[HPforGrownups] Re: Why did JKR not explore H/Hr as canon?

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 168729

On 14 May 2007 at 0:00, Bart Lidofsky wrote:

> Bart:
> And this shows what happens when you use obscure terms in a group,
> without even acknowledging their obscurity. But I still believe that
> they started in ST fandom as based on stereotyped rural American
> names, signifying a lack of soophistication. 

And you're right, Bart, they did. The term actually has a variety of shades of meaning.

The name 'Mary Sue' was actually used in a parody of Star Trek fanfiction that was written 
around 1973 and it's from there the term came into widespread use. The parody was 
basically addressing a whole bunch of stereotypes that typically occurred in fanfiction.

The Mary Sue character was, as I have described, intended to parody the author who put 
themselves into the story as a perfect heroine. Typically she saved the ship where everybody 
else had failed, and then got intimate with Kirk or Spock (or both) as a reward for her courage 
and ingenuity. The character was a wish-fulfilment fantasy - "I want to be the hero and I want 
to get the guy." The name 'Mary Sue' was chosen for the character because it was a 
stereotypical unsophisticated rural American name - because again, this was a parody and 
the person writing the parody was suggesting that these were the type of people writing this 
type of fanfic.

So it parodied both.

JKR has said that: "I have often said that Hermione is a bit like me when I was younger." 
When most fans refer to Hermione as JKR's Mary Sue, this is what they are talking about - 
that element of the definition.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
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facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
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