I think the author of the essay must've been someone whose friend got PPC'ed or Sue-shamed somehow. Mary Sues aren't female empowerment characters -- often they act shallow and vapid and replace strong female characters.

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said. All I can say is this: I've written rants when someone gave me hard crit. Long-winded rants, sometimes. This piece of pseudo-academia, though, takes the cake. It's giving a mature mask to an otherwise immature reaction. Mary Sues are unacceptable. In fact, sometimes the Sues are bullies in their own right.

I only wish I'd discovered the PPC boards sooner, so I could have given my two cents in the heat of this battle. Right now, I have to settle for comfortably smouldering.

...by being caught up in real life concerns. Silly me.

I found out about all this brouhaha today by reading a post on Geek Feminism that was much more concise and in the same vein as Mary Sue sporking = misogyny, bullying, and marginalization of women writers.

It's the last part that really bugs me. There is marginalization of women writers -- it is real, and needs to be addressed. Honest criticism of bad writing =/= not being able to get published in fantasy or sci-fi unless you take a male name (CJ Cherryh is who I'm referencing specifically). Female writers are still marginalized, especially in 'genre' writing.

But no, instead of addressing problems in the book-publishing industry, let's say that sporking is the real problem here.

Give me a break.

You know, I'm a feminist, and proud of it...I understand -- I really do -- that there is misogyny and abuse in telling people to grow a thicker skin when they're dealing with real marginalization. I deal with it every day. If I can't get published because I'm a woman and you tell me to grow a thicker skin, that is misogynistic. Telling me my writing is what's preventing me from getting published because my characters are unbelievable, or my setting sucks, or my dialogue isn't connected well enough (which is a real problem in my writing that I've been working on), is not misogyny. It is criticism.

(Now, if you specifically said my characters were unbelievable because most of them are women and strong and defy traditional gender roles, then yeah -- sexism right there. But that's not the same as saying "This passage is awkward, and your MFC seems a bit OOC." Not at all.)

Also, what I find very interesting is that it seems okay to criticize bad writers if they're male, or have a male OC that warps the canon. How is it feminist to want to give women special treatment because they can't handle criticism?

There are not enough headdesks in the WORLD for this.

I'm so riled up I wrote 15 pages worth of essay last night at work. Here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc42qtdb_2c4rnmrc6

*breathes in*

*breathes out*

Right. So. This discussion seems to be approaching a point at which it will no longer be productive for anyone. That means it's time to take a step back and attempt to regain some objectivity.

Let's be clear about a couple of things:

1. Boosette and her friends don't like the way we do things. That's okay--they have that right. Yes, even if they don't precisely understand our point of view.

2. We don't agree with the majority of what she said about us, or how she said it. That's okay, too.

To sum up, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Right? Right.

Now then. I think most of us would be fairly happy to quietly go back to business as usual, without further unpleasantness, but if we want to continue a dialogue with our fellow human beings, we're going to have to cool our heads and come up with an actual line of communication, 'cause what's happening right now doesn't count--it's more akin to shouting at each other from either side of a ravine. We've done the whole "circle the wagons" thing; to switch metaphors, we've also run up the colors and fired a warning shot across the bows. Now it's time for parley, if they'll have it, or surrender if not. Because this isn't war, and we don't want war. We just want to get the facts straight.

However that may be, let's be clear about one more thing for ourselves: we've received a critique, and we of all people ought to respect that. We may not agree with all of it, we may not like the form it's taken, but hey, we can take it, right? And some important issues in our community have come to light because of it. I believe those issues deserve their own thread, up at the top where everyone will see it, so I'm going to start one tomorrow, after I've slept and had some time to compose my thoughts some more. Keep an eye out for it.

In the meantime, don't anybody say anything, here or anywhere else, without thinking it through first, all right? Let's not let this get out of hand.

~Neshomeh, moderating.

