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The Mary Sue problem
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bad_rpers_suck the Newbie's Guide to RP'ing contains notes on one of the greatest irritations of both RP and fanfiction.
+++++
The Evil and Dreaded Mary-Sue
There's been some confusion about the definition of Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Here you are, folks- the wikipedia definition of Mary Sue and Gary Stu.
Mary Sue
Mary Sue characters are generally marked by over description with extraneous, tacked-on paragraphs describing in great detail their distinctive appearance or possessions, even if they have no significance for the plot and seem out of place. For example, a Mary Sue would not merely be said to carry a gun. The model, color, appearance, and special features of the gun would be described all at once.
A Mary Sue may be tougher, smarter, and cooler than the established characters and so win their admiration. Alternately, the Sue may be nicer, sweeter, and more charming than the established characters (often despite being tortured by a tragic past) and win their love. Either way, the setting's protagonists are upstaged by the new character's perfection. If this new character dies in the story (typically as an act of self-sacrifice), there is often extensive grieving.
Common traits of Mary Sues:
* Has only sympathetic flaws; Mary Sues may be paraplegic, or dangerously naïve, but are very rarely selfish or petty-minded
* Can do no wrong - or, if she does do anything wrong, has strong justification for it
* Unique abilities
* Distinctive physical features (odd-coloured eyes, birthmarks, scars, etc.)
* Owns an unusual pet (especially, 'one that only she could tame')
* Deliberately exotic name
* Name based on that of the author (such as an anagram)
* Cultural/racial background very different from her peers (often adopted out of her culture)
* Deeply traumatic past
* Attitudes contemporary to the author in a setting where these are unheard of
* Close relationship with a major canonical character (long-lost brother, etc.)
* Well-liked by all the canonical protagonists
* Powers or abilities closely paralleling those of a major canon character
* Centrally involved in every part of the story
* Invokes powers impossible in the canon
* If the published universe is set in a different country to the one the author is from, the Mary Sue will probably be from the author's country of origin
* If much of the tension in a series is largely dependent upon a sequence of ongoing character flaws and misunderstandings (such as the works of Rumiko Takahashi), the Mary Sue character almost invariably possesses a 'big picture' view that allows them to solve all of these little problems, thereby sewing up the series in a happily-ever-after fashion
None of these traits in and of themselves make a Mary Sue; rather, a Sue depends on the author's reliance on such gimmicks to make a character unique and appealing. Another "yardstick" used to see if a character is considered to be a Mary Sue is how other characters react to that character. For example, even if a Mary Sue is impossibly beautiful or talented, other characters are unlikely to be jealous of her.
There are many definitions of Mary Sue. Those are some basics.
Gary Stu
A Gary Stu is somewhat different from a Mary Sue in that his perfections are less oriented on personality and more on physical traits, skill, or expertise. For example, some Gary Stus are very strong, skilled swordfighters, expert wizards, or legendary heroes with scars who often attract female characters within the story. Most are designed to fill either the role of dangerous action hero or caring, supportive lover. In addition to Mary Sue traits such as unusual background and lack of flaws, the following features are common:
* Dark, brooding, quiet, mysterious, tormented, or otherwise enigmatic, with a dark or tormented past yet somehow showing none of the psychological damage that such a past should inflict; sometimes being almost comic relief silly
* Either a devoted, monogamous lover, or an accomplished, "badass" action hero
* Plenty of gadgets; accompanied by lists of weapons, technology, etc.
* Penchant for violence or skill in battle (sometimes to the point of seeming sociopathic)
* Reluctant warrior, caught up in a conflict he's not ready for (for example, Luke Skywalker from Star Wars)
* "Strong but sensitive" alpha male type (for example, Wolverine from the X-Men)
* An attractive young ephebe who has earned the respect of his much older companions through his genius-level intelligence and/or skills.
