December 31st, 2011
by
Yonmei
ikoniI was reading this fabulous essay by Comic Book Girl, Mary Sue, what are you? or why the concept of Sue is sexist:
So, there’s this girl. She’s tragically orphaned and richer than anyone on the planet. Every guy she meets falls in love with her, but in between torrid romances she rejects them all because she dedicated to what is Pure and Good. She has genius level intellect, Olympic-athelete level athletic ability and incredible good looks. She is consumed by terrible angst, but this only makes guys want her more. She has no superhuman abilities, yet she is more competent than her superhuman friends and defeats superhumans with ease. She has unshakably loyal friends and allies, despite the fact she treats them pretty badly. They fear and respect her, and defer to her orders. Everyone is obsessed with her, even her enemies are attracted to her. She can plan ahead for anything and she’s generally right with any conclusion she makes. People who defy her are inevitably wrong.
God, what a Mary Sue.
and it reminded me of an experience I had at WinCon 1999: I had just got hold of a copy of Vonda N. McIntyre’s wonderful novel, The Moon and the Sun (1997), and was full of how great it was. At a relevant panel, I mentioned it – to be greeted (to my surprise) with howls of derision from the women the audience, about how terrible it was because the hero, Marie-Joseph, has too much. She’s a composer, a mathematician, a fair artist, and she has a sea monster for a friend. As Catherine Asaro points out in her review
Science fiction is replete with the idea of the polymath — a protagonist talented in many diversified disciplines. This isn’t coincidence; in real life, artistic and linguistic gifts often pair with scientific or mathematical talent. The math-physics-music constellation is perhaps the best-known combination. Science fiction writer and Analog editor Stanley Schmidt, for example, is also a Ph.D. physicist, linguist, composer, and musician. The character of Marie-Joseph fits right into this tradition. McIntyre gets her personality down well, with sharp details, such as her fledgling attempts to quantify natural phenomena with equations. In essence, Marie-Josephe is struggling to derive chaos theory far ahead of its time. I found her a likable genius, unaffected and humble, with charm, integrity, and humor.
I remember a similar reaction to Segnbora in The Door Into Shadow – not the more usual one of defining her by having been raped, but a complaint that by the end of the book she has a magical sword that will cut anything, she has the Flame, she has Hasai – she has too much.
But she’s the hero. No one made that complaint about Herewiss. But (back to Comic Book Girl):
The idea that woman has to “earn” any power, praise, love, or plot prominence is central to Mary Sue. Men do not have to do this, they are naturally assumed to be powerful, central and loveable. That’s why it’s the first thing thrown at a female character- what has she done to be given the same consideration as a male character? Why is she suddenly usurping a male role? “Mary Sue” is the easiest way to dismiss a character. It sounds bad to say “I don’t like this female character. I don’t like that this woman is powerful. I don’t like it when the plot focuses on her. I don’t like that a character I like has affections for her.” But “Mary Sue” is a way to say these things without really saying them. It gives you legitimacy.
Is there any useful way to use the trope “Mary Sue”?
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- More blogging by
Yonmei at
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Filed under Books & Literature, female characters, feminism | Comments (16)
“Is there any useful way to use the trope ‘Mary Sue?’”
Hmm. Now that you mention it the best thing to be done with the “Mary Sue” trope would be to ask how it’s different from the “Lazarus Long” trope? Because, sweet mother of pearl, are there a lot of so-worthy-and-plucky-and-lucky-they-inherit-everything male characters in sci-fi… let alone in the equivalent of male fan-fic. (Isn’t fanfic where the original Mary Sue trope is supposed to have emerged?)
I mean, seriously, yeah, the “mary sue” characters you describe in serious sci-fi do sound pretty over the top, how many characters from Hugo and Nebula award winning authors start out so far in the bullied, impoverished, orphaned gutter they shouldn’t have been found with radar and a map… but instead they wind up being ridiculously important, wealthy, influential, admired, technically and/or physically brilliant, and greatly but never jealously desired?
For a while sci-fi was virtually unreadable because of them.
Call it the problem with the fantasy element of SF/F — unthrottled fantasy goes to wish fulfillment and sex of the author notwithstanding before you know it you’re reading about the infallible exploits of Lazarus-Sue Potter-Long.
In other words the best way to use the Mary Sue trope is to put it in context and then mock the whole enterprise.
figleaf
p.s. for what it’s worth it doesn’t sound like McIntyre’s Marie-Joseph was actually a Mary Sue. But in the late 90s the Lazarus-Sue trope was thick enough for people to have become hypersensitized.
That essay is fantastic. Thanks for writing about it! It’s humbling to realize how wrong I’ve been about it.
