(no subject)
Why Sues really are bad.
(and, yet, awesome female characters are great)
The current talk in the LJ Metasphere seems to be the old topic of the Sue/Stu. This posting is about Sues, and why I consider them to be a bad thing.
I will also go into why I reject that “Disliking Mary Sues is misogynist”.
For my argument, I will use a minor Spoiler for Umineko no Naku Chiru to illustrate something, so please stop reading if you mind reading about the existence of a specific character in that story.
What is a Sue(or the equivalent, the male Stu)?
Many argue that a Sue is anything out of the ordinary. Having good grades? SUE, therefore a Sue is interesting writing. But that definition is not only wrong - it’s also entirely pointless. By that standard, everyone and everything is a Sue in some way, including my cat (he can jump very high!). It’s not what the term means.
It’s not about being interesting, having one(or more) love interests, or about moving the plot along. It’s about more than that. It’s also not about being an OC or not - there are a few, rare canon Sues, are far as I am concerned. Not to mention the legion of Canon Stus.
Let’s give an example of a canon Sue.
Now, why do I pick her? Sexist reasons? A woman who is just too interesting? Far from it. I pick her because being a Canon Sue is her main reason d’aitre.
I am, of course, talking about Furude Erika from Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Umineko is a very, very meta-intensive series. The characters actually have duels using arguments about the structure of mystery novels to stab each other. Yes, really. This is a series where arguments CAN draw blood. The story is essentially about a story in a story. There is the meta world - where witches and other special people reside. The people in this world are watching, and POSSIBLY interacting, with our world. A game is taking place, about solving a murder in the world they are watching.
Now, one character in the meta world is Bernkastel. She is a witch, and has the power of Miracles, which means she can do everything, as long as the probability for the event is over zero. In this case, her intention is to solve the murder.
She does this by [i]adding a person that does not exist[/i] to the scene of the murder before the murder happens. In other words: She creates an actual self insert. She writes herself in the story, to help solve the murder, after all: It IS possible there was another person there. Thus, she can do it, and she makes sure to make her creation as annoying as possible.
And this insert, Erika, is a Sue. Why? Is it her cute appearance, resembling her creator? The name, derived from the first name of her creator(Frederica Bernkastel -> Furude eRika - did I mention that Erika's name is written using a fancy hiragana that's out of use? Even the name is THAT special)? Her flawless manners and the ability to immediately fit into a rich, upper class family, who all think her funny and adorable? Her perfect memory - being able to remember everything in a room after seeing it but once? Her intellect - able to solve a riddle a family has failed to break during many years? Her superior hearing? Her incredible luck to have survived a taifun after falling of a ship? That she predicts everyone’s actions easily? The fact that everyone, magically, respects her authority and skill and takes her as the right person to solve the murders, once they start happening, even when there's no reason for that?
Only the last one is Sueish. It is that she literally warps the story by being there, and makes the characters all about her, to the point of OOC. She declasses all other characters as mere side pieces, who are just there to answer her questions, to be dismissed when she is done with them. She ridicules them by her superiority, which she gained only because she was set up that way by her creator, her author. This is bad writing!
Needless to say, for those watching this from the meta world, it’s annoying as heck. The Sue doesn’t fit in, ruins the story for everyone involved, and makes literally everyone else in our world look awful and unintelligent.
A dyed-in-the-wool sue. Because that’s really the issue about Stus. It’s not that they have special traits, are sexy (and, of course, pure if female, which totally isn’t a sexist double standard or anything), or woo all other characters. It is that they turn the canon into something that’s all about them - but not in the way a protagonist does.
A protagonist is important, but a good story usually has worlds that would go on without the Sue or Stu. A Stu brings this to a grinding halt, and at the end, the Sue resembles a black hole, the plot and characters spiraling around her/him to their DOOM and PERIL!!!
