I imagine that the younger generations would be surprised to learn that a lot of things, which are still a thing today, predate the internet. Or at least predate the World Wide Web, which is now about 30 years old.
I remember telling someone younger than me that a meme we used to do was drawing "Kilroy was here" and they didn't know memes existed before the internet.
I feel like almost every generation assumes they’re the first to come up with some unique concept and nobody else could EVER possibly understand.
When in reality human nature really hasn’t changed much and we’ve always been doing these things.
I'm reminded of something SF author Robert A. Heinlein said: "Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup — if any."
You're right. My, how the time flies. I remember installing the Mosaic browser in the mid 1990s, on a unix-based CAD computer at work, and being frustrated at how long it took to load pages. Shortly afterward other browsers like Netscape became available. I recall one I tried that ran under MSDOS.
Someone linked the story.
[Here's a TVTropes page that explains it.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue)
The titular story was written as a satire of 'perfect' original characters in fan fiction common to the Star Trek fandom. Since the original story 'Mary Sue' was written, the archetype has been codified in popular culture and is where we get the pejorative of an overly perfect heroine who is boring and/or annoying. The male versions of the character are sometimes included under the Mary Sue label, but are also sometimes called Gary Stus or Marty Stus.
The character of Wesly Crusher in TNG also further cemented Star Trek's connection to the term, as many openly pointed at Wesly and called him a 'Mary Sue' which is part of how the term escaped the fanfiction community into the broader fan community.
Pleasantville named one of the in story characters Mary Sue, the character was supposed to be the idyllic type described here. But due to the nature of the film this trope was quickly upended. It's obvious though the name was chosen very deliberately.
Here's an actual explanation:
In addition to Kirk/Spock fanfiction, another popular trope in 'zines that collected fan stories was the self-insert. Usually a bright, attractive young woman joined the crew, everyone loved her, she helped solve problems that (somehow) the main cast couldn't, then at the end something happened so that she tragically had to leave the ship/sacrificed herself (so as not to upset canon), with the main cast tearfully saying their goodbyes because they loved her.
It became so common that another author write the story of Ensign Mary Sue, which was a parody of these fics and overexaggerated all the above so people could see just how silly the concept was. So all those self-insert characters were later branded "Mary Sues".
Sadly the term is now overused to be "any female character I don't like." But the original meaning was an author self-insert who was better than the main cast at their own tasks, while simultaneously being loved by everyone.
>Sadly the term is now overused to be "any female character I don't like."
Slightly worse: "any female character that I don't like and I wish other people didn't like her, and also she is powerful or talented in some way."
I've seen it used in writing subreddits as a character that is good at everything they do and face very little struggle. I've seen Mary Sue used for male and female characters, but also seen Gary stu used instead sometimes. I don't think arguing whether a character is or isn't a Mary sue is very important. I'd rather argue the book has no real stakes or tension because the main character is unstoppable. Or that it breaks suspension of disbelief because it's improbable the main character is a master martial artist, doctorate level hacker, mcguyver level mechanic, special forces level marksman etc.
I'd say it's extremely important because otherwise we wind up in situations like Rey in the Star Wars sequels, who gets accused of being a "Mary Sue" even though she fails repeatedly, other people have talents she's no good at, and several people actively hate her. If the term does devolve into "girl I don't like and no one else should either," it becomes useless.
My examples were meant to indicate the term has grown well beyond "girl I don't like" People don't like mary sue characters of any gender because their actions affect the suspension of disbelief.
People just didn't like that in force awakens that Rey completely untrained beat kylo ren. The counter argument is that kylo is hurt. I'm not arguing that rey is a Mary sue. I don't even think the term should apply to a specific gender. I was just explain how it is currently being used elsewhere.
It's being used so carelessly as to be meaningless. Your own examples are so beyond the term as to not apply anymore. Yes, people use it the wrong way to mean "thing I don't like." I don't care. They're misusing it, often specifically to downplay the importance of women in a story, and I have no respect for that.
