Thoughts about Mary Sue

[alias_sqbr]

I've read a bunch of very interesting posts recently about how Mary Sues are not actually that big of a deal (beyond being generally bad writing) and maybe telling girls not to write overly awesome female characters has some underlying misogyny. This post is not about that but is partly inspired by those posts on that subject:
Oh Mary Mary and the slash writer ponders female characters.

EDIT: Valid question: what do I mean by Mary Sue?
I personally would only call a character a Mary Sue if it fit all the major hallmarks: an original female character in a fanwork who is implausibly unique, talented, and popular, badly written, and has the canon characters and plot warp around her to fit the author's wish fulfillment.
But I have seen the accusation leveled at any original female character who is in any way cool.

So, two thoughts:

1)Why gender? Why should I, as a disabled Australian woman (to choose some of the ways I differ from the "default" of able bodied American man etc) be worried that my female characters are self insert fantasies, but not my male ones that are disabled or Australian?

For me, female characters are the default. They're who I like to read, and who I like to write (of the six prose stories I have up at AO3, four have a totally female POV, one is almost all female, and one is mostly male). So if I'm going to worry about overinvesting in a character it will be because of "non-standard" things we have in common, like being disabled. I'm currently trying to write a story about a male Australian maths postgrad and am having intense issues with over identification, figuring out how to write the situation with some distance is really hard, and this has happened every time I've tried to write Australian characters in the last few years (of course, it doesn't help with fanworks that I don't like much Australian fiction :/)

I guess the fact that fanfic fandom is majority female has a lot to do with it, all the other difference people have are too variable to make broad generalisations about. (And if people started saying "Disabled fanfic writers shouldn't write overly awesome disabled characters" it uh..probably wouldn't go down so well) EDIT: But that doesn't explain why individual female writers should worry about gender the most, and from for example the slash writer ponders female characters it would appear many do.

Anyway, do any other female writers have this issue, where gender really isn't the big stumbling block? What about writers who do not identify as female etc?

2) This section was posted to the dragon_age community first, the text is basically the same but there's a bunch of interesting (albeit spoilery and somewhat context dependent) discussion in the comments which I have summarised at the end of this post.

The protagonist of Dragon Age:Origins is a basically original character saving the day and having everyone fall in love with them, and this is reflected in much of the fic. And I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. EDIT: I'm not saying the character is a Mary Sue. I'm saying fanfic about her is, or at least could be easily read that way.

The way the game works you get to control a lot about your character: their gender, appearance, species, and social position are chosen to start and give you one of six origin stories. The choices you make can have significant effects on the plot, and since there's often no obviously "right" decision required to win the game it makes sense to just play your character with whatever personality and motivations seem fitting. The plot of the game you play is broadly the same as everyone else's so it's possible to share fic and have everyone get the references (assuming they've played all six origins :)), but I know my characters feel much more like my own creations than the main characters of say a Final Fantasy game.

People talk about "My *insert character's name*", and they can be quite different. For example, two spoilery comics dealing with the poor relationship between the dwarf noble character and her brother: Siblings (she's nice and it's all his fault) and Lady Aeducan Explains it All (she's a machiavellian back stabber)

I enjoy other people's stories and engage with the PC characters mostly as I do with canon characters rather than entirely original ones, but they're not about my PC characters, not entirely. They feel about as close as the characters in an AU fanfic do to the canon ones.

Two other things about the PC character: they have three possible romantic interests (there's four choices total but two of them are straight) who, if you play the game right, are clearly very much in love with the PC. These characters are well written and voice-acted, and attractive if you squint and use your imagination.
Also, while not a prophesised chosen one or anything the PC is canonically Made Of Awesome, while some of the origins start pretty beat down and spat upon, by the end everyone is going on about what a great, talented, special hero they are.(*)

All this combines to create a lot of stories about Totally Awesome semi-original female characters who probably fit the writer's idea of what looks cool having whoever of the romantic interests the writer finds most engaging(**) fall in love with them and saving the day from the Forces of Darkness before riding off into the sunset. EDIT: Which still doesn't make them necessarily a Mary Sue, but they certainly tick a lot of the boxes.

And while Sturgeon's Law applies, the stories aren't bad. I don't read everything that comes through the comms I'm on but I would say that the "Female PC + canon romantic interest" stuff is about as good as everything else on average and I have enjoyed quite a few of them. They're certainly not all Mary Sues in the sense of being nothing but wish fulfillment. (nb there's plenty of "Male PC + canon romance", "Female PC gen", "Fic about NPCs" etc as well) Personally I prefer "Female PC has canon romance go horribly wrong", and have written a whole series of them, but my id is odd :D (it also alas reflects the way my games have tended to go)

I was thinking about what other canons would create this sort of semi-original main character. There's other computer RPGs: the Final Fantasy ones I've played the main character's personality and arc is pretty set in stone, and with what little I played of Neverwinter Nights I didn't feel like my character was a real person at all. Apparently other Bioware games like Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic work like Dragon Age: Origins and have similar fic. People get very invested in their tabletop roleplaying characters of course, but those are genuinely original characters and those outside your roleplaying group won't care about them any more than they will any other original character.

