Mary-Sue Revisited

[kerravonsen]

I've been musing, over the last few days...

Mary-Sue Revisited

A "Mary-Sue story" can be described as a wish-fulfilment fantasy on the part of the author, in which a thinly disguised avatar of the author is placed into the story, a character too good to be true. Some authors of Mary-Sue stories therefore defend themselves with a cry of "MariSu doesn't resemble me at all!". However, since a variation on the Mary-Sue is when a canon character is made into someone too good to be true, (these are given names such as Willow-Sue or Mulder-Sue etc) then one can see that the emphasis of Mary-Sue's critics is not so much on the self-insertion as on the wish-fulfilment. (That's why I like to use a separate term, "self-insertion", for stories in which the Author appears as a character -- because while these can often be Mary-Sue stories as well, it is actually possible to write self-insertion stories that aren't Mary-Sues, and I'd rather have a separate term than confuse the issue by calling such things "good Mary-Sue stories".)

Mary-Sue and Romance

There are some fandoms where, as soon as an original female character appears, she is accused of being a Mary-Sue. Others restrain the accusation until the female in question is set up as a romantic interest of one of Our Heros. Why is the question of romance such a sensitive one? Is it that most romances are badly written, or is there a significant difference between the introduction of an original character as opposed to a romance between existing canon characters?

I think the last is probably an important factor. Part of it is plausibility. If a character is already there, then the Hero in question will have a better chance of falling in love with her, simply because they're already interacting and getting to know each other. Secondly, a canon character (whether regular or recurring) already has a reason for being there, a reason other than being a love-interest. They already have a character of their own (even if it's very sketchy) and therefore have a better chance of being of interest for their own sake.

An author who wants to introduce an original female character for the purposes of romance has a number of hurdles to overcome, temptations to avoid. If her sole, or main purpose in being in the story is as a romantic object for Our Hero, then the temptation will be to try to prove to the reader that she is "good enough" for Our Hero, and from there it's a small step to "too perfect" and Mary-Suism. Even if the author isn't trying to prove anything, there may still be a Babe-of-the-Week effect, making the character a love-object and not a person.

Maybe it's just personal taste here, but I've always found romances more interesting if they developed over a longer period rather than quickly. Which, for fanfic, could mean over the course of more than one story. Which means the lady in question needs to have some other purpose to enable her to hang around with Our Hero.

Mary-Sue and Perfection

Whether or not a Mary-Sue is romantically involved, one of her most obvious characteristics is that she is too good to be true, unbelievably perfect, and often having other signs of "specialness", such as an exotic name. However, it isn't so much the absolute signs of her amazing good traits, so much as how much better she is than those around her. It's not necessarily a problem for an original character to be a superhero -- if she's surrounded by other superheros. Even a character being somewhat extraordinary isn't always a problem -- after all, we're often more interested in extraordinary characters than dull, normal ones, especially when heroics are required. After all, many canon characters are extraordinary, that's why we like them. But that can also be the first step into turning them into Canon-Sues.

Sometimes the reaction of an author can actually confirm the Mary-Sueness of a character, when the question is raised as to whether the character is "too perfect". The tell-tale sign is when the author starts listing "flaws" in the character which are meant to be examples of why the character isn't perfect, and all the supposed "flaws" are actually positive character traits. The example which brought this home to me was the quote from Jean Auel, the author of the "Earth's Children" series starring the extraordinary heroine, Ayla, and she said words to the effect that Ayla had flaws, such as she tried too hard. Huh? That's supposed to be a flaw? It sounds more like a virtue to me.

Of course, it's true that every virtue hides a vice, and every vice a virtue; that every strength is a weakness -- but people don't tend to remember that. A well-rounded character is going to have weaknesses that arise out of hir strengths; such as a strong will being linked with stubbornness, or the gift of the gab which can talk its way out of a bad situation can also be used to talk its way into big trouble as well. Or even that one man's thief could be another man's security expert.

Perhaps it isn't so much the desire for "specialness" as a desire to put the character on a pedestal. Unfortunately, the only things that go well on pedestals are stiff statues.

The Rule of Three and the Rule of One

Let's just divert here for a moment and take a look at two rules of writing, which I call the Rule of Three and the Rule of One. The Rule of Three was expressed by Lewis Carroll in "The Hunting of the Snark": "If I say it three times it is true." In writing, if you want something to be noticed, if you want something to be established as commonplace, then make it appear (or be mentioned) three times. That is the Rule of Three.

The Rule of One is its opposite: it is about unlikely happenings. Unlikely happenings are allowed to happen just once. If they happen more than once, then they aren't unlikely -- because if they happen three times, it's commonplace (remember the Rule of Three). Unfortunately, TPTB (especially those writing serial television) don't seem to be aware of this, and it becomes annoying. One long-lost love is acceptable. More than one is not. One alien takeover is a fluke; more than one is a running gag. One case of one's love being taken over by aliens is tragic; having it happen again to a conveniently-unearthed Old Flame is a farce.

Mary-Sue the Collapsar

So, let us reconsider Mary-Sue. It isn't so much that she's a self-insertion, nor that she may be a romantic interest, nor even that she may be extraordinarily special that is the real problem with Mary-Sue. No, the problem with Mary-Sue is that she distorts all of spacetime around her, like the gravity field of a collapsar. Nothing escapes her influence, the whole universe is dragged into her ego-field. What do I mean by that?

The true evil of a Mary-Sue is the effect she has on the characters around her. Which is why one can have things like Willow-Sues as well as original Mary-Sues. With a full-blown 'Sue, normally strong characters become weak and helpless, normally bright characters become dumb, and marginally annoying characters become downright evil. Probabilities bend in the vicinity of a 'Sue; unlikely things happen just to promote her welfare and/or to demonstrate her specialness. Rule of One happenings are commonplace.

Most insidious of all, the attention of all characters, from the high to the low, from the regulars to the extras, is drawn inexorably towards the 'Sue. They either love her or hate her (though hating her is a Sign Of Evilness, of course). Even if they don't adore her, they still remark upon her specialness -- even if they were characters who normally couldn't care less.

The reason this is insidious is because even experienced authors can fall into the attention trap, if the main character or guest-character is someone they admire a great deal. I fell into this once with a Highlander crossover, where I suddenly realized that the story consisted only of the other characters remarking on how unusual Adam Pierson was -- oops! I ripped up the story when I realized that.

One could therefore argue that most of the rotteness of a Mary-Sue boils down to weakness in the author's writing skills. The character isn't enabled to stand on their own merits (showing) because all the world must be told how special s/he is (telling). Information-dumps about a character's past, full of unneeded and extraneous details, come about because the author cannot Resist the Urge to Explain. Probabilities are warped because it's easier to ignore problems than to solve them. And even attention-grabbing can be avoided with one or more of the following strategies: reduce the amount of telling; restrict the story to one character's point of view, remembering not to forget what the character doesn't know; and/or add in a B-plot to spread the attention.

Unfortunately, even this isn't always the case. Probability warping, for example, may occur not because the author is too lazy to solve the problem, but simply because the author is too self-indulgent to care that it is a problem. Wish-fulfilment fantasies don't, apparently, have to be probable, just self-satisfying.