So, since this is a wide-open public forum, well known organization, and very well known by some of the people with boosette, and because I (and probably other people) told them, they eventually got around to answering this thread/Araeph's response. Bear in mind that the following is a quote from the person who directed me to this 'Board about five years ago, and the person who is responsible for me actually writing like a coherent adult, and not (A/N: LOLZ lyk dis!!!) anymore. It's not some ignorant, just-stepped-into-fanfic kid who's got her feathers ruffled.

"We don't need to do a rebuttal to their argument. We've already won. The vast majority of fandom agrees with us, and is sick of being shamed and harassed for what they write. The PPC can think they're right and correct and the good guys all they like; we really don't care, because we (despite their protestations) aren't bullying people weaker than us, and they are."

This, though, is the community's response. Or as much as we're going to get.

Personally, I dislike much of this thread here, especially the part where people go "Oh, but we don't target canons, so she didn't do the research!" If I had any real interest, I'd go back and find all the times people have labeled a character Canon Sue/Stu. I've had entire debates on whether Tamora Pierce's characters (most of them, not all) fit the bill. No, we don't target canons in missions, but there are plenty of people who have asked to, over the years. I will say that we do target both male and female targets, so I'm not certain about the "anti-feminist!" thing. That's a bit out of line.

But their points about being unnecessarily harsh and cruel struck a chord with me. I got a bit upset when I realized that nobody really seems to bother giving authors concrit anymore, if they want to just eviscerate the story. That bothers me. If our interests are in trying to improve fandom, shouldn't we try to help people improve? I know most of the people on here started out writing utter shit, I sure as hell did, and would we have improved if no one had ever bothered pointing out-- nicely or mockingly-- our flaws, and how to fix them?

More to the point, we can go on and on and on about how Sues really are horrible horrible horrible things, and personally I'm not a fan of OOC or bad syntax, but in the Constitution itself, it says

"17. Mary Sues are generally despised and though most of the Regulars will (probably) treat you with respect if you like them, this Board is not the best place for you.

18. If you hate Lord of the Rings, this Board is definitely NOT the place for you. You’ll find pretty much everyone here in disagreement with you."

Mary Sues are GENERALLY DESPISED. Not The Evil That Stalks Us All In Everything. Just... we don't like them. Okay. But it also says no flaming, and that Regulars should treat their fans with respect (at least, all the other parts of the Constitution lean that way on top of it).

But there's also a rule against flaming, and against abuse, and I have seriously been somewhat freaked out by the number of people around here who seem to quietly applaud trolling and flaming. That's not helpful. Part of my problem with Boosette's rant was that she seemed to lump us, a bunch of people who I've always kind of thought of as fairly easygoing, definitely capable of holding a decent conversation with a badfic author if they made an effort (which has been done in the past, I think), or a debate on Sues, an intelligent debate, in with the people who post reviews like "Your character is a Sue and you should die in a fire for writing her." That... that's not what the PPC is supposed to be about.

It says so in the original series. "I don't like that these stories can make me a common flamer." (Jay, Children of the Earth.)

So yeah. I don't think the PPC is a herd of evil bloodthirsty wolves and bullies, but I think we walk a fine line sometimes, and it's a good idea to keep it in check.

It seems as though the only way someone can be this blinded to the harms of Mary Sues is if one of her or her friend's characters has been taken down. Do we know if any of her stories has been the subject of a mission? If so, was it a particularly violent assassination? That would most likely create a feeling of dislike, especially if she had connected to the Sue, though this seems like it is rather out of proportion. A Sue team, perhaps?

