kippurbird | Mary Sue Paper

I finished my essay for the confence!! yay! Yay!Yay!!
Please read. Review. Let me know what you think. Let me know if it acurately fits Fan Fiction a response to Children Literature.

In Tolkien’s Essay “On Fairy Stories” he says that “To make a Secondary World inside which [a] green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief will require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: Indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.” These stories that he is talking about are fantasy stories like his Lord of the Rings or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Some people have become so enchanted with these fairy stories, these fantasy stories, that they have decided to pick up the writer’s pen themselves. However unlike writers of the past, instead of creating new Secondary World they invite themselves into the already created worlds. The writing that these fans do is called fan fiction. And it is fan fiction, its types and motives in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books that I am going to discuss. However the things that I am discussing can be found in all the types of fan fiction.

First what is needed is a clarification of terms to be used. Fan fiction has its many subcultures and genres, which can be confusing to the uninitiated. The first term I would like to clarify is fan fiction itself. Fan fiction is writing of stories based on someone else’s work. This work can be a book, a movie or anything else. Usually it is published on the internet for others to read. A fan writer or author is someone who writes fan fiction. There are about four main genres in fan fiction; the filler, the Alternate Universe or AU, slash and the Mary Sue. These shall be defined better later. Another term is canon. Canon refers to the published work that the fan writer is basing their own work on. It is from there that the fan writer gets the rules and characters that they use for their own work.

Filler and alternate universe fan fiction are fairly similar in their goals, which is to look at the original canon story and see what is missing or what could be different. In these cases they add to the original story and expand the world that is seen in the canonical work. A fan writer who wants to create a filler story has to look at the canon story and see what is missing. This is not to say missing as in something the author forgot to put in or did wrong, but missing as in the author decided for the narrative flow of the cannon story not to put in something. These sorts of exclusions are necessary for the telling of the novel because every detail about a character’s life can’t be included. These exclusions however lend to perfect opportunities for a fan writer. Instead of writing about what is known and given by the author, the fan writer engages the text by looking at the unknowns and the things only hinted at. This sort of writing is extremely difficult because while the fan writer can make up the events that have happened in the undisclosed period of time, the resulting story has to fit in with the canon work. The writer has to be able to recreate the secondary world, not in its entirety, but with enough detail and attention to character that it is recognizable to the reader. An excellent example of the filler story is “While the Ring Went South” by Thundra Tiger. “While the Ring Went South” expands upon the sentence “[the Fellowship] had been a fortnight on the way when the weather changed” (Tolkein, 275). In her story she explores what might have happened during those two weeks before the weather changed. She looks at the character’s relationships, from Gimli and Legolas’ hatred of each other, to Borimir’s mistrust and awe of his companions and Aragorn who could claim to be his king. She creates events like a devastating down pour and flood that wasn’t talked about in the books but nonetheless the events don’t deviate from the canonical story and weaves a story using familiar characters in a new situation.

An Alternate Universe however is slightly different than a filler story. Where as a Filler story looks at what the author left out, an Alternate Universe, or AU, story looks at what might have been. There are no rules for what is considered an AU or not an AU, in fact all of Fan Fiction could be considered an AU. But certain stories that set out to look at the canon changed at a certain event are generally labeled AU. These events usually are pivotal events in the canonical story, an event that if it didn’t go as it went in the books could change the entire outcome of the story. These AU’s are generally started with the question, What if. What if Faramir, Bormir’s brother had gone to Rivendell in his brother’s stead? What if Sirus Black had been proven innocent in the Prisoner of Azakabam? What if Neville Longbottom had been the one chosen in the prophecy revealed in book five? What if Suaurman had thought that the humans and not the hobbits had the ring? What if Legolas had been turned into a Ringwraith? What if the Durselys weren’t afraid of magic? There is no such thing as a wrong AU; some are just more implausible than others. I.e. one that introduces a Tolkien like elf into Harry Potter’s world vs. Pippin not being chosen to go on the Quest to destroy the Ring. A good AU looks at the source material and changes a pivotal event or happenstance. To do this the fan writer has to, once again, know the source material extremely well because just because the situation that the characters are in changes it doesn’t mean that characters are going to act any different. An AU changes a situation that happens in the canonical story in not the characters and their motivations. The fan writer has to be aware of all the repercussions that her change makes. She can’t arbitrarily decide that the Fellowship doesn’t have Gimli and replace him with female character without looking at how a woman would effect the way the relationships between characters and their choices. Not only that but she has to come up with an exceptionally plausible reason for Elrond to pick a woman who probably doesn’t have the training or skills that the men have, to be a member of the Fellowship. An excellent example of an AU story is “Stealing Harry” by Samuel Vimes. In the third Harry Potter book it is revealed that Sirius Black is Harry’s godfather and that he went to prison for killing Peter Pettigrew and betraying the Potters. In Stealing Harry the premise is What if Lucius Malfoy got to Peter first? From there Vimes spins a story starting when Harry is eight years old and Sirius Black rescues him from the Dursleys. This causes all sorts of problems as one of the reasons why Harry was at the Dursleys was for the protection spell that his Aunt gave to him against Voldemort. Harry learns about the Wizarding world much sooner and he is much happier, but his life falls into more danger as Peter Pettigrew starts to find away to return Voldemort to the world. Unfortunately this story is still an ongoing work and has not been completed as yet.

