Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: What's a "Mary Sue" fic?

Can someone please tell me what a "Mary Sue" story is? I've heard people refer to the term a couple times and I have no idea what it is. :p

Isn't that the kind of story in which the author is actually a character and interacts with Lois, Clark...?

Mary Sue is where the author (usually, though not always, a teenage girl) inserts herself into the story so that she can live out her fantasy of having the hero fall in love with her and live out a role in the universe of the show.

Mary Sue is a teenage girl. Usually perfect. She has no flaws. She will always save the day, is super intelligent and so beautiful that all of the male characters instantly fall in love with her. She will be much more clever than the cleverest character. For instance, in an LNC MS, it will be MS, not Lois or Clark, who solves the story. Even though she probably has less reporting experience than either character.

She sometimes dies tragically, but heroically, saving the universe - often while pregnant with the hero's child. If she doesn't die, you can bet your bottom dollar the hero of her choice will give up everything to marry her.

This is the classic definition of MS, as defined by the Trek fandom, decades ago. Since then, the online fan community has expanded the definition - to the extent to be honest that in my opinion it has very little meaning any more. You'll find things included as MS which imo aren't and it almost encompasses anything and everything, depending on the personal story biases of the person compliling the list of MS's qualities. Online, over the years, the definition of MS has stretched to the point of being in the eye of the beholder and pretty much useless as a definition.

Basically, MS is wish-fulfilment for the author. Her way to take part in the world she watches on TV. Any attempt at plot or characterisation is usually sacrificed in order to fulfil the personal fantasy. The author will bend the characters and/or the rules of the universe for the show in order to achieve her fantasy. For example in early Trek MS fanfic, Captain Kirk would always leave his ship and give up his career to ride off into the sunset with MS. Even though we all know that's way OOC.

LabRat

Thanks, LabRat!

Chriscy

There's nothing wrong with Mary Sue daydreams And I think lots and lots of writers start out with Mary Sue stories, especially if they start writing as children. And hey, if you want to write them for yourself and they make you happy, more power to you. The only crime in Mary Sue stories (imho) is expecting other people to read them

Some interesting essays/etc on Mary Sue (and Gary Stu):

• Who is Mary Sue and why does she have to die? - An essay by Dr. Merlin. (Also see the Original Mary Sue Litmus Test .)
• Too Good To Be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue - An academic look at Mary Sues over the last century. It's surprising how far back they go!
• Barbie Goes to Hogwarts - A really interesting theory about how children's toys influence kids to think in terms of Mary Sue characteristics later in life.

Don't mind me, I find fandom fascinating and I enjoy reading all this stuff Maybe someone else will find them interesting too...

Kaylle

ChriscyK, this isn't really on topic. But it's related. And I didn't want to start a new thread for those people who are doing the survey (since this is one of the questions specifically asked in the survey). But what is a 'shipper story?'

ML

I think a shipper story is one that focuses on a relationship, usually a relationship that is either not formally recognized in the show at all, or only faintly.

Examples (if I understand correctly) would be having Mulder and Scully (X-Files) be in love, or Sam and Jack (Stargate SG-1). Relationships that (certain) fans see as totally obvious, but which the powers that be don't *officially* promote.

I think. <g>

Bethy

Yeah, Bethy's got it.

Good job, Bethy.

Oh, dear, I may have lied on the survey... (cool links, Kaylle). My first fanfic has a suspicious female character... She's the niece of a series regular, a gifted engineer, and ends up with my favorite series character. In my own defense, she does *not* take over the story, she's not terribly beautiful, and she doesn't save the day... but she is terribly brave in adversity and her plight makes my favorite character realize he ought to open up to love, even though he's been warning everyone else off for twenty years...

<sigh>

I was young and foolish then...

At least she's not named after me. Though I'll admit, during my teenage years, a lot of my female characters had names that began with "P"

PJ

Hmm, I thought the term 'ship' could refer to any pairing. I believe I've seen it mentioned in HP fanfic about canon-pairings too.

