Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Yes, Virginia, My First Fanfiction was a Mary Sue

You may or may not be familiar with the word “fanfiction”.  The clever reader (which I have on good authority all of you are) might discern the roots “fan” and “fiction” and correctly infer that this is fiction based upon something of which the writer is a fan. 

Fanfiction has been wildly popular for more than three decades.  It has become so ubiquitous that college professors now give lectures and write research papers on the topic.  Some of the best pen and ink art I have ever seen graces the covers of fanzines--publications comprised of fanfiction. 

Fanfiction was in its infancy when I walked into my first Star Trek convention in 1975, and I still didn’t know what fanfiction was when I walked into my first Star Trek convention as a vendor in 1983. 

I got the crash course that first day.

The vendor coordinator hadn’t known where to put a business called “Fantasy Portraits”, so he had put me in the room with the fanzine dealers.  There I was, with my humble setup:  the aluminum easel I had borrowed from my Dad; my set of Prismacolor Pencils; and a pad of charcoal paper, surrounded by dealers sitting behind tables stacked high with thick, often ring-bound publications.  I didn’t know what to make of them, and they didn’t know what to make of me.  It was an awkward start.

Friday afternoon, the hoards came shopping:  women armed with huge canvas bags swarmed the tables, spending vast amounts of money on these publications--and completely ignoring me.  The frenzy was nearly overwhelming, and I thought I was sunk.  Fantasy Portraits would die in its infancy, all at the hands of these crazy ladies and their bulging tote bags. 

Though it’s not relevant to this story, you ought to know that the rest of the weekend was much better. 

These books were called “zines”, and that their content came in several flavors.  I learned that just because my initials were “KS”--for “Sophia Kelly”--that did not mean that I drew “K/S” (that’s zinespeak for relationships between Kirk and Spock; the “/” (you may see references to “slash” zines) is the shorthand for the relationship part.  I learned that if you could draw, you could illustrate for a zine, but there is no money in it. 

While fanfiction got its start with Star Trek, by the time I went to that convention, it had branched out to include many other TV shows and movies (referred to as “fandoms”).  There was already a considerable body of work involving characters from shows like Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.  Throughout the course of the 1980s, more and more zines representing more and more shows were published, some with increasingly elaborate and colorful bindings. 
Today, fanfiction flourishes, and the fandoms it represents number as the stars, some new, like the BBC series Sherlock and some very, very old, like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Starsky and Hutch.  (No, really, I am not kidding.)

Yes, I have written fanfiction.  Much to my editor’s distress, I am not terribly prolific, but my stories are relatively popular and I have on occasion even received fan mail. 

Yet there is one ghost that haunts me, that sends me running to friends about 3/4 of the way through every story.

Her name is  Mary Sue.

Wikipedia defines a Mary Sue thusly:  A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfilment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional. While the label "Mary Sue" itself originates from a parody of this type of character, most characters labelled "Mary Sues" by readers are not intended by authors as such. Male Mary Sues are often dubbed "Gary Stu", "Larry Stu", "Marty Stu", or similar names.

While the term is generally limited to fan-created characters, and its most common usage today occurs within the fan fiction community or in reference to fan fiction, original characters in role-playing games or literary canon are also sometimes criticized as being "Mary Sues" or "canon Sues" if they dominate the spotlight or are too unrealistic or unlikely in other ways. One example of this criticism is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The term "Mary Sue" is from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale"[1]:15 published in her fanzine Menagerie #2.[2] The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"), and satirized unrealistic and adolescent wish-fantasy characters in Star Trek fan fiction. Such characters were generally original (non-canon) and female adolescents who had romantic liaisons with established canon adult characters, or in some cases were the younger relatives or protégés of those characters. By 1976 Menagerie's editors stated that they disliked such characters, saying:
Mary Sue stories—the adventures of the youngest and smartest ever person to graduate from the academy and ever get a commission at such a tender age. Usually characterized by unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling. This character can also be found burrowing her way into the good graces/heart/mind of one of the Big Three [Kirk, Spock, and McCoy], if not all three at once. She saves the day by her wit and ability, and, if we are lucky, has the good grace to die at the end, being grieved by the entire ship.[3]

