Leave Mary Sue Alone!
Dec. 15th, 2012 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesIt's past time for Mary Sue to go into retirement. The concept isn't helpful, and in fact distracts from more than it sheds light on the larger problem of crappy writing and storytelling. A character perceived to be Suish inspires such knee-jerk dislike, people start thinking the character is what's wrong with the story when the real problem is much deeper. Mary Sue is just the merest surface of the problem, an easy target and not the source of the issues.
The term "Mary Sue" as a collection of traits is pretty much conceptually bankrupt as a means of understanding, critiquing, and improving fiction. It can't even keep from contradicting itself. She is either brave and cheerful or unnecessarily mopey or distressed. Being too incorruptible makes her a Purity Sue, but if she's too bad-tempered and bitter she's a Jerk Sue. Being too perfect is an obvious sign of Suishness, but inverting all the common Sue traits still won't save her because she just might be an Anti-Sue. It's gone past the point where anyone can make sense of it beyond "knows it when I sees it."
It's easy to see how this ridiculous state of affairs came about. People who didn't like a certain type of character decreed that X, Y, and Z made a Mary Sue and should be avoided. Other people started picking up on that message and avoiding X, Y, and Z, making their characters evil instead of good, depressed instead of perky, ordinary people instead of genetically engineered unicorn-phoenix mutant hybrids.
How many problems did this Sue-evasion solve? Exactly zero. Commentators, assuming there were more Sue traits they hadn't nailed down, simply expanded the list to include A, B, and C, even if they completely contradicted the earlier X, Y, and Z, until the very idea of the Mary Sue became hopelessly jumbled.
These efforts were entirely wrongheaded because they focused on the symptom and not the disease. The audience, convinced the Mary Sue character was the problem because they didn't like her, thought nailing down the precise Suish traits and getting rid of them would make stories better. I think it's clear that the effort was an unqualified failure. Attempts to run the elusive Mary Sue to the ground won't do a lick of good, because she was never the real problem in the first place. She was just one manifestation of the problem.
Show me just one really well-written story in any medium that has a genuine hateable Mary Sue. I'm not talking about a character that just has so-called Mary Sue traits, but one that ruins the enjoyment of the story, whose terrible behavior neither the author nor any of the "good" characters ever calls out, who distorts the reality field of the story for the cause of his/her awesomeness.
Chances are, if there is a genuinely annoying character like that she is only possible because the writing presents a dishonest view of what the characters (including established canon characters, in case of fanfic) and the world are like. Even if the story is pretty good overall it is likely to be flawed in proportion to these qualities. If the writing is really good, it's likely that the Suish traits won't harm the enjoyment of the story at all.
Particular character traits, in other words, have no bearing on the enjoyment of story. When we're complaining about Mary Sue we're really talking about bad writing. What matters is the writer's willingness stay true to her own premises and explore the implications of the character traits, character actions, and the world.
George Elliot's classic piece on what we would call Mary Sue fiction today, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, is both useful and entertaining precisely because it's not all about Mary Sue. Of its roughly 10,000 words, less than 1,500 are directly devoted to the heroine's traits in hilarious passages making fun of the conventional heroines that populate these novels. The other 8,500 words are takedowns of the contrived plot, frivolous settings, failure to be true to life, implausible dialogue, heavy-handed characterization, cliched diction, Author Filibusters, breathless melodrama, and other aspects of shoddy craft that make these novels so awful. The title is Silly Novels, not Silly Heroines, because Elliot had an actual understanding of the craft and knew the heroine and her traits are only parts of a story. The real proof of the pudding is not in whether the heroine is a beautiful tragic heiress or not but in how truthful, genuine, and lively the story itself is.
"Mary Sue" is a convenient shorthand for that twinge of annoyance we feel when we realize the fictional reality is being warped or broken for an author agenda. Real conversation about storytelling and writing, however, won't happen while we just brush past bad writing in pursuit of the irritating character. Let's talk about the disease of bad writing in general, and not just its face and symptom: our much-maligned, cheerful or depressed, pure or evil, special or ordinary, but ultimately tragically overblown Mary Sue.
The term "Mary Sue" as a collection of traits is pretty much conceptually bankrupt as a means of understanding, critiquing, and improving fiction. It can't even keep from contradicting itself. She is either brave and cheerful or unnecessarily mopey or distressed. Being too incorruptible makes her a Purity Sue, but if she's too bad-tempered and bitter she's a Jerk Sue. Being too perfect is an obvious sign of Suishness, but inverting all the common Sue traits still won't save her because she just might be an Anti-Sue. It's gone past the point where anyone can make sense of it beyond "knows it when I sees it."
It's easy to see how this ridiculous state of affairs came about. People who didn't like a certain type of character decreed that X, Y, and Z made a Mary Sue and should be avoided. Other people started picking up on that message and avoiding X, Y, and Z, making their characters evil instead of good, depressed instead of perky, ordinary people instead of genetically engineered unicorn-phoenix mutant hybrids.
