While doing some idle, late night surfing a couple of days ago, I found myself reading
my old blog entries from shortly after I moved up here in the summer of 2003. Let me just apologize now for the quality of the blog lately, since I found those old ones far more interesting than anything I'm writing about lately. Then again, I enjoy my old, rambling posts more than most, I suspect.
Anyway, I eventually happened upon the
August 5, 2003 entry, in which I babbled on about this and that, before finally working my way into
a semi-review of the last Jean M. Auel novel,
Shelters of Stone. Though I was only able to tolerate skimming over the first 50 or so pages, I talked to Malaya, who skimmed the entire book, and felt that was sufficient to give it an overall score of a 1, the lowest I've ever given any novel.
I also couldn't resist reading (again) some of the outraged and
deeply-disappointed reader reviews on Amazon.com. They're sad, really. People who loved the first four books in the series, waited loyally for book 5, and wanted so badly to like it... and gradually realized it was horrible, and a complete rip off.
While looking over those reviews, I saw a few mentions of the term "Mary Sue" in regards to superwoman Ayla, and remembered how much I liked that concept. What's a Mary Sue? A quote
from a review:
Ayla's the kind of character that I have come to find myself rooting AGAINST, even though it's a fixed game - the author clearly loves her creation so much that she can't bear to think of Ayla being insufficient in any way. She's so beautiful that every guy wants her. Whenever you get the male viewpoint, it's never "Ayla was reasonably attractive, though Jarovar preferred smaller, brown-haired women." No, she's always considered dazzlingly beautiful...
Not only is Ayla beautiful, but she's a supergenius. She has already invented or discovered the domestication of animals, the needle, the use of flint to start fires, the atlatl, the travois (I believe) and the role of men in human reproduction. Let's not forget that she's an incredibly talented healer, able to learn foreign languages in less than a month, and, I think, psychic. And she's a great orienteer - she's able to find a cave that has been overlooked by the people who live directly on the site.
Does everyone love Ayla?, Well, yes, unless they're psychotic, insanely jealous jilted lovers, drunken bums or otherwise amidst the dregs of humanity. In fact, I can't even recall anyone who's lukewarm about her.
Sadly,
Shelters of Stone isn't fanfic, it's by a best selling author, but that doesn't make the character any less of a Mary Sue. The fanfic type can
be found here, in a good description from a very good fanfic writer's guide. There are even
Mary Sue tests, to subject your characters to before you inflict them upon an unsuspecting world.
The problem with a Mary Sue, besides clearly advertising the author's wish fulfillment issues, is that, like Ayla, they're boring. They're perfect, they're infallible, they always win in the end (or fail nobly, sacrificing themselves to save everyone else), etc. Amateur writers want to have cool characters doing cool things, and that works for a while, but it gets old in a hurry for readers. There's no suspense since you know how things are going to turn out. You need heroes (in most stories, at least) but you don't want to make them unbelievable and so perfect that readers actually start rooting against them.
While surfing for Mary Sue humor in fanfic, I found a link to this site and its collection of
truly horrendous fanfic; we're talking MST3K quality. Literally. It's fanfic that's been archived and excerpted, with the story in bold, and MST3K-style commentary inserted around it. The first link I saw sent me to this story, and I laughed so hard I got sweaty and had to take my shirt off to cool down. If it hadn't been 5am I would have enjoyed it even more, since I had to constantly stifle my mirth to avoid waking up Malaya.
The original story would have given me the shakes, it's so incredibly bad, but with the commentary added it achieves something akin to genius. Remember, the original is in bold. And grammatically horrendous. And constantly misspelled. And...
Legolas was riding along the woods and one day he found a baby whaped in colth
DG: Whaped?
Teegs: Colth?
Doodles: I'm not the only one who didn't get that, I see...
so he got off his horse and went to the baby and then Legolas said"who
Teegs: Could have written such a horrible thing?
Hika: CAPITALIZE, DAMMIT!
Doodles: (To Hika) Simmer!
left you here little one"
DG: Obviously someone who didn't want the thing.
and then the baby just cryed and then Legolas pick her up
Teegs: *commanding tone* Legolas, pick her up!
Hika: This author has real problems. It's like... one big run on sentence... and cried is spelt wrong... and...
Doodles: We GET IT, Hika.
and hold her and then the baby stoped crying and then Legolas said"your name is going be Laura"
DG: What a wonderful Elvish name!
and then Legolas and the baby went onto the horse and went back to the castle where he lived.
Doodles: ...that's the first period in the whole thing.
DG: That's sad.
All: *nod*
That's just the start of the "story." It goes on and on from there, with more insane events and grammar and spelling and just generally enough writing atrocities to kill most literary agents. It's not the only one either; the site has half a dozen other MST'ed pieces of fanfic, all of which are as bad
or worse than this one. They're so bad you'll find yourself questioning their authenticity, and assuming someone must have made up the worst writing possible, just to see if they could do it. (Please God tell me it's true.)
Reading these stories though, greatly improved as they are by the sarcastic commentary, I realized why people have such a low opinion of fan fiction, and why various authors (Anne Rice and Anne McCaffrey are 2 I know of) attempt to circumvent the first amendment and fair use laws in the US by banning even non-commercial fanfic. It's one thing to have people writing good stories set in your world and using your characters, stories that fans enjoy reading and that make them eager to buy more official material by you. It's quite another to go online and find
something like this:
Legolas said sorry but I lied my love you are the descendant of gods you have to go to Frodo and take the ring from him Sary said well I'll go are you coming Legolas said I’m afraid I can't becouse I'm dying and then Legolas died
Sary yelled NOOOOOOOOOO!! My love you will have the last kiss Sary kissed Legolas and then she went to find Frodo only Legolas’s bow with her that she got from Legolas when she arrived to Frodo's cabin Frodo pulled her in and raped her and hit her with a sword but then the door opened and Aragon stepped in and killed Frodo and took Sary and headded for home
On the other hand, my future plans to host forums on my writing website, including a fanfic forum, might work nicely with this sort of work. After all, I couldn't read any good fanfic, since then I might see ideas that I was going to use myself, I'd be open to lawsuits for taking someone else's intellectual property if there were coincidences, etc. But with stories of this quality, 1) there's no way one earth anything would be worth stealing, and 2) they'd also be a great deal of fun to read.
Anyway, read some of those
MST'ed fanfics, but not when there's someone sleeping in the next room, since muffling your own laughter promotes suffocation and sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the whole process.
Labels: fan fiction, writing
