For writing Tenth Walkers, for writing fourth members of the Harry Potter trio, for making Christine Chapel an Olympic-level figure skater before she entered nursing. For empowering themselves through their writing.
…
You do know that the number of Mary Sues who force their way into the main plotline by humiliating or killing off strong female characters that were already there far exceeds the number of Mary Sues who actually support the female canon characters’ agency and right to their own love interests, don’t you?
You do know that the strong female canon characters who are warped into Mary Sues in fanfiction almost always get, not just sooper speshul abilities, but physical transformations to make them more physically appealing to men?
That’s the problem with Mary Sue. Her incessant need to hog the spotlight means she tramples over characters, timelines, plots, romances, deaths, and births, just so she can exist. In doing so, she disparages some of our most beloved, and if you will, empowered female characters!
You are mistaken if you think that Mary Sue cares about female empowerment. Mary Sue only cares about empowering Mary Sue. She will wreak havoc on every existing character, and as mentioned before, her treatment of pre-existing female characters is particularly shabby. At least the canon male love interest for the Sue only gets a fanfic lobotomy. But the unfortunate female canon characters who were originally paired with the canon males…well, it’s probably best just to continue with my response, rather than think of some of the things I’ve seen done to get a strong female canon character out of the way of a Sue.
The Call of Mary Sue isn't just limited to PPC, of course, nor is the mission directive: Check out deleterius's userinfo page:
If you find your story here and are upset about it, try to relax.
There are reasons you should try to relax:
1. Throwing a tempter tantrum will only serve to amuse us further.
2. Amusing us further will cause us to sink our claws and teeth in deeper.
3. Throwing a temper tantrum will not incite me to remove your fic. So long as no LJ TOS issues are being violated, it will stay posted. Don't like it? Sucks to be you.
4. "But it's fanFICTION, I can do whatever I want!" No, you can't. Move along.
And from the linked rant, by magdaleina (in 2005, I will grant you: ancient internet history, back before we talked about why this sort of thing was even discussed, before anyone had bothered questioning whether this behavior was bullying, was harassment, was anything other than okay.).
I’m not sure why you think that people weren’t questioning us in 2005. People have been ranting against the PPC and its allies since its inception in 2001! As for the LJ comms, a Suethor whose work was featured on Marysues waaay back in 2003 very kindly (and in such a feminist way!) called the community “a world full of bitches and lesbos”. We’ve taken it all in stride, really.
However, criticizing a story and criticizing a person are two very different things. I hope you have noticed that, whatever I have said so far about Mary Sues, I have refrained from insulting anything about the Suethors except their writing. It’s PPC policy to do the same on missions.
Anyone has been welcome, at any time, to critique the PPC’s own writing style. (We would hope, of course, for it to be a well-written, funny, and entertaining piece of writing.) In fact, someone did that a long time ago. The result? We hosted that story on our own website. Yep, we sure are evil and oppressive.
What those intimidated by criticism fail to realize is that they needn't remind anyone -- specifically not a fan of a book who actually read it -- that their work is fiction (because half the time, the reviewer would rather not believe the story was ever written, much less whether it's real or not). What a reviewer is actually questioning is the merit of the writer's fandom; whether or not they are a true fan.
Instead of, "write to the best of your ability", the message is: Don't you dare write characters who are too perfect! Don't you dare write characters who are too flawed! Don't you dare make your characters too forthright or too timid, too connected to canon characters or not connected enough!
I would really like to know where it is said or implied in any of our archives that a Suethor’s character might be too flawed. But to get back to the point…Suethors can write self-inserts who are as perfect as they like. Their avatars can be as all-powerful and cool and rebellious and beautiful as the midnight stars, with no argument from us at all.
They just can’t do it with someone else’s characters.
Without wishing to speak for the entire PPC, I would sum up our message as: “If you’re going to borrow other people’s stories without permission, at least make sure the characters and plotlines are treated with respect and returned in recognizable condition.”
You’d think that wouldn’t be too hard…ah, well.
Don't you dare put any of yourself into your characters, lest you commit the crime of pepper jack cheese!