I'm going to agree with everyone who said that Boosette has a misconception of misogyny, Mary Sues, female empowerment, and the PPC. She probably didn't look into these things much further than the basic definitions. She does have a point about bullying the Suethors, though. The PPC does have to make sure that we don't start insulting the Suethor in that sort of way. That problem isn't very common, though, so there wasn't much of a reason for Boosette to bring it up as if it were a plague. I also don't like that she neglected to mention that the PPC pretty much fits the same age group as fanfiction authors. And that many of us are female. And that there are male Suethors, too.
What really ticked me off is the fact that she seemed to imply that the PPC hates characters like Keladry of Mindelan. Keladry is my favorite character! I even like Daine, the true canon Sue of the Tortall books. (Watch out for cursing from this point on.) She's basically calling me a misogynistic, cold hearted, bullying bitch for disliking bad fanfiction, which isn't too far from the truth, except for the misogynistic and bullying parts. Still...
I'm not sure why Boosette went off and wrote this essay/rant. I mean, I'm pretty sure she's the same Boosette from the Goldenlake forum. That Boosette is highly opinionated, yes, but she hasn't gone off in an essay-long, meandering rant on that forum. She didn't even rail me for being a PPC agent when I blatantly made it known there from the very beginning. I sure hope she doesn't try to glean support from the Goldenlake community, though. People already think I'm insane there, and this wouldn't make matters better. I'm trying to make the PPC look positive to the Tortall fans, not negative.
Anyway, this was a very interesting essay. Thanks for linking it.

...who regularly flames Mary Sues, I'm guessing I'm the one she imagines when she talks about the PPC. All of her points seem fairly invalid when she starts by equating Mary Sues with all strong female characters. Because that's just wrong. There's nothing feminist about bad writing, even if it is glorifying women. Mary Sue isn't applied to strong women, just badly written strong women who aren't part of a regular continuity. I write strong female characters all the time. Hell, I love strong women. That's why this pisses me off so much.

I just wanted to ask:
Wasn't "Mary Sue" ALWAYS a negative term? I mean, we get the phrase from the famous Star Trek fanfic that MOCKED that kind of character. When was it ever neutral?

There's this OFC I like. She's friends with the best con man in the world even though she's married to the FBI agent who sent him to prison. She's stubborn and emotional and sharp as a whip, and even though she could do anything in the world she has a job where she makes things pretty because she loves it. Sometimes she gets hysterical and her husband leaves his job to come home and fix the things that are making her hysterical. And she once had her office torn apart by the bad guys! And then her straight-laced husband PUNCHED THE BAD GUY IN THE FACE and it was awesome and he got suspended for it. Also she's gorgeous and she's shaped kindof like me, ie: round. Which might have something to do with her actress being pregnant, but a girl can wallow in vicariously sized awesome for as long as it's available, right?

Her name is Elizabeth Burke. She's the best thing about White Collar.

There's this OFC I like. She's kindof inappropriately in love with her boss and doesn't really know what to do about it, and doesn't know that she can do anything about it.

Um, about right here is where you should have read up on your definitions of Mary Sue.

She's also the best damned helmswoman in the galaxy (otherwise she wouldn't be piloting the flagship space-vehicle), and when her captain is stupid and gets himself roofied and kidnapped and almost turned out to pasture as a stud, as it were, she takes a team down to the planet and BLOWS THE TOP OFF THE MOUNTAIN where the bad guys are keeping him. And when that appears to not work, she takes a small team inside the mountain (well: this doesn't work either,

Here would be good, too.

since all they guys on the team get left back at home, and it's just her and this other chick, and you can see where this is going, right?). So the bad guys try to make her captain choose a mate from the available females! And they tell him all about her private fantasies about him! And even though she's pretty MORTIFIED ABOUT IT,

Oh, definitely here. Mary Sues and mortification do not go hand in hand.

she helps take one of the bad guys hostage so they can escape! But then when the bad guys are twirling their collective mustaches and talking about breeding a race of artisans and stuff, she OVERLOADS HER SIDEARM TO KILL EVERYONE THERE rather than let her descendants live as genetically engineered slaves. Word of God has that she's the most beautiful, smartest, capable person on her planet for the year she was born, and that she was designed to be that way. She has lots and lots of Issues and an interpersonal inferiority complex because of this.


Her name is Number One. She's from the Star Trek Pilot film The Cage and unless you've been living under a rock these past six months you know she is my FAVORITE thing about the Star Trek franchise.