Some things people pointed out when I cross posted this to dragon_age:

• There are no unambiguously happy endings to this game, so totally fluffy romantic happy endings require a moderate amount of handwaving and OOCness. Most of the origins are an oppressed minority in some way, and that oppression doesn't magically vanish by the end of the game. The one exception is the human noble (who still goes through a lot of crap and has to make some murky unpleasant decisions) and fics with that character as a protagonist are the most likely to be Mary Sue-ish.
  
• There's a difference between the game handing fanwriters a character who fits a lot of the markers of a Mary Sue as a protagonist who they can choose to make 3D and flawed or not, and a writer choosing to insert an OFC for no good reason.
  
• There's a specific subgenre of fanwriting which deliberately obscures all the details of the PC so that the player can mentally insert their own PC. See for example the comic Master and Protege by aimo. (I love this fandom, so many humourous meta-ish fancomics :))
  

EDIT: I have no deep thoughts, but it's interesting to commare to dating sims, see for example Starry Sky. Do people write fic for them I wonder?

Anyway, those are my two thoughts! I have no final conclusion, beyond thinking people shouldn't be so locked into rigid anti-Mary Sue dogma. I guess the two things I'd like people's opinions on are the fact that individual female fanfic authors are expected to worry more about their female characters being self inserts than the ones with whom they share other significant traits, and the Mary Sue-ishness (or not) of fanfic based on particular types of canon characters (eg the protagonist of Dragon Age)

(*)An aside: it's weird for me watching ads for the game which (as well not being a very accurate representation any actual scene of the game nor it's appearance) are clearly aiming this message at Manly Male Characters played by Manly Male Gamers. They felt rather odd aimed at my characters, who really aren't very manly. Especially the guys :)
(**)Though it's important to note that this may change for different characters with the same player, I know it did for me.

Comments

[tattered-pinion.livejournal.com]

I would say gender is a big hurdle for most immature writers (ie fan fiction writers) because they have either hugely self-inflated views of their own worldliness or are painfully naive. Having said that though, it isn't at all unreasonable when you're a white, western female to presume that another white, western (Or maybe exotically asian!) female character of your creation is similar to you except for any differences you care to specify. That sort of 'fill in the blanks, where the blanks are what I think and feel' type of presumption and lack of imagination is probably what causes it?
This is generally because they are young and ignorant though, so it isn't particularly surprising.

It is a purely demographic thing. Most of your bad fan fiction writers that write self-insert characters are female and they generally make female characters.

As for dragon age, I think I don't agree with your definition of a mary sue character. If you play a female in dragon age you are powerful and awesome etc but that isn't what defines a mary sue. The path of becoming a powerful character and fighting the dragon at the end is just a textbook hero's journey type affair.
The Warden in dragon age isn't particularly mary sue-ish in my mind, they are just a powerful hero who is exceptional but is just a magnified version of whatever archetype (mage, fighter, thief) you pick. You do the same things as other people, you just happen to be better through experience and skill. Someone has to be the best, after all! It seems reasonable.

[alias_sqbr]

Crap, that was a stupid choice of cut text *edits*. I don't think a female Dragon Age PC is a Mary Sue, but I do think fic written about her very easily comes across as one (and sometimes is).

It is a purely demographic thing. Most of your bad fan fiction writers that write self-insert characters are female and they generally make female characters

The thing is, one could say the same thing about the other things many immature fanfic writers have in common, eg if you're inserting an American teenaged OC into a fic (especially one for say Dragon Age :D) the likelyhood that they suck is moderately high :)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I write female POVs by default, and these days I read female POV by default too, which can be very disorienting, and also very annoying. I find it hard to empathise with male characters any more; I genuinely just don't care. I want to read women's voices! And I'm not even saying it's women *authors*, I just want stories that have female leads.

*shrug*

I thought I was over it, but I tried to read another fantasy with a male protag, and once again I had the urge to go and read something I like after a page or two.

[alias_sqbr]

I can read a moderate amount of male POV stuff, but if ALL the characters are male, or I can't identify with any of the female characters because they're so poorly written then I get very quickly turned off.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I stopped reading the Oh Mary, Mary blog because it was tl and the white on black was making my eyes hurt, but I've probably got the drift of what she was saying. And I suspect she is wrong about why people rail against Mary Sues - I think the reason is because it's easy to do.

