Subject: Powerful Characters
Author:
Posted on: 2012-08-23 20:37:00 UTC
Just because the characters are powerful doesn't necessarily make them sues. If they have genuine conflicts and limitations (more importantly, if these limitations don't get handwaved all the time to allow for more added powers and crazy shennanigans) and above all, their personalities make sense with their psychology, I say go for it.
...challenges common media stereotypes found in the Canon (and most of the Canon itself) and thus constitutes fair use under copyright law?
Aside from, you know, the disturbing notion that Mary Sues could get print, what really got me was the writers' portrayal of the Mary Sue as the feminine-stereotype-empowerment symbol.
Thoughts?
It's clear that she isn't actually defending Mary Sues, but a different concept altogether. Honestly, she didn't really seem to know what she was talking about; she seems to be laboring under the (admittedly, unfortunately common) delusion that "Mary Sue" means "any female OC who can do anything" and is defending that concept instead. She's taking animosity towards a canon-warping, poorly-written monstrosity and thinking it's directed towards any and all female OCs, and basing her paper around that. Her thesis is based on a faulty premise, and if she really understood what a Mary Sue was, and what a Sue really meant, I doubt she would still be defending them.
She also didn't seem to realize that "A Trekkie's Tale" was an intentionally bad parody. So I'm not sure what to make of that.
My first thought is that I'm having a hard time taking this seriously, when they keep dragging in 'A Trekkie's Tale' to use as an example without really acknowledging the fact that the whole thing is a blatant parody. The way they write it, you would think that it was the first story about a female commander on the Enterprise, when it's actually a parody of something that clearly had already been going on for a long while.
That said, I just shrugged my shoulders at this. They obviously have a definition of Mary Sue which is different from both the one generally used on the internet and the one used by the PPC.
In their vocabulary, Mary Sue seems to mean any original character who is either a woman or belongs to a minority group, which is not adequately represented in the canon work. This includes canon characters who takes part in slash, which is something I have never seen in any definition of the term before.
But, from their point of view, where a Mary Sue is 'any independent female character in a male-dominated world', sure, it makes perfect sense to say that Mary Sues are empowering.
If we take the PPC definition which is closer to something like 'any female character who dresses like a dominatrix, insults Arwen, stuffs Eowyn into a plothole, makes Gimli a raging misogynist just to give her some opposition to overcome and who ends up winning the heart of Aragorn in spite of being a complete and utter brat', then no, I don't find Mary Sues to be the least bit empowering.
Barb Wire was a woman in a male dominated environment,who beat up men and objected to being called 'babe' and oddly enough, I didn't find her the least bit empowering either.
The authors of the essay seem to focus only on the fact that 'here's a minority in a heteronormative, male-dominated, predominately white world, whee!' and ignore the negative sides or these stories. People who are against Sue's have a lot of legitimate complaints about them and they just brush them off like 'oh, they're just mad that there's a woman in the fellowship, when Tolkien didn't write one in'.
Um, no, we're mad that she's ordering everyone around and is generally acting in a way that would never ever have been tolerated by one of the male characters.
Mary Sues do nothing to prove that women can be a part of the fellowship or command the Enterprise. Rather, they seem to support the idea that the only way a woman can do those things, is if all logic and common sense is revoked. I find them an insult to good characters in general and well-written female characters especially.
Whether Mary Sues are awful constructs of bad writing or unfairly demonized by prudish gatekeepers is an ongoing debate that pops up here every so often. A lot of people (not including Suethors) are not big fans of groups like the PPC.
I won't touch the fair use - making money off of fanfiction is something that I highly doubt will ever be legal (without the author's permission, or the expiration of copyright, or what have you), no matter what is claimed about the story.
But the Mary Sue, in some ways, and to quite a few people, is in fact seen as a symbol of empowerment. In some ways, I actually quite agree - not in the fanfic scenario, so much, but in original fiction. Let's try this one: a wealthy girl is orphaned at a very young age, and grows up to become one of the world's most unstoppable assassin-type vigilantes. She can stop any villain, and best any one of her teammates (with varying degrees of ease), her male opponents tend to fall in love with her, none of her female opponents can stand up to her for more than a story arc before getting curb-stomped, and in general, anyone who dislikes her is Bad, Very Bad Indeed* (and probably corrupt). She is the Best At Everything; her civilian alter-ego is rich, beautiful, and all the guys at every party line up to be with her... but she also has a Dark and Tortured side, which mainly comes out at night with her alter-ego. Her friends are devoted to her, no matter how badly she might treat them, and in the end, she is (almost) always proven to be right.
The Sue in question, of course, is gender-flipped Batman. I have exaggerated a bit to make a point, but do you see where I'm coming from? In mass media, male characters are 'allowed' to be over-the-top and perfect; female characters who do the same are Sues. Batman is, admittedly, a very over-the-top example. Let me point out this.
