In the anthology Private Voices, Public Lives Ann Putnam notes her own tendency to project herself into literature: “When I read Porter, when I read ‘my grandfather, my great-aunt,…my decrepit hound and my silver kitten,' it is always my tall quiet grandfather I see, my beloved aunt, my black and white puppy, an accumulation of sorrows such as any life knows” (9-10). This kind of identification is commonly noted among the women academics writing in the volume, and similarly Ann Romines notes her inspiration from Little House on the Prairie: “At the heart of them all was that entrancing protagonist—the brown haired second daughter, Laura Ingalls. Her fresh, steady vision, printed out in a library book, seemed to legitimize my own vision, my sometimes-furtive life as a child. When my best friend Jimmilee won the part of Laura in the Book Pageant and I (too tall) was cast as the gawky narrator in my Girl Scout uniform, I was bereft. For that was the role I had dreamed of—as Laura, living in a Little House book” (19). In fanfiction such projection and identification with the characters and environment of the source material takes an extreme form in what are referred to as “Mary Sues.” A Mary Sue is a character inserted into the world:
She's amazingly intelligent, outrageously beautiful, adored by all around her—and absolutely detested by most reading her adventures. She's Mary Sue, the most reviled character type in media fan fiction. Basically, she's a character representing the author of the story, an avatar, the writer's projection into an interesting world full of interesting people whom she watches weekly and thinks about daily (Pflieger).


The use of the gender specific term “Mary Sue” for these projections is an interesting development, as it is sometimes even used to refer to male characters, most notably the infamous Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wesley Crusher has come to define the idea of a Mary Sue and is one of the most recognizable of this type of character to exist in popular media. There is no term accepted by the community for a male equivalent to a Mary Sue, although a few fan communities have adopted terms like Marty Sue to express a similar projection. The idea of literature's inciting concerns over gender is a common one: Nancy Owen Nelson noted in Private Voices, Public Lives that
As I read into the book, I recall being suddenly struck with how much I was expected to please others with the academic and personal directions I was taking. I had no sense of self, no "individuation." I also wondered how much of my previous passivity could be attributed to inherent gender traits. Why was I beginning to feel the pull to speak out for myself and other women? Why was I ready to challenge traditional gender limitations? Why did I see certain traits emerging in myself which were considered ‘masculine’? (65).
A writer of fanfiction can change the genders of established characters, redefine their roles, and interact with them through whatever persona he or she chooses—the Mary Sue, not “simply a substitute for the author, though the character does allow the author to enjoy vicariously adventures in a world which gives her pleasure. In that sense, as fan writer Paula Smith points out, ‘... all characters for all writers are [wish fulfillment]’” (Pflieger). Like the somewhat formulaic characters in popular romance novels, these characters can be projected onto by both the reader and writer.

These wish fulfillment characters are often avatars that allow the writer to confront some situation or create a more personal interaction with material, and while fanfiction readers interested in the quality of stories decry Mary Sues as damaging to the plot, some writers defend their creations as self-expression: "To the members of the Mary Sue Webring, she's an 'avatar' of whom they no longer feel the need to be embarrassed…‘You got me through an awful lot of the Grey Times,’ Susan Crites explains to one of her Mary Sues. ‘My writing wouldn't exist -- I wouldn't be ME -- if it wasn't for you.’ It is appropriate. We created her, and, true heroine that she is, she has recreated us” (Pflieger). In that sense, the idea of a Mary Sue represents a form of self-fashioning. Critic David Templeton asked Judy Greber, better known as mystery novelist Gillian Roberts, to comment on the idea of reposessing icons through the act of writing:
"'What a marvelous idea!' she says when I ask which famous literary character she'd most like to get her writerly hands on. 'I think Huck Finn would be fun to play with, she says. "Though it would really feel heretical, but Huck always had such a clear sense of the hypocrisy all around him. I'd like to take him out and see what else he can do.' 'Huck Finn Vampire Hunter?' Shocked at the thought, though still laughing, Greber says, 'I think I'd rather put him in politics somehow. Huck Finn Goes to Washington'" (Templeton).
It is no accident that the wishes being fulfilled through the persona of an online avatar--be that avatar embodied in fanfiction, roleplaying, a chat room or another online environment--so often return to desire. The physical body is the mechanism of desire in physical space, but also the hindrance. The physical body has supposed flaws, limitations of space, and is subject to the realities of age, gender, and even geography. The virtual body is freed from that frame, the goddess unleashed in a realm where she has power to realize desire. In the case of a "Mary Sue," the avatar put forward is one of reconstructed self, a playground for shaping an identity to place in a familiar setting and run wild.


[Regress]