(Stumbled on this while doing some searches on fiction tropes)
I think the problem with the term isn’t really that its sexist. People are pretty quick to label Gary/Marty Sues alongside their female counterparts these days (I’ve seen both Jon Snow and Daenerys called Sues in Game of Thrones discussions), and the tradition goes back quite a ways. Wesley Crusher was widely denounced as a Sue character on Star Trek:TNG, and one might make an argument that the entire modern comic book cosmos exists as a rebuttal of the Sue-ishness of an invincible Superman.
The problem for me, more than the term legitimizing a sexist reaction, is that it’s highly subjective and often reflects an instinctual dislike of a character more than careful analysis. This gut reaction could be based in sexism, but it can come from other places too (simple jealousy toward broadly-successful characters, preference toward another character, etc).
Wherever it comes from, and whether its applied for a Mary or a Marty, the term is too broad to be informative, and that’s what robs it of a lot of value. Its still a label one might make use of when grouping certain constellations of criticisms (I think one of the core Sue ideas is not just broad competency, but also a lack of presently-meaningful flaws or weaknesses), but at best its only that, a label. If you’re going to call some character a Sue, you need to have a body of character criticisms ready to explain why.
Oh, and just for fun, real life polymaths are hardly restricted to the math/science/music/language constellation: Dolph Lundgren, of Rocky IV fame, has been a model, a bodyguard, a champion martial artist, as well as a movie star. That’s fine you say, those are all related physical talents! Well, apparently he’s also SUPER SMART, and was offered a scholarship to MIT for chemical engineering. The truth is, genetics doesn’t play fair and people with talent frequently succeed in many areas. Maybe this is another reason for the negative gut reaction that causes people to identify (and attack) Sues so harshly.
Illegitimacy is the main characteristic that the term Mary Sue hinges on. If people use it as an opportunity to reflect on the reasons behind the gut feeling — to examine their assumptions about what’s legitimate, and then to look at power dynamics of the systems from which those assumptions arise, then it’s useful. (And the reasons can vary — whether it’s original characters detracting from the canon characters that originally drew the fandom together, or original characters upsetting the established hierarchies of the social order the ideology of which readers take for granted — but a sense of illegitimacy always begs the question of the laws underpinning it.) Though it’s easier to knee-jerk than to raise consciousness.
[...] Great piece on how the very idea of ‘Mary Sue’ is sexist, ties into this episode’s theme about the criticism of female characters. [...]
Having read a fair amount of fanfiction, I think the major difference between a really competant person and a Mary Sue is based on two things.
1) A lack of relevant Failure: A Mary sue doesn’t have setbacks or problems that she’s caused that actually derail her plans. Any setbacks that happen serve to make people take pity on her / comfort her.
2) Relationships with established charcters: A Mary Sue is loved / admired by all – the only people who don’t want to be her friend are the villains of the piece. There’s no “She’s alright” points of view – people either want to be her, want to be her girl/boyfriend, or hate her (possibly with a side helping of jealousy because they could love her, if that character wasn’t a villain.)
Isn’t it interesting, sort of, how any post like this inevitably ends up with male fans coming by to explain how come this is not sexist because…
…and using examples that were already part of the debunking argument in the first post?
Batman suffers no lack of relevant failure. He is loved/admired by all except the villains. So Batman is a Mary Sue, not a really competent person.
Hm. Looking at Mary Sue from it’s definition as a Fanfic trope, I’m looking at the relationships between the new character introduced by the fanfic author, and the original characters from the show / work in question. Ie, the original Mary Sue was a new Starfleet character who was beloved by all of the Enterprise crewmembers, or a new Hogwarts student who is beloved by all the canon characters, except possibly Snape, who is of course all villainy.
That said, Batman is a bit Mary Sue-ish, really. In Grant Morrison’s stories at the beginning of his JLA run, these new superheros show up, capture everyone in the Justice League, and are going to control the whole world… except they didn’t capture Batman, and he’s able to release his friends and take out a number of the superheros. (Well, they start off looking like superheros.)
On the other hand, there’s been long stretches of time where Batman isn’t admired by all the non-villains. He’s been seen as a public nuisance, as enabling/causing the showy villains which go up against him, and so on. There’s been many a time when the police have actively been trying to capture the Batman and put him in jail, and although naturally as the protagonist we don’t want them to succeed, this doesn’t make the police department villains. (Well, not all villans. Another big part of Gotham tends to be corruption in the police, so there probably are some villains in there. But I digress…)
Ah, but back to my point, which was that polymath or really competent characters, whatever their sex, aren’t Mary Sues. This is because a) In any well-written novel they probably go up against some pretty significant challenges, and b) everyone in the novel doesn’t immediately love and agree with them because they’re wonderful.
I’m sorry if you thought I was disagreeing with you.