Pepper Jack Cheese, from the Godawful Fanfiction Dictionary, linked above:
Pepper Jack Cheese = Where a badfic author includes silly little details that have nothing to do with the plot, for his/her own amusement. Well known sporker Pottersues came up with the term from a Harry Potter fanfic where the author repeatedly mentioned that Hermione liked pepper jack cheese (which isn't available in the UK) just because it was the author's favourite cheese.
Every author puts some of his/herself into a character; to pretend otherwise would be foolish. But there’s a difference between putting some of yourself into a character and making a self-insertion. And if you don't know the difference between those two things, you really have no business posting an essay on Mary Sues.
And if you do, if you dare: we'll make fun of you for it, we'll mock you for it, we'll question your worth as a writer and as a person
Show me the place where we have questioned a Suethor’s worth as a human being, and I’ll show you Napoleon bungee-jumping off Mount Everest.
behind your back!
Ah, so you think we should mock their stories to their faces? Well, believe me, we’ve tried. It never ends well…for either us or them. What ends up happening is:
1. Suethor throws a temper tantrum.
2. All her friends join in. They resort to personal attacks first, not the other way around.
3. Since we don’t really care what Suethors think of us, instead of being contrite or angry, we are heartily amused. Sometimes, we’ll try to explain what we were trying to do, to no avail.
4. Inevitably, the Suethor gets even more upset that we aren’t mending our vile ways, and resorts to sockpuppetry so she may defend her shoddy writing more vocally.
5. When this doesn’t work, she will take things a step further and try to get the PPCing or sporking removed from whatever site it’s hosted on.
And that last one is the clincher, really. We never...ever…ever try to get a Suefic taken off fanfiction.net unless is it blatantly violating the Terms of Service. But Suethors will try to get our mockery removed for no reason other than that they want it gone. Since this has often worked even though we are careful not to violate posting rules, it’s enough of a hassle that we have learned to keep the mockery among those who will actually appreciate it.
(Of course, even if we offer up constructive criticism in a polite review with no mention of the PPC or mockery, 1. and 2. will usually happen anyway. Bless fandom and its huge sense of entitlement about positive feedback!)
We'll dogpile you and we'll get all of our friends to tell you you're wrong-wrong-wrong for daring to question us,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*wipes away tears of laughter*
I can see it now. “Shh, don’t question the PPC…or else!”
Boosette, the Suethors aren’t questioning us when they write their stories. Most of them don’t even know we exist—thanks to the mocking-behind-their-backs policy that you so derided, the vast majority live on in blissful ignorance that a single bad word has been said about their idealized, emerald-eyed creations.
We’re the ones questioning their writing. They’re just typing up whatever they jolly well feel like no matter how terrible it is, posting it in a public place for all to see, demanding feedback for this very poor fanfiction, and then complaining if the feedback is negative.
to defend yourself, and if we're feeling really ambitious we'll make you cry and then laugh about it!
And yeah, this bears a remarkable resemblance to the bullying a goodly number of us experienced as geeky misfits, growing up.
Geeky misfits. Again, an epithet most members of the PPC would proudly say applied to them—much more than the Suethors, in this case, because geeks are actually familiar with and have a respect for the source material(s) that they claim to be fans of.
This is the environment of Mary Sue. This is the context and the history, today, of Mary Sue.
That is your history of Mary Sue. Here’s my preferred version, from PotCverse:
Once upon a time, there was a movie. It was fun, witty, and thoroughly enjoyable. Many people loved this movie, for various reasons. Some loved it for the scathing one-liners, some for the fact that it was a pirate movie, and some loved it for its technical aspects, such as costumes and sea battles, and whatnot.
And there were those who loved this movie for two (and sometimes three) reasons. These reasons had nothing to do with the movie, not really. They mainly had to do with how H0TT!!!1! the three male leads were. Now, these reasons, while decent reasons when compiled with others, were very shallow on their own. But many ignored this fact, and focused on the hormone induced lusting of t3h h0ttn355 of the leads.
