community: snowflake_challenge Challenge #3

[matsushima]

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favorite character, anything at all.

When I was a teenager, I used to be part of those sporking communities where people made fun of self insert/Mary Sue fanfiction. I'm not proud of it.

I realized in undergrad that what I really wanted was an excuse to read "badfic." I pretended I was doing it ✨ironically✨ but I genuinely enjoy reading Mary Sues and self inserts - still do. My first big research paper was about Mary Sue fanfiction. Almost 20 years later, I'm working on a conference proposal about… yeah, you guessed it: Mary Sues. I'm returning to my roots.

Mary Sues are honestly so fun. I love your mood ring eyes, your flaming red/raven black/sunshine golden hair. You're dating your blorbo? Good for you.

Mary Sues aren't hurting anybody. I guess maybe wading through FF•net in the bad old days before AO3's tagging system was a thing might have been annoying for older fans trying to find more canon-centered(?) fic but… It was weird when I realized that many (most?) of the members of marysues weren't other teenage girls but whole ass adults? As a whole ass adult now, I'm like, Did these grown-ups really have nothing better to do with their time than make fun of actual children?

Honestly, I think the time I spent in those "sporking" communities really did a number on my creativity in ways that I'm still trying to unpack. I cringe when I think I've given too much of myself away, made it too obvious that I like this or that other media… even though I screamed (in a good way!) when the sandworm rises out of the dunes in Trigun Stampede in a frame-by-frame reference to/recreation of the scene in Dune (1984). I love catching references and allusions to the author's influences but I'm shy of doing it myself because of the old "pepper jack cheese" [archive link] joke at pottersues.

Nowadays, I'm (one of the) admin(s) at fandomocweekly and, while not every original character is a Mary Sue, I consider it a pro-Sue community. Is Paisley Webster a Mary Sue? What about Mary Brigid Mohan? I don't know… but I also don't really care any more.

I've been thinking of starting a Mary Sue fest here. Somewhere we can all write and share our repressed teenage 10th walker dreams. Maybe I'll run it this summer while I'm off school.

P.S. Sorry I didn't do the actual "love letter" format. I couldn't get into it.

Comments

[glitteringstars]

A conference proposal on Mary Sues?! That's so cool! Do you have any paper recommendations?

But I know the feeling of having old adjacent hatedom burning in the back of your brain when you want to write something for yourself. Things I've turned to are a couple of times are a couple of interviews by Kimberly Lemming with Smart Podcast, Trashy Books (found here and here). Lemming takes a lot of inspiration from Chuck Tingle's philosophy on sincerity in writing.

[matsushima]

I've only just started collecting my bibliography but my most recent find is Gimp Sue Gets the Girl: Disability in Twilight Fanfiction.

My idea is to look at fanfiction, specifically Mary Sue fanfiction, as children's literature - an unusual literature as it's the only one named for the audience, not the authors (in most cases, with a handful of notable exceptions). But most Mary Sue fanfiction is written by children for other children.