I’ve been reading fan fic review lists, and I think I’m going crazy.
There seem to be a disturbing preponderance of Mary Sues out there. Not that I see anything wrong with Mary Sue--if she’s done well and presented tastefully, in a subtle way. But amateur Mary Sue at the helm of hormone-driven fourteen year olds...there’s something really quite frightening about it. Especially in The Lord of the Rings fan fic.
This is mostly a slight rant about the amount of, and lack of variety in Legolas fan fic out there. Now I’m not knocking Legolas. I happen to like Legolas. Heck, I liked him before I saw the movie...re-read the book when I was fifteen, and next to Sam, he was my favorite character. Who wouldn’t like him? Skinny little elf, magical, good with a bow and arrow, immortal...and then there were the oddly endearing “culture clashes” with Gimli. Just adorable. He’s a great character, and admittedly the guy who plays him in the movie isn’t half bad either. Pretty little blond things are right up my alley. I’m not complaining about Legolas per se, or the actor who portrays him. I’m talking about character assassination on the part of alleged fans.
There’s a term used in Hercules fan fic (yes, I’m dipped my wee little toes into many different genres, thank you very much) called the Cult of the Pallid Hunter. It’s used to describe the completely emasculated Iolaus used in so many fan fics. He’s often--to my dismay and horror--portrayed as a weak, simpering little girly man who couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper sack without Hercules’ help. Don’t ask me why people choose to do this with a perfectly decent, upstanding character, but they do. (And yes, I DO like the character Iolaus. Shh, don’t tell anyone...it’s supposed to be a secret.) It all boils down to simple character assassination: They take what could be an excellent character, who is well-established on the show as a fine, physically and ethically secure human being with little to no problems with his self-esteem, and then nearly beat him to death with farm implements after being repeatedly raped (no, I’m not making this up. I wish...), all so his Big, Strong Protecter can nurse him back to health. It’s sickening, and what they do to Legolas is nearly as bad.
I’ve read what few Legolas/Mary Sues I could muster without vomiting in derision, and in virtually all of the stories Legolas only marginally resembles the independent, resolute character from a little book we might know as The Lord of the Rings. There are many hormone-crazed adolescents out there, and far too many of them a) display an obsessive, near-crazed fondness of our blond elven friend and b) have access to electrical units and sharp pointy writing utensils.
Now I understand the appeal, both of elves in general and of Legolas in particular. Elves are slim, fair, intelligent, nimble, ethical, and warriors par excellence. They’re nearly perfect, which is why they’re so popular in fantasy-type role-playing games. They’re also immortal, which carries the added tinge of potentially endless, undying love. Very appealing to the masses. And Legolas in particular is played by a very attractive actor, in a media that is readily available to the masses. I understand the sudden widespread surge in Legolas’ popularity (and am thankful that I was on that particular train years before the film came out!).
However, this does not excuse the sheer lunacy implemented in this character’s deevolution, via the enigma known as Mary Sue. We all know who this lady is (and if you don’t, shame on you and go read my Mary Sue analysis for a definition), and we know that she is usually applied by amateur authors as a sort of testing ground for future works. Unfortunately, each Mary Sue seems new to her creator, and each one is older than time. This causes her to be a particularly annoying and repetitive device in fan fiction, one which will likely never end because of her assumed novelty.
It’s not, however, merely Mary Sue herself that is so annoying; it’s the manner in which she is applied. I would happily read dozens of originally-fabricated Mary Sues, if a) the plotline was engaging enough and the supporting characters well-fleshed out, and b) it didn’t focus on the wonderfulness of Mary Sue (and therefore the author) in all her form and splendor. I’ve traipsed upon Star Wars fan fics, ostensibly to read about familiar and therefore favorite characters, only to recoil in horror at the sentence, “Claryssa WinterRaven, the Force-sensitive rogue pilot/assassin, tossed her wavy black tresses out of her violet, lace-fringed eyes and sidled up to the cantina,” and at that point no power on this earth can prevent me from hitting the Return button as fast as my little fingers can manage. Even if you liked the first half-dozen or so Mary Sues that everyone eventually comes across, they get old very, very fast.
Mary Sue usually manifests as a plot device in LOTR, as a way for the author to vicariously get herself some elf lovin’. It’s a lay-Legolas story, and pretends to be little else. Or should I say, ought to pretend so. Unfortunately, the vast majority of said fan fic tends to be written by inexperienced fourteen year olds who barely have a clue as to what goes where, so instead of just going all out and writing unabashed smutty PWPs, they write thinly-veiled porn with ambitions of a romance novel, in vague and often embarrassing terms (I even came across one once that made reference to “elfhood”. Dear God...).
I understand why so many fen feel the urge to pencil themselves into the action...there are precious few strong female characters in LOTR; I can think of maybe three main female characters off the top of my head: Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn. Sure, Galadriel had cool powers, but it was mostly mental abilities like mind-reading...otherwise she just sat there looking serene and all-knowing and doing squat. She was too archetypal and a poor candidate for teenage identification. And Arwen’s character was majorly expanded for the movie...in the book she’s pretty much limited to Aragorn’s love interest. Many fandoms lacking strong female characters tend to suffer the most from Invasion of the Mary Sues (Star Wars, the original Star Trek etc). So thus the reason for the abundance of Mary Sues littering the internet. But my goodness, does she have to be so badly written?