The original Mary Sue wasn’t bad because she was with Kirk and the rest of the guys, or because she was the youngest Starfleet Officer ever, or because she was brilliant. She was all of it - and everything was about her, and everyone got OOC because of her. Not even Kirk at his worst moments was even anywhere near as bad for his universe (and I say that as a total and utter hater of Kirk. I have hated the character since I was six). He was respected, sure, but he wasn’t the one star in the universe of everyone in his universe.
Special female characters are Awesome. Hyper intelligent female characters are awesome: Umineko has several of them. Bernkastel is awesome, even when she’s a completely cruel, utterly evil witch who enjoys making people suffer, among other things by torturing them with and by Sues.
She’s not a Sue, but her creation? Erika is.
Oh yes, she is. [Okay, in a way, Erika’s a subversion, since her real personality is rotten, and she ends up being despised by half the cast for her behavior. But that’s outside of the story she was written into. That’s really what happens to most Sues: They’re drawing hate like a magnet, due to being this annoying because of their canon warping properties]
Sues are bad. However, female characters who are loved by their boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s)? Awesome! Them saving the world a few dozen times over? Totally awesome! Them having great skills, playing the flute really well, and looking great in a dress (or a tux) while riding their golden pony? Why not!
That doesn’t make em Sues! Yeah, even you, dear reader, you’re not a Sue or Stu. Even if you got a pony at your birthday once! Not even if it’s a unicorn.
Misogyny
Next is the sexism Charge. It is said that “Mary Sue” is a term with “a loaded history”. It’s sexist!
To which I reply: Nay. It’s misused by sexists. So is the word ‘cunt’, and last that I checked, that didn’t make it a particularly bad bodypart.
LJ Media fandom - and, hey, it certainly isn’t alone with that - has a problem with misogyny. I will not deny this, because it is true. Female characters are definitely getting bashed in some fandoms way more than male characters. Traits that are praised in male characters are cause for bashing in female ones. I am not denying this, nor saying this is okay.
But I am saying that the whole Sue-getting-used-for-all-female-characters problem is nothing inherent to the term Sue. It’s the other way round: Using the term wrong is a problem inherent to the fandom structure and the bashing of female characters. Attacking the term “Sue” is therefore not only counterproductive: It is attacking entirely the wrong target.
It absolves those bashing characters with misogyny of their responsibility - it was just the Mary Sue concept that was bad! And that’s wrong. The problem is this: That female characters are notoriously underappreciated. To bash them, anything available is misused, from traits that would be judged awesome in guys (would you argue those traits are all bad? Why not, if you do so for the concept of Sues?), to the term Sue.
What’s needed isn’t doing away with the term “Sue”, it’s reclaiming female characters and pointing out to bashers what terms like Sue actually mean. In other words:
Hey, misogynistic basher? You keep using that Sue word. I do not think it means what you think it does!
Not to mention that actual Sues are hardly paragons of feminism. I’d argue that a real Sue is one of the more misogynist portrayals of a female character you can do: Ultimately, they’re there for approval of male characters, which usually completes them.
I thought the point was that female characters should be awesome on their own…
What to do if a Sue is spotted
Concrit. And no, I do not mean bashing the author, which is always bad. (Sadly, people seem to only mind when the writer is bashed for writing a Stu. Is getting sporked and flamed for awful purple prose any different? Nope. It's the same bully culture, and shouldn't get a pass just because it's not specifically targetting Sues)
I mean carefully explaining why it is bad, why it makes characters OOC, and why this in turn is usually not very enjoyable to read, especially not in a fanfic.
A Sue Author can be a great, wonderful author. All they need is to know why what they are doing could be made unproblematic. She can do a totally awesome female character without warping the entire story around her. The character will be far more awesome without merely standing by author mandate, no?
We female writers are not so delicate flowers that we can't stand criticism and need to be protected from *GASP* that what we wrote may not be a gold-embedded platin diamond ruby diadem.
And that is my wall of text nobody will ever read. But it was good to get it off my chest ^_^;
-One german loserfangirl with too many favorite female characters to count.