The next two types of stories are a bit different than the filler and the AU. While the previous stories worked with in the relationships and world already created, the Slash story and the Mary Sue story change relationships and the world of the canonical story. The reasoning for writing a Mary Sue or Slash story is also different than the reasoning for writing an AU or Filler. While the purpose of the filler and AU is to explore possibilities of what is presented in the text the Mary Sue and Slash seems to be a purely fan invention. They have nothing to do with the secondary world that canon story exists in except for using the characters, sometimes in name only.

Slash stories look at the homosocial bonds between male characters in the canonical story and turns them into homosexual relationships. The slash story gets its name from the slash mark placed between two character names or initials, such as Legolas/Aragorn or L/A. It is put into the summary of the slash story to indicate the pairing found within the story. Slash, which heterosexual women usually write, is believed to have started in the Star Trek Fandom when fan writers took the relationship between Kirk and Spock to a sexual level. (Kustriz) Characters who are usually “slashed” or put together usually have some sort of tension going on between the two of them or are both extremely good looking. In the first case the tension builds to a point where neither character can stand it any more and they end up having sex. Any sort of tension, even hatred, is interpreted as repressed sexual tension. This is especially common in Harry Potter and Snape Slash as well as Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy slash. In the second case one of the characters is usually feminized and the relationship. The reasons for slashing a pair of characters varies. , but one sentiment that seems to go through the fan fiction slash stories, by looking at the author’s notes, is that the characters are “hot”. In some other cases it seems like the writer is placing themselves as one of the slashed characters. Thus being able to project themselves into the story and have a relationship with a character that they desire.

Good Slash is extremely difficult to write. For starters the writer has to come up with a reason that the characters that are defined as straight in the canonical story to become homosexual. The fan writer also has to deal with a character’s existing relationships, such as Aragorn and Arwen before placing them with their new partner. If, in the canon story, Arwen is Aragon’s true love and half of his motivation for doing things, why would he leave her to go with Legolas or Boromir? Then the writer has to deal with characterization, making sure that characters stay true to the canon story without turning them into a feminized version of themselves. This is a common problem in many bad slash stories.

An interesting sub-set of Slash is the male Pregnancy story. In it one of the characters, usually the prettier looking one, like Legolas, ends up pregnant. The explanations for how the male character ends up pregnant are vast. Some authors don’t explain it at all. Some talk about magic potions. In the Lord of the Rings fandom, the excuse that “there are special kinds of male elves that can get pregnant” is commonly used to explain how a male can get pregnant. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any sort of reasoning to why the fan writer would want the male character to get pregnant. It has been suggested on fan message boards, such as Deletrius and God Awful Fan Fiction (or Gaff) that the fan writer wants the male character to have a child and experience all the joys that comes being pregnant.

