Mary Sue Misogyny?
ZeldaQueen: I am writing this, not to be a big meanie head, but to give myself a chance to organize my thoughts in a nice rebuttal. Please no linking of this back, lest I hurt the author's feelings. This is not the entire essay, and you can read the entire thing here. This is just the points I had a specific response to. Hope I make sense.
Note - the essay seems to be protected now. I apologize if you are unable to read it. And if the author somehow does find this, let it be known that I am not attempting to take anything out of context
Writing these women as they appear in canon would constitute writing them as "Mary Sues" -- They're special. They're competent, they're attractive, they have weaknesses and insecurities and by virtue of being protagonists and first-string supporting characters, they warp plots and universes and other characters to their needs. Elizabeth is Peter Burke's greatest weakness; Kel talks to the king and gets him to rescind a law she doesn't like; Number One is executive officer of the Federation Starfleet flagship despite being only a lieutenant and is "the most experienced officer on the ship," second to Pike himself, to boot.
ZeldaQueen: Those things are often indicators of Mary Sues, but don't make characters necessarily Sues. The fact that you pointed out that they have weaknesses and insecurities actually goes against most concepts of Mary Sues. Yes, Sues can be overly special, competent, attractive, and so on. The problem isn't that. The problem is does it make sense. There's a difference between competent and having knowledge of future events that seems extremely unlikely, unless the author looked ahead. There's a difference between having special abilities and having abilities that make them vastly overpowered to the point of being boring.
And Mary Sues can take place in canon. They are called, appropriately enough, Canon Sues. Of course, and this will come up a lot, what constitutes a Canon Sue can vary
These characters are awesome. No really, look at these characters: how awesome are they?
ZeldaQueen: That would depend on the opinion of the viewer. What is a Sue to some people is a fantastic character to others. I know a lot of people who think Amy Pond of Dr. Who is flipping amazing. My mother can't stand her. She thinks Amy is extremely annoying and smug and thus probably would consider the amount of attention she gets as unnecessary and undeserving. To my mother, I'm sure Amy would qualify as a Sue
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Once upon a time, the term "Mary Sue" was a value-neutral genre descriptor: Original (female, let's be real here) characters who entered the story, won the admiration of all the canon characters around her, who won the day and maybe developed a romantic relationship with one or more of said canon characters (usually the author's favorite).
Pat Pflieger writes her paper, 150 Years of Mary Sue:
The Cinderella portrayed by Drew Barrymore in the movie Ever After, especially, is everything that defines the Mary Sue -- intelligent, funny, beautiful, physically strong, competent, lovable -- but there isn't the hint of self-deprecation we see in some of the Mary Sues cited above. From Schumann's paper, we get a sense that young teenaged girls now aren't as willing to abdicate their natural powers as were girls of previous generations; it's their right to be competent and strong, and to carry off the occasional prince over their shoulders.
ZeldaQueen: One would probably say that the reason Drew Barrymore's Cinderella is not a Mary Sue while others (say, Disney's) are has to do with the characters. Danielle was strong and competent, but she didn't singlehandedly solve every single problem that came her way. She didn't give her stepmother a speech that caused the Countess to renounce her wicked ways. While the prince was interested in her, he didn't fawn over her twenty four-seven. She defended her honor by pointing a sword at a man's throat, but didn't defeat a trained soldier in armed combat.
The term was coined in 1974. It is not the value-neutral term it once was, and you only have to look so far as Protectors of the Plot Continuum (PPC) to see this for yourself. Or Godawful Fanfiction. Or
marysues, or
deleterius, or ...
Let's look at PPC. The website intro reads:
But changing the *main plotline* of the canon story is ridiculous. (Except in speculative AU "what-if" type stories.) And Mary Sues upstage the canonical main characters, which really should not happen. If you want to be the main character, try doing original fiction. Then you can even publish it without breaking copyright laws, maybe even get rich. But if you do that, please knock your character down a few notches from "angel".
The Fanlore description of PPC reads:
Protectors of the Plot Continuum, often abreviated PPC, is a cross between sporking and an RPG. The PPC is an organisation dedicated to the elimination of badfic. It is divided into various departments such as the Department of Mary Sues and the Department of Bad Slash. Writers create characters called Agents who go into badfic, spork the story, and fix it by killing Mary Sues, exorcising OOC characters, and otherwise restoring the story universe back to its original state.
Translated, roughly: PPC goes around bullying tweens, teens, young women and yes: older women, too -- for daring to write fanfiction not up to their (dubious) standards. For writing original female characters, minor canon characters and major canon characters in a manner that is empowering to them.
ZeldaQueen: I fail to see how they are any more "bullying" than the cast of MST3K was to the movies they rifted. Or reviewers of Channel Awesome are to the games and movies that they scream about. As they - and many other sporkers - point out, the authors who write Mary Sues put them online. They are inviting commentary. They are making their works public.