A lot of amateur (and pro for that matter) writers get to a stage where they want to teach. There is nothing wrong with that, and if nothing else it's what fuels the beta trade, but a lot of them unfortunately start a little early. So they are trying to teach when they don't actually have all that much to teach, because they haven't the experience to have worked out anything very new and shiny yet, so a lot of what they try to teach is just regurgitated twaddle. All those meta posts about how to avoid adverbs and common homophones and where to stick your apostrophes are examples of the problem. And the anti-Mary Sue posts are generally pretty much the same thing.

Someone, somewhere decided that overly perfect characters were a bad thing - which is true, they are - and so invented the concept of a Mary Sue to try to teach new writers what not to do, and the example has become a dictum that gets warped and twisted and less useful with every reiteration, until we are no longer even that sure what a Mary Sue is, let alone why they matter so much.

Personally I've been fighting the 'don't Mary Sue' statements for years, because fear of Mary Suing seriously limits the number of OCs found in fic and I reckon that is a very bad thing indeed. I've made anti-anti Mary Sue rants and had grateful writers thank me for giving them the courage to try OCs, which is something I'm very proud of.

It is important that writers learn about how to create balanced characters, but most Mary Sue rants are not the way to go about it. Teaching how to write balanced characters is sadly a great deal harder than that.

As for myself, I do indeed worry about creating balanced characters. I spit out OCs all the time and have had to develop a lot of tricks for presenting characters quickly that are still, I hope, believable, recognisable and people that other people care about. Those tricks aren't gender specific, although some of the traits I use to make quick and easy recognisable types obviously are gender dependent. (And race and every other stereotype you can imagine dependent - the stereotypes are very useful tools for just this reason. But that's a different conversation.) So I wouldn't say I worried more about balancing a character when the character happened to be female. Balancing is just as tricky regardless of who the character is.

Do I self insert and identify? Yes, a lot. I self insert and identify with every character I have ever written in any detail. It's at the heart of writing and I couldn't write without it. When I've had to self-insert into and identify with a murderous, abusive paedophile the experience has been less than pleasant, but that's how I write. I essentially method. That's also one reason why I have more difficulty writing female than male characters, but again that is probably a different conversation.

Has the 'writing womenz is hard' kerfuffle started up again? Bother. I've been sitting for moths now on a promised post about how I taught myself to write women, but I can't post it if they're still kerfuffling. (Yes, I admit it, I suffer from the desire to teach - that's why I recognise it in others. Fortunately my more embarrassing early attempts were deleted years ago.)

[alias_sqbr]

Well, I think there's multiple reasons behind the problem. I do think the "look at me, I know all about fanfic writing, let me tell you about it" thing helps perpetuate these ideas and make them more rigid once they get going, but that doesn't explain why this particular criticism has more weight than many others.

(And I totally suffer from teacher mode myself. Price I pay for doing a Phd where I got into the habit of writing up everything I learned as an essay and then working for ten years on and off in science communication :D)

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

I like this comment. I rant against the mary sue brigade all the time now-- I think it has exacerbated the problem of women's identities, encouraging women turn to slash rather than attempt to write about women.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with Mary Sues per se, and I'd even go so far as to say it's a recognisable stage on many writers' paths of improvement. I think the largest backlash comes when they're trotted out en masse in front of an internet which is looking for something more advanced.

Part of the issue may be that there's really no simple way to wean the advanced storytelling from the equivalent of stick-figure scribbles on the internet. Following known good writers is sometimes the best compromise, but then there's the issue of finding them in the first places without wading through an ocean of, uh, less experienced prose.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I think writers need space to be crap while they get the hang of the craft, but that does make it hard on readers who understandably would prefer to read the good stuff.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

I think the debate would be a lot easier if we had a more standardised definition of "Mary Sue." Right now, it seems there are several that are covered by the same term:

"Author-insert character"
"Idealised character"
"Horrible black hole that warps canon and reality for the purpose of stroking the author's ego"

I tend to go by the third, but a lot of people seem to include all under the one term, and (the important part!) assume they are all interchangeable.

Possibly a good rule of thumb would be to ask oneself, "Would this look out of place if I swapped the genders?" If the potential "Mary Sue" would pretty much turn into James Bond or something, then there is probably not a big problem. (Unless you have a problem with James Bond, which OK, that's fine, too.)

But yeah really I only see a problem when a character (of whatever gender) doesn't have to confront any real challenges to get what they want. And that's just bad writing.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I was going to post something similar myself: my biggest problem with Mary Sues these days is that no one seems to understand what the term means any more. Dragon Age: Origins, as a wholly original story, can't really be a Mary Sue because the protagonist you play is integral to the storyline. And that's a long way beyond a fanfic where Ensign Grant saves Kirk, Spock and McCoy and defeats the Romulans, etc. I think it's only Mary Sue if a new character is being forced into an existing narrative, that not only visibly represents the writer's ideal of themselves but also winds up being the most critical and useful character in the story.

[alias_sqbr]

Agreed on all counts.