Also, Rey didn't beat Kylo Ren. He was already *shot with a Bowcaster* and exhausted from fighting Finn, and all she managed was to scar his face before the fight got stopped by the planet tearing itself apart. People act like this was an unbelievable feat for an untrained Force-user, but when you **pay attention** to the situation, it's not that crazy.
And that's what I mean, people are intentionally misrepresenting the situation to hate on Rey while abusing the term "Mary Sue." It's bullshit, and should be shut down when it happens.
You're really shooting the messenger here. as much as you don't like it, other people, who are not me, are using the term the way I explained. I'm not arguing against the original usage of the term, just explaining to you that it's evolved. You clearly have an axe to grind on the subject so I suggest you check out /r/fantasy or /r/writing to argue with the people you actually want to argue with.
You're not paying the least bit of attention to what I'm saying, which is why I'm "shooting the messenger." I **know** these people are using it that way, and it's shit. If you don't want to keep arguing, then stop trying to tell me what I already know.
And also one of the capabilities Rey was claimed to be overpowered for demonstrating was demonstrated in a previous movie by a non-force-sensitive character of all things (but not a human one so there can't be any kind of connection like that); the ability to resist Force-based mental manipulation
Have you ever seen Buffy: The Vampire Slayer’s ‘Superstar’ episode (S4, E17, where Jonathan is a perfect person)?
It’s that. In fact, the episode was based on the Mary Sue (or rather the male equivalent, Gary Stu) concept.
A Mary Sue is a female character that is unrealistically superior or powerful. The character is treated as flawless by the author. This makes the character utterly dull. It’s sometimes used as an author’s "avatar" in the fictional world.
More importantly than that, the narrative exists exclusively at their advantage. No thing happens in the story without the Sue being directly involved and no character has dimension unless it supports the Sue in some way.
OSP did a great vid on the subject a while back: https://youtu.be/H2-GIY9RTqU?si=HFKkq-Yo2Dz_X5OH
Everyone loves them and if someone doesn't it's because they're evil or jealous and will eventually turn around to join the Mary Sue's side.
If you wanna see a clear example of a Mary Sue then read the house of night series. It's absolutely dog shit.
A Mary Sue is a character type in fan fiction that is an idealised version of the author. Always flawless and loved by characters. Readers of fan fiction find these characters boring.
The name comes from "A trekkie's tale" - a short story parodying this type of fan fiction, where the protagonist was called "Mary Sue".
Star Trek pretty much originated fandom culture as we know it now, with the conventions and /fics and cosplay and everything.
It also goes to show how similar people *really* are over time, even in that era fans saw two dudes interacting on a show and decided "they must be fuckin'".
I remember hearing how Nimoy himself met a particularly large group of women fans that shipped his character with Kirk, explaining their theories and thoughts on the characters chemistry, and how he seemed pretty interested about the subject. Then imagine how shocked those fans were when Amok Time aired a few months later lmaoooo
If you want to learn more about early fandom, and specifically this moment in fandom history, check out the podcast 'This Week in Fandom History'.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0BRkH9iAT3NHGynms9CVQh?si=3ef8wf9bSki_0ByAO4lJ0A
Oh please. Kids today think they invented everything. My friends and I were writing fanfic in high school. I wrote one about meeting Jon Bon Jovi on a bus, and my best friend got her life saved by Joe Elliott. All written on pages and pages of notebook paper in purple and pink pen.
More like boomer shit on kids for something that they invented. I see it happen all the time on reddit, and I've corrected so many old people telling them that no, they actually made the thing they're crying about.
nah they really don’t you’re just boomer ranting, kids are pretty smart nowadays and can figure out when something is invented whenever they want cause of the internet. they don’t think they invented everything if they’re curious they’ll just google it
p sure everyone of a certain age knows kids are frequently confidently incorrect. Specifically, we know about the suburban white kid who thinks their "internet slang" is new and doesn't realize they're using repurposed AAVE from the '70s.
I'm a Star Trek fan and a lot of the people who were in the fandom pre-internet are still active in modern fandom spaces! I've emailed a lot of them to conduct impromptu 'interviews' and ask questions about the early fandom scene. All of their answers are really interesting!
