"Mary Sue"

[tamchronin]

Actually, I'd like to open this up for discussion here.

"Honestly, as a writer and an avid reader all my life, I'm getting a bit bugged by the "Mary Sue/Gary Stu" in original fic bashing. It has become a witch hunt, I swear, where any character that fits the hero archetype is called that. Call them cliche, or cookie-cutter, or boring and predictable! That's what you're complaining about. "Mary Sue" is a fanfic faux pas, where the fanfic author has hijacked the story with their own idealized character, usually a self-insert with flaws glossed over. It really bugs me that any character that an author has sympathy with or a liking for has fallen under that umbrella."

reposted from: http://community.livejournal.com/deegan_fan/315749.html?view=4097893&style=mine#t4097893

And, to expand on the theme, I'll give an example about why I have grown to hate the label. There is a VERY good writer on my friends list who started writing a novel for NaNoWriMo the same year I wrote Twilight Dreaming. When I stopped my own writing frenzy and read what she had written, I was in love with the main character and with the world she had created. She confided that it was only about a quarter of the story, and I pouted and begged for more. We talked back and forth about writing over the next few months, and one of the things she said floored me. She had asked if her main character was a Mary Sue. She was so afraid that it was, that she'd eventually grown paralyzed by the idea and couldn't bring herself to write more of it.

The idea nearly paralyzed me too, to be honest. When she told me how the concept had grown to include original characters, I started jumping at shadows. Ahrianna from TD really had started out as an exploration of self. She shared my hair color and my unique view of my eyes. (It was an exercise in description on my part, to break apart the "brown hair, blue eyes" blah that could describe just about anyone.) I drew on my past experiences for her reactions at first, though soon enough she developed a personality of her own. So, was I doing the "good" thing of writing what I knew? Or was I doing the "bad" thing and creating another worthless Mary Sue?

It didn't make me a better writer, to start worrying about it. In fact, it was a huge contributing factor in my writer's block, the more I gave the idea credence. As far as I know, my friend abandoned her world entirely over the lurking shadow of "Mary Sue". In order to write these days, I have to remind myself that it's okay to associate with my character, to see things from their point of view, and not worry about being "too perfect". Especially in first person writing, you have to allow a bit of an idealized version of events be filtered by your character's point of view. Most people don't view themselves as the bad guy, and I believe readers will sympathize more with someone who share that view, even if they otherwise would not react to events in the same way. If your main character is being stupid, show the consequences after the fact, but feel free to present their idealized view in the present. It's okay even to be a little cliche, because a cliche becomes cliche when it is something that works. It's comfort food for the soul, like ice cream or chocolate. Your diet can't consist entirely of those things, but don't be afraid to add some for the enjoyment of it.

Well, that's my tl;dr view of the subject. I'd like to hear other views now. Is "Mary Sue" the literary equivalent of "your mother wears combat boots" or is it a valid critique? My mind is open, especially if it is something that may help me be a better writer.

Comments

[slytherinblack.livejournal.com]

Does anyone accuse the character in Running with Scissors to be a Mary Sue? Just sayin', it's totally valid to write about yourself. I don't think it's appropriate to write about yourself but treat yourself as if you can do no wrong, and I think characters need to have flaws, but I don't think the concept of "Mary Sue" generally applies to original fiction. I also believe that all characters a person creates are going to have something of themselves in them or of people we know because we base them on life experiences and "write what we know", as they say. When I think about my characters, Hart has my lazy sloppiness, I project my angst into Andy, and Adrian and Jason represent an external version of one of my internal struggles between privacy and honesty.

[katharos-8.livejournal.com]

I don't remember where I first found this but I read it when I was just getting into fandom and it's influenced my thinking ever since.

(paraphrased)
So you have this character. He's handsome, brave, wonderful lover, great luck with women, practically unbeatable fighter who knows several styles, speaks several languages, plays the piano, good, many friends who speak admiringly of him...

Sounds like a mary sue doesn't it? Add on that he's four hundred years old and you have Duncan MacLeod.

It's not what the character is that makes him or her a mary sue. It's how they are treated in the story universe. If the story warps itself around them, falling over itself to accomodate them... you have a boring story. And probably a Mary Sue. If things don't always go the characters way, if they are challenged, somtimes look bad, forced to adapt and change... it doesn't matter at all how wonderful and competent they are.

[cygna-hime.livejournal.com]

I think of "Mary Sue" as a fairly subjective term when it gets into original fiction, because the primary definition of a Mary Sue (someone who twists canon until it's All About Her) becomes difficult or impossible to apply to an original heroine--of *course* the story is about her; she's the heroine!

