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mistressofmuses) wrote2025-01-15 09:21 pm
Snowflake Challenge #3
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snowflake_challenge: A fannish opinion that has changed over time.
Originally I was going to skip this prompt, because I couldn't think of a good answer. I don't really have that many fandom opinions that changed... I mostly keep liking the same things, even if the level of "fannishness" I feel ebbs and flows. I add new canons and fandoms and ships that I like, but don't really change my feelings on old ones, beyond losing interest. I've gotten a little pickier about quality, maybe? But that's just a function of growing up and getting exposed to more stuff. At most my feelings tend to move from positive to neutral, which doesn't feel like much of a change.
Then I thought of something. (I thought of it before the subject tangentially came up in comments on a different Snowflake post, but that just sort of seemed like a sign that yeah, maybe that IS the thing to mention.)
The thing that my opinion has changed on is... Mary Sues.
Or at least the painfully overbroad and mean-spirited definition that I first learned in the 00s when I entered fandom.
The 00s were often VICIOUS when it came to "Mary Sues" or anything that could be even vaguely construed as one, and to my embarrassment, I fell into line with that meanness completely. Any original character showing up in a work was automatically suspect, and if the character was female, you were already on impossibly thin ice that you probably couldn't make it back from. If your character was a new member of the canon team? If your character was paired with a canon character? Unforgivable!
I remember well the "Mary Sue Litmus Test," and while I know the creator of that test has also stepped back and pretty well disavowed it and how it was used, and now urges people to look at things very differently, I treated it as gospel at the time. I wanted to be a good writer (even as I struggled to actually write very much), and so when I saw that Sues were held up as the pinnacle of terrible no-good awful cliché stupid bad garbage teenager writing, I wanted to ensure that I never fell into that trap!
Now... I DO understand the narrower concept of a Mary Sue as I realize the criticism was originally intended. It IS often frustrating to have a character who seems to warp the world around them (if that's not a literal spec-fic plotline); a character who goes beyond having some expected plot armor straight into "no consequences matter to them ever"; characters that are SO perfect that the other characters (and even the narrative itself) are just tripping over themselves to remind us of how extra super special and great the character is, regardless of their actual actions or behavior; a character who is just somehow better at everything than all the canon characters that you're presumably in the fandom to read about. I don't enjoy that sort of story, and it certainly can be a sign of kind of mediocre or inconsistent writing.
Except, as many people later pointed out (whether they knew it at the time or realized it later), the criteria was ever-shifting and painfully unfairly applied. It often wasn't actually describing that sort of canon-breaking characterization, and was instead used as a broad brush against ANY original characters who dared have the slightest shred of anything interesting about them.
Then later it started being applied to the canon characters when they showed up in fanworks. Sometimes this was wielded against a writer focusing on a particular canon (female) character, where they could be accused of "Sue-ifying" them, often coming with the extra condemnation that the writer "obviously" wanted to write some self-insert stand-in, but was using the canon character instead solely to escape the criticism. (So now they deserve double the rage!)
Then I started seeing applied to original canons themselves: again, especially if they dared have a central female protagonist. (Wow, the protagonist of the work is central to the story and has something special about her that propels the plot forward? Other characters interact with her heavily and are even, gasp, potentially romantically interested in her, or want to be her friend or ally? SAY IT ISN'T SO!)
(And yes, there were the "Gary Stus" that people would talk about as well, but in my experience, it was nowhere near the same levels of vitriol.)
Even if we are talking about that sort of canon-warping, ridiculous plotline where every character is in love with her, and where she's super overpowered for the genre, and is better at everything than the canon characters... So the fuck what? If that's the thing the author wanted to write, then... so? I probably do think it's a crappy or boring story, but if I don't have any interest in reading it, then what does it matter?
I will say that in my defense, I didn't ever leave nasty comments on these fics for these authors or anything. (I had pretty well internalized the old fandom lesson of "don't like, don't read." I'd used that to defend myself against drive-by "flame" comments on my fics, such as the person who wanted to rage at me for making "her husband" (Kurama, from YuYuHakusho) gay in my fic. Even then, I understood that applied to me as well; if I didn't like reading about someone's Mary Sue OC, it was on me not to read it.) My cattiness was private, between me and a few friends.