A blurb of a much longer piece. (The latter contains some NSFW language.) This just about makes my point. Not that a guy wrote a bad book. Not even that a guy wrote a bad book and got critical acclaim for it! But that I think it is pretty clear that if you just flipped the protagonist's gender... he'd be A SUUEEE OMG. (Like Eragon! Or, hell, Bella Swan!)
I am one of the weird PPCers who thinks Sues and Stus can be done really well - even fanfic Stus/Sues, on very, very rare occasions. I've had people argue before that if a character is written well, they're not a Sue. But honestly, I see that exception applied a lot more often to male characters. IIRC, people have called Alanna, of Tamora Pierce's Tortall canon, a Sue. I haven't really seen that applied to Harry Potter - though he has the same sort of striking eyes, supernatural-ish help, and accomplishes feats of great heroism etc, etc.
So... no, I don't think Mary/Marty Sue/Stus are really good things. But I don't think there's anything wrong with people using Mary Sues as a tool of empowerment, provided the characters are well done. One of the criticisms I've seen of Sue-hating is that the biggest beef seems to be, in many cases, femininity. For example, in A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya gets hella love from the fandom. (As she should!) But Sansa gets vitriolic straight-up hatred from the fandom - and, leaving aside her childish shallow issues (which, c'mon, look at the later books), seems to be simply because she's a girl. And unlike Arya, she doesn't try to be a boy. She does girly things. She's good at them. She's pretty, and she believes in the fairy tales involving a handsome and chivalrous knight, and for this she gets crazy amounts of hate.
It's not cool. And I don't think there's anything wrong with writing Wicked Awesome Girly-girl Feminine Characters who are Totally Great At Everything. Like male characters who are Wicked Awesome and The Manliest Ever and Totally Great At Everything, they need to have characterization. If they've got that, we've got no beef with them, I think.
(And, you know, spelling/grammar/etc. But that's what syntax-betas are for!)
*Depending on the writer, of course, as with most of these things - Nolan's Batman is a good one to substitute, here.
Yeah. I notice that a lot too.
See, my problem with the Mary-Sue thing (regardless of gender) is when people write characters who lack any depth or legitimate character - people who only exist to be right because they're the main character, or who are only right because the author thinks they're cool. But if you poke the issue with a shovel, it turns up all sorts of problems with how we see "girly" characters as somehow lesser than "action" characters (and heaven forbid a character try to be both.)
I tend to think that the Mary Sue issue gets all mixed up with other issues by people using it where it shouldn't be used. Like there seems to be this tendency to call almost all female characters, regardless of how they fit into the story or are treated by the story, Mary Sues.
Now this isn't right. Just because a character is a girl, they shouldn't be called a Mary Sue just for showing the slightest bit of competency.
But, to me, that says a lot more about the people calling it than the term they are throwing around. If they didn't have the convenient Mary Sue term to toss about, they'd find something else that they consider derogatory, because their issues run a lot deeper than any particular term.
Yeah, that and the sixties, seventies and eighties models of fantasy and sci-fi contribute to it as well. (In my experience, fantasy and sci-fi original female characters get stuck with "mary sue" a lot more than characters in, say, a mystery story or a period romance.)
Now, I've seen female characters being called Mary Sues for being competent (even at things which it makes good sense that they'd be competent at, given their age, training and environment: for example, being a good shot with a laser rifle, which is difficult, but doesn't require brute strength the way a seven-foot longbow does,) as well as for being incompetent and then having to be rescued. Usually what annoys me is the girls that can take the big bad without batting an eyelash and then bust up when their boyfriend of three months leaves them, but that's just inconsistent characterization and plot warping at it's finest.
Ah, sage advice on the internet. People's prejudices reveal more about them than their actual words.
The Mary Sue conundrum is an interesting one, especially where original fiction is concerned. This gets even more interesting where there are multiple 'Sues who may work against each other (this would fail in fanfic because there would still be the poor canons getting dragged OC left, right and centre).
For instance, one 'Sue starts being awesome at something or running off with the story, but then another counters and takes it back. In essence, it ends up moving between them (and others), so no one character gets all the attention etc. The trait of a 'Sue bending the plot around her to her will would also be nullified, because when surrounded by more 'Sues the others resist. Or take powers: you just end up with a general power increase across the continuum, perhaps with different specialties that make pretty fireworks when set against each other. The result: a group of characters who may interact in quite complex and interesting ways, balanced out by each other.
Obviously, there is no pardon for bad spelling/grammar/punctuation/logic etc.
I ask simply because I have a piece of original fiction containing a number of rather powerful characters (although not entirely without weaknesses). They all have different specialties, so can be outmatched in other areas. Some are more powerful than others, but the weaker ones tend to be more likely to team up. There are LOTS of rules, and rules governing any exceptions. A fair bit of the story also revolves around some of these characters' psychology. They are not always liked and they don't romance everything in sight - or anything at all, usually. From this description, are they 'Sues and do they cancel out if they are?
This is a really useful set of guidelines to measure characters up against and is very helpful. While there are some restricting factors, these will enable me to tweak where and if necessary. Many thanks.