The final type of Fan fiction is a genre that most writers don’t set out to write except in parody, but is so prevalent that it has become its own genre none the less. This story type is based on a character type collectively called a “Mary Sue”. A Mary Sue is an original female character inserted into the canonical universe of the piece of Fan Fiction that causes the Canon characters to act out of character and the universe to follow different rules than the Canonical Author laid out. The Mary Sue warps the reality that they are in by changing the main focus of the canon characters to be on them and not on their previously designated tasks. Often times they are the Fan Author inserted into the story with special powers, possessions, looks and abilities. The name Mary Sue comes from, once again, a Star Trek fan fiction story written in 1974, where she was “a beautiful and desirable half-Vulcan – captivates Kirk, Spock and McCoy, rescues them with a hairpin during an away mission, and –fighting off the effects of the disease which has laid low her superior officers – runs the Enterprise single-handedly before dying, wept over by her agonized superiors” (Pflieger 2). This half-Vulcan character, while not the first Mary Sue is where her name comes from, and she exemplifies the stereotype. She is beautiful, the heroes of the show (in this case) worship the ground she walks on and she is able to perform feats that defy credibility. However unlike most modern Mary Sues, she dies heroically.

Mary Sues are usually written by girls between the ages twelve and nineteen. They are, in many ways, authorial inserts into the secondary world. But they are inserts of not how the fan writer really is but how the fan writer would like to be perceived: perfect and loved by those characters that she loves. As a representation of the fan writer, a Mary Sue is a way for her to interact with the characters and stories that she has enjoyed.

The problem with the Mary Sue is that her stories she warps the secondary world that she is in, becoming the most important character in the story and by often ignoring the fundamental rules set down by the work’s author. Most people when they read fan fiction read it to see other people’s interpretations of canonical works, to see what other people thought about what might have happened when Sirius Black met James Potter for the first time. They didn’t want to read about Kallie Jade Malfoy, Lucious Malfoy’s good twin sister who was James Potter’s first love with the special ability to use wandless magic and was a natural animagus and had long sparkly black hair that looked golden in certain lights with violet eyes and a CD player that could work on Hogwarts grounds.

By ignoring the fundamental rules of the canonical universe the Fellowship of the Ring is allowed to reach Moria in less than forty days (any where from a couple of hours to a couple of days), CD players or other Muggle inventions work on Hogwarts grounds, Fairies run amuck in Middle Earth and Herminone comes back from Summer vacation a non-mudblood, vampire with curves in all the right places who needs to be resorted into Slytherin and becomes Draco’s true love. Or even Princess Kathryn Anewe Lyric Legowelenia from the elven kingdom of Carpas which is a secret kingdom of Magical elves that no one has ever heard of who are all excellent fighters despite that fact they’ve all been killed by Orcs and she is the last one and has come to council with her magical Unicorn Sweetbut and is unaffected by the One Ring and has the twenty first ring which is the One Ring’s counter commanded to marry Legolas who she hates because he’s just a spoiled prince and she has better things to do, like remind Elrond that she’s his long lost daughter with Galadriel.

These Mary Sue examples are not from actual stories, but they are typical of a Mary Sue story. Admittedly some aren’t as complex as these are, but some are even more complex and improbable. This is a trademark of a Sue. Other trademarks include lengthy descriptions of how the Sue looks, often a tragic past, being related to a canon character in some way, incredible powers, being a mixture of creatures that defy genetics (i.e. half unicorn, half elf and half demon), and an ability to bend or break the rules set down for others. Mary Sue stories in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fandoms have clichéd plots that appear over and over again with in the fandoms. Examples of Mary Sue plots are the girl falls into Middle Earth, the warrior Mary Sue, the transfer student from America to Hogwarts and the long lost twin sister of Harry Potter. Poor grammar and spelling also proliferate in Mary Sue stories, as does net speak.

Mary Sues are written because the fan writer wants to take part of the secondary world but they don’t feel like that they as themselves are interesting enough or because they are following the writing adage, slightly modified, “write what you know”. Mary Sues can’t work because of another adage, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not to say that Mary Sues or their writers can’t be redeemed. They have to be shown how to create realistic characters and to find a secondary or beta reader. They also have to learn the source material and be willing to follow the canon author’s rules for the secondary world. If they aren’t willing to do such a thing then they are better off creating their own secondary world.

The writing of fan fiction is different and in many ways more difficult than writing regular fiction. The fan writer has to know the secondary world that she is writing about extremely well. When done well it adds to the canon world and offers new thoughts and discussions about the published work by showing what people find interesting or missing in the canon story. When done poorly it can insult and ruin the canon story by turning it into something completely unrecognizable. However by looking at the fan fiction, both badly and well written gives a fairly accurate pulse to what people find interesting about a book and what they don’t particularly care for.