+++++
My first response to the above was ‘oh, hell yes!’ or possibly 'holy fuck, yes!', I can't quite remember. Unfortunately, I appear to have somehow either angered the non-existent God of Fictional Germanic Bishounen or he has some other new insanity planned for me because I managed to lose my rant that I’d saved yesterday. So now I have to start over and I’ve been sitting here for at least half an hour now trying to recover it. It may have been more of a rant than a reasonable objection I suppose but still, the fact of having to type it up again is ever so slightly irritating.
But to the point in hand, the major point that struck me, one of the first things that I will rant about and that I’ll always be ranting on about ever after is the typical Mary Sue’s possession of attitudes contemporary to the author in a setting where these are unheard of. I’m talking about things like the female pirate who’s never had any trouble because of her gender in a world where it’s equivalent to the 15th century, the Victorian gentleman who doesn’t find a flash of a woman’s ankles scandalous, the medieval prince who refuses an alliance with a neighbouring princess because he’s ‘in love’ with a serving wench, the girl who turns up in a historical setting and improves things for everyone by applying modern morality and so on.
This sort of thing is perhaps glaringly obvious in historical or historical equivalent settings but unfortunately occurs almost everywhere that Mary Sue and Gary Stu drop in. In sci-fi settings perhaps it might be a little harder to detect but as long as there are a given set of world-rules then the anachronism of the self-insert character is horribly apparent.
The Sue who challenges the caste system of Darkover during the ages of chaos who has no possible reason to do so, the one who joins up with the Fellowship and is Aragorn’s long lost sister, the girl who isn’t Melnibonian but is welcome in their court are all the stuff of wish-fulfilment fantasy, like the boy who’s the ‘other’ heir of Slytherin or the chap who is the second ‘One’ or is was made a Marshal of the Pulsian army at a younger age than Daryoon, just to name a couple.
The aping of canon traits stolen from existing characters or the just plain ignoring of canon entirely defeats the point of fanfiction pretty much. If Sue or Stu doesn’t serve a purpose, doesn’t drive the plot forward or provide needed external commentary then they have no place being there at all. You may as well just go write original fiction instead.
Granted there are often occasions when an original character would fit to either pass on needed information that canon characters couldn’t conceivably get any other way or at least get easily, or act as a catalysis for some larger event but even then there is a world of difference between an original character acting as a cipher and a piece of wish-fulfilment fantasy that’s been shoehorned into a plot. One particular example of a fandom with far too many Stus running around being The Matrix. Every two-bit rebel hack was the next One and they were just as flat and bland as I’d expect their authors to be.
Can original characters be written into set universes? Yes, undoubtedly. I’ve done it myself on several occasions and continuing with The Matrix as the fandom example of choice, I’ve written an entire series that involved original characters every step of the way. The only difference between them and the Sues and Stus that were floating about at the time was that at the end of the day the entire plot revolved around the established agent team of Smith, Brown and Jones and Smith’s confrontation with Neo. Characters like Lucifer and Raphael were there to drive things towards that conclusion, to create tension and often enough to dump information on the unsuspecting heads of the likes of Smith and Neo. But for all the overpowered capabilities of the Cherubim, Lucifer himself got rather spectacularly got at the end of the first section because Neo, as the central character was meant to have the ability to override the established rules of the system.
Essentially, while original characters are useful to demonstrate matters like the established canon lead’s prowess at something or to scene-fill or just sometimes direct the canon characters into a situation that they need to reach, afterwards that cipher pretty much needs to simply packs up and go home because they aren’t necessary to the plot beyond that point.
A good portion of original characters in those scenarios are essentially equivalent to NPCs in the hands of the person running a campaign. They’re the guards who give directions, the citizens who ask for an item to be recovered, the innkeeper who gives the central characters information. In an established universe where there are set canon characters that are the stars of the show, your original is only going to be an accessory to their actions.
Original characters can have personalities beyond giving quests or providing information but those personalities must be tailored to fit the scenario, not the other way round. Even if you’re running an RPG campaign and are playing one of the central characters in that plot, you have to tailor your application to fit the given world-rules. A sunshine-and-rainbows happy human simply doesn’t fit into a Sabbat campaign, unless you’re feeling fiendish and want to play out their transformation into an insane Tzimisce war-ghoul. Likewise, your Sabbat Inquisitor has no business in a universe where vampires can be created artificially with ‘freak’ chips, granted she’s got more of a chance of blending in there if you knock off the whole Sabbat Inquisitor thing but regardless the character has to change to fit the world-view.