I won’t bother outlining the definition of Mary Sues (since I have already done so in my analysis), but I will partially describe the typical Mary Sue/Legolas plot: We get a couple of paragraphs devoted to Legolas (usually involving the rest of the Fellowship, but not necessarily), then the action skips directly to Mary Sue, where it stays for the the rest of the story--or at least if the author has anything to do with it (and she does). We are treated to multiple paragraphs describing her eyes, her hair, her clothing, her abilities, and her sheer scintillating presence. She has an inexplicable, unexplainable (and quickly dismissed) effect on Legolas--and sometimes one or more other members of the Fellowship--and, if he’s on the quest for the One Ring, she promptly falls into step and joins them. Note that this is rarely protested by his fellow questgoers...she’s just accepted as one of them. Right. Sure. Arwen couldn’t go, and yet Mary Sue can. I’ll believe that. Uh-huh. At the end she either a) finds eternal happiness in Legolas’ arms or b) dies a noble and tragic death, to be mourned by all for the ages. Go ahead, pick a card, any card.
But even THIS I wouldn’t mind if Legolas acted halfway in character. I’m sorry, but Legolas is a fairly strong character. He has resilience and presence of mind. So it pains me greatly to read about this same character simpering about because some whiny teenage girl is in the picture. Also, just because Legolas looks like he’s in his twenties doesn’t mean he should think or act like it. The character is over two thousand years old and theoretically immortal. Legolas is mentally mature and self-possessed. He wouldn’t sit around acting moony or reciting love poems to some chick. I don’t care how well her emerald eyes offset her auburn locks; it’s out of character and it needs to stop.
Another tell-tale symptom of Mary Sueism in LOTR fic, is the bestowing of unpronounceable names on the author’s part. This is highly puzzling to me. Tolkien picked unusual names, but they weren’t seven syllable tongue-twisters. Yet all too often, the object of Legolas’ affections is christened Tranithilthraielnuiawendorian, or some other linguistic nightmare. It’s as if the longer and fancier and more headache-inducing the name, the more sophisticated it sounds. I would lay off at three, MAYBE four syllables. Any more and it’s just ridiculous. And no giving her “cute” nicknames (although I personally would be highly amused by someone creating a nickname out of Tranithilthraielnuiawendorian. “Tranni”? Tee hee!).
Because I was bored and had little else to do, I counted all of the probable MSes on Barrow-Downs (a LOTR fan fiction site). The estimates were based on title and summary. Anything with the following words was considered a potential Mary Sue:
Daughter of [canon character], wakes up in Middle Earth, female ranger, Legolas in love, mortal woman, beauteous maiden, modern girl, American teenager, tenth member of Fellowship, twin sister, younger/older sibling, long-lost relative, story of [noncanon female character], story of [noncanon male character], elven princess, shield maiden [unless Eowyn], true heritage, forgotten “extra” Ring of Power, wife/ fiancee/ girlfriend/ long-lost love, half-[elf/ hobbit/ wizard/ wraith--actually, I haven’t seen that one yet!], the Fellowship in modern day, saves Legolas, saved by Legolas [stop picking on the poor little elf dude!], follows/joins the Fellowship on quest, a girl named [blah, especially if title or author’s name], and any mention of a tortured secret past. Actually, pretty much any non-canon female elf character could be considered a potential Mary Sue. Cruel, but accurate.
I got 78 out of 277. That’s a thirty-six percent Mary Sue rating. This is BAD, folks. Can’t anyone write original non-Mary Sues anymore? Jeepers, work on some creativity, people!
One thing I just don’t get is the distinct lack of hobbit-slash available on LOTR fan fic sites; specifically, Sam and Frodo slash. They’re the most lovey-dovey, physically affectionate literary couple I have ever seen, and the movie follows through with their absolute devotion to each other. Yet the vast, vast majority of the fan fic revolves around Legolas. Again, nothing against Legolas, but why the heck does he get all the fiction? Yes, elves are very pretty, and Legolas personally is downright jaw-droppingly gorgeous, but as far as the character himself is portrayed, he might as well be gender-neutral. He’s not played up for romance in the novels, and aside from a few wink-wink nudge-nudge moments with Aragorn, he’s not romantic in the movies either.
I looked up Sam and Frodo slash, and came up with less than thirty stories. I then looked for Legolas slash, and came up with literally hundreds of stories, generally evenly divided between Aragorn and Elrond, with a few adventurous souls daring a Gimli story or two (which makes a hell of a lot more sense if you’ve read the books...I’d rather see a Legolas/Gimli than anything else, because at least that would be halfway canon).
As I’ve mentioned before, Legolas is also a prime candidate for repeat Mary Sue offenders, so he tends to see more than his fair share of het action, too. And any female canon characters he’s paired up with are generally Mary Sued beyond recognition. I’ve noticed that Eowyn especially tends to be transmorgrified into a Mary Sue...the author gets the conceit of playing “a real character” sans the stigma of a Mary Sue, while still placing herself in the place of a powerful, tough, yet highly desired female character. There are countless Mary Sues running around out there, under the guise of Eowyn, and her presence in fan fic has exploded since the advent of the films.