A Trekkie's Tale

https://fanlore.org/wiki/A_Trekkie%27s_Tale

by Tomte • 4 years ago

42 26 4 years ago

If a male Mary Sue is a Marty Stu, what should one call a national mythos in which one's country is (a) universally loved (except by the villains!), because it (b) possesses all positive qualities, and (c) suffers no negative qualities?

Mauritania Sue? Mary Sudan?

actionfromafar2• 4 years ago

America

msla2• 4 years ago

Thinking nationalism's limited to one country is, itself, a form of nationalism.

teddyh• 4 years ago

“Propaganda”

bioemerl• 4 years ago

Oceania? (from 1984)

jareklupinski• 4 years ago

Terra Misu

miiiiiike• 4 years ago

That's just a gender swapped Wesley Crusher story.

DocTomoe• 4 years ago

In fact, one of the reasons Wesley got such a bad rep back in the day was because fans considered him to be a genderswapped Mary Sue, introduced to appeal to the younger audience. Ten years later, people would probably have considered him to be a highly-competent Jar Jar Binks.

That caused the character to be abused on-screen, first as a cheap vehicle for audience representation, later as your favorite whipping boy when it became clear he didn't appeal as much as originally intended. And eventually, he was written out of the show.

I'm glad Wheaton still managed to get out of there not completely jaded.

Beltalowda• 4 years ago

In the first 2 series Wesley was an especially badly written character in an already badly written show, the only reason it survived long enough to become a good show is because it's Star Trek. There are some good moments in the first 2 series, but not many.

Wesley is much better in later episodes as the writing on the show improved a lot, and also because Wheaton's acting improved a bit. "Young cadet struggling with being young" would have been a good regular, not to dissimilar to Nog in DS9, and Wheaton would have been a good actor for it, but I guess by this time the damage had been done.

EFreethought• 4 years ago

My guess is that Roddenberry had plans for the character, but as his health declined and his involvement in the show was reduced, the remaining producers did not have the heart to get rid of Wesley. It seemed like Wesley was mostly written out and sent off to Starfleet Academy almost immediately after Roddenberry died.

pflenker• 4 years ago

Fun fact: Originally, Wesley was intended to be female: Leslie Crusher. So the original idea was to not even bother with gender-swapping.

p_l• 4 years ago

My understanding was that Wesley was supposed to have much less screen time, but due to how syndicated series were run combined with a writer strike what was a bunch of unpolished early drafts (that normally would end up condensed into fewer episodes after a lot of editing and polish) ended going straight to screen due to lack of finished scripts.

Have no proper confirmation of this, though.

f1refly• 4 years ago

Didn't Wesley have at least the story line where they accidentally killed another student with a risky and banned manoeuvre? He didn't came up with the idea, but still he failed to stand up to the guy who had and became an accomplice.

voxadam• 4 years ago

The maneuver was the "Kolvoord Starburst" in The First Duty (ST:TNG S05E19).[0]

[0] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode...

jwie• 4 years ago

He failed to keep his mouth shut more like it. Picard guilt trips him into confessing, but this was very late in the series. Wesley had already established himself as an insufferable child prodigy so there wasn’t a lot of growth available to him as a character.

The far more interesting leader was the precursor character to Tom Paris. Who was a much better gifted character because he had flaws to redeem at the beginning, not at the end.

pubby• 4 years ago

The term "slash fiction" is rooted in Star Trek too. Back in the 70's, a very popular fan-fiction subject was a Kirk/Spock romance (with other gay pairings popular as well). I believe it was mostly women who were into these stories.

wrp2• 4 years ago

Living in Japan years ago, I was surprised at the huge piles of boy-boy romance manga in the bookshops, given the notable lack of such coupling out and around. It was eventually explained to me that the market for these was mostly young women.

0823498723498722• 4 years ago

A boy-boy pair of my friends visited Japan once, and said that although they felt like a bit of a curiosity, it was amplified when one of them wore his school sweatshirt (featuring a large "H") and that day they were pursued by muffled giggles.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Mary Sue reminds me why I don't care for fan fiction. Does anyone enjoy it?

I'm not going to beat up on fan fiction authors though — I can see the appeal for writing it. In fact I think it is probably a tempting gateway for budding authors.

Just be sure to use a pseudonym.

btach• 4 years ago

I've read a few fan fiction stories that I think were quite good. Protagonist wasn't superhuman, was effectively foiled as seemed appropriate, had flawed notions and perceptions, etc. That being said, I've read many more fanfics that made me cringe. I've enjoyed finding the good ones (that are good to me, anyway).

asplake• 4 years ago

Not the tale of the trekkie so put out by Paramount pulling ST:Discovery from Netflix that he vowed never to watch another episode again? (Not that I'm bitter or anything)

themadturk• 4 years ago

Discovered an interview with Paula Smith, the woman who invented the term Mary Sue, at https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/articl.... Lots of good detail there on the world of Star Trek fandom, early conventions, etc. -- and, at the end, the little story that started it all.

A Trekkie's Tale

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