However, I was way overcritical of the writing of loved ones, sometimes.
One of my friends in high school had a Lord of the Rings OC who had a maybe sort of cliché backstory. She was a half-elf, if I recall, and she got to go on adventures with parts of the Fellowship. I don't think I ever said anything nasty about it to my friend, but I think I tried to discourage her from posting anything with the OC (in part because I was afraid that people WOULD be mean to her, but also because of what I thought of the inclusion of OCs, and that was crappy of me.)
I think I was similarly dismissive of some writing an ex-girlfriend showed me. It was an intro for a D&D character, and I think I was overly critical about her being "too special," when like... I was the one talking out my ass. The character was perfectly in line with the norms for backstory/appearance/abilities/motivation. There was no reason to ask her to tone down how "cool" her character was. RP characters should be cool and fun and interesting!
The same ex tried to get me into a book series she liked, and I think she was trying to preempt some of my criticism by telling me about the main character, and she said something like "well, I guess she's maybe a little bit of a Mary Sue, but it makes sense in the books that she's special, and here's this cool stuff that happens..." And I super rudely replied "Well, if she's a Mary Sue then it's just bad writing." When like... these were books I know she liked! WHY WAS I BEING MEAN ABOUT IT? It was more than fifteen years ago, but it fucking haunts me.
I recognize that some of my zeal around how bad I found Mary Sues to be was that I was a little overly defensive. I said in my "fandom origin" post that I'd first really started off as a kid, playing pretend where I got to meet and go on adventures with my faves from whatever my current favorite books/shows/etc. was. Discovering that child-me had obviously been coming up with Mary Sues made me feel guilty, and like I'd been doing something wrong by finding that fun, and so I felt like I had to prove that I wasn't like that anymore. (Like. Chill, 15 year old me. 10 year old me was fine.)
If I hadn't given in to that sense of shame, I wonder if I would have chosen different stories to write, or if it would have given me a little less baggage to work through when I did finally start trying to write original works?
Now, I still don't like much in the way of OC fic. (Though some canons lend themselves much better to using OCs to explore things that canon doesn't.) There's a pretty big popularity surge in "x/reader" fic, shipping a canon character with the reader as a second-person protagonist/narrator. I have less than zero interest in that sort of fic. (And have the minor gripe of wishing it was much more consistently tagged so that it was easier not to come across it when trying not to.) But I also 100% believe it belongs in fandom, and I'm genuinely happy for how many people DO enjoy both writing and reading it.
I've remained very good at "don't like, don't read" and "ykinmkato" (even if the "kink" is just "this isn't the genre or format of story that I want to read.") In that sense, I suppose it isn't outwardly much of a change in attitude, because from the outside it looks pretty much the same.
Even so, it's been a pretty strong internal change, from a petty near-rage at people having fun in a way I didn't approve of, to a "thumbs up, you do you" feeling. I'm happier to feel this way now (and actually feel really protective of the hypothetical young teens who want to write their silly Sue fic or readerfic, and hope that they don't let people being jerks the way I once was discourage them.) Which is also not to say that it's only "young teens" who write these stories or engage in fandom this way, and deserve fully to do so.
As glad as I am that I was very rarely any sort of public jerk about it, I still feel pretty guilty about having and adding to that general attitude at the time. And I am really sorry that I was judgey toward people that I loved! I also remember that teenage-me was Going Through It, so maybe it's not shocking that I had some douchey thoughts. Still, I am glad that I grew up and am happier for people to play in their own corner of the sandbox however they'd like.
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Yes, agreed. The reader fic and the self-inserts and other types of things that I don't like? I am very very glad that there are people who do like them, and that those people have lots of fun with them.
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LOL I feel like I'm fighting this demon within me every day I sit down to write, aaaaughghg, it can be paralyzing!
Hugs to your 15yo self, she's still growing!! <3
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And thank you. 15 year old me definitely had some stuff to get through and over, haha. She tried to do her best at the time!
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(I know some parts of fandom have swung the other way on the tolerance scale, taking a downright puritanical stance on what people should be "allowed" to write, and that is also shitty.)
Hopefully someday everyone can learn to calm down and scroll past the things they don't like, and leave space for people to create the art they want to!