Realtalk tho, it’s actually pretty interesting and makes sense why it *started* but the *application* when internet fandom opened things up for everyone to share their work is the problem. Because
a. The term originated in pre-online fandom media (zines)
and b. Fandom was basically by adults for adults back then
A kid on the internet would have to even be allowed on the computer tying up the phone line to participate and they’d have to get parental approval to socialize with a bunch of adults if their parents weren’t involved in that weird fandom crap. If it was in the physical world, that would also mean needing approval to give addresses to get something like a zine being one of many concerns.
So I can see a disconnect in the minds of early internet fandom when kids started getting involved that “this is a space mainly adults inhabit because they’re the ones with the means to even create and participate in a fandom space” and I’m guessing most kids getting involved would be kids of fandom involved adults back in the day? Idk.
But that meant the only fanfic fix you got was a zine that came out like once a month. Meaning it was submission based as well. Imagine you only have like 10 fanfics to read for the month. Like just 10, not 10 after you filter through your preferred tags, pairings, ratings, etc, just 10 fics and they’ll be whatever the fuck got chosen.
Now imagine all you get to read is the super powerful perfect loved by everyone prettiest most important person no one has ever heard of. That it becomes a common trope that takes up fanfic space month after month and it’s practically the same story every time. You actually paid for this, you actually wanted to read fanfic about the characters you were invested in, not someone’s power fantasy with Star Trek serving as accessories to prop them up.
And that’s where the term Mary Sue even came from. A parody of such fics that took the trope of the super perfect more special than everyone ever that everyone liked and exaggerated it to show the absurdity of the concept being written over and over and then accepted into zines and taking up space that could have been about the characters/plot/setting/world that people get the zine to read in the first place. And her name was Lieutenant Mary Sue of the USS Enterprise, youngest Lieutenant at 15 and a half years old!
We take the infinite access to everyone’s thoughts for granted, we don’t think about fandom pre-internet and how much effort went into it out of love for the source material but also the desire to speculate and create for it.
However, things like Mary Sues that were actually taking up space and pushing out other potential content isn’t a thing on a user uploaded internet. It’s one thing to include it in an anthology, a compilation, a digital zine, etc, etc where there’s an element of wider exposure being given but just being uploaded to a site with infinite archive space and no mods having to approve of the content? That’s where those standards for fics should be more relaxed.
The disdain for the Mary Sue was born out of a fandom environment when space for sharing any work with the wider fandom was EXTREMELY LIMITED and that’s a context where it makes sense.
Back in the day, even if user uploaded content and no limit on what could be created and put out there had done away with the restriction of space, the other problem was REALLY LIMITED FILTERING, so you had to slog through endless fics yourself and came across the same power fantasy over and over and over, new and truly innovative methods of bad formatting, the 400th Bring Me To Life songfic, your NOTP, AUs, etc, etc, etc.
THIS point was the era of fandom I inhabited. So the irritation of not being able to find content you wanted without putting in a LOT of time to find a 600 word crackfic that implied your rarepair and your eyes going blurry and hours going by seeing the same “everyone loved her!” “she was so pretty but had such a tragic past!” “she’s flawed! See how clumsy she is!?” was frustrating (literally something I’ve done before and that’s not to mention going through all 50 pages of an archive to find there is literally no content for your otp). You only had affiliate links to count on to find other content in the fandom or the niches to OTPs, characters, AUs, hell even just places to post fanfic and fan art (when everyone was able to host their own web page and submit content which was still a thing in the early days of community sites like ff.net and took the same effort mostly adults had the means for but not as much as pre-internet fandoms).
So now, with even just being able to *TAG SHIT* those frustrations are GONE and the only real offense is tagging shit incorrectly and I think everyone kind of agrees that someone doing that intentionally is being a fucking asshole. More advanced content filters have chilled people the fuck out to a point where a lot have forgotten why they were tired of and VERY mad about these kinds of tropes to begin with. It wasn’t that they were girls enjoying themselves, it was an unfortunate hold over from ~*the old days*~ that really shouldn’t have been taken out on people who were new to fandom.
I will also note back then, internet privacy and not sharing personal info, chief among them your age (esp if you were a kid), was the standard. If the internet and fandom was mainly populated by adults, the assumption was you were an adult that could take the criticism.
Does that make it okay? No. Does it make it understandable? Yeah, honestly. Am I glad those attitudes have mostly been ditched or lost to their own niche of assholes? Fucking YES.
I will say as I conclude here though, you’ll be looking back on this current era of fandom and say the same things again about current fandom attitudes and I hope that it ends up a more nuanced take than “everyone just hates girls having fun.” These attitudes about content don’t go away, they just move on to the next “acceptable” target and it’s only after it’s moved on do most people decide that the previous target wasn’t acceptable after all.