Just because the characters are powerful doesn't necessarily make them sues. If they have genuine conflicts and limitations (more importantly, if these limitations don't get handwaved all the time to allow for more added powers and crazy shennanigans) and above all, their personalities make sense with their psychology, I say go for it.
I tend toward Araeph's understanding of Sues, myself. The powers or awesomeness or any particular set of physical attributes do not make a Sue. What makes a Sue, is a character being out of place and warping the story around xirself. Or as Phobos, usually says in these discussions, a duck swimming in a pond is not a problem, because ducks swimming in ponds is a natural thing. (Now back to my own wording) Put the same duck in a soup tureen at a black tie party, and there's going to be a problem. (This is how a character could be a total and complete Sue in a fanfic, but a great character if they were placed in their own story. I've seen ones like this in fanfics before.)
If you took one of the X-Men and dropped xir off in the Sherlock Holmes continuum, and then let him/her use his powers to dominate the world, then that character, who might not be one of the most powerful or outstanding in his/her own world, would be a problem Sue.
Another example--the Whiny Teenage Protagonist. This is a character that comes in both male and female varieties, whose over-riding characteristic is that he/she gets to angst and feel sorry for xirself and generally be a pain in the rear, while every adult in whining range falls all over themselves to accommodate and coddle the character, assure him/her that xe is right about everything, etc. So if you've got the Gruff Soldier who should be concerned about keeping the party alive in hostile territory, I just don't buy that they are going to make their greatest daily task coddling the Whiny Teen.
(A fanfic that includes a Whiny Teenage Protagonist getting blasted by an in-character Rodney Mckay, which is hilarious, as far as I'm concerned, can be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4481881/1/ This story is a bit over 100,000 words and is told entirely from the point of view of original characters, yet it has a great plot, the canons are in-character and are at the center of the story, where I think they should be in a fanfic)
That kind of warping and making it all about me, me, me, is characteristic of the Mary Sue, in my opinion.
If you have multiple characters that are all giving and taking and sharing the lime light, then pretty much by definition, they aren't Sues.
My understanding of a Mary-Sue is, simply put, a character (any gender, although of course we often use various male-specific terms when they apply) who doesn't suffer the consequences of their actions, given the world they live in. As you say, a Whiny Teen in hostile territory would not usually be coddled, so one who is had better have a darned good excuse (such as being actual royalty, or the soldier leading them being very new, or something).
Even more generally: if enough bullets are fired at you, you're going to get hit. James Bond is a raging Sue (Stu), but he's also deliberately tongue-in-cheek. He doesn't stay alive because the author thinks that's realistic - he stays alive because he's James Bond, and no mere bullet will stop him getting the girl... I mean villain. He's virtually self-parody.
Batman, on the other hand, should get hit a lot more than he does. I know there are occasional Ooh 'Eck I'm Injured scenes, but really, he ought to be dead. Black clothes only get you so far, and I don't recall most versions wearing body armour. But that's the Superhero genre for you - if it didn't exist, you couldn't get away with inventing it.
Basically: Magneto trying to take over Holmes' London could be an awesome crossover, if he obeys the rules of the world (which start and end with Holmes Is Smarter Than You). The Riddler outwitting Holmes would be stupid, and one character or the other would be massively OOC. My new character The Questioneer outwitting Holmes would make TQ a raging Stu.
If you insert a character into a world, they either follow the rules, or they're a Mary-Sue.
hS
...is that too often people call a Sue by her form within the story, rather than her function.
The multicolored eyes, the tragic past, the implausible plot devices - all of the Sueish traits that we hate so much and love to make fun of are merely symptoms of the character's function. (That is, to take over the story and be awesome with little to no amount of negative consequences, setbacks, or evolution of character.)
That's why Sue tests for original fiction are so difficult to get right - they focus on what eye color the character has, or what abilities the character possesses, rather than whether the character's relationship with the Story itself is one of peaceful coexistence or tyrannical occupation. And that's also why people are quick to call "Sue" when they see what they think is a symptom of Sueishness, without taking into account the overall function of the character - as well as why other people, who look only at the form of the Sue, don't see anything wrong with it.
But the reason why Sues, even if overall well-written, always contain bad writing, is that whenever it comes down to a contest between what's best for the overall story and what's best for the Sue's function (see above), the Sue will win every time. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mary Sue doesn't always come from bad writing, but s/he always encourages it.
That, I think, is what it comes down to in the long-standing debate of "It's OK if it's well-written" vs. "It can never be well-written." And that is why creating a Mary Sue, no matter how good a writer you are, is a bad idea.
~Araeph
...with plenty of Suvian traits and yet becoming beloved characters (*cough* BBC!Sherlock Holmes, I'm looking at you *cough*), but obviously it all relies on the author's ability to render them well.
However, the writers of the essay clearly say that Mary Sues in fanfiction, especially in archaic, largely-a-sausagefest settings like Middle-earth, are symbols of empowerment because they contradict whatever media stereotypes are enforced within the Canon. And that's what I have a beef against.