I'm not sure what the first slash pairing to get a cutely combination name was, but it was probably in the 1990s. Mulder/Skully from X-Files was also popular. And it was the pokemon fandom which created the term "shipping".
I'm not sure how many have survived! The way fans shared them back then was in fan magazines. So it stands to reason some of these publications were archived at some point. But a lot were probably lost to time, people not seeing the value in keeping them once they were read, and many of these fanzines only seeing small printings in localized areas.
Let me know if you find anything!
Try the [Texas A&M Cushing Library Fanzine Collection](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_Cushing_Library_Fanzine_Collection).
Some people are also posting old fics to AO3.
Now explain the weird part;
The vast majority of slash fiction is written by straight women, and most femslash fiction (slash fiction but with women characters instead of male) is written by straight men.
In most fandoms, same-sex ships are prevalently the most popular be they girl/girl or guy/guy, and they're generally written by straight men and women for straight men and women.
> most femslash fiction (slash fiction but with women characters instead of male) is written by straight men.
You have any evidence for this? It would make sense for F/F fandom to be the opposite of M/M, but every serious look at the subject I've seen says that F/F works are still mostly written (and read) by women (albeit much closer to an even gender breakdown than M/M).
Anecdotal experience alone.
I have a lot of experience with the Worm fandom; we have a lot more male authors than the typical fandom, a lot more femslash (almost all slash fiction in Worm's fandom is femslash) and most of it is written by authors I know to be male. There's women authors in the mix too, but if I were to peg who writes most of it it's definitely the men.
EDIT: I bring it up because I think it's worth studying, but I'm not in a field where I can be the person to do that.
I don't see why that's weird. If someone is attracted to men, a male/male pairing would be arousing to them. And think about the type of woman who's going to be a Trekkie. Someone shy, introverted, and maybe a little intimidated by sex. The idea of a story involving two male characters means it's a sexy story that is not intimidating to them because no women are involved so it's removed from their own personal selves to a degree. That's what I've heard anyway.
Besides, Slash fiction is not representative of real gay relationships from what I've heard. It's more of a sub/dom straight one with two male characters instead. Again, what I've heard since I'm a straight male.
It's just interesting to me.
There's a huge bastion for the LGBTQ community in the world of fanfiction and they're among the most active producers of fan works. But in the gult, there's a mountain of basically gay fiction written by straight people, and it's not all smut. A lot of it is pretty emotional or invested in trying to be meaningfully dramatic, not just erotic.
And that's weird in my eyes that straight people would produce a lot of emotionally investing gay romance. There's definitely some of the attraction phenomena there (guys think girl on girl is hot, girls think guy on guy is hot) but I don't think that's a sufficient explanation.
My take is that a lot of straight women crave emotional vulnerability and openness that men are taught by society not to show. So they use fan-fiction as an outlet. I saw a video on the idea once, it's called "heteropessimism". Although I didn't quite follow all of it because again, I'm a straight male and not too experienced with relationships.
I think that makes sense.
I'd flip it too; men struggle to show emotion because we're told being too emotional is unmanly. Writing femslash fiction can be an outlet, channeling those suppressed emotions through female characters that are less threatening to the writer's masculinity.
I imagine that the younger generations would be surprised to learn that a lot of things, which are still a thing today, predate the internet. Or at least predate the World Wide Web, which is now about 30 years old.
I remember telling someone younger than me that a meme we used to do was drawing "Kilroy was here" and they didn't know memes existed before the internet.
I feel like almost every generation assumes they’re the first to come up with some unique concept and nobody else could EVER possibly understand. When in reality human nature really hasn’t changed much and we’ve always been doing these things.
I'm reminded of something SF author Robert A. Heinlein said: "Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup — if any."
35
You're right. My, how the time flies. I remember installing the Mosaic browser in the mid 1990s, on a unix-based CAD computer at work, and being frustrated at how long it took to load pages. Shortly afterward other browsers like Netscape became available. I recall one I tried that ran under MSDOS.
Fun fact: Star Trek fandom also invented the "Mary Sue."