I do think female characters are attacked as Mary Sues more than male characters, but I don’t think this is sexism, but that male and female characters are badly written in different ways. Male wish fulfillment characters are more likely portrayed as powerful and skilled, while female wish fulfillment characters are more likely to be Beloved By All, displacing canon characters and causing melodrama. Some feminist speaker said, little boys are taught to excel, while little girls are taught to please. I think these social expectations are reflected in escapist fiction.
A badly written male character might be a sniper ninja rock star, which while dumb, is tolerable reading. A badly written female character is more likely to be a princess from a long lost kingdom, unusually beautiful, the last of a superhuman but extinct race, and have a telepathic creature companion and magical necklace. Notice in the latter, I haven’t mentioned a single skill, just desirable traits. While the male fantasy is about success and achievement, the female fantasy isn’t about being good at something, it’s about being special. I’m a woman myself, and while I dislike both types of poor writing, I hate the latter more.
Also note that Mary Sue is legitimately useful as a fanfiction term, not just a general critique of any heroic woman one dislikes. Mary Sue will make the canon cast act out of character. The male hero is happily married, but he’ll murder his wife to be with Mary Sue. WHAT? Or Mary Sue clashes with the setting by existing. She might be a Japanese school girl in the Middle Ages, or be half-vampire half-elf in an established setting with neither vampires nor elves. We’re not talking about Jon Snow or Batman here, we’re talking about blatant idiocy that will NEVER get published. Since the majority of fanfiction is written by women, the problem afflicts female characters more. Self-made male gaming avatars are just as bad, but thankfully rarely appear in prose.
Angie, do you not see the sexism in attributing the reaction against female characters to a list of gendered characteristics?
Yonmei: isn’t it interesting how very like the reviled indictements of Mary Sues in fanfic mansplainers are, inserting themselves into discussions and expecting to have everyone’s attention?
I apologize for upsetting folks. It was not my intention.
Angie: I do think female characters are attacked as Mary Sues more than male characters, but I don’t think this is sexism, but that male and female characters are badly written in different ways. Male wish fulfillment characters are more likely portrayed as powerful and skilled, while female wish fulfillment characters are more likely to be Beloved By All, displacing canon characters and causing melodrama.
Three characters from pro Star Trek novels that I loved when I was reading ST novels by the bucketload: Doctor Evan Wilson (Uhura’s Song, by Janet Kagan); K’t'lk (The Wounded Sky, by Diane Duane); and Colonel Elizabeth Schaeffer (Death’s Angel, Kathleen Sky). None of them displaces a canon character. None of them cause melodrama. All of them are powerful and skilled.
All of them get criticised, persistently and consistently, as “Mary Sues”.
A badly written male character might be a sniper ninja rock star, which while dumb, is tolerable reading. A badly written female character is more likely to be a princess from a long lost kingdom, unusually beautiful, the last of a superhuman but extinct race, and have a telepathic creature companion and magical necklace.
And this is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s really horrid double-bind. A woman writer who creates a strong, heroic, skilled male character might get shrugged off as writing her own sexual fantasy – but the character himself won’t be assumed to be a Mary Sue. (Unless, as with Anne Rice, the author herself admits that Lestat is her self-insertion…)
A woman writer who creates a strong, heroic, skilled female character will have that character written off as a “Mary Sue” … and then Mary Sues declared to be badly-written superhuman beautiful princesses with telepathic necklaces and such.
I discovered the Mary-Sue thing a while ago, through fanfictions.
It’s mostly used to say “Hey, your hero is just a super yourself with a crappy plot”. But that’s a judgement driven by women on women, i don’t know if, in male fanfic, you see the same proble arising. Maybe they consider normal !
Idea to follow.
Thanks for the post :)
Angie, do you not see the sexism in attributing the reaction against female characters to a list of gendered characteristics?
Do you mean my readiness to accept a male “ninja-sniper-rock star” while disliking a female “sparkly princess”? I’m annoyed by the princess role’s passivity, not its femininity.
My point is that it absolutely is sexist that a lot of fiction for girls teaches that the most important thing is to be beautiful and beloved (most notoriously “Twilight”), while popular boy fiction emphasizes bravery and competence. My opinion is that the writer’s obsession with prettiness and likability, rather than compelling conflict or realism, defines a Mary Sue. Your definition may be different. I think the fiction itself is sexist, not the reader backlash.
Isn’t it interesting how very like the reviled indictements of Mary Sues in fanfic mansplainers are, inserting themselves into discussions and expecting to have everyone’s attention?