*edits post to explain what I mean by Mary Sue*

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I suspect a lot of badass female Mary Sues would turn into Bond were the genders swapped, since James Bond pretty much is a Mary Sue -- Ian Flemming worked in the British Intelligence service during WWII, but presumably slept with far fewer nubile Bond girls in the process.

But Bond, like Harriet Vane (who is a screamingly obvious authorial insert Sue if you know a bit about Dorothy Sayers' RL biography), is well-written enough that he's able to transcend just being Flemming's fantasy and become the reader's/viewer's, too.

One of the best definitions of a Sue that I've seen is the "warps canon/reality around them" definition, where the Sue is so special that normal consequences don't apply to them (ex: the author's rules for what their fantasy 'verse's magic can and can't do apply to everyone... except the Sue, who is the youngest mage to master the craft in a century and can perform X impossible magical thing because, well, because he/she just can. They can use the Dark Side of the Force without negative consequences, they are immune to the temptations of the One Ring, they are both a wereleopard and a vampire at the same time, they can "speak truth to power" by critizing the absolute monarch's/company head's/whomever's policies and be lauded for it rather than getting in trouble despite being a peasant/entry-level employee/whatever, she can espouse second wave feminism in Victorian England and still be invited to all the best parties, etc.). And that tends to happen to both male and female characters in the hands of clumsy authors. It just tends to stand out more when it happens with women, I suspect because, at least in many fantay and historical settings, society places so many restrictions on women that "The heroine who is magically unaffected by the sexism that limits all the women around her, thereby making her even more special in contrast to them in a way that performing the same actions in a more gender-equal society would not" (one of my pet Mary Sue peeves in historical fiction/fantasy) stands out like a sore thumb. It's also probably a powerful wish-fulfillment fantasy for some of the same reasons.

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

*blink*

You know, this is the first time I've come across the idea that Mary-Sue-ishness is a particularly female fault/tendency/thing. I mean, there's the name, but that has a particularly long fannish history, and (to me, it seems like) saying it's a girl thing is like saying that if it's not Kirk/Spock, it's not slash.

[tattered-pinion.livejournal.com]

It is a girl thing because, well, they are pretty much all written by girls. It is due to the fan fiction demographic I suppose.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

People shouldn't be locked into any sort of rigid dogma that defines for them what is 'good fiction' and what is 'bad fiction'.

A lot of people, particularly geeks and particularly on the internet, fall into the mindset of establishing a set of objective criteria for the quality of fiction. Since fiction is inherently subjective, such checklists (including 'Is the main character a Mary Sue?', by whatever distorted definition they choose to consider) lead inevitably to the presentation of opinion as fact, and hence to endless semantic flame wars.

I would consider a character a Mary Sue if their exaggerated awesomeness broke my willing suspension of disbelief and thus prevented me from enjoying the text. The important thing is that this is a subjective opinion, and not everyone might agree with it (presumably the author would disagree, at the very least).

[alias_sqbr]

Yep, I agree with all that :)

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

Say, I think it's not accurate to define a Mary Sue by the protagonist of an original fiction (it's even weirder that that fiction is a game--games' characters are even more superpowered in general than protagonists everywhere). Even if zie's superpowered, or the center of the universe, or whatever, that's what the protagonists are in adventure fiction. They have a Destiny, or Win Everything In The End, or Are Awesome, or All Of The Above, etc. Every reduction on this is a purposeful play in the part of the author, generally to make it or more sympathetic, or the adventure more suspenseful, or give it realism or whatever.

There are no canon Mary Sues (despite what Twilight would have us think--that's a different issue). Mary Sue is a exclusively fanfiction phenomenon. The problem is how it warps the previously unwarped characters and story around herself when the people reading fanfiction in general want to read about those characters and that setting.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

There are no canon Mary Sues

I disagree.

here from metafandom

[blueinkedpalm.livejournal.com]

I'm a latecomer to the fandom of Baldur's Gate, another Bioware game with user-designed characters. Fanfiction ranges from the sparkly and oppressed half-elf half-succubus half-psion with all the special powers the writer could think of and all the NPCs the author considers hot licking her boots; to the bland character the writer cannot seem to impose any distinct personality characteristics upon whatsoever (this sometimes makes for a still readable story when the supporting cast is given wide range with their own strong personalities); and (surprisingly, rather commonly) to the interestingly developed protagonist giving no wish fulfillment vibes.

There's a difference between the game handing fanwriters a character who fits a lot of the markers of a Mary Sue as a protagonist who they can choose to make 3D and flawed or not, and a writer choosing to insert an OFC for no good reason.

Agreed. :) I think the setup where an original character is expected, is naturally very different from the setup where a Mary-Sue has to insert themselves into a group of established characters. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Mary-Sue forcing herself as an extra and unnecessary member of the canon group has a very different feeling to Xanthippe, Yevgenia, Zofia, and the protagonist we know was needed to contribute to the adventures they had.