(and, yet, awesome female characters are great)
The current talk in the LJ Metasphere seems to be the old topic of the Sue/Stu. This posting is about Sues, and why I consider them to be a bad thing.
I will also go into why I reject that “Disliking Mary Sues is misogynist”.
For my argument, I will use a minor Spoiler for Umineko no Naku Chiru to illustrate something, so please stop reading if you mind reading about the existence of a specific character in that story.
What is a Sue(or the equivalent, the male Stu)?
Many argue that a Sue is anything out of the ordinary. Having good grades? SUE, therefore a Sue is interesting writing. But that definition is not only wrong - it’s also entirely pointless. By that standard, everyone and everything is a Sue in some way, including my cat (he can jump very high!). It’s not what the term means.
It’s not about being interesting, having one(or more) love interests, or about moving the plot along. It’s about more than that. It’s also not about being an OC or not - there are a few, rare canon Sues, are far as I am concerned. Not to mention the legion of Canon Stus.
Let’s give an example of a canon Sue.
Now, why do I pick her? Sexist reasons? A woman who is just too interesting? Far from it. I pick her because being a Canon Sue is her main reason d’aitre.
I am, of course, talking about Furude Erika from Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Umineko is a very, very meta-intensive series. The characters actually have duels using arguments about the structure of mystery novels to stab each other. Yes, really. This is a series where arguments CAN draw blood. The story is essentially about a story in a story. There is the meta world - where witches and other special people reside. The people in this world are watching, and POSSIBLY interacting, with our world. A game is taking place, about solving a murder in the world they are watching.
Now, one character in the meta world is Bernkastel. She is a witch, and has the power of Miracles, which means she can do everything, as long as the probability for the event is over zero. In this case, her intention is to solve the murder.
She does this by [i]adding a person that does not exist[/i] to the scene of the murder before the murder happens. In other words: She creates an actual self insert. She writes herself in the story, to help solve the murder, after all: It IS possible there was another person there. Thus, she can do it, and she makes sure to make her creation as annoying as possible.
And this insert, Erika, is a Sue. Why? Is it her cute appearance, resembling her creator? The name, derived from the first name of her creator(Frederica Bernkastel -> Furude eRika - did I mention that Erika's name is written using a fancy hiragana that's out of use? Even the name is THAT special)? Her flawless manners and the ability to immediately fit into a rich, upper class family, who all think her funny and adorable? Her perfect memory - being able to remember everything in a room after seeing it but once? Her intellect - able to solve a riddle a family has failed to break during many years? Her superior hearing? Her incredible luck to have survived a taifun after falling of a ship? That she predicts everyone’s actions easily? The fact that everyone, magically, respects her authority and skill and takes her as the right person to solve the murders, once they start happening, even when there's no reason for that?
Only the last one is Sueish. It is that she literally warps the story by being there, and makes the characters all about her, to the point of OOC. She declasses all other characters as mere side pieces, who are just there to answer her questions, to be dismissed when she is done with them. She ridicules them by her superiority, which she gained only because she was set up that way by her creator, her author. This is bad writing!
Needless to say, for those watching this from the meta world, it’s annoying as heck. The Sue doesn’t fit in, ruins the story for everyone involved, and makes literally everyone else in our world look awful and unintelligent.
A dyed-in-the-wool sue. Because that’s really the issue about Stus. It’s not that they have special traits, are sexy (and, of course, pure if female, which totally isn’t a sexist double standard or anything), or woo all other characters. It is that they turn the canon into something that’s all about them - but not in the way a protagonist does.
A protagonist is important, but a good story usually has worlds that would go on without the Sue or Stu. A Stu brings this to a grinding halt, and at the end, the Sue resembles a black hole, the plot and characters spiraling around her/him to their DOOM and PERIL!!!