If there is a hole that could be plugged with an appropriately shaped block, then by all means do it. Expand a character concept that you might have thought up elsewhere and tailor it to fit that universe, if it serves a purpose. As long as the character fits into the universe that they’re being written into comfortably, there’s really no problem and more than likely they’re just an original character and not a Sue or Stu at all.
The problem starts when the author decides that they’d like to make their original character an idealised thing, giving them traits that the author themselves finds desirable. Then the character becomes less of a nice idea to fill an appropriate hole in the canonical details with than an idealised version of the author themselves. Its characters like that who are beloved by all or feared by all irrationally that tend to set off a reader’s Sue-dar.
Can a self-insert character work in fanfiction? Probably not or at least not unless it’s a sort of secret Stu, where only the author knows that it’s meant to be them. And even then that still becomes just an original character with perhaps one or two traits that the author might share.
Overall, original characters should serve a purpose and even when they do there should also be some reasoning as to why they don’t appear canonically. And the canon leads should react to them according to their set canonical behavioural patterns. The world-view itself should not be changed to accommodate any original character introduced; they should be changed and adapted until their character concept fits the universe. And perhaps most important of all, they shouldn’t suddenly move the focus away from the canon leads simply because of their existence.
As for whether or not they should go away once their job is done, well, if they’re there to serve a function it seems only sensible that once that’s seen to they should just pack up and go home.
And as I’ve said before anyway, Happy Noodle Boy doesn’t need your Sue either.
bad_rpers_suck the Newbie's Guide to RP'ing contains notes on one of the greatest irritations of both RP and fanfiction.+++++
The Evil and Dreaded Mary-Sue
There's been some confusion about the definition of Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Here you are, folks- the wikipedia definition of Mary Sue and Gary Stu.
Mary Sue
Mary Sue characters are generally marked by over description with extraneous, tacked-on paragraphs describing in great detail their distinctive appearance or possessions, even if they have no significance for the plot and seem out of place. For example, a Mary Sue would not merely be said to carry a gun. The model, color, appearance, and special features of the gun would be described all at once.
A Mary Sue may be tougher, smarter, and cooler than the established characters and so win their admiration. Alternately, the Sue may be nicer, sweeter, and more charming than the established characters (often despite being tortured by a tragic past) and win their love. Either way, the setting's protagonists are upstaged by the new character's perfection. If this new character dies in the story (typically as an act of self-sacrifice), there is often extensive grieving.
Common traits of Mary Sues:
* Has only sympathetic flaws; Mary Sues may be paraplegic, or dangerously naïve, but are very rarely selfish or petty-minded
* Can do no wrong - or, if she does do anything wrong, has strong justification for it
* Unique abilities
* Distinctive physical features (odd-coloured eyes, birthmarks, scars, etc.)
* Owns an unusual pet (especially, 'one that only she could tame')
* Deliberately exotic name
* Name based on that of the author (such as an anagram)
* Cultural/racial background very different from her peers (often adopted out of her culture)
* Deeply traumatic past
* Attitudes contemporary to the author in a setting where these are unheard of
* Close relationship with a major canonical character (long-lost brother, etc.)
* Well-liked by all the canonical protagonists
* Powers or abilities closely paralleling those of a major canon character
* Centrally involved in every part of the story
* Invokes powers impossible in the canon
* If the published universe is set in a different country to the one the author is from, the Mary Sue will probably be from the author's country of origin
* If much of the tension in a series is largely dependent upon a sequence of ongoing character flaws and misunderstandings (such as the works of Rumiko Takahashi), the Mary Sue character almost invariably possesses a 'big picture' view that allows them to solve all of these little problems, thereby sewing up the series in a happily-ever-after fashion
None of these traits in and of themselves make a Mary Sue; rather, a Sue depends on the author's reliance on such gimmicks to make a character unique and appealing. Another "yardstick" used to see if a character is considered to be a Mary Sue is how other characters react to that character. For example, even if a Mary Sue is impossibly beautiful or talented, other characters are unlikely to be jealous of her.
