On Mary Sues
a while ago on Tumblr, taifunu reblogged a quote from an essay criticising the concept of Mary Sues, and I thought it was a good quote pointing out the double standards for how we approach idealised male vs female characters (e.g. the former is considered normal, the latter considered bad writing and slapped with the Sue label). It basically described a shiny perfect Sue-ish female character, and then later revealed that they'd just described Batman. So that was a nice twist, and I was intrigued enough to read the rest of the essay. and I found that while I agreed with their observations, I had a lot of disagreements about their conclusions, to the point I would have probably written an angry soon-regretted rant if my internet hadn't been really slow. it also disturbed me how just about everyone in the comments was agreeing, and the only disagreement came from people being blatantly misogynist trolls. and then anschauen brought it up again in a recent comment and I wrote a reply that I shall just paste an extended edit of here:
I don't get how so many fandom feminists are seemingly oblivious to how fandom is dominated by people who are attracted to (and thus often love) guys. That oversight always strikes me as really bizarre. It's happened other times too, with random people wondering, like, why fandom people write so much more about naked men having sex with each other than naked women having sex with each other, and declaring misogyny to be the cause. -_- IDGI. I've encountered at least one long, thoughtful critique on that topic, and at no point did they mention (or even seem aware of) how fandom is mostly straight women and a few gay men, and that *maybe* that particular demographic detail explained the disproportionate fixation on dick. it was really surreal.
I couldn't relate to a lot of the essay either, because some of the most memorably bad Sues I've encountered were male (as well as the worst, written by this guy on FFN called Neotheone88 who wrote a bunch of Matrix fics in which his obviously idealised self-insert male OC goes around obnoxiously pwning everyone and Neo is so impressed by him and Trinity falls in love with him etc and I was torn between laughing and crying and wanting to punch the author, which says a lot because I'm a militant pacifist by nature. I actually still remember his username, ffs. that's how much of a scarring impact his fics had on me. >_>). and I didn't find them any less cringe-worthy because of their gender. I wrote my own horrible self-insert male Sue when I was 13. it needs to be burnt. I also wrote a horrible self-insert female Sue around that same age, but on hindsight that one actually doesn't seem that much like a Sue.
I'm sure that misogyny does play a part in the Sue phenomena, because it's everywhere, and I admit that I'm more likely to consider a female character to be a Sue than a male one if they're exactly alike other than gender. So yeah, double standard. But what makes a Sue a Sue isn't the stuff the author seemed to think (idealised female author self-insert, standing up to the men, being attractive, being talented, having guys randomly fall in love with her etc), because I've seen some really well-written female characters just like that who I wouldn't have considered to be Sues in any way.
like, say, Olivia Dunham from Fringe, who is still my favourite fictional female character in a TV show. She has so many Sue-qualities if I think about it - tragic past living with an abusive stepfather and people who cruelly experimented on her, she's a super-accurate marksman, has a photographic memory, regularly pwns her male colleagues by being awesome, developed freaking superpowers from the experimentation that *killed* so many of the other kids because she's just that special, like srsly she actually has people literally telling her she's special on a regular basis, she's the only person in two universes who can cross from one to the other at will, random guys and her alternate self fall in love with her over multiple timelines, she's not afraid to show her emotions and express her femininity, she goes around angsting a lot because of the burden of her past and her responsibilities, etc etc etc.
and yet she's not a Sue at all. She's one of the most well-written characters - male or female - I've had the fortune to encounter on screen. Throughout everything she's still human, and I totally love her.
Such that the Tumblr essay's cricitism fell flat - while the author was talking about how we often consider a female character to be a Sue if we think she's too talented/capable/awesome for a woman, because misogyny, I was thinking about Olivia and other female characters I love (all the ones in Fringe, for starters, and their alternate universe counterparts, because awesome show is awesome, ugh I miss it so much) who could fall into that category but who don't trip my Sue-dar at all, as well as characters who don't fit that criteria but are flaming Sues.
I don't know what it is exactly that sets off my Sue-dar, though I think it's something specific to fanfic - I'm much more likely to consider an OC in a fic to be a Sue than a OC in original fiction. I actually need some mental adjustments to think of even Bella from Twilight as a Sue, for instance. Like, it's her own story, it's her own world, she can rule everything and poop rainbows for all I care. It would be canon. But in fanfic, if an OC randomly comes in and starts grabbing all the attention from the other characters, causing them to suddenly go OOC and drop everything for their sake, then I'll call Sue. Unless it's really well done, which is always interesting to see.