The original Mary Sue wasn’t bad because she was with Kirk and the rest of the guys, or because she was the youngest Starfleet Officer ever, or because she was brilliant. She was all of it - and everything was about her, and everyone got OOC because of her. Not even Kirk at his worst moments was even anywhere near as bad for his universe (and I say that as a total and utter hater of Kirk. I have hated the character since I was six). He was respected, sure, but he wasn’t the one star in the universe of everyone in his universe.
Special female characters are Awesome. Hyper intelligent female characters are awesome: Umineko has several of them. Bernkastel is awesome, even when she’s a completely cruel, utterly evil witch who enjoys making people suffer, among other things by torturing them with and by Sues.
She’s not a Sue, but her creation? Erika is.
Oh yes, she is. [Okay, in a way, Erika’s a subversion, since her real personality is rotten, and she ends up being despised by half the cast for her behavior. But that’s outside of the story she was written into. That’s really what happens to most Sues: They’re drawing hate like a magnet, due to being this annoying because of their canon warping properties]
Sues are bad. However, female characters who are loved by their boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s)? Awesome! Them saving the world a few dozen times over? Totally awesome! Them having great skills, playing the flute really well, and looking great in a dress (or a tux) while riding their golden pony? Why not!
That doesn’t make em Sues! Yeah, even you, dear reader, you’re not a Sue or Stu. Even if you got a pony at your birthday once! Not even if it’s a unicorn.
Misogyny
Next is the sexism Charge. It is said that “Mary Sue” is a term with “a loaded history”. It’s sexist!
To which I reply: Nay. It’s misused by sexists. So is the word ‘cunt’, and last that I checked, that didn’t make it a particularly bad bodypart.
LJ Media fandom - and, hey, it certainly isn’t alone with that - has a problem with misogyny. I will not deny this, because it is true. Female characters are definitely getting bashed in some fandoms way more than male characters. Traits that are praised in male characters are cause for bashing in female ones. I am not denying this, nor saying this is okay.
But I am saying that the whole Sue-getting-used-for-all-female-characters problem is nothing inherent to the term Sue. It’s the other way round: Using the term wrong is a problem inherent to the fandom structure and the bashing of female characters. Attacking the term “Sue” is therefore not only counterproductive: It is attacking entirely the wrong target.
It absolves those bashing characters with misogyny of their responsibility - it was just the Mary Sue concept that was bad! And that’s wrong. The problem is this: That female characters are notoriously underappreciated. To bash them, anything available is misused, from traits that would be judged awesome in guys (would you argue those traits are all bad? Why not, if you do so for the concept of Sues?), to the term Sue.
What’s needed isn’t doing away with the term “Sue”, it’s reclaiming female characters and pointing out to bashers what terms like Sue actually mean. In other words:
Hey, misogynistic basher? You keep using that Sue word. I do not think it means what you think it does!
Not to mention that actual Sues are hardly paragons of feminism. I’d argue that a real Sue is one of the more misogynist portrayals of a female character you can do: Ultimately, they’re there for approval of male characters, which usually completes them.
I thought the point was that female characters should be awesome on their own…
What to do if a Sue is spotted
Concrit. And no, I do not mean bashing the author, which is always bad. (Sadly, people seem to only mind when the writer is bashed for writing a Stu. Is getting sporked and flamed for awful purple prose any different? Nope. It's the same bully culture, and shouldn't get a pass just because it's not specifically targetting Sues)
I mean carefully explaining why it is bad, why it makes characters OOC, and why this in turn is usually not very enjoyable to read, especially not in a fanfic.
A Sue Author can be a great, wonderful author. All they need is to know why what they are doing could be made unproblematic. She can do a totally awesome female character without warping the entire story around her. The character will be far more awesome without merely standing by author mandate, no?
We female writers are not so delicate flowers that we can't stand criticism and need to be protected from *GASP* that what we wrote may not be a gold-embedded platin diamond ruby diadem.
And that is my wall of text nobody will ever read. But it was good to get it off my chest ^_^;
-One german loserfangirl with too many favorite female characters to count.