Why gender? Why should I, as a disabled Australian woman (to choose some of the ways I differ from the "default" of able bodied American man etc) be worried that my female characters are self insert fantasies, but not my male ones that are disabled or Australian?

I kind of think one should worry because male characters can just as much be Sues--but I also think you shouldn't worry, because thinking about Mary-Sues too much winds up with no interesting original characters created at all. It's more common that female writers make their centre-of-the-universe-avatars female Mary-Sues, because it's more common (though not universal) that writers prefer to identify with characters of the same gender, and so it's the Sue that gets most of the fear; but female writers create bad overly sparkly male characters too. (I once committed a pretty, sparkly male character because I felt a particular fandom lacked them, and he really didn't work out at all.) I think Gary-Stus committed by female authors do eventually get noticed when they happen; it's only that they're somewhat rarer. But I think if a character has a defined and consistent personality, does not warp the canon material and particularly the other characters, and refrains from relying upon excessive coincidence to boost either their powers or their angst...is not so much any kind of Sue.

Re: here from metafandom

[alias_sqbr]

fanfiction ranges from the sparkly and oppressed half-elf half-succubus half-psion with all the special powers the writer could think of and all the NPCs the author considers hot licking her boots; to the bland character the writer cannot seem to impose any distinct personality characteristics upon whatsoever (this sometimes makes for a still readable story when the supporting cast is given wide range with their own strong personalities); and (surprisingly, rather commonly) to the interestingly developed protagonist giving no wish fulfillment vibes

These all sound oddly familiar :D

it's more common (though not universal) that writers prefer to identify with characters of the same gender, and so it's the Sue that gets most of the fear; but female writers create bad overly sparkly male characters too.

Agreed.

--but I also think you shouldn't worry, because thinking about Mary-Sues too much winds up with no interesting original characters created at all

*nods* I mean I think one should worry a little, but not so much you get stifled.

[miss_prince.livejournal.com]

While I won't deny that you hear about the female version way more often, the male version does exist: Gary Stus. They typically beat up a bunch of canon characters and dual-wield something. And they are equally annoying.

For me, I just can't tolerate the wish-fulfillment aspect, in that it is basically baring one's deepest desires and insecurities to complete strangers on the internet, and I am very uncomfortable reading it. I would encourage people to have those fantasies and even to write them, not so much to show the whole world. They tend to reveal a lot more about the authors than I think they realize.

[miss_prince.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think we may be more critical of the female versions because fanfic-writing fandom is majority women, and we can identify with the insecurities more and don't like to be reminded of the more embarrassing feelings of our younger selves.

via metafandom, btw

also via metafandom

[bluefall.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly nodding about your whole post here, and I think it's fairly telling about the whole phenomenon. Once you take her away from the game itself, the PC starts looking like a Mary Sue... because generally, protagonists are inherently Mary Sue-ish. It should hardly surprise anyone, then, that a lack of female protagonists in cultural narrative leads to a lot of female protagonists in private, amateur narrative, or transformative narrative, or however you want to classify fic, even at the cost of displacing the existing protagonists. Not something to get excited or condemnatory about.

I wonder how much that has to do with the high proportion of female RPGers as compared to other genres of gaming? It'd hardly be the only factor, or Oblivion would outsell Final Fantasy, but I'm sure the higher probability of a *legitimate* Made Of Awesome female hero over, say, an FPS, makes a difference.

I also wonder if the seemingly high ratio of f!Cousland/Alistair fics to everything else is meaningful here. Cousland male (who romances Morrigan) does seem to be sort of the "default" canon for the game, as even beyond the marketing, it has the most impact on and is best integrated into the storyline, so I can see a lot of people being drawn to the Cousland origin in general, just because the canon steers you that way. But it's probably not coincidence that so many people engage the most fannishly with the storyline that gives you the most power and agency, the happiest life, and eventually nets you the throne.

They felt rather odd aimed at my characters, who really aren't very manly. Especially the guys :)

That expectation carries over into the game, too, really. I laugh so hard every time my hideously scarred, square-jawed, painfully stern Warden gets talked up as "pretty" by passing NPCs.

Re: also via metafandom

[alias_sqbr]

But it's probably not coincidence that so many people engage the most fannishly with the storyline that gives you the most power and agency, the happiest life, and eventually nets you the throne.

Indeed. Yet interestingly, I would say that Cousland fics are a minority amongst the fic and art I see with male PC characters, Amell/Zevran seems way more popular. Of course I'm hanging in the girly bits of fanworkdom.

That expectation carries over into the game, too, really. I laugh so hard every time my hideously scarred, square-jawed, painfully stern Warden gets talked up as "pretty" by passing NPCs.