There's this OFC I like. She really wanted to be a knight all her life, and she was raised in Japanalogue so she's not good at expressing her feelings, and her parents are TOTALLY BEHIND HER in becoming a knight. But the training master isn't! He doesn't believe women SHOULD be knights cause they're weak and hysterical and easily frightened! So she works REALLY HARD and makes friends and lives with people who don't like her and has a dog and birds even though pages aren't allowed to have pets. The training master even loves her dog! And she has a secret rich benefactor who equips her with the best weaponry EVER and turns out to be her childhood hero - the only other female knight in the land! And she gets crushes on all her BFFs (okay well, just the one BFF and then the BFF's cousin) and then then the commander of this really awesome division of elite soldiers PICKS HER AS HIS SQUIRE. He is hilarious and snarky and like a grown up version of Our Heroine and that's awesome. On her first mission with him she adopts a baby griffin and it's pretty much a disaster until its parents show up and DON'T ACTUALLY KILL her even though griffins always kill anyone who touches their babies! And then when she finally gets her shield, she gets handed the command of a refugee camp! But it's okay because her old training master, the one who didn't believe in her? HE'S CHANGED HIS MIND. She's the only one he TRUSTS enough for the job! Nobody else would be able to do it RIGHT! And at the end after lots of action and kidnappings and questing to slay the bad guy, she comes home and she's not hanged as a traitor even though she committed treason by disobeying a direct order from her liege during wartime!

Her name is Keladry of Mindelan, from Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small, and I LOVE HER LOTS.

Oh, I love Keladry of Mindelan to the ends of the earth. She’s one wonderful character, not least because she worked her ass off every waking moment to achieve all that she did and had a crippling fear of heights that almost prevented her from rising to knighthood. She’s a much better character than SuperSue Veralidaine Sarrasri.
Hmm, something in common. At least we’re off to a good start!

*


Gene Roddenberry married Number One's actress. Tamora Pierce is on-record as having said that Kel is her favorite character to write.

You can see where I'm going with this.

Yes, and good old trodden ground it is, too: the unfortunate misconception that because we don’t share your opinion that Mary Sues are awesome and cool characters, that we automatically MUST dislike all female characters who actually ARE awesome and cool!

Writing these women as they appear in canon would constitute writing them as "Mary Sues" -- They're special. They're competent, they're attractive, they have weaknesses and insecurities

It baffles me why anyone would post a long rant in support of Mary Sues without knowing exactly what a Mary Sue is.

and by virtue of being protagonists and first-string supporting characters, they warp plots and universes and other characters to their needs.

You can only “warp” a story to your needs if it didn’t revolve around you in the first place. A world revolving around a main character is only a problem if the story is fanfic and a Sue has replaced a canon character as the protagonist.

Elizabeth is Peter Burke's greatest weakness; Kel talks to the king and gets him to rescind a law she doesn't like; Number One is executive officer of the Federation Starfleet flagship despite being only a lieutenant and is "the most experienced officer on the ship," second to Pike himself, to boot.

These characters are awesome. No really, look at these characters: how awesome are they?

I’m not familiar with the other two characters, but they sound a helluva lot better than Marty Stu Eragon or what’s-his-face from Twilight.

*

Once upon a time, the term "Mary Sue" was a value-neutral genre descriptor:

Hah!

Original (female, let's be real here)

Yes, denying Marty Stu’s existence is always a good idea.

characters who entered the story, won the admiration of all the canon characters around her, who won the day and maybe developed a romantic relationship with one or more of said canon characters (usually the author's favorite).

Pat Pflieger writes her paper, 150 Years of Mary Sue:
The Cinderella portrayed by Drew Barrymore in the movie Ever After, especially, is everything that defines the Mary Sue -- intelligent, funny, beautiful, physically strong, competent, lovable -- but there isn't the hint of self-deprecation we see in some of the Mary Sues cited above. From Schumann's paper, we get a sense that young teenaged girls now aren't as willing to abdicate their natural powers as were girls of previous generations; it's their right to be competent and strong, and to carry off the occasional prince over their shoulders.