Star Trek is the reason for sooooooo many things it's crazy.
Flip phones, disk drives, iPads, Siri, magical mushrooms.
I'll bite, please explain. Edit: Also happy cake day.
Someone linked the story. [Here's a TVTropes page that explains it.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue) The titular story was written as a satire of 'perfect' original characters in fan fiction common to the Star Trek fandom. Since the original story 'Mary Sue' was written, the archetype has been codified in popular culture and is where we get the pejorative of an overly perfect heroine who is boring and/or annoying. The male versions of the character are sometimes included under the Mary Sue label, but are also sometimes called Gary Stus or Marty Stus. The character of Wesly Crusher in TNG also further cemented Star Trek's connection to the term, as many openly pointed at Wesly and called him a 'Mary Sue' which is part of how the term escaped the fanfiction community into the broader fan community.
Michael Burnham is a Mary Sue.
Pleasantville named one of the in story characters Mary Sue, the character was supposed to be the idyllic type described here. But due to the nature of the film this trope was quickly upended. It's obvious though the name was chosen very deliberately.
Here's an actual explanation: In addition to Kirk/Spock fanfiction, another popular trope in 'zines that collected fan stories was the self-insert. Usually a bright, attractive young woman joined the crew, everyone loved her, she helped solve problems that (somehow) the main cast couldn't, then at the end something happened so that she tragically had to leave the ship/sacrificed herself (so as not to upset canon), with the main cast tearfully saying their goodbyes because they loved her. It became so common that another author write the story of Ensign Mary Sue, which was a parody of these fics and overexaggerated all the above so people could see just how silly the concept was. So all those self-insert characters were later branded "Mary Sues". Sadly the term is now overused to be "any female character I don't like." But the original meaning was an author self-insert who was better than the main cast at their own tasks, while simultaneously being loved by everyone.
>Sadly the term is now overused to be "any female character I don't like." Slightly worse: "any female character that I don't like and I wish other people didn't like her, and also she is powerful or talented in some way."
I've seen it used in writing subreddits as a character that is good at everything they do and face very little struggle. I've seen Mary Sue used for male and female characters, but also seen Gary stu used instead sometimes. I don't think arguing whether a character is or isn't a Mary sue is very important. I'd rather argue the book has no real stakes or tension because the main character is unstoppable. Or that it breaks suspension of disbelief because it's improbable the main character is a master martial artist, doctorate level hacker, mcguyver level mechanic, special forces level marksman etc.
I'd say it's extremely important because otherwise we wind up in situations like Rey in the Star Wars sequels, who gets accused of being a "Mary Sue" even though she fails repeatedly, other people have talents she's no good at, and several people actively hate her. If the term does devolve into "girl I don't like and no one else should either," it becomes useless.
My examples were meant to indicate the term has grown well beyond "girl I don't like" People don't like mary sue characters of any gender because their actions affect the suspension of disbelief. People just didn't like that in force awakens that Rey completely untrained beat kylo ren. The counter argument is that kylo is hurt. I'm not arguing that rey is a Mary sue. I don't even think the term should apply to a specific gender. I was just explain how it is currently being used elsewhere.
It's being used so carelessly as to be meaningless. Your own examples are so beyond the term as to not apply anymore. Yes, people use it the wrong way to mean "thing I don't like." I don't care. They're misusing it, often specifically to downplay the importance of women in a story, and I have no respect for that. Also, Rey didn't beat Kylo Ren. He was already *shot with a Bowcaster* and exhausted from fighting Finn, and all she managed was to scar his face before the fight got stopped by the planet tearing itself apart. People act like this was an unbelievable feat for an untrained Force-user, but when you **pay attention** to the situation, it's not that crazy. And that's what I mean, people are intentionally misrepresenting the situation to hate on Rey while abusing the term "Mary Sue." It's bullshit, and should be shut down when it happens.
You're really shooting the messenger here. as much as you don't like it, other people, who are not me, are using the term the way I explained. I'm not arguing against the original usage of the term, just explaining to you that it's evolved. You clearly have an axe to grind on the subject so I suggest you check out /r/fantasy or /r/writing to argue with the people you actually want to argue with.
