wherein Liz thinks about Mary Sues

[edenfalling]

metafandom (or metafandom) has recently been linking to an ongoing discussion about Mary Sues -- about whether the term has any remaining use as a description of a particular type of bad writing (character development failure plus plot warping, mostly), about whether the term's inherent gender bias ruins it, about whether people have expanded it to mean 'any interesting female character ever,' about various kinds of internalized and expressed misogyny, about people using Mary Sue accusations as a bullying tactic, and so on and so forth.

Which, okay. Clearly the term Mary Sue has gender baggage, especially since there has never been a single agreed-upon male equivalent. Also, male Sues seem to get written differently and reacted to differently, which is self-evidently problematic. (For example, if I had a dollar for every time I have seen a canon male character turned into a completely OOC plot-warping, ultraviolent, superpowered, girls-at-his-feet, jerkass karma houdini who makes every opposing character into a whining, ineffective, jealous loser, I would... well, I'd have at least a couple thousand dollars, that's what -- and people love those stories, which is beyond me. And if you want to talk pure male self-inserts, go poke around various anime fandoms for a few hours. They are not in short supply. You can start with Carrotglace and Skysaber, for two of the most over-the-top examples.)

Um. Where was I?

Right, so there are deep issues with the term, and if somebody can come up with a good, short gender neutral descriptor for 'character who warps the universe around hirself to the point where ze coopts all stories as hir own, and is also unrealistic -- ie, has skills and attributes without the effort and consequences such things would require and bring -- and generally badly written to boot,' then I would be very pleased. (That, incidentally, is what I mean when I say 'Mary Sue.')

The bullying, shaming, and self-censoring aspects of the Mary Sue phenomenon are more interesting to me, though, because I have some personal experience with them as a writer rather than just an annoyed reader. I fell into fandom in early 2002, via Harry Potter, and most specifically through FictionAlley and its forums. There was a fair amount of talk about Mary Sues there in 2002-2005, and IIRC, there was even a board where people could post descriptions of planned original characters for other people to check them for Mary Sue warning signs.

I always thought the way people ran those checks was odd. What most writers did was post a list of character traits -- name, age, hair color, eye color, favorite this and least favorite that -- and then explain or change various aspects other posters picked out as unrealistic. So fear of Mary Sue accusations had an effect on what people wrote, but not in any way I consider helpful. All that forum did (full disclosure, I participated there sometimes) was make writers nervous about their characters and fill them with self-doubt.

This is not to say that I think original characters cannot be usefully critiqued. It's just that a list of traits and skills utterly misses the point of what makes a Mary Sue. The issue is not the number and type of traits and skills a character possesses. The issue is whether those traits and skills make sense in context and as a whole, and whether they play out in the story with at least minimal realism and attention to consequences.

Let me give you an example from Naruto fandom. Here is a girl who wants to take the chuunin exam and is supremely confident she will pass. She is partnered with Umino Iruka (a minor canon favorite) and can effortlessly get under his skin. She is related to Orochimaru (a major villain) and shares some of his more distinctive physical traits (golden eyes, pale skin, a penchant for flashy earrings). She has a bloodline limit, she is amazing at taijutsu (she beats several skilled opponents over the course of the story), and she also has a summons contract. At one point, she fights a male ninja who admires her so much they end up dating despite belonging to different villages. Later on, she survives an attack from Uchiha Itachi and actually saves her partner from Itachi's massacre of his entire family, which is the next best thing to impossible.

She sounds pretty unrealistic, right?

Her name is Tonoike Naga. She is a secondary character in my stories The Way of the Apartment Manager and The Guardian in Spite of Herself. Do you know how many accusations I have had of her being a Mary Sue?

Zero.

You can make anything work if you put a little thought into it. Except people don't usually talk about that when throwing around Mary Sue accusations. They talk about traits and skills, not about the integration of traits and skills into a rounded character and an unwarped story. And so writers hear, "She's too this, she's too that, make her less this, make her less that," instead of, "Why is she like this? What are the logical consequences of that trait? How did she learn to do that? How much time does it take to become good at that skill? What does such dedication says about her?" and other questions along those lines.

...

I was not personally intimidated when I started writing fanfic, but that's because I had been writing (mostly bad and/or unfinished) original fiction for years before I knew fanfiction even existed. And one thing you have to do when writing original fiction is create and introduce characters, over and over and over again. By the time I tried writing fanfic, I was confident that I knew what I was doing when it came to making believable characters.

Even so, I worried about how other people might react to OCs I created. I knew they made sense and served the story (rather than warping it), but I had no way to know if readers would give them a chance, or if they'd see the presence of OCs and automatically reject my stories on the 'any OC -- and especially any female OC -- must be a Mary Sue!' theory. I am perfectly willing to believe that pressure has continued or increased over time.

And that sucks.

I dislike Mary Sues (as I defined them above), but I don't want to lose potentially awesome female characters (both canon and original) because people are too afraid to write anyone who has any defining characteristic that raises her above a shabby gray doormat.

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Okay, back to state income taxes. *beats head against desk*

Comments

rambling...

[deralte.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about Gary Stu's (my preferred term for male Mary sues) the other day while reading the new Dresden Files book. Harry (the gary stu) makes a joke along the lines of, "You mean the universe doesn't really revolve around me?" And I blinked because we, as readers, and the author are perfectly aware that it does. So does acknowledging the fact make Harry more or less of Gary Stu, or was it the author's attempt to gloss over the fact that Harry's powers and skills are getting rather ridiculously overpowered?

I actually find it a lot harder to pick out mary sues/gary stus in canon simply because most authors, by the time they've reached the publishing point, have learnt to hide the more obvious signs that it's a wish fulfilment, self insert. I'm fairly lenient in canon though because characters have to be almost perfect in those cases before they get on your nerves, which often takes a least a book or a whole series to develop (whereas the same thing in a fandom can ring warning bells in seconds). Two examples I read recently - Myrren's Gift which had a main character who was pretty much good at everything, well liked etc etc, but he avoided perfection by being spectacularly ugly. That problem was 'solved' by the end of the book and I rolled my eyes and decided to not read any further. Another example is Rhapsody from the Symphony of Ages series. She started out a well rounded character who was pretty, though not beautiful and had one very useful skill. By the end of the book she was breathtakingly beautiful, adored by all, had several amazing skills she was perfect at etc etc. In cases where they keep it remotely realistic, I'm willing to keep reading (The Dresden Files, the Sookie Stackhouse series, etc), though I know I may have to drop the series for idiocy eventually (Sookie is coming periously close to it these days... I dropped Anita Blake ages ago. And Tom Clancy for that matter.)

Re: rambling...

[edenfalling]

As I said to redwolfoz above, if a universe is designed from the word go to revolve around a single character, it's not anywhere near as jarring as a plot-warping and focus-stealing OC inserted into a universe that was designed to revolve around other people. With characters who, in canon, display Mary Sue-ish traits, you start off identifying with them and so you vicariously share the power fantasy. Whereas with a Mary Sue inserted into fanfic, you generally start off identifying with the canon characters and so the power fantasy shuts you out and smothers you along with the canon characters.