I genuinely wish that everyone would delete the word “Mary Sue” from their vocabulary. In its original, fanfic usage, it described a character who was, yes, usually female, but whose greatest crime was not perfection: it was twisting the story. A Mary Sue in that sense literally walks into someone else’s world and makes everything about her. Flash forward to the modern day and it’s a rare female protagonist who doesn’t get accused of being a Mary Sue, and hence worthless. Here’s the thing: she can’t distort the story if the story already belongs to her. The protagonist, regardless of gender, is awesome and interesting and has a milkshake that brings all the boys, girls, or genderfluid space pirates to the yard, because that’s why they’re the star of the story. So calling female protagonists “Mary Sue” is sexist, belittling, and reduces them in a way that is very rarely applied to their male counterparts—even when those male counterparts are just as guilty of being a little too perfect to be real.
- Seanan McGuire
SF Debris's fellow Channel Awesome contributor Jill Bearup also did an excellent commentary on Mary Sue, best summed up by the line "One person's Mary Sue is another person's Batman." Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLqrLo9aC7Q
Edited to fix a minor spelling error.
Last edited by Arkle on Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Yep, "Mary Sue" is basically a meaningless term that tends to amount to "Any (usually female) character I don't like." And is often applied to attack female characters who sexists consider too capable to be "realistic".
Sure Batman is a Mary Sue. That's why every time he fights Bane he ends up with a broken back.
For anyone who reads Marvel comics, the weird definition above definitely applies to a lot of new characters. America comes to mind. (let's go back in time and steal Captain America's thunder by punching Hitler first)
Very few movies can pull off the untouchable super protagonist. Those usually have action adventure characters that are well established, not by brand but by experience. (Indiana Jones is well into his career when we first meet him, and his younger self fails to get the artifact)
The typical hero's journey, starts with an every day person with every day problems and every day capabilities. If the hero never struggles then how can you empathize with them, or feel any stakes, or watch them grow in strength over time.
This is the bane of the Mary Sue, character growth. If you start out as perfect, where do you go from there?
Honestly, I disagree with all the other entries fairly strongly and a kind of willing to lump in this one too. I haven't heard anyone use Mary Sue to describe a character who wasn't from a fanfic or a fanfic-like substitute.
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TGLS wrote:Honestly, I disagree with all the other entries fairly strongly and a kind of willing to lump in this one too. I haven't heard anyone use Mary Sue to describe a character who wasn't from a fanfic or a fanfic-like substitute.
I kind of envy you. I see it all the damn time and it gets on my nerves. I'm not 100% certain but to the best of my recollection the first time I can remember hearing the term Mary Sue it was applied to a canon character. Thing is I can't remember if the person who said it to me was talking about Buffy or Superman.
I think it has use in fanfic or works in a shared universe, and even some original works can have elements of it - the universe bending around them can reach a point where it's irritating even for a main characer.
But yes, female characters are disproportionately accused of being a Mary Sue, and male characters that set off my Suedar like crazy (or Studar in this case, I suppose) get a pass. Male wish fulfillment isn't looked at as sideways as female wish fulfillment is.
Fuzzy Necromancer wrote:Mary Sue is one of those terms that has become watered down to uselessness through overuse, like Emo was and like Hipster is in danger of becoming.
Frankly I think "hipster" already is a null phrase. A lot of the time people just seem to use it to describe anything they don't like/get.
Nah, the word is good and has a specific definition. If you want to criticize whether it's being used accurately or not, knock yourselves out. As far as I can tell, this push to get rid of it comes largely from butthurt because of it being used to describe Rey from Star Wars, which is actually a description I agree with. Because if you think about it, she never really has any kind of difficulty in dealing with anything. I almost wonder if the writers weren't overcompensating to avoid accusations of sexism if anyone else (especially if they were male) had to save her.
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