The term was coined in 1974. It is not the value-neutral term it once was, and you only have to look so far as Protectors of the Plot Continuum (PPC) to see this for yourself. Or Godawful Fanfiction. Or marysues, or deleterius, or ...

Let's look at PPC. The website intro reads:

But changing the *main plotline* of the canon story is ridiculous. (Except in speculative AU "what-if" type stories.) And Mary Sues upstage the canonical main characters, which really should not happen. If you want to be the main character, try doing original fiction. Then you can even publish it without breaking copyright laws, maybe even get rich. But if you do that, please knock your character down a few notches from "angel".

*grins* Jay and Acacia. Gotta love ’em.

The Fanlore description of PPC reads:

Protectors of the Plot Continuum, often abreviated PPC, is a cross between sporking and an RPG. The PPC is an organisation dedicated to the elimination of badfic. It is divided into various departments such as the Department of Mary Sues and the Department of Bad Slash. Writers create characters called Agents who go into badfic, spork the story, and fix it by killing Mary Sues, exorcising OOC characters, and otherwise restoring the story universe back to its original state.

Translated, roughly:

If by “roughly” you mean “like Babelfish on 40 proof,” then yes, your explanation of what the PPC does is indeed a translation.

PPC goes around bullying tweens, teens, young women and yes: older women, too –

You could have just said “PPC goes around bullying people who write Sues”; the fact that you didn’t, coupled with your choice to list “tweens” first, suggests that you are making age a factor in your “bully” argument.

Funnily enough, “Tweens, teens, young women, and yes: older women, too—” is exactly how I would describe the members of the PPC themselves. We have some younger members, and some older members; almost all of us are young women. When we started out, the average age of a PPCer was a whopping sixteen years old. It has since gone up to *gasp* twenty and a half. We’re almost old enough to drink, we are!

For the most part, Suethors actually share our gender and age bracket. So, there is no need to bring up the youth of Suethors in your argument. (There is no need to bring up their gender, either, but I will address that part momentarily.)

for daring to write fanfiction not up to their (dubious) standards.

Hoo boy, there’s a lot of ground to cover with that one phrase.

Let’s start with:

1. Please explain to me how writers are “daring” anything when creating a fanfic Mary Sue. Yes, PPC and GAFF and the like make fun of Mary Sues, but if you look at any major fandom—LotR, HP, PotC, Star Trek—and calculate the ratio of Mary Sue authors to Mary Sue mockers…I’m afraid we are badly, badly, outnumbered. In fact, having one’s Suefic mocked by the PPC is akin to being struck by lightning in its rarity. Heck, if you want to write what everyone else in fandom is writing, get lots of reviews from like-minded writers, and have fellow writers come to your defense for any criticism whatsoever of your beloved fic, Mary Sue is the way to go! She’s not defying convention. She IS the convention.

2. We set the standards for good and bad fanfiction? We did no such thing.
The original story, the canon, set all those standards far better than we ever could. All we do is remind fans what those standards are.
And yes, writing fanfic that’s as good as canon is still a bar most fans can’t hope to reach. But you see, Boosette, the PPC doesn’t look for fic to mock near the bar. It looks past the bar beneath that bar, and the bar under that, and finally peels back the mat underneath the lowest bar and boggles at the grime found underneath. The stories by supposed fans who seem to have forgotten that the high bar even exists.

3. Please explain to me which of our standards you find to be dubious, and why.

For writing original female characters, minor canon characters and major canon characters in a manner that is empowering to them.

