Re: OT: Harry

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>

> Sarah Marie Parker-Allen scripsit:
>
> > Fanfiction exists in spades for LOTR and Star Trek (though a
distressingly
> > large amount of it is author-insertions wherein the inserted character
is
> > perfect and sleeps with Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Faramir, Spock, Kirk,
> > Picard, and/or Data).
>
> Generically known as "Mary Sue" fanfic.
LAUGH!
Yes, I've heard of this.  Seen it!!  I got a little involved in looking at
fan fiction after I did Hollow Pursuits, and Constance Penley's article
about "slash" was a great hit among academics.  Kirk/Spock.  Can't say I
haven't been tempted by the Mary Sue's, even the "slash" fic, but the former
reminded me too strongly of my fantasies in the late sixties when I was
fourteen and watching the Original Series.  What Penley revealed,
interestingly enough, was that a great majority of the slash fiction
published in fanzines was produced by heterosexual women (she hung out with
them).  Her surmise was that it was not "cool" to write Mary Sues, that
identifying with an admired MALE character who sleeps with Spock, Kirk,
Picard, Data, and Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Faramir, etc. was ultimately
more liberating for the writer and her identification with her protagonist;
it side-stepped the tiresome hetero problems and stereotypes for women
writing romances from the standpoint of heroines: women--no matter how
strong--having to be pursued, falling into the same problems, etc.  (Have
they started slashing the LOTR?  Or have done all this time?  Leg'o'lamb and
Gimlet, in _Bored of the Rings_.  But most of the slash stuff I've seen has
been very serious and artful.)

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

Reply