How many problems did this Sue-evasion solve? Exactly zero. Commentators, assuming there were more Sue traits they hadn't nailed down, simply expanded the list to include A, B, and C, even if they completely contradicted the earlier X, Y, and Z, until the very idea of the Mary Sue became hopelessly jumbled.
These efforts were entirely wrongheaded because they focused on the symptom and not the disease. The audience, convinced the Mary Sue character was the problem because they didn't like her, thought nailing down the precise Suish traits and getting rid of them would make stories better. I think it's clear that the effort was an unqualified failure. Attempts to run the elusive Mary Sue to the ground won't do a lick of good, because she was never the real problem in the first place. She was just one manifestation of the problem.
Show me just one really well-written story in any medium that has a genuine hateable Mary Sue. I'm not talking about a character that just has so-called Mary Sue traits, but one that ruins the enjoyment of the story, whose terrible behavior neither the author nor any of the "good" characters ever calls out, who distorts the reality field of the story for the cause of his/her awesomeness.
Chances are, if there is a genuinely annoying character like that she is only possible because the writing presents a dishonest view of what the characters (including established canon characters, in case of fanfic) and the world are like. Even if the story is pretty good overall it is likely to be flawed in proportion to these qualities. If the writing is really good, it's likely that the Suish traits won't harm the enjoyment of the story at all.
Particular character traits, in other words, have no bearing on the enjoyment of story. When we're complaining about Mary Sue we're really talking about bad writing. What matters is the writer's willingness stay true to her own premises and explore the implications of the character traits, character actions, and the world.
George Elliot's classic piece on what we would call Mary Sue fiction today, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, is both useful and entertaining precisely because it's not all about Mary Sue. Of its roughly 10,000 words, less than 1,500 are directly devoted to the heroine's traits in hilarious passages making fun of the conventional heroines that populate these novels. The other 8,500 words are takedowns of the contrived plot, frivolous settings, failure to be true to life, implausible dialogue, heavy-handed characterization, cliched diction, Author Filibusters, breathless melodrama, and other aspects of shoddy craft that make these novels so awful. The title is Silly Novels, not Silly Heroines, because Elliot had an actual understanding of the craft and knew the heroine and her traits are only parts of a story. The real proof of the pudding is not in whether the heroine is a beautiful tragic heiress or not but in how truthful, genuine, and lively the story itself is.
"Mary Sue" is a convenient shorthand for that twinge of annoyance we feel when we realize the fictional reality is being warped or broken for an author agenda. Real conversation about storytelling and writing, however, won't happen while we just brush past bad writing in pursuit of the irritating character. Let's talk about the disease of bad writing in general, and not just its face and symptom: our much-maligned, cheerful or depressed, pure or evil, special or ordinary, but ultimately tragically overblown Mary Sue.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 03:08 pm (UTC)I think you've said in two sentences what I wrote a whole message to say. :) Yes, trait-wise, Aang is a total Mary Sue. He's the Chosen One by birth, with a Cursed by Awesome complex to boot, has powers that literally no one else on earth has, and is even the last survivor of a lost race--which died out because of the bad guys' hell-bent pursuit of him. His most questionable decision works out in the end, even if it takes a blatantly contrived and poorly foreshadowed plot point (Lion Turtle, anyone?) to do it.
Aang is also a case in point where the so-called Mary Sue traits are totally useless as a way to critique fiction. I think the dividing line between Aang and a True Sue is good, or even just competent, writing. All that stuff about Aang, being the Avatar and the last survivor and all, were used to full dramatic effect instead of being shallow props to make the character Special and Cool. He has believable flaws that have real consequences when he runs away from his duties for a hundred years. His genuine fear of the Avatar State is believable and sympathetic. His agony at losing everyone he ever loved was heart-wrenching. If that's a Mary Sue, then I want to see a lot more of it.
50 Shades is another example where the real problem is with the writing, not specific character traits. Specifically, from your description, it sounds like a case of telling over showing--or worse, what the author keeps telling us over and over conflicts with what the reader can see, resulting in disengagement and frustration.
Now I think there's room for author inserts in fiction. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with writing a story in which a fantasy version of yourself or some perfect character you wish you were is the star.
Absolutely. In fact, I think fiction would be in a sad state if we excised power fantasies and self-inserts from stories. Fiction has to excite us, after all, and what's more exciting than personal fantasies of being loved, the strongest, and the best? That's why I dislike the condemnation of Mary Sue traits: besides being useless as a tool of critique, it guilts people for living their fantasies when stories are all about celebrating that excitement.
I think these kinds of fantasies can be done well, as long as the writer adheres to the basics of good writing: Don't ignore your own premises, and follow them where they lead you even if the character ends up being a bit less shiny, even if it's personally painful (and it can be, for cherished fantasies). And then there's stuff like show don't tell, so if you want the character to be strong and inspirational show them actually being so instead of trying to convince the readers by saying so over and over again. I don't think there's any way for a story that follows sound writing principles to be silly, at least in a bad sense.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-16 02:58 pm (UTC)