon personality of the character.

In short, Flawless OC usually have two major issues: 

they render canon irrelevant to glorify Flawless OC, and 

the universe constantly validates their choices to a degree that wrecks narrative suspense. 

what makes each of these things 'bad writing’ is different.

The first problem I mentioned - warping of mythos, plot, and characters to accomodate the Flawless OC - is a fanfic problem.  Canon-warping absolutely allowed, but what makes it fanfic - the canon source that acts as our shared experience and usually our main reason for being a potential audience to the fic - is almost always nigh-unrecognizable. That makes for bad fanfiction, but it doesn’t always make for bad fiction. Change all the parts of canon enough and you’ve arguably got an original work. It might even be a good original work if the author has writing skill.

The second problem - the validation of the universe - is what makes Flawless OC a dull read in any context. If Flawless OC wants something, you know they’ll get it. If Flawless OC hates someone, you know they’re going to catch hell. If Flawless OC needs to be vulnerable for their love interest, something just bad enough to make them vulnerable will befall them. The perfection of the OC is less of an issue than the lack of meaningful conflict. (A character can have no faults and still be interesting to follow if they must struggle against a universe that doesn’t care.)

to wit:

there’s a fantasy book by David and Leigh Eddings - The Redemption of Althalus - that I read long ago. it stuck with me to a peculiar degree because for a book with such a unique conceit, it was incredibly boring. This is published fiction: it had editors, a marketing team, and was written by professionals with lots of experience! But looking back, none of this saved the story from featuring Gary Stu in a universe that catered to his every need.

The main character, Althalus, is ostensibly a person in need of redemption for being such a bad person all his life and never punished for it, but he’s a loveable, quick-witted rogue almost from the start. To 'redeem’ himself, he’s tasked with saving the world from Enemies (we’re told they’re evil, but I don’t think we see them more than once or twice).  Protected by the Goddess of Luck - literally - for the entire novel, there’s never a single moment where Althalus’ victory over the Enemy is in question. He never does anything really awful that would explain his need to be redeemed (in fact, it turns out the Luck Goddess is the one who protected him from punishment all his life). The enemy is weak, forgettable, and constantly outwitted, and the protagonists, supposedly people of gray morality, never did anything worse than be snarky.

The unique conceit that kept me reading was the House at the End of the World. Being the home of the Goddess, it had doors that opened to anywhere on the planet. but for an idea with such double-edged possibilities, it turned out to be an impregnable fortress of Good. The House and its owner were the forces that bent the whole book’s universe to the inevitable triumph of the main character and his companions.

A counter-example might be Miraculous Ladybug. I’ve often wondered if Mary Sue could be written well and be likeable, and Marinette - the titular Ladybug - is probably close. She’s good at almost everything and always outwits her enemies; even when she seems confident to the point of arrogance, it’s justified by her endless successes. (Her only real flaw is being clumsy when she’s distracted, and it only happens when it’s conveniently cute. this is a walking Mary Sue cliche.) Her power is to be lucky, after all.  

However: even though everything ends up right for Marinette at the end of every episode, she’s not rewarded when she acts poorly towards others. She causes herself problems when she does. Her luck powers give her the ability to bend the universe a little, but the universe is otherwise unforgiving; she’s subjected to the same banalities as everyone else and learns to be a better person along the way.

OTOH if you put Ladybug in another canon with a makeover to recast her as Flawless OC, changing everything so she could occupy a central role like the one she has in her own series, she’d be insufferable: hence Ladybug is a solid example of how a Mary Sue can prosper provided she’s in a universe designed to both feature her and contain her powers for the sake of Good.

I apologize for how long a reply this is. Still: I hope it successfully illustrates for you that:

though original writing and fanfic writing use the same tool (words), and both can use them masterfully, what original writers like you do and what fic writers do are, in general, very different things.

And Mary Sue is what you make of her. In the right universe, she’s just a very lucky person. :)

[academic195xb-blog]

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