Haha, yes. It was weird for my somewhat funny looking (by human standards) commoner dwarf, who got lots of "You're so beautiful" from men, then had Leliana being all "I feel so safe and protected around you" despite her being like a foot taller and just as strong :)

via the metafandom:

[kaptainvon (from livejournal.com)]

All this combines to create a lot of stories about Totally Awesome semi-original female characters who probably fit the writer's idea of what looks cool having whoever of the romantic interests the writer finds most engaging(**) fall in love with them and saving the day from the Forces of Darkness before riding off into the sunset. EDIT: Which still doesn't make them necessarily a Mary Sue, but they certainly tick a lot of the boxes.

It's been mentioned, by bluefall and doubtless others, that having whichever romantic interest the writer finds most appropriate for the character fall in love with them, saving the day and riding off into the sunset &c. is basically standard run-of-the-mill fantasy protagonist fare.

Honestly, I think the Mary Sue is a fannish synonym for what, before becoming active in Fandom, I used to call 'Invincible Protagonist Syndrome'. It's the thing that makes Superman boring unless the story is about Superman as a person rather than a Saver of the Day; the thing that makes Vampire Chronicles novels after Interview so bloody painful to read; the thing that makes the antagonist/conflict in big comic stories so convoluted and full of either sufficiently advanced magic or wobbly science, depending on how you ask.

Fantasy, especially epic fantasy of the single-player-roleplaying kind, is very prone to this sort of thing. A lack of meaningful conflict between character and environment plus the often heavily stylised and oversimplified conflicts between characters (plain morality; archetypal romantic relationships) and the desire to preserve conflict in the narrative by introducing metric shitloads of conflict between the character and themselves all sort of come together to create a story about the Best Person In The World having people fall in love with them while they fight unambiguously evil people and have loads of issues because that's the only place where there's any conflict left.

It's one of the (many) reasons why I personally prefer low fantasy and shun epics like they don't believe in Candy Mountain - because the expectations of the epic are very hard to get interesting conflicts out of.

Hmm. This is going to mature into a longer post about the games I play/settings I write if I'm not careful. Better stop there.

Re: via the metafandom:

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I think the Mary Sue is a fannish synonym for what, before becoming active in Fandom, I used to call 'Invincible Protagonist Syndrome'.

*nods* It's the fiction-writing version of God-moding your RPG character, and it's just as annoying in a novel as it is when the guy playing D&D with you has given his character the highest possible score in every attribute. Canon writers tend to do it to Batman and Wolverine a lot, too (let's take Batman's normal level of badass uber-competance and DIAL IT UP TO ELEVEN! Let's have Wolverine regenerate from a charred skeleton! Surely the reader will still find that believable!)

A lot of SF writers forget to include the Kryptonite Rule/Achilles Heel principle when handing out superpowers to characters (i.e. that when you give a character super powerful special abilities, you have to give them a weak spot to balance it out, or you end up with no potential for suspense or conflict because the character can never really be threatened by anything, and how heroic are they really if they never really risk anything meaningful when they step into a fight?).

The magical sparkly unicorn of specialness syndrome that tends to accompany the Invincible Protagonist when it's written by teenage girls also abounds in original fiction -- I've seen my share of sparklypoo-style silver/purple-eyed half mermaid/half angels in published fiction and amateur original fic as well as in fanfic. They're ridiculously over the top there, too.

via metafandom

[kazaera.livejournal.com]

This is a really interesting post and has spawned some very interesting realisations in my head.

First off, it's not just you! I really don't think writing a character as a woman puts me in imminent danger of over-identification. Nor, for that matter, does writing a character of the same sexuality as me (probably due to the fact that I tend to assume characters asexual unless proven otherwise and all my OCs default asexual unless I specifically try to give them another sexuality. As a result, having a character have my sexuality is not particularly unusual for me.) On the other hand, being disabled is far more of an issue, with more or less trouble when it comes to disability. I'm working on two characters with mobility impairments, which I don't have, and I don't think it's such an issue there - other issues, but not over-identification because of disability. I also have a character who stutters, which *is* one of my disabilities, and I think it's a bit more of an issue but still doable. OTOH, I've tried my hand at autistic characters or characters with depression and oh wow look at that overidentification. Especially my autistic character.

But the biggest problem for me? Nationality/culture. I'm German, and I don't usually read German books or watch German TV or, well, anything. And recently I tried mentally setting an original fic in Germany and it's almost impossible. There's one ethnically/culturally German character and I keep getting me all over her, and the fic absolutely insists on being set in my hometown even when I try to shove it away, and the characters keep deaging and ending up in my high school (they're meant to be at university, which I *haven't* attended in Germany) and it is just plain awful.

But no one goes "oi, you can't write a German/disabled/asexual character unless you're sure you're not putting too much of yourself in them!" It reminds me of this post I saw when the homophobia-in-slash debate started turning into the why-don't-we-write-more-women debate - a queer woman pointing out that saying we should be writing female characters instead of m/m because we're women and misogyny! is telling her that her gender is more important than her sexuality. And reading comments about how of course gender is the sticking point and we must be particularly wary of gender is reminding me of that, because really if anyone I'm the one who gets to decide what the most important bit of my identity is.