Writing quality is still a really important factor. and keeping to canon, and being reasonably realistic. For me at least when I read fanfic it's because I love the canon characters and want to read about them, not some unknown author's personal wish-fulfilling power-fantasy self-insert OC. and if said OC starts getting in the way and making my beloved canon characters act silly, I'm going to be annoyed regardless of the OC's gender. Because of the overrepresentation of male characters in media and the overrepresentation of female people in fandom, those OCs are almost always female. Which leads to a disproportionate vilification of female characters, yeah, but while misogyny probably does make it worse, I still have trouble believing that it's the root cause.
The author also said:
People will claim a female character is a Mary Sue if she is a love interest. Put a female character within a foot of a male character, and people will scream “Mary Sue!” Why does someone falling in love with her make her a Mary Sue? Well, she hasn’t “earned” this awesome dude character’s love. What has she done to show she’s worthy of him? Fans miss the irony that this line of logic makes the male character seem more like the Sue in Question, as he’s apparently so perfect one has work for his coveted love and praise.
which, again, Most People In Fandom Like Guys. and we tend to idealise the people we're attracted to and consider them perfect and awesome and above all reciprocation. I find the mentioned irony there ironic because I've seen practically the exact opposite situation with straight guys complaining about how movies keep portraying all these perfect beautiful talented women next to grossly inept men, crying misandry. and I'm like, dude. the women there are idealised because they're written by mostly male writers putting out their idea of their perfect wife or girlfriend who, despite her perfection, will still pay attention, tolerate, and even love someone as pathetic as them even though likewise they've done nothing to "earn" it.
and similarly, they bash and degrade and plot against any guy who steals their female crush from them. Look at all the complaints from Nice GuysTM whining about how it's always the horrible nasty men who get the women *they* want. (admittedly they bash the women involved as well, and in that case, yes it's misogyny.) Look at all the annoyed teenage boys frothing at the mouth as they obnoxiously rant on about Justin Bieber or One Direction or Keanu Reeves any other popular male celeb and how much they hate them and want them to die (I've seen some pretty graphic death threats) and can't fathom what on earth girls see in them. Going by the fandom feminist logic that declares it misogynist when straight/bi women insult other women who take "their" man, that would be an example of misandry. Which it obviously isn't.
I still think that there is a place for criticism of Sue characters, male or female, because bad writing is bad writing, and sometimes criticism is the only way people can improve. But while there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on the gendered double standards, dismissing the entire Sue concept as misogynist ends up being a lazy excuse for weak characterisation and bad writing, as well as apparently ignorant of how romantic/sexual attraction manifests itself, in fandom or otherwise, and in the end ends up effectively bashing fandom's androphilic population for just being very, very human.
I don't get how so many fandom feminists are seemingly oblivious to how fandom is dominated by people who are attracted to (and thus often love) guys. That oversight always strikes me as really bizarre. It's happened other times too, with random people wondering, like, why fandom people write so much more about naked men having sex with each other than naked women having sex with each other, and declaring misogyny to be the cause. -_- IDGI. I've encountered at least one long, thoughtful critique on that topic, and at no point did they mention (or even seem aware of) how fandom is mostly straight women and a few gay men, and that *maybe* that particular demographic detail explained the disproportionate fixation on dick. it was really surreal.
I couldn't relate to a lot of the essay either, because some of the most memorably bad Sues I've encountered were male (as well as the worst, written by this guy on FFN called Neotheone88 who wrote a bunch of Matrix fics in which his obviously idealised self-insert male OC goes around obnoxiously pwning everyone and Neo is so impressed by him and Trinity falls in love with him etc and I was torn between laughing and crying and wanting to punch the author, which says a lot because I'm a militant pacifist by nature. I actually still remember his username, ffs. that's how much of a scarring impact his fics had on me. >_>). and I didn't find them any less cringe-worthy because of their gender. I wrote my own horrible self-insert male Sue when I was 13. it needs to be burnt. I also wrote a horrible self-insert female Sue around that same age, but on hindsight that one actually doesn't seem that much like a Sue.