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Kaylle, you beat me to it and said exactly what I intended to. I definitely agree! MS fantasies are all about growing up. Just like most of us have teenage crushes on someone or other, MS stems from the same hormone rushes coming online. It's just a way of putting those fantasies onto paper.

So there's nothing wrong with them per se and I'm sure most of us have at least one MS skeleton lurking in the cupboard.

And, yes, shipper fanfic can be about any pairing out there, legit or non-legit. For example, most any show out there will have slash ship fanfic somewhere around, even if it's completely OOC for the characters as they appear on screen. Daniel/Jack fic or Sam/Janet fic for SG1, for example. But Sam/Jack shipper fic is legit because that relationship is shown on screen, acknowledged by the actors, producers etc. So ship fic can definitely be about pairing any characters you like. That's what fanfic is for - exploring all the possibilities, whether they're canon or not.

Pam -


LabRat (waits for someone to ask what slash fic is )

Thanks for the information, guys . And, fortunately, I already know what slasher fic is

ML

Cool, links, Kaylle! About Barbie goes to Hogwarts, I was once tested in grade 12 English on this fantastic article in the Toronto Star about how the media encourages children to take on MS perspectives. She was mainly attacking Disney and she said how children are taught to assume that they are, for example, Belle in Beauty of the Beast, that they'll have everything, be beautiful forever, life will always go their way, when in reality, life might not always be so kind and they might end up like the supplementary characters, for example Mrs. Potts, a middle-aged single mother who has to care for her child alone, or someone else who has an equally unfairytale-like life. I thought it was quite interesting and very true.

I think the worst (well, most disturbing) MS stories are the ones in celebrity fiction, although I'm not a fan of the concept of celebrity fiction in general. A good friend of mine who was never into fanfics (although many of my friends are, because we all got into it in elementary school together - grade 7, 8, to be precise) was really excited to tell me once that she was finally reading a fanfic. I asked what fandom it was in, and she told me that it was about the singing group The Killers, and I had to tell her that what she was reading was celebrity fiction, which was sort of different.

She went on to tell me the plot, which was about how this girl/woman followed the band around and eventually had all the members lusting after her. The married ones even left their families for her, but while she enjoyed her time with them, she ultimately sacrificed herself in the end, because female fans didn't like the band anymore and she didn't want to ruin them, etc. My friend said there was a huge response to it and while she found the story fascinating in some way, she thought the writer was just illustrating her fantasy. I thought the whole idea was sort of creepy and that the person was sort of manifesting her desire to stalk the band and rewarding herself in the story for it.

But yeah. I can understand MS stories but I'm really not a fan of celebrity fiction.

Now as for shipping! I was wondering whether the term has also become so stretched out that definitions have also become sort of different for everyone. I always thought that shipping had to entail that the couple isn't obviously together yet and that fans were pushing for them to be together. Any views on that?

No, the definition of shipper fic is pretty straightforward. It's any fic which pairs characters together in a romantic relationship. Whatever the permutation. Simple as that.

Unless things have changed recently in the online community. I haven't been paying much attention, admittedly.

LabRat (growling because her dang spellcheck seems to have vanished again )

Things haven't changed, Labby. The term 'ship' still refers to any character pairing. The pair can be conventional (like Lois and Clark), subtle (Clark and Chloe), or completely out of character (Clark and Lex).

The LnC fandom doesn't get a lot of talk about shipping because there really is only one ship. Other fandoms like Smallville, LOST, and pretty much any teen drama or daytime soap tend to have more talk about shipping because the pairings aren't as set in stone on the show.

~Anna

This is what I love so much about LnC--we don't have to argue over ships because we wouldn't be here if we didn't think Lois and Clark were a pair. Jonathon and Martha--same thing. And no one seems to mind the various permutations of dates Lucy and Jimmy go through in the stories.