And - here is where the thinky thoughts begin - it occurs to me that this entire argument, that we must be particularly careful when writing characters who have X in common with us when X is a marginalised trait, is highly problematic. Because it implies that not-X is the default, writing X is unusual and noteworthy and some kind of decision that we are making. I mean, the "be careful of your female characters! They could be Mary Sues!" sort of carries as the undertone that a) female characters are special in a way male ones aren't and b) that we should check whether we can write good female characters or else go back to writing male ones. I mean, do we *honestly* think that male writers think or should think that they must take particular care with their male characters? That their male characters are somehow special and noteworthy and they're in danger of overidentification because of their gender? Or that, say, CND writers must be careful when they're writing CND characters? And, not to play Oppression Olympics here or anything, but no one has *ever* told me that I should take particular care with my disabled or queer characters because zomg Mary Sue! And if they had, I'd have exploded at them because it sounds rather -ist.

Also, do Mary Sueness and over-identification really have to be that linked? In my experience, my Sues are not the characters I pour too much of myself into; my Sues are more the types of characters I think are really cool and I sort of wish I could be but who are not necessarily like me at all (low self-esteem, represent!). Over-identifying is still not a good thing, but I'm a bit dubious about this link.

...I have *way* too much to say.

[kazaera.livejournal.com]

*coughs* On another note! I'm in a few create-your-own-PC fandoms and have written fic as well - Morrowind and Baldur's Gate, mainly - and have thought about the dilemma of Mary Sues and whatnot a lot! I mean, I generally have a lot of thoughts on Mary Sues and why the rampant fear and omg you must do anything not to write a Mary Sue is damaging and seriously disproportionate, but I find it really obvious in that kind of fandom, because as you point out your character automatically hits a lot of the traits that usually get OCs written off as rampant Sues. (SPOILERS for Baldur's Gate and Morrowind follow:



in Morrowind, you're the reincarnation of a great hero, subject of a prophecy, end up killing two gods if you follow the main quest of the game and one of the expansions and can *easily* end up the head of some of the most powerful political factions in the game - simultaneously. In Baldur's Gate, you're the child of a god, end a war, fight demons in hell, become world-renowned heroes, and actually *become* a god in one of the endings of the expansion of BG2.



END SPOILERS

I once did a generic Mary Sue litmus test with my BG character. 40+ points was "irredeemable Sue, scrap this character and start again". I got over 120. In fact, I got over 70 with a generic female half-elven fighter/mage - just hitting "yes" when the canon backstory demanded it. Fun!

It really brings home, to me, how much the issue is making your characters interesting, rather than external stuff like species, eye colour, gender (:/), power level, etc., and how much trying to judge the Suedom of your character by that scale is going in entirely the wrong direction. For me, one of the markers of a good BG or Morrowind fic is having the character seem like a real person, having their personality positively drip off the pages. One of the best Morrowind fics I've read has their main character have had serious training as an assassin when they were small and be one of the best fighters around even relatively early in the game - and it works! And I love the character! And there are fics where the MC is much weaker which I find boring as hell!

...also, now I want to play Dragon Age: Origins. It sounds like it took everything I liked about Baldur's Gate and made it even cooler! It might even deserve to lick the boots of Planescape Torment!

via metafandom

[yhibiki.livejournal.com]

I saw your original post up on the dragonage comm, suddenly felt motivated to comment.

But anyway, it's sort of amusing to me to see the definition of Mary-Sue so... different from what it used to be. I feel like an old-timer (and I'm not THAT old, by internet standards?) but I get the feeling that at least in anime/manga circles, "mary sue" used to mean "character so warped from their canon personality they may as well be an original character now." And there were "self inserts," which is a lot more gender neutral. In the very least, I would support going back to the definition of "self insert" since it's less confusing than Mary Sue/Gary Stu. And no need for gender differentiation.

As far as Dragon Age fanfic goes... as much as I love the game, I've found that reading fanfic is hard for me, because I love my own Warden so much, I can't really stand the ones that name her different, or make her look different, or have her be a completely different personality. Similar problems arise with Mass Effect fiction. One of the main reasons I haven't been able to get into either fandom as much as I'd like.

Re: via metafandom

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, Mary Sue and self insert are blurred together and they're not the same thing.

I have issues reading fic about characters with the same origins as the two I finished Origins with, but hardly anyone writes f!Brosca or m!Amell and I am happy enough reading f!Cousland etc fics as a complete AU which has nothing much to do with my characters :)

[marlenanke.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just jaded because I've been around fandom, in one way or another, for a little over 9 years now. I've had the Mary Sue period go on in my head, but I thankfully never set it to paper because that would have been a disaster story. Hence, I can fully see the appeal of MS-type characters, but I think an author should be able to realise these are just the type of characters which give way to stories that no one other than the author (and maybe some of her friends) might want to read.