Again, we seem to have so much in common! We too write original female canon characters, minor canon characters, and major canon characters is a manner that is empowering to us. But unlike the Suethors, we understand that just giving a character heaps and heaps of power for no reason isn’t empowering. Neither is stomping all over the personality of a well-developed canon character just to puff up Sue’s ego. It doesn’t make the Mary Sue better, or as special as the author thinks she is. After all, any author can rain a golden shower of gifts on a pet character; why does that make the character great?

What is empowering is allowing a character to earn power for herself by virtue of the conflicts that arise in a story. Even having a character try to earn power and fail honorably is more empowering than just imbuing a character with incredible abilities and watching her take out ridiculously enervated villains.

Ultimately, Mary Sue is bowling-with-bumpers safe as a way to experience a story. She is unrealistically beautiful, inhumanly powerful, and always gets rewarded for everything she does with only the barest of struggles. She can’t fail. She can’t get humiliated. The story itself will dutifully remove all real obstacles from her shining path. And a character who needs her author to do all that work for her is not a character who has any sort of power. On the contrary, that character is weak.

Something posted at the site where this essay was published, and containing all the counterpoints that had already been posted there (Mary-Sues conform to patriachal ideals more often than not, majority of PPCers are female and empowered, words are taken out of context).

Maybe I'll get lynched for this someday, but I am really, really sick of seeing 'femenine empowerment' and - worst of all - "equality" as a word being thrown around to justify whatever the speaker/author happens to be angry about. I'm sick of it. Whether we use the actual term or not, no one can deny that Mary Sue characters are downright terrible examples of writing, and we can make fun of it if we like - just as talk show hosts or parody movie makers or whomever else in the published/public world can make fun of things. Yes, I think this woman has a point when she says that the term is being applied to broadly, but that doesn't mean it can't be used at all. I've lost count of how many times people misuse words like "dumb", "irony", or _ - that doesn't mean the rest of us can't go on using them properly.

... Wow. I believe that qualifies as a rant. First in a while.

Anyway, in a slightly calmer but more disjointed fasion:

She's making too many connections that aren't there. People tend to be cruel in their critque of Mary Sues - a lot of people tend to be cruel in their critique of real life people - like politicians - as well. That doesn't mean that whomever is shouting that Bush is an idiot is empowered just because she's a woman, or that she is in any way less entitled to her opinion just because a Bush supporter (male or female) shouts her down.

Also, this writer talks about context and fails to acknowledge that characters like Number One are great IN CONTEXT, but shoved rudely into another character's place (say, Captain Janeway), she'd be just as bad. Characters are good in the stories they are written for, and stories don't have room for an endless number of Great Characters.

Last, I agree with Artell - no one is making them post their work in public.


(I'm in a rush - again - so this is all rough. I'll phrase myself better later.)

It sounds like a kneejerk reaction to me, and an ill-thought-out one at that. There's a definite suggestion that women writing is good, and I'm down with that, but it's coupled with an assumption that just because someone can pick up a pen and form squiggles, they should proudly display said squiggles to the world.

Having the freedom to write is a good thing. But I strongly object to the idea that writing of poor quality in a public place is "empowering", and that to comment on the quality is "bullying".

It seems to me that to call writing of any quality empowering simply because a woman is able to produce it in fact serves to demean women. It's patronising. Writing should be applauded, where warranted, for its own sake, not because its author has the fortune to live in a society granting (almost) all individuals the requisite education and freedom to put pen to paper. Female authors should be held to the same standards as male authors: they should be judged on the quality of their writing. I would mock a story written by a boy, a black person, a gay person, a disabled person, a French person, someone of any given group you care to name, if their writing was of poor quality, not because of who they are, but because it is poor quality. Hiding behind centuries of oppression is not a valid answer to storytelling skills in need of improvement.

Maybe all of you lot in the DMS do things differently, I don't know. But I was under the impression the PPC's raison d'etre is to spork bad writing, whether it features Sues or not. The writer of the essay doesn't seem to have realised that. Perhaps we're giving the wrong impression somewhere. Perhaps she didn't do the research. Who knows?

