"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes." - Gustave Flaubert
Mary Sue gets a lot of bad press. She has since the day she was "born". Her name is a byword for rubbish fanfic. I've seen people describe the fanfic universe as "infested" by Mary Sue. Almost makes me want to write an Alien spoof with Mary Sues bursting out of canon characters stomachs.
But the thing is that Mary Sue is an excellent representation of fanfic itself. In fact, she intrinsic to it. She's the lifeblood of the thing. She is us and I feel we should all get down off our high horses and get to grips with that fact.
The thing is that fanfic is about us high jacking someone else's story so we can play with it. We want to be part of the fantasy world. We want to be the characters and the story, or to be with them in that fantasy world... or we want to fuck with their heads. This is what I love about it. We can twist canon, add to it, and make anything happen. We can interact with our culture in a very organic way and become part of it.
The term Mary Sue is used quite specifically to define a story where the author has inserted themselves as a character in a perfect form. Some people would say that this is a very wrong thing to do (bad Mary Sue writer, no biscuit). I would say that a writer who writes a flat out Mary Sue fic is at least an honest writer who knows why they write fanfic. They do it because they want to be part of the story. The rest of us want that too but we think we're above all that. We are better than the Mary Sue writers. We are smarter and have prettier noses. We have loftier aims in our fanfic. We are writing for our audience and not just for ourselves. It's not just about the fantasy. We are real writers.
The problem is that all fanfic is "Mary Sue-ish", in fact all writing is. A writer can't help but insert themselves in their story. Go back to the beginning of this post and read the Flaubert quote again. As the creator you are everything in the story. The words you choose are you. The way you break your paragraphs are you. The elements of a character that you choose to include are you. All fanfic is us inserting ourselves organically into some else's creation.
Being mean about Mary Sue is to be willfully blind to the fact of what we are and what we do. We're all fantasists in the same essential mould. To be so harsh on writers who write Mary Sue to the dictionary definition - often people who may not have imagination, talent or even the will to stretch to inserting pieces of themselves into the story in more subtle, character-driven and poetic ways but still feel the glorious need to write - is just cruel and completely anti to the inclusive spirit of fanfiction. If we don't embrace everyone and all their ideas, then our glorious sub-culture ("one of the oddest and most delightful subcultures on the Web" - http://slate.msn.com/id/80225/) becomes a hellhole of elitism where only "proper" writers who stick blindly to a very narrow canon and never experiment are allowed to join in.
I've always believed that everyone should be allowed to write fanfiction in any way they like without fear of censure. It's a fucking huge internet after all. I've debated, argued and, ultimately, left mailing lists and messageboards where the rules of "good, proper writing" became a tyranny that allowed the privileged few the ability to oppress newcomers. Talent should be nurtured, not beaten down and chased away for the sake of some people feeling powerful and better than the rest.
There's nothing wrong with literary criticism. If it's a bad fic, then it's just bad... but calling it a Mary Sue and labelling that as intrinsically bad is just not good enough.
What's so wrong with Mary Sue? I feel the answer is that she breaks the fantasy. You know, the one where we're all proper writers and not just idiotic little fans messing in someone else's playpen. If we can look down on the fangirls who feel the need to write blatant stories like this then somehow we're not like them. Which is actually a lie. We're all the same... although some of us do have prettier noses.
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Comments
And like Stretforditto said, I prefer the Mary Sue that goes on in my head. I don't ever write it down, because who else would want to read about ME in the Buffyverse? No one, I'd wager. And that's normal.