Enemies to “I accidentally came across you while you were vulnerable and scared and I’m not a total asshole so I tried to help you” to “accidental mutual uncovering of softer sides and vulnerabilities” to “I can’t be mean to you anymore, not out of pity but because it would feel weird betraying that brief truce we had” to “Fine I’ll make an effort to be nice to you now I guess” to “actually now that we’re not actively hating each other you’re not so bad I guess” to “i think we’re friends but I’m not going to say that because I’m afraid you’re not gonna feel the same way” to “oh you also think we’re friends? Great” to lovers
i buried a sword my f*ther made in my back yard YEARS ago and i live on a large plot of land and i can’t for the fucking life of me remember where, is anyone out here psychic enough to point me in the right direction, i’m getting exhausted and can only dig so many fucking holes in a day. yes i’m being serious, i want the fucking sword back
can’t use a metal detector bc junk land + lockdowns so i’m just going to dig holes all weekend until my momther starts screaming
only 46 more plots to dig
i was rly unclear so, yellow is places where there’s structures or whatever so it’s not possible for it to be there. red x is where i’ve already been :(
not pictured; mother yelling at me thru the window to fill in and re-seed the holes i’m making
i was going to take a break bc it’s hot and i’ve been playing manual-labour-battleship for going on 3 hours now, but someone just told me “there’s better lies to make up for notes xoxo” so now i ha—i Have to find this sword to deliver it personally up their ass
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LADS WE’RE IN 34 COULD THIS BE IT AAAAAAAAAAAAA
MY FAMILY SWORD RETURNS TO ME
a girl reunited with her sword
@derry-down-dreadnought oh i can’t @ you! that’s so disappointing :(
i know reading comprehension is really hard for some people which is why i included pictures! pictures of the holes i dug! :) if you scroll up you can see the spots where there dirthas been overturned by a shovel. the holes have to get filled in and leveled back out because having a back yard full of holes is Dangerous! (i can explain why if this is not clear to you? you can use simple common tools called a shovel and a rake to preform this task)
also! the sword is stainless steel and i own many items you may be unfamiliar with called “cloths”, they’re an item you can use to wipe objects down, and can be used wet or dry :)
i know no one has ever been kind to you, and that you obviously don’t live an interesting life, and that seeing a mention of a dad on a post makes something happen in your little grinchbinch heart, but if you want attention, don’t do it by hijacking other peoples posts! try making your own more interesting and being less of a cunt :)
also so sorry to the other troll in the comments frothing about shovel stickers and who was expecting a “proper” sword made by a blacksmith, and not one made by a bored 20-something guy at a steel fabricator in the 90’s to try and do something cool for his kid, i’ll go back right now just for you and edit the word FAKE before each time i said sword, my bad guys, sorry my sword doesn’t live up to the ones you own!
Trans people don’t typically scream at people over being misgendered, so whenever a transphobe acts like trans people do that I just think “this is made up” or “what did you really do to get them to that point”
nothing sexier than that picture with the italian players on top of eachother after the win and the english ones going through the 5 stages of grief in the back
anyone else scared of single player minecraft. not just like oh it’s scary to mine alone. but the odd paranoia that there is another user there. that you’ll be playing alone and leave your house and there’s a person standing there. or you’re mining and there’s a user standing in the path you mined that leaves when you see it
God I thought I was the only one
i literally can never play for long before getting that genuine weird fear and exiting the game :(
are you scared of herobrine
Honestly Minecraft is so eerie because of that loneliness. I have always seen the “story” of Minecraft as Steve’s fruitless search for other survivors, wandering the landscape, following maps and unearthing ruins and hoping to signal to someone else—anyone else—that he is here, that he’s alive.
For example, the Beacon has obvious utility for the player, but in the story, it seems much more like it would be built as a signal to others.
It is made more eerie by the fact that the creatures he encounters are misshapen mirrors of a human form. The villagers are clearly evolved either from humans or a human-like ancestor, but are not themselves human. Drowned and Zombies perhaps were once human, but unlike zombie villagers, it seems that they cannot be cured. (Maybe he will find a way. Maybe, maybe.)
The Endermen are peaceful when respected, if unnerving. They used to frighten him, but he has been alone for so long; the empty horizon that once held hope has become so unwelcoming that the garbled syllables of these flitting black figures are almost a comfort. He talks back to them, seeing patterns in the handful of noises they repeat that aren’t there.
He has followed the clues left in the ruins, piecing together doors to the hellish, inhospitable realms the previous inhabitants of this world must have tried to escape to, and encountered incomprehensible beings. He has discovered weapons and ancient texts imbued with magic and learned to replicate it.
It has been so long. He has traveled so far, from the harsh, unforgiving lands of the desert, over mountains and into sticky jungles, and there is never a new clue, a new signal, something, anything left that might indicate that there are survivors.
So what would he think, if he saw someone appear, standing in the doorway of the fortress he has built over the years, someone human? Someone else, after so long spent searching? After so long spent knowing, deep, deep down, that there is no one else left?
What is more likely? That he would think this is a surviving human, incomprehensibly, after all this time?
Or that this is yet another being, in a world of magic and strange power, that once was human, or is trying to be human, or is not quite human, that is just
if I wrote a dystopian novel where the corrupt evil megacorporation that controls society has a fucking smirk for a logo, my editor would tell me to use a less heavy-handed metaphor
and yet
Speaking of heavy-handed metaphors, there’s this black substance derived from untold death, a vile fluid that could kill you if imbibed or inhaled, and yet our society runs on this necromancer’s fluid. Wars have been fought, men have been killed for this stuff, all for the power it contains, even knowing that using it is actively harmful to the natural world.
i buried a sword my f*ther made in my back yard YEARS ago and i live on a large plot of land and i can’t for the fucking life of me remember where, is anyone out here psychic enough to point me in the right direction, i’m getting exhausted and can only dig so many fucking holes in a day. yes i’m being serious, i want the fucking sword back
can’t use a metal detector bc junk land + lockdowns so i’m just going to dig holes all weekend until my momther starts screaming
only 46 more plots to dig
i was rly unclear so, yellow is places where there’s structures or whatever so it’s not possible for it to be there. red x is where i’ve already been :(
not pictured; mother yelling at me thru the window to fill in and re-seed the holes i’m making
i was going to take a break bc it’s hot and i’ve been playing manual-labour-battleship for going on 3 hours now, but someone just told me “there’s better lies to make up for notes xoxo” so now i ha—i Have to find this sword to deliver it personally up their ass
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LADS WE’RE IN 34 COULD THIS BE IT AAAAAAAAAAAAA
