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

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

The problem I have with counting canon stuff is that there will always be some discussion about if the characterization has indeed gone awry, and if the rules have been bended or not (it's easier to discern if the author has changed over time, like in series, so it's more plausible to find another perspective on who's the principal character, etc). I would prefer to keep the denomination for fanfic (which is, after all, where it was first conceived), and just talk about the related phenomena in original fic with other terms.

It's particularly ridiculous, for me, to call the main character of an original story Mary Sue/Gary Stu, given that the story has been conceived around it. It can't, by definition, bend it or distort it by its presence. So yes, it can be badly written, and it can be a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author, but it can't be really a Mary Sue (and if fact, I suspect it would piss off people way less than a fanfic Mary Sue, even if it were even more blatant. ). (I also suspect that the fact that the term was first invented by fanfic folk does tell us that it's more annoying, or more noticeable, as a fanfic narrative. I think this is because it bends canon around the character.)

[furikku.livejournal.com]

(and if fact, I suspect it would piss off people way less than a fanfic Mary Sue, even if it were even more blatant. )

From experience, I can tell you, no, that is not quite the case. XD

I would prefer to keep the denomination for fanfic (which is, after all, where it was first conceived), and just talk about the related phenomena in original fic with other terms.

That really seems to be getting into strict semantics way too much for me. Why coin new terms to describe this when a preexisting term is adequate and describes nearly everything involved already?

Also,
The problem I have with counting canon stuff is that there will always be some discussion about if the characterization has indeed gone awry, and if the rules have been bended or not

IME there will always be that debate, no matter what, because canon experience is subjective.

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

Of course there will always be debate. I think the matter is much clearer in fanfic. Which is why I want the terms to be separate. (Also, I think the quality of warping already established canon is much more probable in fanfic. There's original fiction where it happens, but it's not the more common case--i.e. series, a la Wesley Crusher (sp?).)

Well, I know various protagonists that I consider to be Mary Sue-like in original stories, and the stories are well liked and bought and read by many many people who keep reading. While Mary Sues in fandom are in general (I have heard that some people like reading them) avoided by the readership. So I kinda think that original or 'canon' Sues piss off less people.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

piss off less people.

AH! I see the disconnect! I'd taken your previous statement (it would piss off people way less) to mean, "it would cause less anger in people," rather than, "it would cause anger in fewer people."

I think the matter is much clearer in fanfic. Which is why I want the terms to be separate.

It still doesn't ping to me as enough of a difference to warrant entirely new terms. Besides, what the heck would you call that character type? It's just much easier and more intuitive to adapt a preexisting term, in my mind.

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

wish-fulfillment fantasy? Unless they're really warping previously established canon around them, then OK, Mary/Gary. Though those will be a much smaller amount.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I know various protagonists that I consider to be Mary Sue-like in original stories, and the stories are well liked and bought and read by many many people who keep reading.

Mary Sues in fanfic often get the same response, actually, whether it's a canon-sue treatment of a canon character or a classic OC Sue. I can think of several Harry Potter fandom Mary Sue fics that I adored as an eighteen-year-old, that had huge followings (let's face it, pretty much the entirity of the canon character/OFC genre is Sue fic, or at least, it was in 2002/2003 when it came to Snape/OFC fics, going by what I can remember reading -- there was this one fic with a heroine who had three animagus forms and a terribly tragic past who redeemed Snape by the power of love that I stalked religiously for updates as a college freshman). There's a lot of sneering at Mary Sues in fandom, but not necessarily from all quarters. A lot of young readers love them.

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

That's a first for me. I always assumed they were generally reviled. I got into fandom at nineteen or so, and can't stand them, even the independent!Harry type of stories (Harry as a Gary Stu, basically). (Though I confess enjoying, at a time, Hr/S stories, in which Hermione is a borderline Sue. What turned me off them was how canon was twisted, really. I don't necessarily mind the wish fulfillment thing unless it takes away the suspense entirely.)

So, you say loving Mary Sue and Mary Sue like characters in original fiction is a youth/maturity marker?

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I don't know that it is for everyone, but I know that I adored Mercedes Lackey novels as a teenager -- and when I read stuff like the Black Jewels Trilogy or other Sue-tastic fantasy now, my inner fourteen-year-old loves it for reasons that have little to do with objective quality (just as my inner fourteen year old loves "Everyone has terribly misjudged character X" fics and make-over scenes where female characters in historical settings get an entire new wardrobe of lovingly-described fancy gowns).