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Whatever Happened to Mary Sue? by Eshva (eshva_i@yahoo.co.uk) |
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I'm sure most people are familiar with the classic definition of Mary Sue. "A true Mary Sue is a surrogate for the author. But not just any surrogate... oh, no, far from it. MS is not merely a stand-in for the author. Instead, she is the embodiment of all that is true, good, and holy. She immediately wins the respect and affection of all the canonical characters, and, if the story is a romance, the undying love of whoever the writer has a crush on. She is brilliant. She is beautiful. Her hair is never out of place, even when she has a flowing mass of (fill in the blank) locks. Her career, interests, and personal beliefs are eerily similar to the author's own. She always holds the key to the mystery. She knows how to work the computer. The slavering, vicious guard dogs curl up at her feet and gaze up affectionately. If she dies, she does so bravely and for the sake of others. In various science fiction fandoms, she occasionally saves the universe while she's at it." Definition from The Divine Adoratrice's page But Mary Sue spotting has become more complicated. There are stories and genres that cause my MS radar to blip frantically, but which don't fit the pattern of the classic Mary Sue. I have a theory - though I have no evidence of course, but when did that ever stop anyone writing a rant. It seems possible that once the classic Mary Sue features had been identified, mocked and become widely known, some (many?) writers started to avoid writing classic Mary Sues. It seems like an example of the act of observation causing changes in the thing being observed. Once writers became self-conscious about it - knowing that Mary Sue was generally regarded as a bad thing - they stopped writing about her. This hasn't wiped out all classic Mary Sues of course. Some neophyte writers may not be aware of the stigma of Mary Sue and write one without realising. And some writers may just say "I don't care, I like Mary Sue" and write one anyway. There is in fact a website dedicated to celebrating the divine Ms MS at http://www.subreality.com/marysue.htm It may be that there is a natural impulse to write MS style stories. After all, we are fans of these characters. We don't just sit back and watch what happens to them - we become involved. We lust after them, so we want to bonk them. We think we understand them, and so we want to give them a good talking to and straighten them out. They drive us nuts, so we want to yell at them. We think about their relationships, so we want to matchmake. Really, it would be surprising if there wasn't Mary Sue fic. So, if the impulse toward Mary Sue is still there, but the classic form is stigmatised, the Mary Sue has mutated into different forms, which I plan to have a burble about. Firstly, there is what I would call the Subtle Mary Sue, or Mary Sue with the serial numbers filed off. These are stories which feature an original character (sometimes not even female) who has few if any of the classic Mary Sue features, but who nonetheless set my MarySue-dar blipping. I suppose at this point I should define the criteria that make me think 'Mary Sue'.
1. She gets to bonk the writer's principle lust object. My feeling is that the writer of a Subtle Mary Sue is attempting to avoid many of the usual criticisms levelled at the type - that she is too perfect, that she is two-dimensional. I have a half-written example of my own sitting on my hard drive. She is definitely a Mary Sue, but I defend myself by thinking - but she's old and unattractive and she doesn't get to bonk the hero. These SMS types can be well-rounded characters and, from various list discussions of some of them, seem generally accepted as being free of the Mary Sue taint. The problem that I have is that they still set off my MS-dar, which makes it difficult for me to warm to them. It seems that a Mary Sue character can't quite transcend her MS-hood. For instance, there have been a few stories where I've been reading along and not been sure whether the character was MS. There was one where the OCF was sexually involved with the prinicple lust object (criterion 1), but she was well drawn and I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. But then, toward the end of the the story she had an outburst of criterion 2 and the case was clinched. Mary Sue. A well done version, but Mary Sue just the same. I suppose the question boils down to - did we dislike Mary Sue because she was badly done or because she was done at all? If it was that she was badly done, then the subtle Mary Sue should overcome the problem. But for me, the problem is that I don't like the fannish presence within the story. I want to read about another universe, so it puts me off when I find a lump of this universe floating it the story. The second mutation of the Mary Sue that I've encountered goes in the opposite direction. Rather than project herself into an original female character, the writer simply writes about herself. More rather than less blatant. Perhaps she could be called the Me Sue. I've encountered a few of these in TPM fic, though perhaps not enough to generalise. Often they seem to be directly about "real world meets TPM world". So you either have Ms Fan transported to the TPM universe or the Jedi are transported to the real world and meet up with Ms Fan. An interesting comment