Some lusted after these men in the quiet of their own minds, and it was good. Everyone has fantasies, after all. But there were others who decided they absolutely HAD to share these idle daydreams with the rest of the world. So, they wrote down these fantasies, and posted them on a notorious website known as fanfiction.net.
In all fairness, there were some fantasies that were very well done. They were cohesive, and enriched the original plot of the movie. And the fans who read these stories were very, very happy. And then there were other fantasies. These stories were crude, poorly crafted, and irritating. And the fans wept with rage and sadness, seeing their beloved movie being turned into a playground for pubescent teenagers.
The fans watched as the main character of the movie fell in love again and again with a girl named Mary Sue. Mary Sue came in many shapes and sizes, but it was she the entire time. Each time Mary Sue made someone fall in love with her, something was lost. A little bit of the magic that made everyone adore this movie died. The more Mary Sue appeared, the more the magic died. Pretty soon, the universe the movie took place in was unrecognizable. And the true fans wept.
Moral of the story? Your Mary Sue kills canon.
So to abandon for a moment my quasi-professional tone:
Your tone was quasi-professional?
If you think that you can use "Mary Sue" as a value-neutral term in this environment, and with this history, you are contributing to the environment which approves and encourages the bullying and harassment of women for the sin of daring -- daring! -- to write characters in such a way that is empowering to them.
Mary Sue is not defined in any dictionary as “empowered/strong female character.” Mary Sue is only a fantasy of what her author wants to be, and all too often what the author thinks men want her to be. In fanfiction in particular, this involves:
-An obscene emphasis on a pre-determined model of beauty.
-The idea that romantic love is superior to all other relationships.
-The obligatory male-rescues-female-from-rape-and-she-falls-for-him scenes that populate at least half of her stories. (Or worse, the obligatory male-rapes-female-and-she-falls-for-him stories! Bleaugh.)
-The cheap way her author portrays sensitive issues like abuse, abandonment, and prostitution—as simply devices to get a quick pity-fix for her heroine.
-A penchant for manufacturing misogyny in an otherwise egalitarian universe in order to “prove” that she is good or better than men.
-A disturbingly high tolerance for controlling, tyrannical love interests as long as they are hawt.
None of these things has anything to do with real empowerment. But all of them have to do with the fundamental selfishness that defines Mary Sue—the fundamental idea that she is better than everyone, that only she can be better than everyone, that the whole rest of the world had better stand back in awe at her awesomeness…and most of all, that anyone in the story who doesn’t respect her will fear her. Because if they don’t, they will suffer the author’s, I mean her, swift and terrible retribution.
Writing "Mary Sues" is empowering. Writing them being awesome is empowering. Calling Mary Sue, and contributing to an environment such as the above, which encourages the denigration of female awesomeness in fiction,
As a GAFFer once said...Mary Sue is not a hero. She usually doesn't have one single thing going for her that makes me respect and adore her, the way that the author OBVIOUSLY expects me to do. I don't find these supposedly perfect people who get all good things without so much as struggling for it interesting. I never got anything for free, why should they?
A reward, or a victory, is so much sweeter when you've fought for it - I know this from my own, personal experience - and THAT'S the sort of feel-good entertainment that I want! I want to see the long struggle. I want to be inside the character's head as he's overcoming all his difficulties... at the end of the book, I want to cry with happiness. I want to feel that all that hard work, all that suffering and struggling, PAID OFF!
Mary-Sue has too easy a time - as much as I might LIKE to identify with her, I can't. I want my heroes to EARN their feel-good, like I've done, because that's an INFINITELY greater feeling than just getting everything for free... like Mary Sue does.
which encourages the bullying and harassment of participants in female awesome, is participating in that culture.
Calling "Mary Sue" in this environment is shaming women for empowering themselves.
Then our environments are very different. Calling “Mary Sue” in the PPC is telling a flat, unrealistic, stereotypical character exactly what she is, so that a three-dimensional character (the Agent)—who is usually female herself, I might add—can get rid of Mary Sue and her canon-warping ways and enjoy a good fandom in peace.
Maybe you should come over to our environment. It’s climate-controlled and story-centric.