I don’t think anyone’s trying to be a “mansplainer.” I thankfully haven’t seen anyone called names or become violently defensive in the comment thread so far. Everyone actually seems pretty polite around here. :)
Three characters from pro Star Trek novels that I loved when I was reading ST novels by the bucketload: Doctor Evan Wilson (Uhura’s Song, by Janet Kagan); K’t’lk (The Wounded Sky, by Diane Duane); and Colonel Elizabeth Schaeffer (Death’s Angel, Kathleen Sky). None of them displaces a canon character. None of them cause melodrama. All of them are powerful and skilled.
All of them get criticised, persistently and consistently, as “Mary Sues”.
Yonmei: I feel your pain. Like you, I have favorite female characters always accused of being Mary Sues. I also have favorite female characters who I love for their internal conflicts, who others hate for not being unilaterally “strong” enough. I still don’t think sexism is the main cause. Sometimes people just won’t like what you like. Different people have different pet peeves, like orphaned characters, teenaged characters, or characters with unusual eye colors. Sometimes, it has nothing to do with good or bad writing, just what annoys people individually.
Star Trek novels are also in a weird position, because spin-off media in general has a harder job pleasing an existing fan base than entirely original fiction. Unfortunately, perfectly valid characters can feel like Mary Sues, taking the “rightful” attention away from older well-liked characters, simply because they came later. I’m not familiar with the Trek-verse at all, so I can’t comment about your particular examples.
I don’t doubt there are some accusations of Mary Sue-dom towards strong female characters that do come from a sexist place. But I don’t think that misuse makes the entire term sexist. Criticizing a vampire-catgirl in Lord of the Rings fanfiction for being ludicrous isn’t same as assuming any heroic female is unrealistic.
Also, male characters are routinely criticized for being unrealistically powerful by other men, but not with the term “Mary Sue” because fewer men are involved in the fanfiction community. In the male-dominated gamer community, most stupid wish-fulfillment characters are called “munchkins” and tend to be male.
Some reasons I think more female characters are seen as Mary Sues:
1. There’s a sexist tendency to make female characters more virtuous and perfect than male characters, who are given interesting flaws. This is sexist to women because such characters are simplistic and boring.
2. See “Angst Dissonance,” a phenomenon where, though characters realistically should show emotions in certain situations, readers are put off. “Parents killed by the villain? He/She should have stopped being depressed, it’s the 10th episode already!!” TvTropes explores this in some detail. I absolutely do NOT think women are inherently more emotional. That’s pretty sexist. But I do think that female writers more often make a stylistic choice to reveal more of their characters’ inner lives. Therefore, regardless of writing quality, more female characters and narrators will be interpreted as self-pitying, melodramatic, and attention-seeking by readers that dislike any display of fictional emotion. That’s a personal preference on writing style, not sexism, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Sorry for ranting! I think your blog is really thought-provoking!
The concept of Mary Sue discussed here (applied to heroines in fantasy profic) is, yeah, sexist. MOST fantasy protagonists are either awesome right off the bat, or reveal their awesomeness, and to have a special disparaging term for the female ones says something about how people receive female protagonists.
Having said that, I -really- think it might be necessary to distinguish the concept discussed here from the way Mary Sue is applied used in fanfic — I think they’re effectively different terms.
In fanfic circles (which is where I first encountered the term, and where I assume it originated), I’ve mostly seen it describing -not- super talented characters, or characters beloved by everyone else in the story, but characters who are clumsily written authorial self-insertion.
The clearest example I can think of is a story (which I admit I never finished) in which a teenager walking home from school passes out and wakes to find herself in Middle Earth, where she proves invaluable to the fellowship. It’s just blatantly coming up with a storyline in which you get to be the star of your favorite novel/show/movie/whatever.
OTOH, a well-written original female character in fanfic can be super awesome but not be tagged as a Mary Sue (a great example would be Havildar Cheema in the SGA fic Indelible, by Shaenie).
As far as the term being gendered, since fanfic — unlike profic — is predominantly (almost exclusively?) written by women, it makes sense the feminine term would develop before the masculine equivalent.
Fanfic-style Mary Sues/Gary Stus are unlikely to survive the publishing process in profic. (And if I try to come up one, the first that comes to my mind is male, the protagonist of Terry Brooks’ “Magic Castle For Sale — Sold!” That guy is TOTALLY a fanfic-style Gary Stu.)
I think the term has some to mean something different as its applied to profic — and like I said, I agree that the way it’s used in profic is problematic.
I guess it depends on how you define a Mary Sue. To me, the most important aspect in defining them is flaws. If a character has real, nuanced and believable flaws, then I’ll most likely be with them all the way.
If they don’t have any discernible flaws and are just perfect at everything then my blood starts to boil. This happens ESPECIALLY if they’re women, because–when you write perfect female characters–you’re contributing to the weight of narrative that says women can’t be flawed. They should be flawless and beautiful and great at everything.
There is a really great article that explores the space between ‘strong female character’ and ‘Mary Sue’ over here: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/
Well worth a read!