I'm sure that misogyny does play a part in the Sue phenomena, because it's everywhere, and I admit that I'm more likely to consider a female character to be a Sue than a male one if they're exactly alike other than gender. So yeah, double standard. But what makes a Sue a Sue isn't the stuff the author seemed to think (idealised female author self-insert, standing up to the men, being attractive, being talented, having guys randomly fall in love with her etc), because I've seen some really well-written female characters just like that who I wouldn't have considered to be Sues in any way.
like, say, Olivia Dunham from Fringe, who is still my favourite fictional female character in a TV show. She has so many Sue-qualities if I think about it - tragic past living with an abusive stepfather and people who cruelly experimented on her, she's a super-accurate marksman, has a photographic memory, regularly pwns her male colleagues by being awesome, developed freaking superpowers from the experimentation that *killed* so many of the other kids because she's just that special, like srsly she actually has people literally telling her she's special on a regular basis, she's the only person in two universes who can cross from one to the other at will, random guys and her alternate self fall in love with her over multiple timelines, she's not afraid to show her emotions and express her femininity, she goes around angsting a lot because of the burden of her past and her responsibilities, etc etc etc.
and yet she's not a Sue at all. She's one of the most well-written characters - male or female - I've had the fortune to encounter on screen. Throughout everything she's still human, and I totally love her.
Such that the Tumblr essay's cricitism fell flat - while the author was talking about how we often consider a female character to be a Sue if we think she's too talented/capable/awesome for a woman, because misogyny, I was thinking about Olivia and other female characters I love (all the ones in Fringe, for starters, and their alternate universe counterparts, because awesome show is awesome, ugh I miss it so much) who could fall into that category but who don't trip my Sue-dar at all, as well as characters who don't fit that criteria but are flaming Sues.
I don't know what it is exactly that sets off my Sue-dar, though I think it's something specific to fanfic - I'm much more likely to consider an OC in a fic to be a Sue than a OC in original fiction. I actually need some mental adjustments to think of even Bella from Twilight as a Sue, for instance. Like, it's her own story, it's her own world, she can rule everything and poop rainbows for all I care. It would be canon. But in fanfic, if an OC randomly comes in and starts grabbing all the attention from the other characters, causing them to suddenly go OOC and drop everything for their sake, then I'll call Sue. Unless it's really well done, which is always interesting to see.
Writing quality is still a really important factor. and keeping to canon, and being reasonably realistic. For me at least when I read fanfic it's because I love the canon characters and want to read about them, not some unknown author's personal wish-fulfilling power-fantasy self-insert OC. and if said OC starts getting in the way and making my beloved canon characters act silly, I'm going to be annoyed regardless of the OC's gender. Because of the overrepresentation of male characters in media and the overrepresentation of female people in fandom, those OCs are almost always female. Which leads to a disproportionate vilification of female characters, yeah, but while misogyny probably does make it worse, I still have trouble believing that it's the root cause.
The author also said:
People will claim a female character is a Mary Sue if she is a love interest. Put a female character within a foot of a male character, and people will scream “Mary Sue!” Why does someone falling in love with her make her a Mary Sue? Well, she hasn’t “earned” this awesome dude character’s love. What has she done to show she’s worthy of him? Fans miss the irony that this line of logic makes the male character seem more like the Sue in Question, as he’s apparently so perfect one has work for his coveted love and praise.
which, again, Most People In Fandom Like Guys. and we tend to idealise the people we're attracted to and consider them perfect and awesome and above all reciprocation. I find the mentioned irony there ironic because I've seen practically the exact opposite situation with straight guys complaining about how movies keep portraying all these perfect beautiful talented women next to grossly inept men, crying misandry. and I'm like, dude. the women there are idealised because they're written by mostly male writers putting out their idea of their perfect wife or girlfriend who, despite her perfection, will still pay attention, tolerate, and even love someone as pathetic as them even though likewise they've done nothing to "earn" it.
and similarly, they bash and degrade and plot against any guy who steals their female crush from them. Look at all the complaints from Nice GuysTM whining about how it's always the horrible nasty men who get the women *they* want. (admittedly they bash the women involved as well, and in that case, yes it's misogyny.) Look at all the annoyed teenage boys frothing at the mouth as they obnoxiously rant on about Justin Bieber or One Direction or Keanu Reeves any other popular male celeb and how much they hate them and want them to die (I've seen some pretty graphic death threats) and can't fathom what on earth girls see in them. Going by the fandom feminist logic that declares it misogynist when straight/bi women insult other women who take "their" man, that would be an example of misandry. Which it obviously isn't.
I still think that there is a place for criticism of Sue characters, male or female, because bad writing is bad writing, and sometimes criticism is the only way people can improve. But while there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on the gendered double standards, dismissing the entire Sue concept as misogynist ends up being a lazy excuse for weak characterisation and bad writing, as well as apparently ignorant of how romantic/sexual attraction manifests itself, in fandom or otherwise, and in the end ends up effectively bashing fandom's androphilic population for just being very, very human.