It's funny to me that the author of this essay thinks PPC missions are intended as attacks against the Suethors. Most of the mission writers I know of don't even contact the original Suethor to begin with. The essay says writing badfic doesn't hurt anyone; well, neither do PPC missions or other sporkings.

Also, as Neshomeh mentioned already, using another term or phrase in place of "Mary Sue" wouldn't change the badness of the stories they appear in, or any reader's reaction to them. To paraphrase Shakespeare, a rose will always the same flower, no matter what we may call it.

The author lost me at the suggestion that well-rounded canon characters would be branded Mary Sue.

I stopped reading there. I had a feeling I knew where this was going. Somewhere in the direction of: some people call these characters Mary Sues; they are wrong; therefore all people who call characters Mary Sues are wrong.

There's a logical fallicy in there I can't quite put my finger on. At least not at the moment. Perhaps after a good night of sleep.


I shall leave you with a message I received a few weeks ago.
Someone whose empowerment I apparently shamed (wrote a mission to one of her fics) send me a message telling me she thought it was "piss funny" though she'd been upset about it at first. She said she'd rewritten the story, hoped it was better, and asked me to take a look at it and give her any tips.

I think that's a case where the PPC is empowering. Empowering authors to get better at their craft.

I think she failed to demonstrate her point with her examples by failing to illustrate the connections between one and the other. Also missed the point, at least where the PPC is concerned. As Italian for Grandma said, Did Not Do The Research.

And... her entire point is that the term "Mary-Sue" is hurtful and shouldn't be used? Okay. I'm perfectly happy to say "poorly-written, unrealistic, shallow female character" instead if it'll make everyone feel better. {= P

I think I would be less annoyed if I felt we could respond publicly without being told to shut up. The hypocrisy burns us, Precious!

But maybe this warrants a new entry in the FAQ For Other People...

Calling Mary-Sue is misogynist!
There are those who believe that sporking Mary-Sues perpetrates a culture that oppresses young women trying to empower themselves through their writing, and that the term itself is offensive. We disagree.

First of all, many Mary-Sues themselves are NOT empowered characters, and ascribe to the basest tenets of the patriarchy (heterosexual marriage is the true way to happiness, women are homemakers, men win the bread, etc.) (Artell). How many Mary-Sues join the Fellowship only to have Aragorn or Boromir save them in a dramatic manner from a danger that a so-called empowered female could have got out of herself? How many Mary-Sues fall in love with a wholly unsuitable, even dangerous man (e.g. Sweeney Todd, Severus Snape, the Phantom of the Opera), and expect the power of Twu Wuv to turn him into the perfect mate and father so she can have a perfect life? How many Mary-Sue stories depend on a man to complete the fantasy? How is that empowering to women?

Second, the PPC believes that there is no excuse for bad writing, and the fact of the matter is that people who write Mary-Sues are likely to be poor writers. However, there IS such a thing as a well-written Mary-Sue, as shocking as that may seem. We are aware of this. You will never see us sporking a well-written, well-constructed Mary-Sue. Why? Because, as is stated elsewhere, the PPC rarely goes after only moderately bad fics, and we will never go after a good one. Even if it contains a Mary-Sue.

The fact that we primarily spork Sues has little to do with hating female characters and everything to do with hating bad writing. It's like drawing a correlation between ice cream sales and murders: the number of ice cream sales in a month appears to strongly correlate to the number of murders in a month; however, ice cream sales clearly do not cause murders. Both ice cream sales and murders strongly correlate to the temperature of the weather: murders are more likely to occur in warm weather, and so are ice cream sales. Similarly, Mary-Sues alone do not warrant sporking. Even though many sporkings happen to Mary-Sues, it is because of the third factor of bad writing, not the Sues themselves.

Third, a question: would you rather have us use a word other than Mary-Sue? Because we're perfectly happy to say "poorly-written, unrealistic, shallow female character" instead if it'll make everyone feel better.

Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that most fan fiction writers, sporkers and Suethors alike, are female. Although women can certainly be misogynist, it's a bit foolish to overlook this fact when complaining of sexist behavior. Of COURSE most of the works we spork are written by female writers, because that's who's doing most of the writing. If more guys were out there writing terrible stories, we'd spork them, too. Have done, in fact. [Insert links to killed Gary-Stus here]. It's just that they appear with far less frequency than female Mary-Sues written by female writers.

Feel free to add to/refine that. It's heat-of-the-moment right now, probably not the most objective or clear. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

A lot of people can be unnecessarily cruel when criticizing a Mary-Sue fic. I know, because I can be that at times. We have to remember that we are not here to make fun of aspiring authors, since many of us were at that same point at one time or another.

That said, the author of this essay demonstrates the typical fanbrat tendency of not doing the research. She has a temper tantrum at the beginning of the essay about taking words out of context, and then she goes right ahead and takes Jay and Acacia's words out of context. The rant didn't even really fit in with the point she was trying to make.

And that comic strip? Hah! If she was trying to criticize the PPC, she's a hypocrite, because she's advocating the same sort of behavior she seems to detest in PPC agents.

Then she lists a few awesome female characters who, in different contexts, might be called Sues...and says that we hate them. No we don't, because these characters were handled well. They were special, yeah, but not so much more so than everyone else. They didn't get away with breaking the laws of nature, physics, and their respective governments simply because of their specialness. They had characters, and stuck to them. They didn't try to 'fix' a world that didn't require fixing. When faced with a misogynistic society or situation, they didn't fix it by spewing mindless feminist rhetoric (like the author of this essay), they fixed it by bloody well pulling up their sleeves and *prooving* they could be as good as the boys. Yeah, they saved the day, and they were badass about doing it, but the whole world did *not* revolve around their every little need. *That's* what makes a strong feminine character...the ability to be strong just because she *is* strong.

Eowyn, anyone?

Plus, Mary Sues *are* the product of a misogynistic mindset. You know how everyone criticizes rail-thin models because they threaten the self-image of preteen girls? A Mary Sue is what happens when that negative self-image crosses over into fanfiction, when a girl is convinced that in order to be special, she has to be a goddess...instead of just being herself. I'm convinced that if more girls were satisfied with who and what they are, we would have less Mary-Sues to kill.

The essayist also forgets that, while the majority of fanfic writers *are* female, there are males as well...and they have to put up with the same type of crap that female authors do. For example, the PPC criticizes Twilight, a badfic published by a female author, for obvious reasons. However, it also criticizes the Inheritance Cycle, a badfic published by a male author, also for obvious reasons. This isn't about us trying to repress female authors...it's about us giving male *and* female authors a reality check. If the essayist had cared to actually read the missions, she would have seen that the PPC is an equal-opportunity sporking society.

Anyone who has read the sporkings of "That Series" knows that the PPC isn't misogynistic...the fics the PPC kills are.

And I shall descend from my soapbox now.

intellectually dishonest to hide behind the barrier of feminism and female empowerment to defend poor writing. It demeans female empowerment. Many Mary Sues are NOT empowered characters, and ascribe to the basest tenets of the patriarchy (heterosexual marriage is the true way to happiness, women are homemakers, men win the bread, etc.).

To paint PPC and critics of Sues as misogynistic is doubly dishonest, because PPCers are, in my impression, predominantly female*, which leads to my main point: *fan fiction is mainly written by women.* I just can't find any way around that fact. If a vast majority of fics are by women, then poor fics will also be written mostly by women, and thus you will have way more female Mary Sues.

It reminds me of the way heterosexual white men go about whining how modern society is actually oppressing *them*.

'Bullying' is also disingenuous. No one is making you publish your writing. If you don't like the criticism, you can ignore it, you can not accept it, you can circulate your stories in a closed community. But if you publish it on a place like fanfiction.net, you are implicitly consenting to scrutiny.

* Caveat: women CAN be misogynistic, obviously.