That said, most heroes and heroines can be made to sound like Mary Sues if you list only their good qualities--she's beautiful, she's a powerful mage/warrior, she makes friends with all these people, etc. The difference between a Mary Sue and a good original character is the other list, the list of flaws. A Mary Sue's list of flaws consists entirely of things like "she cares too much", "she has a temper", and "people hate her because of Obviously Wrong Reason X". A good heroine's list takes the character traits already established and shows the bad side of them--she's kind and sympathetic, BUT she's gullible, so she gets into trouble when someone spins her a sob story, or she's honest BUT tactless, or she's honorable BUT this gets her into trouble she can't get out of without help, or she's independent BUT that means some of her small problems turn into big ones because she refused to ask for help.

The difference, therefore, is basically in terms of the writing. If your character has flaws as well as virtues, and flaws of equal severity as virtues, then that character won't be a Mary Sue. If the character's list of abilities ends up as long as my arm and she never meets a situation she can't handle--or, worse, meets situations she *should* be able to handle but doesn't for no reason the reader can see--then she's become a Mary Sue.

Take Hercules. Strongest man in the world, son of Zeus, most of his problems are caused by Hera because she's meeeeen, can perform fantastic feats of strength, defeats armies single-handed, gets laid pretty much all the time by his choice of attractive people of both genders--sounds pretty Gary Stu, right? Except he also has this tendency to get drunk and kill people, and he certainly isn't very sharp. Oh, and when he dies, it's because his wife poisons him because of the constant philandering. Not such a Stu anymore, is he?

[jupiter-star.livejournal.com]

I REALLY have to agree a lot with what katharos_8 said about it being the way the character is treated than what the character is. That said, I really do feel like the concept of Mary Sue in original fiction is just...a stupid label. Almost every writer out there has a characters that could be classified as a Mary sue in them (Hermione AND Harry Potter, most fantasy heroes and heroines, the majority of characters in old, classic stories from Achilles to Aragorn to Bob Crachit to Juliet and the list goes on and on and one). The biggest trait of a Mary Sue is being incongruous with the universe the character exists in and making the characters behave entirely unlike themselves...in original fiction, however, how does that happen? If you threw a character into TD that wore Prada shoes and miniskirts and made Jalireth suddenly be all about loving fluffy bunnies and giving up all of his magic, it would be a valid critique, but how often does that happen? Mary Sues as a critique pretty much only apply to fanfiction.

And in addition, people don't seem to realize that Mary Sues are not necessarily a bad thing. That's why pottersues has a "Good" rating, and why most Mary Sue litmus tests say that it's all right to have a Sue character as long as they are well rounded...because just because your character is a Mary Sue doesn't necessarily mean that they are a bad character or that the story itself is bad. I can think of at least six fics with Mary Sues in them that I actually quite enjoyed because, despite being a Mary Sue, the character was still well-written, fun to read, and in a really, really good story. They aren't always a bad thing. People just don't seem to remember this.

Anymore, it feels like the term Mary Sue is just thrown around as an insult to ANY character that people don't like. It's lost almost all meaning and seriousness even in fanfiction, much less the little tiny bit of meaning it had for original fic (because I'm sure somewhere out there was a medieval fantasy with a girl in miniskirts with an iPod in there somewhere).

And that's my two cents, times about six hundred ^_^.;;

[sakanagi.livejournal.com]

When the idea of a character being a Mary Sue is stopping people writing original fiction, then it's gone much too far. I think it may have some limited use, in rare circumstances, or for joking purposes. I can think of one series of books - but only one series I've ever read - where I consider the main character to be a clear Mary Sue. I don't even remember the titles of those books now. @_@ They were really, really badly written. But almost always, when a main character is powerful/treated as if they're the centre of the universe? Yes! It's because they're the main character and maybe everything does revolve around them. And powerful/important characters can be fun. So I'd agree that the term Mary Sue only really belongs in fanfic. You can't be the main character and hijack your own series!

So therefore I must be wrong about that one I mentioned earlier being a Sue, despite strong gut feelings to the contrary. It IS just a writing quality issue if it's original fiction. Curses. Zapped my own argument.

[peacewish.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me as I read your post that most of the very oldest stories in history feature heroes that were as close to perfect as one could get - the gods of Norwegian and Greek mythology, or their children, or chieftans (Beowulf) or royalty, or whatever. How could anything less than a perfect character face whatever terrible evil threatened the world? Flawed main characters seem to be a more recent development in the literary world, possibly due to Shakespeare himself. So if people want to yak about Mary Sue, steer them to the classics so you can get some alone time to write.

Personally, I've never worried about whether a character had too many good qualities. The issue is to ensure they're just a little bit (but only a little!) outmatched when it comes to confronting their antagonist. Too much outmatched and it's implausible and you lose the audience. Un-outmatched and there's no challenge, it's boring, and you lose the audience. Just a little, though, is just right. And who cares how great the character is? If we all hated fantastically talented characters, the James Bond franchise would have never made it past Dr. No.