I think a lot of the time we write things that are wish-fulfillment. And that's fine. It is. It just doesn't make for good writing. Other fans who begin in a fandom by reading MSs will quickly grow out of them and move on to more interesting stories. That doesn't mean OCs as main characters cannot be interesting and well-written, but I think it takes a good writer and an audience that has an interest in reading something like that. And, when it happens that an OC is well-developed and makes sense as a main character, then it's most likely because s/he serves a different purpose, either to evidence the awesomeness of the world within the source material by tapping into areas of the world that the original creator did not or to develop other qualities of the canon characters. At least, that's how Ive encountered it before.

I hope this makes a bit of sense. I might have lost my point along the way. ;)

Regarding the beginning of your post, I think that there is a causal relationship between most of fandom being female and most MSs being female. There just is. You do want the fairytale princess fantasy even when you're a hardcore feminist. Or something.

In defense of Mary Sue: Everyone has to go through this phase. Look at Jane Eyre. We needed this novel, among others, in Western literature in order to get the concept out of our system. Now it's out and the standard for quality literature is definitely not a Mary Sue anymore. There's nothing original about, and, if there's one thing that works over well with audiences who are looking for "good" writing, is so-called originality.

Uh, yes. 0.02 cents here.

[alias_sqbr]

I agree with most of this.

But: I wouldn't say Jane Eyre is a Mary Sue, but more an example of how a self insert with elements of wish fulfillment can be done well. I don't know that it's any worse than a great many modern novels if you ignore the excess sentimententality etc that was applied to all characters in novels those days.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

I'm in between meetings and haven't had a chance to read through this whole discussion, so I apologize if I'm repeating something already said.

Mary Sue--she has been with us since the earliest days of "Star Trek" fandom, finally prompting Paula Smith (writer and zine editor) to parody the phenomenon in "A Trekkie's Tale." As explained by Paula herself in the ST letterzine INTERSTAT (#17, March 1979, Mary B. and Terri M., eds.) Paula responded to an inquiry with this (quoting with permission):

"I suppose I am as qualified as anyone to explain: 'Mary Sue,' a.k.a. 'Lt. Mary Sue, the youngest (15 1/2) officer in Star Fleet,' is a term I created in 'A Trekkie's Tale' (MENAGERIE 2 [Dec 1973]) to comment on a story type prevalent at the time (and still common afterwards), the story of the youngest, smartest, pertest, most adorable ever female teenaged (generally) lieutenant on the Enterprise, who is lusted after--chastely--by any or all of the senior officers, who is often half-Vulcan/half-God-knows-what, saves the ship in some improbable way, sometimes has the grace to die beautifully by the end of the story, and is impossible to accept as a real being by anyone save the author. It later became a term of disapprobation and was slung around, sometimes undeservedly, at any woman character of more personal presence than Christine Chapel at her most vapid. These days, of course, no one would be caught dead writing a Mary Sue. They write 'old-fashioned romance/action/adventure stories' instead."

Having had decades to observe Sues in action, I'd say that, while there are many variations on the theme, the most consistent and defining
characteristic of a Mary Sue character/story is this: the primary characters of the media source product--the ones who usually carry the action, solve the problems, make the decisions, rescue the victims (fill in whatever is appropriate to your fandom)--the heroes of the piece, if you will, are inexplicably warped out of shape. They step back and yield their place in the story to the MS character. MS is then the one who takes the action, makes the decisions, etc. If the story is a relationship story (het, slash, or "just good friends"), MS also will smooth the tangled skeins, pour oil on the troubled waters, and in general set the characters back on the path of True Love or Epic Friendship. MS is not restricted to a specific age, gender, or relationship to the characters. There are Mary Sues who are female and form the traditional MS love interest, but there also are Neighbor Sues, Best Friend Sues, Relative Sues, Villain Sues, and so on--all of either gender. Often they come in a fandom-specific guise, such as Jedi Sues, Immortal Sues, Agent Sues, Sentinel (or Guide) Sues. I've even seen Pet Sues.

And, yes, it's possible to take a canon character--even a *main* character--and warp him or her into a MS (suddenly the main character is even more larger than life than is normal for the character, and the other characters become less capable than they are supposed to be, more admiring and worshipful of the now-MS character).

Writers who don't have the necessary level of writing skill, or a sufficient understanding of human nature (in general, or specifically of the characters they are writing about) are prone to Mary Sues--even when they don't mean to be. On the flip side, those writers with sufficient writing skill and a mature understanding of human nature *can* create an original character--even a love interest for the main protagonist--without creating a Mary Sue.

[alias_sqbr]

I've been trying to think of a deep reply but: I agree with most of this :)