As for empowering - there is a difference between a liberated, empowered woman and a female character that is so overpowered that it just isn't funny. Take, for example, the infamous Rose Potter. She has mental abilities out the wazoo, can transform into various stuff, and has kung-foo abilities. The author also takes every minute available to describe her breasts and other private bits, basically devoting her and almost every other female character to personal fanservice. Is that "empowering"? Jenna Silverblade was most definitely a Mary Sue and acted like June Cleaver. Is she empowered? What about Holly Potter, who has mental powers and strong magic, but is always crying and wangsting and never doing anything, instead letting her multitude of male friends take action? Hell, what about Bella Swan? Case in point. In fact, that is one of the reasons so many people hate Bella - she lives her life in the service of men and doesn't think for herself at all
For writing Tenth Walkers, for writing fourth members of the Harry Potter trio, for making Christine Chapel an Olympic-level figure skater before she entered nursing. For empowering themselves through their writing.
ZeldaQueen: I repeat, there is a difference between empowering a character and making them so teeth-gnashingly angsty or smug or undeserving of so much attention. In a way, it's like how people think that just because a female character beats up men, whether or not the men deserve it, it's "feminist". It doesn't work like that
The Call of Mary Sue isn't just limited to PPC, of course, nor is the mission directive: Check out
deleterius's userinfo page:
If you find your story here and are upset about it, try to relax.
There are reasons you should try to relax:
1. Throwing a tempter tantrum will only serve to amuse us further.
2. Amusing us further will cause us to sink our claws and teeth in deeper.
3. Throwing a temper tantrum will not incite me to remove your fic. So long as no LJ TOS issues are being violated, it will stay posted. Don't like it? Sucks to be you.
4. "But it's fanFICTION, I can do whatever I want!" No, you can't. Move along.
And from the linked rant, by
magdaleina (in 2005, I will grant you: ancient internet history, back before we talked about why this sort of thing was even discussed, before anyone had bothered questioning whether this behavior was bullying, was harassment, was anything other than okay.).
What those intimidated by criticism fail to realize is that they needn't remind anyone -- specifically not a fan of a book who actually read it -- that their work is fiction (because half the time, the reviewer would rather not believe the story was ever written, much less whether it's real or not). What a reviewer is actually questioning is the merit of the writer's fandom; whether or not they are a true fan.
Instead of, "write to the best of your ability", the message is: Don't you dare write characters who are too perfect! Don't you dare write characters who are too flawed! Don't you dare make your characters too forthright or too timid, too connected to canon characters or not connected enough!
ZeldaQueen: I once wrote a rather awful Mary Sue. She was a first-time Pokemon trainer who snuck out on a journey against her parents' wishes, had more Pokemon than I could count on one hand before reaching the first city, had bright pink hair, and could talk to her Pokemon. Looking back, that fanfiction makes my teeth ache. I'd hardly call something like that writing "to the best of my ability"
There's also the fact that a lot of Mary Sue writers have no shortage of fans and positive reviewers. Rose Potter, one of the most notorious of Harry Potter Sues, has an entire Yahoo group dedicated to her. Any time there is a rare criticism, all of the other members swarm to accuse that person of being a troublemaker, asking why they're there if they don't like the story, to go read something else if they don't like this, and if they know so much, why don't they go write somethin better?
Don't you dare put any of yourself into your characters, lest you commit the crime of pepper jack cheese!
Pepper Jack Cheese, from the Godawful Fanfiction Dictionary, linked above:
Pepper Jack Cheese = Where a badfic author includes silly little details that have nothing to do with the plot, for his/her own amusement. Well known sporker Pottersues came up with the term from a Harry Potter fanfic where the author repeatedly mentioned that Hermione liked pepper jack cheese (which isn't available in the UK) just because it was the author's favourite cheese.
And if you do, if you dare: we'll make fun of you for it, we'll mock you for it, we'll question your worth as a writer and as a person behind your back! We'll dogpile you and we'll get all of our friends to tell you you're wrong-wrong-wrong for daring to question us, to defend yourself, and if we're feeling really ambitious we'll make you cry and then laugh about it!
ZeldaQueen: I personally don't care about stuff like that, depending on the context. I know that there are people who like to write fics where Harry and Malfoy face off on American Idol. If a fic's supposed to be silly, I personally don't care. I know some people do, I just don't.
Here's the rub though - if one is writing in a fandom, one is usually expected to stay within the realms of what is available and acceptable, given the time and place. To use an example, My Inner Life is set in the quasi-medieval setting of the land of Hyrule, yet the writer felt the need to continue to put in things like Christian wedding ceremonies, modern kitchen appliances, heated baths, and the like.
Bottom line is that there's a difference between putting "any of yourself" into a character and fitting your character around yourself to the extent that it noticeably is anachronistic.