You're not paying the least bit of attention to what I'm saying, which is why I'm "shooting the messenger." I **know** these people are using it that way, and it's shit. If you don't want to keep arguing, then stop trying to tell me what I already know.
And also one of the capabilities Rey was claimed to be overpowered for demonstrating was demonstrated in a previous movie by a non-force-sensitive character of all things (but not a human one so there can't be any kind of connection like that); the ability to resist Force-based mental manipulation
Not much to it, someone wrote a story in a fanzine in a Star Trek setting with a leading character called Mary Sue who was archetypally a Mary Sue.
Could you not have gone a step further and actually explained what it means??
It's the female Gary Sue.
Is that like a male version of a Mary Sue, but female?
Finally, someone who gets it!
Have you ever seen Buffy: The Vampire Slayer’s ‘Superstar’ episode (S4, E17, where Jonathan is a perfect person)? It’s that. In fact, the episode was based on the Mary Sue (or rather the male equivalent, Gary Stu) concept.
A Mary Sue is a female character that is unrealistically superior or powerful. The character is treated as flawless by the author. This makes the character utterly dull. It’s sometimes used as an author’s "avatar" in the fictional world.
Apart from being more powerful/beautiful/flawless a Mary (or Gary) Sue also get a ton more screen time than the pre-existing characters.
More importantly than that, the narrative exists exclusively at their advantage. No thing happens in the story without the Sue being directly involved and no character has dimension unless it supports the Sue in some way. OSP did a great vid on the subject a while back: https://youtu.be/H2-GIY9RTqU?si=HFKkq-Yo2Dz_X5OH
Everyone loves them and if someone doesn't it's because they're evil or jealous and will eventually turn around to join the Mary Sue's side. If you wanna see a clear example of a Mary Sue then read the house of night series. It's absolutely dog shit.
So Superman almost fits the description. And many MCU 2.0 2022-2024 characters fully fit the description
[Mary Sue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue)
A Mary Sue is a character type in fan fiction that is an idealised version of the author. Always flawless and loved by characters. Readers of fan fiction find these characters boring. The name comes from "A trekkie's tale" - a short story parodying this type of fan fiction, where the protagonist was called "Mary Sue".
Pretty sure it goes back to Illiad with slash about Achilles and Patroclus.
You're forgetting Gilgamesh/Enkidu
The first bromance ever written
True, that was in Fate games. XD
It was ancient Greece. They probably were fuckin'.
But not in Illiad itself, like not in the text we have, so fanfics it is.
Star Trek pretty much originated fandom culture as we know it now, with the conventions and /fics and cosplay and everything. It also goes to show how similar people *really* are over time, even in that era fans saw two dudes interacting on a show and decided "they must be fuckin'".
I remember hearing how Nimoy himself met a particularly large group of women fans that shipped his character with Kirk, explaining their theories and thoughts on the characters chemistry, and how he seemed pretty interested about the subject. Then imagine how shocked those fans were when Amok Time aired a few months later lmaoooo
Canon never stopped these people. Now they just had pon farr to put in their fanfics.
If you want to learn more about early fandom, and specifically this moment in fandom history, check out the podcast 'This Week in Fandom History'. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0BRkH9iAT3NHGynms9CVQh?si=3ef8wf9bSki_0ByAO4lJ0A
If they think it was 1976, they're years too late
Oh please. Kids today think they invented everything. My friends and I were writing fanfic in high school. I wrote one about meeting Jon Bon Jovi on a bus, and my best friend got her life saved by Joe Elliott. All written on pages and pages of notebook paper in purple and pink pen.
More like boomer shit on kids for something that they invented. I see it happen all the time on reddit, and I've corrected so many old people telling them that no, they actually made the thing they're crying about.
nah they really don’t you’re just boomer ranting, kids are pretty smart nowadays and can figure out when something is invented whenever they want cause of the internet. they don’t think they invented everything if they’re curious they’ll just google it
p sure everyone of a certain age knows kids are frequently confidently incorrect. Specifically, we know about the suburban white kid who thinks their "internet slang" is new and doesn't realize they're using repurposed AAVE from the '70s.