There are many definitions of Mary Sue. Those are some basics.
Gary Stu
A Gary Stu is somewhat different from a Mary Sue in that his perfections are less oriented on personality and more on physical traits, skill, or expertise. For example, some Gary Stus are very strong, skilled swordfighters, expert wizards, or legendary heroes with scars who often attract female characters within the story. Most are designed to fill either the role of dangerous action hero or caring, supportive lover. In addition to Mary Sue traits such as unusual background and lack of flaws, the following features are common:
* Dark, brooding, quiet, mysterious, tormented, or otherwise enigmatic, with a dark or tormented past yet somehow showing none of the psychological damage that such a past should inflict; sometimes being almost comic relief silly
* Either a devoted, monogamous lover, or an accomplished, "badass" action hero
* Plenty of gadgets; accompanied by lists of weapons, technology, etc.
* Penchant for violence or skill in battle (sometimes to the point of seeming sociopathic)
* Reluctant warrior, caught up in a conflict he's not ready for (for example, Luke Skywalker from Star Wars)
* "Strong but sensitive" alpha male type (for example, Wolverine from the X-Men)
* An attractive young ephebe who has earned the respect of his much older companions through his genius-level intelligence and/or skills.
+++++
My first response to the above was ‘oh, hell yes!’ or possibly 'holy fuck, yes!', I can't quite remember. Unfortunately, I appear to have somehow either angered the non-existent God of Fictional Germanic Bishounen or he has some other new insanity planned for me because I managed to lose my rant that I’d saved yesterday. So now I have to start over and I’ve been sitting here for at least half an hour now trying to recover it. It may have been more of a rant than a reasonable objection I suppose but still, the fact of having to type it up again is ever so slightly irritating.
But to the point in hand, the major point that struck me, one of the first things that I will rant about and that I’ll always be ranting on about ever after is the typical Mary Sue’s possession of attitudes contemporary to the author in a setting where these are unheard of. I’m talking about things like the female pirate who’s never had any trouble because of her gender in a world where it’s equivalent to the 15th century, the Victorian gentleman who doesn’t find a flash of a woman’s ankles scandalous, the medieval prince who refuses an alliance with a neighbouring princess because he’s ‘in love’ with a serving wench, the girl who turns up in a historical setting and improves things for everyone by applying modern morality and so on.
This sort of thing is perhaps glaringly obvious in historical or historical equivalent settings but unfortunately occurs almost everywhere that Mary Sue and Gary Stu drop in. In sci-fi settings perhaps it might be a little harder to detect but as long as there are a given set of world-rules then the anachronism of the self-insert character is horribly apparent.
The Sue who challenges the caste system of Darkover during the ages of chaos who has no possible reason to do so, the one who joins up with the Fellowship and is Aragorn’s long lost sister, the girl who isn’t Melnibonian but is welcome in their court are all the stuff of wish-fulfilment fantasy, like the boy who’s the ‘other’ heir of Slytherin or the chap who is the second ‘One’ or is was made a Marshal of the Pulsian army at a younger age than Daryoon, just to name a couple.
The aping of canon traits stolen from existing characters or the just plain ignoring of canon entirely defeats the point of fanfiction pretty much. If Sue or Stu doesn’t serve a purpose, doesn’t drive the plot forward or provide needed external commentary then they have no place being there at all. You may as well just go write original fiction instead.
Granted there are often occasions when an original character would fit to either pass on needed information that canon characters couldn’t conceivably get any other way or at least get easily, or act as a catalysis for some larger event but even then there is a world of difference between an original character acting as a cipher and a piece of wish-fulfilment fantasy that’s been shoehorned into a plot. One particular example of a fandom with far too many Stus running around being The Matrix. Every two-bit rebel hack was the next One and they were just as flat and bland as I’d expect their authors to be.
