Granice kreatywności. Dyskurs dotyczący postaci typu Mary Sue w amatorskiej twórczości literackiej a reguły funkcjonowania społeczności fanowskich

Some participants of popular culture do not confine themselves to a one-time contact with a favorite book or movie. Instead, they return to fictional worlds, creating literary texts based on original works and sharing these texts with other followers of the same pop-products. A number of these fan-made pieces contain idealized characters whose mentalities tend to be very similar to the personalities of their creators. Such characters, who are known under the name of Mary Sue, frequently become an object of harsh criticism on the readers’ part. The paper presents various forms of so strong a negative reaction and describes its possible causes, basing on the analysis of a discourse created by the users of Mirriel Literary Forum (a message board which attracts people who are interested in amateurs’ literary pieces). The main goal of the paper is to demonstrate how the information obtained in discourse analysis may shed new light on the rules which govern the lives of all kinds of fan communities – most importantly, the rule of staying faithful to the object of one’s passion, that is, to the worlds created by professional authors. Apart from that, the paper demonstrates a concise discussion of the strong and weak points of the method employed.