Today "Mary Sue" carries a connotation of wish-fulfilment and is commonly associated with self-insertion (the writing of oneself into a fictional story). True self-insertion is a literal and generally undisguised representation of the author; most characters described as "Mary Sues" are not, though they are often called "proxies"[4] for the author. The negative connotation comes from this "wish-fulfilment" implication: the "Mary Sue" is judged a poorly developed character, too perfect and lacking in realism to be interesting. Such proxy characters, critics claim, exist only because authors wish to see themselves as the "special" character in question.
The term is also associated with cliché such as exotic hair and eye colors, mystical or superhuman powers, exotic pets, possessions, or origins, or an unusually tragic past, especially when these things are glaringly out of step with the consistency of the canon. These features are commonplace in "Mary Sues", though even a character who lacks them may be labelled a "Sue" by some critics. The term is more broadly associated with characters who are exceptionally and improbably lucky. The good luck may involve romance ("Mary Sue" always gets her man); adventure ("Mary Sue" always wins a fight or knows how to solve the puzzle) and popularity (the "right people" seem to gravitate towards the character). These characters have few problems while attempting to achieve their goals. "Everything goes her way" is a common criticism regarding "Mary Sues", the implication being that the character's inability to fail makes her insufficiently humanized or challenged to be interesting or sympathetic.


So there you have it:  Mary Sue.  The article goes on to state that some critics have labeled Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series as Mary Sue’s.   I tend to agree.

Yes, my friends get at least one email per story, plaintively asking, “Is my zine a Mary Sue?”.

Invariably, to my relief, they say “No, of course not.” 

But they have never read my first fanfic.

Written in 1985, my first attempt at fan fiction was to the tune of Miami Vice.  I freely admit that I had a crush on Lieutenant Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos (who makes any role cool).  My best friend and I cooked up what we thought were some pretty awesome characters (and they are, to a certain extent), and I started writing.  At the time, I thought it was pretty good.
This morning, I opened up the file for the first time in decades, and started reading.  I was prepared:  no doubt the grammar would be painful, there might well be too much exposition.  I gripped my coffee cup and plunged in.

The first scene was surprisingly good, and with the exception of an apparently chronic inability to anchor point of view, the grammar and structure of the developing tale were pretty solid.  The underlying plot (the case the detectives are investigating) had merit.  The dialogue was about 80% character appropriate, which isn’t bad, considering that this was a first attempt.  At least I’d been paying attention.  

The pacing was definitely too fast.  It was so fast it made driving on I-95 around Miami at any given time of the day look like a snail’s pace (my husband once said that he’d rather change a tire on the Schuylkill Expressway at rush hour--that is beyond hazardous--than ever drive around Miami again.  I’m pretty sure I thought this story was done, but in reality it read like a first draft.  You should see what’s happening on page FIVE.

And then the Universe delivered the coup de grace to my artistic pride: I realized,  Oh.  My.  God, the main original character was ME, right down to the insecurities about weight and being dressed appropriately.  I mean, it is one thing to envision oneself as a statuesque blonde (which I did not do) and another thing entirely to drop in a character who is obviously me, who waltzes into the squad room and seduces Martin Castillo (in his first appearance one of the other characters describes him as “Dirty Harry by way of Little Havana”--read “not easily seduced”).  That’s some special talent there!
I usually have a sense of humor about the vagaries of my youth, but this one made me literally nauseous.  I console myself with the knowledge that only about five people had ever read it--and they did so such a long time ago that it’s likely not even a  memory anymore.

I will probably take a dramamine and read through the whole thing to see if there’s anything I can salvage (thanks to Netflix I am on a Miami Vice kick right now, and am thusly inspired).  But I am humbler now, as I embark upon my first REAL book (the one that comes with a REAL publisher and a REAL contract). 

Hey, Universe:  thanks for the reality check, but next time you decide to take me down a notch, make sure I’ve had a couple of drinks first.