Here comes Mary Sue [RE: The Decline of B/W Fan Fiction]

[cilia@xxxxx]

Hey all,

Yes finally the discussion came upon the subject that I try very 
hard to avoid and with good reason. The much debated and hated Mary 
Sue and the all too common god complex of some writers. 

I'm with Mad-Hamlet on the Mary Sue issue and even more so. Good 
writers that write good stories, but then end up ruining by 
inserting themselves as a character or even worse the HERO, those 
kind of stories should remain what they start as fantasies and day-
dreams. 

Also I believe that writers are strong people, the share amount of 
courage it takes just to post a story is testimony to their inner 
strength and a little C&C won't break such a person. So new writers 
aren't bunny rabbits, but more like lion cubs.

To support this stance that I've taken on the New Readers Issue, I 
present the evidence on Cilia the Fairy; I became the writer I am 
today cause of constructive responses that helped knock of some very 
bad writing habits I had in the beginning, mainly being that the 
hero could do no wrong and some points on story flow etc. etc. in 
other words it helped me become a tolerable, albeit slightly fringe-
style writer, cause lets face fact I'm not exactly main stream here 
people, but back to the subject.

The Mary Sue, now since I hail from Star Trek, I'm very familiar 
with this form of writing, yet we Buffy writers often have the 
common sense to stray far away from this, although I remember a 
nasty example from about a year ago, which was a Mary Sue and it was 
bad. Thankfully aside from Pat's excellent story that featured him 
and it was good, we have been mostly free of this menace. So to me 
the Mary Sue is not a mark of a bad writer, but more a mark of bad 
taste and lack of creative if that those kind of stories make up the 
bulk of a writers portfolio.

Then there are the Golden Age talks, things have changed, we can all 
see that, our stories are not the same as they were in the beginning 
of this fandom and new people have somewhat taken over in regards to 
the more frequently posted stories. These writers have a different 
angle on the B/W ship and a different style hailing from that the 
canon they write around is in stark contrast to what myself, Pat, 
Kimber and many other's worked around. So times have changed and a 
new age of perhaps a slightly darker stories with angst that is 
based more on canon then fanon has emerged as the new leading 
element in our stories, for example are stories such as Spike Bad, 
which I intend to review soon, and several other's. 

Well guess that's it for now,
Cilia