Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was contacted in a forum by a nurse in another state seeking a fellow writer to have a little fun smashing Star Wars and Star Trek together. Since this was back in the Dark Ages when smashing fandoms was still considered heresy, I shouted Hooray! and gleefully jumped into emailing back and forth.
It. Was. Awesome. I love writing words. I love Star Trek and Star Wars. I had often imagined what could happen if the streams were crossed. I floated happily along through initial construction, setting up several plot lines and testing out character interactions, like Q bugging the Emperor, when I realized I was playing ball kind of alone on one side of the court while Riker was making out with Leia on the other side. It was dramatic and romantic and completely left out plot devices of any kind, even bad ones.
That was my first experience meeting Mary Sue. I had no idea what to make of it. I thought we were writing a cool story, but turns out I was a tool for someone else's fantasy role play. It felt weird, like asking a stranger to watch and maybe even join in. I was at a loss.
Nowadays, fans skip the whole writing thing and do this cool stuff.
Next up was Sliders. I had a really good time with that one. I discovered I could write quick comedies in very few pages, and I had a ball cracking myself up over the time all the parallel Sliders wound up randomly sliding onto the same Earth in someone's shower at the same time and stepping out sopping wet having to figure out whose people were whose, and the Colins were a riot. You'd have to be there. Sadly, no one else in the fandom was interested because none of them were having sex with each other. Still, it's awesome running into Sliders fans here and there nowadays. Click pic for awesome.
A year or so went by, I was rockin out in the Xena fandom and had figured out that's basically how fandoms party, so I became a ringleader and took a rowdy Joxer bunch with me over to a crazy list feed before we all got thrown out of an actual fan club. It was a lot of work, but I loved it, and pretty much played it like a Vulcan surfing a wave in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. Yeah, I invented party Spock and didn't even know it, way back in the 90s. That is who Yablo was.
Yablo was trubba, but my gang was even more awesome trubba, and I didn't care. Until I was asked to read and comment on some fanfic. I'd already written a couple of 3-page comedies to be included in a fan book to Ted Raimi (never found out if they made it), one in particular that I thought was a genius mashup on Joxer accidentally becoming a Darkwing Duck figure, so I thought Ok, sure, let's see what other people have got.
I didn't expect a submission in a big yellow envelope in my mailbox, and I didn't expect it to be on par with erotica. I'm sure there was love in there somewhere, but since I was unfamiliar with the lingo, I simply fell over cracking up, and from there it became a comedy to me. So when I reviewed it, I had no idea that I hurt feelings quite badly.
Can you imagine if we'd had youtube back then? I'd have been in heaven.
From the frying pan into the fire, they say. My fourth experience with Mary Sue was an entire world fandom eating itself over a dead guy and a love slave, with the show itself instigating the never ending frivolities, and suddenly it all clicked. Marketing. I understand.
No I don't understand, apparently. Stepping back from Mary Sues means we can't be friends, whaaaaa. I have my own tastes and agendas, but being swamped on all sides with singular focus on internet orgies of every conceivable kind had me finally standing up brushing it off in private to a few people. Aaaaand, that didn't go down very well because that was back in the days before I knew I was an asexual person with Aspergers and before you know it, I became a worthless trading card left in the bottom of a drawer. Well, that's a quickie rendition of months of oncoming sadness, but you get the point.
I. Write. Stuff. I can take any writing prompt and turn it into several thousand words of honest to goodness story in minutes. I don't need sex to sell it, I don't need to be a character to feel it, and I certainly don't need validation to keep writing.
I see the fights going on through the years over someone stole my idea thing, and the copyright wars over stuff that's barely even legal to begin with, and I just stopped sharing what's in my head. Until Pinky started publicly blurbing at syfydesigns, which has over 26,700 views now, thank you very much. And then Pinky started publicly blogging on a real blog. And I'm sitting here looking at the view count wondering how in the world that happened.
I love fans. I've always said that. Fans are my coffee in the morning. Fans are my catharsis through rough days. Fans are there in the horrible dark nights when I'm scared and alone. The internet is full to bursting with fans being awesome.
But I'm sorry, I just can't have sex with you guys. I know, I'm weird...
But mostly, I'm busy. It's called a contract. And this blogging stuff is called warm up, you know, like athletes do before big games.
As I write, I am realizing my real life trumps all the fanfic I could have ever written. Maybe one of the reasons I don't Mary Sue fanfic is because I don't have to imagine it. One of the reasons I don't read it is because I've seen it all around me. The vamps. The violence. The slaves. The dead.
I have kept so many secrets. I have been so many scary places.