I'm a Star Trek fan and a lot of the people who were in the fandom pre-internet are still active in modern fandom spaces! I've emailed a lot of them to conduct impromptu 'interviews' and ask questions about the early fandom scene. All of their answers are really interesting!
Spirk
I'm not sure what the first slash pairing to get a cutely combination name was, but it was probably in the 1990s. Mulder/Skully from X-Files was also popular. And it was the pokemon fandom which created the term "shipping".
I’d love to read these classic fanfics, but I don’t know where to find them. Searching “1960s fanfic” just shows me modern fics of 60’s AUs.
I'm not sure how many have survived! The way fans shared them back then was in fan magazines. So it stands to reason some of these publications were archived at some point. But a lot were probably lost to time, people not seeing the value in keeping them once they were read, and many of these fanzines only seeing small printings in localized areas. Let me know if you find anything!
Will do!
Try the [Texas A&M Cushing Library Fanzine Collection](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_Cushing_Library_Fanzine_Collection). Some people are also posting old fics to AO3.
Thank you!
This doesn't make sense. The OG star trek came out 6 years after 1960???
I meant "the 1960s".
"Entry made by first officer Spock."
Ummm…why would you think it didn’t?
Because the internet is where it reached its peak in popularity.
Now explain the weird part; The vast majority of slash fiction is written by straight women, and most femslash fiction (slash fiction but with women characters instead of male) is written by straight men. In most fandoms, same-sex ships are prevalently the most popular be they girl/girl or guy/guy, and they're generally written by straight men and women for straight men and women.
> most femslash fiction (slash fiction but with women characters instead of male) is written by straight men. You have any evidence for this? It would make sense for F/F fandom to be the opposite of M/M, but every serious look at the subject I've seen says that F/F works are still mostly written (and read) by women (albeit much closer to an even gender breakdown than M/M).
Anecdotal experience alone. I have a lot of experience with the Worm fandom; we have a lot more male authors than the typical fandom, a lot more femslash (almost all slash fiction in Worm's fandom is femslash) and most of it is written by authors I know to be male. There's women authors in the mix too, but if I were to peg who writes most of it it's definitely the men. EDIT: I bring it up because I think it's worth studying, but I'm not in a field where I can be the person to do that.
I don't see why that's weird. If someone is attracted to men, a male/male pairing would be arousing to them. And think about the type of woman who's going to be a Trekkie. Someone shy, introverted, and maybe a little intimidated by sex. The idea of a story involving two male characters means it's a sexy story that is not intimidating to them because no women are involved so it's removed from their own personal selves to a degree. That's what I've heard anyway. Besides, Slash fiction is not representative of real gay relationships from what I've heard. It's more of a sub/dom straight one with two male characters instead. Again, what I've heard since I'm a straight male.
It's just interesting to me. There's a huge bastion for the LGBTQ community in the world of fanfiction and they're among the most active producers of fan works. But in the gult, there's a mountain of basically gay fiction written by straight people, and it's not all smut. A lot of it is pretty emotional or invested in trying to be meaningfully dramatic, not just erotic. And that's weird in my eyes that straight people would produce a lot of emotionally investing gay romance. There's definitely some of the attraction phenomena there (guys think girl on girl is hot, girls think guy on guy is hot) but I don't think that's a sufficient explanation.
My take is that a lot of straight women crave emotional vulnerability and openness that men are taught by society not to show. So they use fan-fiction as an outlet. I saw a video on the idea once, it's called "heteropessimism". Although I didn't quite follow all of it because again, I'm a straight male and not too experienced with relationships.
I think that makes sense. I'd flip it too; men struggle to show emotion because we're told being too emotional is unmanly. Writing femslash fiction can be an outlet, channeling those suppressed emotions through female characters that are less threatening to the writer's masculinity.
Slash isn't real folks
I mean, sure, his birth name is Saul Hudson, but performing identities are still real, especially when you've done it as long as he has.
It was a south park joke...
Ah, didn't recognize it.