Can original characters be written into set universes? Yes, undoubtedly. I’ve done it myself on several occasions and continuing with The Matrix as the fandom example of choice, I’ve written an entire series that involved original characters every step of the way. The only difference between them and the Sues and Stus that were floating about at the time was that at the end of the day the entire plot revolved around the established agent team of Smith, Brown and Jones and Smith’s confrontation with Neo. Characters like Lucifer and Raphael were there to drive things towards that conclusion, to create tension and often enough to dump information on the unsuspecting heads of the likes of Smith and Neo. But for all the overpowered capabilities of the Cherubim, Lucifer himself got rather spectacularly got at the end of the first section because Neo, as the central character was meant to have the ability to override the established rules of the system.
Essentially, while original characters are useful to demonstrate matters like the established canon lead’s prowess at something or to scene-fill or just sometimes direct the canon characters into a situation that they need to reach, afterwards that cipher pretty much needs to simply packs up and go home because they aren’t necessary to the plot beyond that point.
A good portion of original characters in those scenarios are essentially equivalent to NPCs in the hands of the person running a campaign. They’re the guards who give directions, the citizens who ask for an item to be recovered, the innkeeper who gives the central characters information. In an established universe where there are set canon characters that are the stars of the show, your original is only going to be an accessory to their actions.
Original characters can have personalities beyond giving quests or providing information but those personalities must be tailored to fit the scenario, not the other way round. Even if you’re running an RPG campaign and are playing one of the central characters in that plot, you have to tailor your application to fit the given world-rules. A sunshine-and-rainbows happy human simply doesn’t fit into a Sabbat campaign, unless you’re feeling fiendish and want to play out their transformation into an insane Tzimisce war-ghoul. Likewise, your Sabbat Inquisitor has no business in a universe where vampires can be created artificially with ‘freak’ chips, granted she’s got more of a chance of blending in there if you knock off the whole Sabbat Inquisitor thing but regardless the character has to change to fit the world-view.
If there is a hole that could be plugged with an appropriately shaped block, then by all means do it. Expand a character concept that you might have thought up elsewhere and tailor it to fit that universe, if it serves a purpose. As long as the character fits into the universe that they’re being written into comfortably, there’s really no problem and more than likely they’re just an original character and not a Sue or Stu at all.
The problem starts when the author decides that they’d like to make their original character an idealised thing, giving them traits that the author themselves finds desirable. Then the character becomes less of a nice idea to fill an appropriate hole in the canonical details with than an idealised version of the author themselves. Its characters like that who are beloved by all or feared by all irrationally that tend to set off a reader’s Sue-dar.
Can a self-insert character work in fanfiction? Probably not or at least not unless it’s a sort of secret Stu, where only the author knows that it’s meant to be them. And even then that still becomes just an original character with perhaps one or two traits that the author might share.
Overall, original characters should serve a purpose and even when they do there should also be some reasoning as to why they don’t appear canonically. And the canon leads should react to them according to their set canonical behavioural patterns. The world-view itself should not be changed to accommodate any original character introduced; they should be changed and adapted until their character concept fits the universe. And perhaps most important of all, they shouldn’t suddenly move the focus away from the canon leads simply because of their existence.
As for whether or not they should go away once their job is done, well, if they’re there to serve a function it seems only sensible that once that’s seen to they should just pack up and go home.
And as I’ve said before anyway, Happy Noodle Boy doesn’t need your Sue either.
no subject
As far as historical inaccuracy goes, I can never decide if I'm more irritated by the portrayal of medieval or similar characters as modern, sensitive and emancipated, or by the portrayal of history as a squeaky clean, shiny place where everyone had glossy hair and a full set of teeth. (I'm thinking specifically of a few Rose of Versailles-based assertions that a sixteen-year-old of either gender, raised in a noble house in eighteenth-century France, would be innocent of the very idea of sex until the wedding night, which seems strangely unlikely.)
no subject
Though looking at it from an RPG angle does seem a rather good way to knock off the Sueness of any new character introduced in fanfiction. If an author can think themselves into the position of player and GM and view the original character from both angles I can’t see how it’d be that easy for them to go wrong. On the turning canonical characters into Sues similar things then should probably apply; your set of PCs and NPCs simply changes. It’s not a case of ‘what would I do in this situation’ but ‘what would character X do’.