So I don't have to qualify every story I write with a "warning, this story features X/Y ship; if you don't like it, don't read it". And nobody's going to flame me because they don't feel Lois/Clark is a valid pairing according to the show. Very relaxing.

LOL, Rachel. Too true.

LabRat

Wow, I am surprised that my survey got so many responses! I just thought I would post here and say thankyou for all the responses. I posted the survey here because I wanted a different perspective than I would have gotten with other fandoms and that concerns the two parts of the survey-the question about Mary Sue's and 'ships'. I belong to many many fandoms and write all kinds of fanfiction (L&C, Buffy, Remington Steele, Firefly, Angel, Highlander, etc.) so those questions are relevant in some fandoms, but not so much in others. I didn't think the Mary Sue would crop up much in L&C (or Remington Steele, which is so much like L&C it's scary...without the tights of course) but I thought it best to keep the survey unanimous to see how some fandoms are different from others. The answers you guys have so kindly provided are starting to give me the results I thought I would get, but wanted to be sure. As I suspected, not much 'shipper' fanfic is written with L&C or RS (well, it IS shipper fic, but only for the established cannonical couple) which is just as well because some fic in other fandoms gets a little TOO experimental if you ask me But yea, in answer to the question, a 'shipper' is someone who supports ANY pairing they can think of, whether it's cannon or not. Some even have code names (like I put in the survey). A person who is a Buffy/Spike shipper is called a 'spuffy' and a person who is a Buffy/Angel shipper is a 'bangel'...in case any of you were wondering, I'm a 'bangel' But then in those fandoms the relationships aren't as straight forward (well in my opinion Buffy/Angel are soul mates, but others would argue with me and that's fine cause that's what fandom is about).

Mary Sue's are also a lot more common in other fandoms because there is more room to introduce characters in which the lead male character can be persuaded to fall in love with the MS. I think you'll all agree that withing L&C that would never happen because they are clearly meant for one another and it would be out of character for a Mary Sue to steal Clark away. Likely if one were written it would have the Mary Sue getting Jimmy rather than Clark I have written a Mary Sue back when I didn't know what a Mary Sue was, but I suspect most newer authors do so. Incidentally those links posted on MS's will be very helpful to my essay so I shall check 'em out. A friend of mine has also written an excellent fanfic called "Slipstream" in which her character "Marie Susan Brooke" 'slides' through various fandoms, trying to get home and fully aware that she is a "Mary Sue"...it's an interesting study of Mary Sue as a concept and one that I think is fantastic.

Anyway, I feel the same way about much of the answers as I have gotten (in that I NEVER EVER read fic about real people and am not a fan of slash, mainly because most of it occurs between two characters who are NOT GAY) but the essay will include all of these deviations because it's all part and parcel of this wonderful thing called the internet. I've been encouraged to submit it to the MB's when I'm done, so if any of you are interested I will post it here when I finish.

Anyhoo, thanks SO much for those of you who sent me answers to my questions! Your help is SO appreicated.

Glad you got such a good response.

As for Mary Sues... there have been some in L&C. The trick is that Mary Sue is wish-fulfillment. She doesn't always have to get the guy. In some fandoms, it's more common for MS to be someone who brings the primary 'ship together.

In L&C, for example, she could be a previously-unknown relative of Clark's. She's in on the secret (if she doesn't know at the beginning, she figures it out soon enough). She sees how perfect L&C are together (or she sees some other problem they're having), and she helps them get things right.

What remains the same is that all the good guys love her, she has special powers and/or talents, and she excells at the things the author likes to do and/or wishes she could do better.

SO, she's still around, she's just a little different.

Anyway... yeah, I'd be interested to see what you come up with. If you're willing to post it here, that'd be cool.

Paul

I meant to post this earlier with my list of links but forgot. Anyway, the most well known Mary Sue story in FoLCdom is Yvonne's The Ultimate Mary Sue , which is definitely worth checking out

Kaylle