Originally at link.
In Defense of "Mary Sue"
by Kai Debra
Ok, I plead guilty. I am a "Mary Sue" addict. For many years I have written articles, mostly for my own gratification. A few years ago I graduated to web publishing. It was only natural that I would make my page about my favorite show Star Trek.
I started doing general Trek parodies and went to doing episode parodies. These were quite fun to do, but the only effective way you can deal with your"I could write a better Trek story than last week's stupid episode" feelings is to actully sit down and attempt it. The worst thing that could happen is that you are proven wrong, and that you would realize that you had better keep your"day job".
This brings me to the subject of "Mary Sue", that infamous device by which an author writes him/herself into a story, usually as someone whose story is more important than the regular characters. Mary Sue's usually earn the wrath of readers who obviously do not understand why the author's avatar is so "wonderful" and deserves more attention than the regular charaters of a series. Perhaps this is why a certain creation of Gene Wesley Roddenberry was so disliked on TNG.
So why do I like"Mary Sue"? To be perfectly honest, if all she did was to "save the galaxy" yet another time, there might come a time when even I would grow tired of her. Yet perhaps there will be a time when she becomes a "real" person, complete with faults and weaknesses, and perhaps she will have a few qualities that will improve the world she inhabits. Perhaps my "Dr. Laura Masters"and The Velveteen Rabbit have something in common.
To be perfectly honest, Laura was born out of desires that are common with some fans. The "rules" for Trek TV and published fiction don't allow for openly Gay characters, an omission that Gene Roddenberry himself wanted to correct. Also, I was offended by some of the "darker" themes of DS9. Do we really want Trek to become a copy of Babylon 5, where there are no real heroes and "black ops"organazations can betray the spirit of Trek with impunity? Then too, it was becoming more and more obvious to me that Voyager needed a Ship's Consulor of some sort, perhaps a holographic foil for The Doctor
Who knows? Some of my friends actually like my Laura Stories, and one of those friends suggested that Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) who appeared in TNG and DS9 fit the "psychological profile" of Laura almost to a tee, so maybe I wasn't so faroff track to begin with, and if TPTB by any chance are listening...
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