The speech-pattern issue for canon characters turned into Sues seems to be one of the worst ones as far as I can see. Granted their change in attitude and behaviour is terrible enough but more often than not it’s the speech pattern that irritates me the most but that comes back to my continual ranging against anachronistic language really.
I'm thinking specifically of a few Rose of Versailles-based assertions that a sixteen-year-old of either gender, raised in a noble house in eighteenth-century France, would be innocent of the very idea of sex until the wedding night, which seems strangely unlikely.
Oh dear… Presumably that idea is used to help romanticise the whole idea? It’s still rather odd though. It’s that sort of thing that tends to trip my offensive trigger and have me saying things like “And how old were you when you started masturbating?” and so on, which really isn’t acceptable in polite company anyway. I suppose I don’t mind the nice, clean romanticised ideal of the Middle Ages as Arthurian myth but then it still really needs to be obviously divorced from reality for the most part.
no subject
It’s not a case of ‘what would I do in this situation’ but ‘what would character X do’.
Unfortunately I imagine that no matter what the milieu, if you're not asking this question on your own when writing a canon character, you're not likely to look at it in terms of NPCs and similar. Truth be told, it's not even the Evanescence-fangirling, Hot Topic-patronizing, oh-so-hardcore variations of canon characters or OCs that get to me (nor their fluffier, pinker cousins in glitter T-shirts and miniskirts) - from what I can see that sort of Sueage tends to come from a relatively young group of authors. I'm really getting more irked now by a different set of rules, often put in place by older authors, in which the canon character maintains the vestiges of his or her character (yes, still likes books, yes, still runs track, hasn't given it up in favor of listening to Linkin Park and smoking in the bathroom or similar), but in which even the flaws have been turned into graceful, saintly attributes of the perfect lady and/or gentleman, with nary a temper or a questionable moral to be seen. This is largely covered in that list, though, with the "flaws" that are no longer flaws but merely cute idiosyncracies, the impossible big-picture view, the need to be liked by everyone and so forth.
Presumably that idea is used to help romanticise the whole idea? It’s still rather odd though.
If it were in a fanfic that would be one thing, but unless my memory has gone severely faulty it was in answer to a question (reasonable enough, I suppose) about how old Oscar, with her confused upbringing, would be before she found/worked out that angle of things for herself, with the answer that she would be probably be a full-grown adult and certainly not inclined to investigate it or find out more since it would be oh-so-shocking to her. And I'm hardly saying that I want to read in a romantic story, should I be reading such a thing, about Versailles smelling more like a pissoir than a rose garden. I would just think you need some sort of perspective in which dramatic shoujo sparkles meet historical fact and go out for coffee.
Depends on what they are, doesn't it?
no subject
I'm really getting more irked now by a different set of rules… in which even the flaws have been turned into graceful, saintly attributes of the perfect lady and/or gentleman, with nary a temper or a questionable moral to be seen.
That’s rather dire and wouldn’t a seemingly ‘perfect’ character remove any of the dynamic or conflict necessary to drive a plot forward? I can’t see how turning a reasonable character with flaws and virtues into some saintly, static straw-doll would make for interesting fiction at all. Unless the point of the piece is to illustrate just how insane they really are, in so far as they believe that every irrational thing that they do is perfectly sane and it’s described as such until the end of the piece were the reader is finally given the outside perspective.
Any character with a lack of conflict over at least something probably isn’t worth writing about anyway. They’d never have any issues about anything and would sit there being painfully happy and that would be all. Where’s the fun in that?
Every time you argue, a PolSci is born.I’d presume that unless Oscar really thought that she was physically a boy, there’d be little issue with it because while she may have been raised as a boy everyone else does seem to be aware that she’s physically not. So unless she did have some drastic body issues I can’t see how she wouldn’t have just figured the details of the plumbing out along the way.