from the writer of one of these was that the story didn't technically count as a Mary Sue because "the first-person-main character isn't a thinly-disguised and idealistic version of me, it really IS me". I think this highlights the way that different people have different ideas about what makes a Mary Sue objectionable. For some it is the absurdly idealised nature of the classic Mary Sue. Making the character into a warts and all portrait of the author avoids this. OTOH, some people find Mary Sues objectionable because they feel like voyeurs into the writer's mind, which can be rather uncomfortable. The Me Sue might be expected to compound this problem. I know that when I see a story featuring an OCF with the writer's name, I am definitely dissuaded from reading the story. The last mutation of the Mary Sue that I've noticed is the ABH story (Anywhere But Here). For those not familiar with the type, their defining feature is that they are written in the second person ie. "You think X, you do Y etc". In TPM it seems mostly to be a form used for writing adult het fic. Indeed, it almost seems to be the standard form for adult het. After a quick count of one archive (QJEB) it looks like at least 60% of the het stories are ABH. The ABH seems yet another strategy for overcoming the objections to Mary Sues. In her interesting essay on the subject "Too Good To Be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue", Pat Pflieger suggests that Mary Sue is intended to act as a placeholder for the reader - not really a character in her own right, but holding the space in the story open for the reader to insert herself. The problem with Mary Sue, she argues, is that she tends to be a failed placeholder. Rather than invite the reader in, Mary Sue alienates the reader, and is more likely to evoke irritation than identification. It may be that this happens because the Mary Sue seems so strongly identified with the author. The story seems to be specifically the writer's fantasy and the reader doesn't really want to read about the author bonking Obi-Wan (for example). The ABH form would seem intended to short circuit this criticism. It fullfils one of the major roles of the Mary Sue (bonking the PLO) but it is not the author (Mary Sue) who is bonking him but "you" the reader. In theory this should mean that the reader feels less excluded. To quote someone's comment "It *requires* that the reader puts themselves in the story." For a lot of readers this seems to be effective and ABHs are very popular (in TPM het at least). However, I'm afraid that for me, they don't work. As far as my reading goes, these ABH "yous" seem to come in two general types. In some stories she is a very sketchy character, lacking distinctive traits. This makes a certain amount of sense as any traits that the reader doesn't share could serve to distance the reader from the "you" of the story. My problem is that this makes her a completely bland character. I want someone I can identify with, but this type of ABH gives me only empty space. Perhaps I am spoiled by slash, but what I like to read is two interesting people interacting. With the undefined "you", all I have is a void. More commonly though, "you" does have a definite personality. After all, it's difficult to write a character doing and saying things without giving some evidence of what kind of person she is. And in this case I encounter the opposite problem - I can't identify with her because she is so far from being like me. Perhaps it's just the particular stories I've read, but many of the "yous" are far more objectionable than Mary Sue ever was. I've seen bratty bitches, slutty bimbos and neurotic wimps who put up with major domestic abuse. And the creepiest thing for me about the ABH is reading a story where "I/you" does things which, quite frankly, I would sooner gnaw off my own arm and bleed to death than do. (I suppose at this point I should mention that, of all the stories that made me utterly sick and horrified and furious, the one that did so the most was an ABH of this kind.) I suppose all smut stories are effectively shared fantasies - that's what makes them work, but the ABH makes this explicit. The author basically says "this is my fantasy and I assume you share it". A limitation of this is that the choice of subject position is completely restricted. In a third person story (or even a first), one can choose not to identify with the character whose POV is given. I find this happens quite a lot - for instance in slash, the author often intends the reader to identify with Obi-Wan, but I end up identifying with Qui-Gon instead. But the ABH closes off this possibility because the author is telling you, the reader, who "you" are in the story. The reader has no choice. For these reasons, I find the ABH both restrictive and alienating. It is however, a very interesting path for fan fiction to have taken in the attempt to avoid Mary Sue. So, in conclusion (if I have one) I think that "Mary Sue" is not quite the same phenomenon she was when she was first identified. She has diversified. And I think that is probably a good thing. All of the variants I have described have fans - readers who love that particular style of story. So writers have a choice of ways they can have a presence in their stories, without having accusations of "Mary Sue" hurled out them. The fact that none of the appeal to me is pretty much beside the point. <g>
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