Hey, guys! I’ve been a little busy these past few weeks, but got a break just in time to come upon a charming Sue-supporting rant, to which I couldn’t resist responding
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(I wanted to comment briefly on your excellent rebuttal, Araeph, but the PPC comm doesn't allow commenting from non-members, so I hope you don't mind me doing that here instead. I really thought it was a fantastic essay - I've been vaguely following the recent Mary Sue discussions going on across Fandom and boggling at the way some people seem to be defining the term (I saw one person suggest that because of some of the things she's done/experienced in her life, if she wrote an autobiography, she'd likely be accused of being a Mary Sue!) - and you've articulated all of the problems I've had with the various arguments made, and many other issues besides, so beautifully.
Ultimately, Mary Sue is bowling-with-bumpers safe as a way to experience a story. She is unrealistically beautiful, inhumanly powerful, and always gets rewarded for everything she does with only the barest of struggles. She can’t fail. She can’t get humiliated. The story itself will dutifully remove all real obstacles from her shining path. And a character who needs her author to do all that work for her is not a character who has any sort of power. On the contrary, that character is weak.
This is such a wonderfully succinct definition of Mary Sue and why she's an example of bad writing! I keep seeing people say stuff like there's nothing wrong with her if she's well written, and being totally perplexed, because as far as I'm concerned she can't be well written. That's the whole point.
And this whole paragraph is just brilliant: Who cares, really, if fantastic SuperPunkRockGoddess triumphed over Persephone and won Hades’ heart? There was never any doubt! What does it matter if Riellanaiëlvaniela defeated ten legions of orcs in your fanfic? It doesn’t say a thing, good or bad, about what a real woman, a real person, could actually do or not do! All it says is that someone wanted it to be true, but didn’t really believe it could be, because the scenario itself is not believable in the context of that particular universe. And worse, it implies that an ordinary woman-a woman who gets a man she loves but sweats and smells during training, a woman who is not as physically strong as an orc but wins the fight through sheer determination, a woman who achieved greatness but learned the cost was high, as all great people do-simply could not measure up, so a super-powered one had to do.)
“I am underweight for my age, being 5-years-old and weighing only 4LB.” Heeee! 1-dimensional characters are so flimsy.
I sometimes wonder with these fics that are basically just the script with an extra character crudely stapled in, why the author can't just give us time codes for all her amendments, and then we could at least watch the film rather than having to wade through a list of all the dialogue.
I was going to bemoan the ubiquitous dead mother trope, but I can't really get on the author's case for that one - Disney started it.
You can joing the community temporarily, if it helps. I'd change the closed commenting thing, but I'm not a mod of that community.
Glad you liked my impromptu essay! I too boggle at the way some people define Mary Sue, in clear contradiction to Wikpedia, the Fanfiction Glossary, and pretty much everywhere else.
My guess is the author meant to write 40lbs, not 4. No, wait, that's my hope. My fervent, fervent hope that this author did not think a five-year-old child is lighter, on average, than a brick.
Ultimately, Mary Sue is bowling-with-bumpers safe as a way to experience a story. She is unrealistically beautiful, inhumanly powerful, and always gets rewarded for everything she does with only the barest of struggles. She can’t fail. She can’t get humiliated. The story itself will dutifully remove all real obstacles from her shining path. And a character who needs her author to do all that work for her is not a character who has any sort of power. On the contrary, that character is weak.
This is such a wonderfully succinct definition of Mary Sue and why she's an example of bad writing! I keep seeing people say stuff like there's nothing wrong with her if she's well written, and being totally perplexed, because as far as I'm concerned she can't be well written. That's the whole point.
And this whole paragraph is just brilliant:
Who cares, really, if fantastic SuperPunkRockGoddess triumphed over Persephone and won Hades’ heart? There was never any doubt! What does it matter if Riellanaiëlvaniela defeated ten legions of orcs in your fanfic? It doesn’t say a thing, good or bad, about what a real woman, a real person, could actually do or not do! All it says is that someone wanted it to be true, but didn’t really believe it could be, because the scenario itself is not believable in the context of that particular universe. And worse, it implies that an ordinary woman-a woman who gets a man she loves but sweats and smells during training, a woman who is not as physically strong as an orc but wins the fight through sheer determination, a woman who achieved greatness but learned the cost was high, as all great people do-simply could not measure up, so a super-powered one had to do.)
“I am underweight for my age, being 5-years-old and weighing only 4LB.”
Heeee! 1-dimensional characters are so flimsy.
I sometimes wonder with these fics that are basically just the script with an extra character crudely stapled in, why the author can't just give us time codes for all her amendments, and then we could at least watch the film rather than having to wade through a list of all the dialogue.
I was going to bemoan the ubiquitous dead mother trope, but I can't really get on the author's case for that one - Disney started it.
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Glad you liked my impromptu essay! I too boggle at the way some people define Mary Sue, in clear contradiction to Wikpedia, the Fanfiction Glossary, and pretty much everywhere else.
My guess is the author meant to write 40lbs, not 4. No, wait, that's my hope. My fervent, fervent hope that this author did not think a five-year-old child is lighter, on average, than a brick.
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