I'm also sort of getting mixed messages from the "behind your back" thing. To me, that's the point of sporking - it's a private way to let off one's frustrations at an unbelievable character or story. It's a way to release steam without directing it directly at the authors of the works (and, at the risk of sounding like a bitch here, it also seems to me that a lot of the more prominent Mary Sue writers are also rather snitty when it comes to criticism of any sort, flames or not, so it seems that criticism, however snarky, is only best behind closed doors). There's also the fact that this essay continues to act as if sporkers are waving their products in the authors' faces, go "nya nya, lookey what I did!", but then implies that sporkers are sneaky bastards for doing it in private. If they keep it hidden, how the hell does it cause all of this self esteem ruining or whatnot? The authors shouldn't know about it. The only way they would is if they're shown it (which, I'll admit, is bad taste) or if they themselves actively seek it out. If it's the latter case, then they have no right to complain, because the sporking was done in private and intended to be kept private and the authors would essentially be pitching fits over the literary equivalent of eavesdropping. And, as Aslan reminds us in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, eavesdroppers rarely hear compliments about themselves
And yeah, this bears a remarkable resemblance to the bullying a goodly number of us experienced as geeky misfits, growing up.
ZeldaQueen: And what about the aforementioned authors who throw snit fits at the first sign of criticism, period. What about the many, many authors who have dozens of fans for their Mary Sues? If someone has two hundred reviews praising their Sue to the high heavens, then I don't have much pity for them getting one or two mocking sporkings any more than I feel sorry when a handful of people say that Meyer or Rowling or Stephen King is a hack writer, amidst their respective ginormous fanbases
This is the environment of Mary Sue. This is the context and the history, today, of Mary Sue.
ZeldaQueen: Yes, how dare people make fun of poorly-written characters? The nerve!
So to abandon for a moment my quasi-professional tone:
If you think that you can use "Mary Sue" as a value-neutral term in this environment, and with this history, you are contributing to the environment which approves and encourages the bullying and harassment of women for the sin of daring -- daring! -- to write characters in such a way that is empowering to them.
ZeldaQueen: What.
I'm personally wondering why the author of this essay keeps insisting that Mary Sue was ever a "value neutral" term. It has always referred to the same thing. If anything, the only difference is that it has became more common to label men with the title as well.
Second of all, I've already addressed the fallacy of assuming that Mary Sues are automatically empowering to women. No, author, they are not, no more than Bellatrix Lestrange or Saffron from Firefly are "feminist" just because they beat up people indiscriminately.
Now see, the logic failing I see here is that the author seems to be going under the idea that "empowered female = Being Called Mary Sue = Misogynistic". That is not true. She pointed out that a good many strong female characters are not Mary Sues. Even within fanfiction, there are a lot of original characters or even rewritten canon characters that are empowered and not Sues. A Sue is not made through her power or connections or attractiveness or intelligence. She or he is made through how those qualities are applied. If a character is allegedly uninteresting and unattractive but gains the instant adoration of everyone in the room, if a character is way overpowered without any drawbacks or compensation, if a character's only flaws are ones that aren't their fault or aren't truly flaws to begin with, if a character is a complete and utter jerkass to everyone for no reason and no one ever blames or calls them out on it - those are signs of a Sue
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Writing "Mary Sues" is empowering. Writing them being awesome is empowering. Calling Mary Sue, and contributing to an environment such as the above, which encourages the denigration of female awesomeness in fiction, which encourages the bullying and harassment of participants in female awesome, is participating in that culture.
Calling "Mary Sue" in this environment is shaming women for empowering themselves.
There is no substantive harm in writing a "Mary Sue" -- there is no substantive harm in creating a character, original or otherwise, who "warps the world around them", who is "adored by all for no particular reason", who wins the day.
ZeldaQueen: There is no harm in writing Mary Sues, no not at all. There is no harm in engaging in fantasy. The thing is, when you write such a character and put it on the internet, for all of the public to see and criticize, you are asking for people who don't like it to make fun of it! If you want to have fun and write something that's not to be taken seriously, keep it on your computer in private. Or in a journal in the bottom of your closet. But don't write something and then complain when people pick at it.
Also, why does the author keep only referring to female Sues? What about Gary Stus? How do they fit into the equation?
There is substantive harm in bullying and shaming real people for empowering themselves through their writing. Words have power. Words cause harm. Words hurt, and the wounds they leave are deeper and longer-lasting than many physical wounds. I nearly stopped writing entirely, as a teen, after having my work and my OC called "Mary Sue". I have friends who did stop writing because of it.
ZeldaQueen: Again, if you put your work in public, for all to see, expect people to criticize it. People will call Mary Sues for what they are, even if it is not in sporking.
And that Mary Sue of mine, in that Pokemon fanfiction I mentioned? I put it up when I was fourteen. That was when I got the only review, which said in the first sentence that she was a Mary Sue and pointed out all of the many plot holes I had in the first chapter alone. I was a bit stung, yes, but I realized that the guy was right. If you can't survive your characters being called a "Mary Sue", I don't know what to say. What this comes across as is that those works got bad reviews which couldn't be dealt with. I don't know. I don't know what those reviews were like. But it doesn't help when you pull the "fit and flounce" card
Before anyone says: "Oh, they/you should just have sucked it up and grown a thicker skin! Learn to accept criticism!"
Think.
You are blaming the victims of bullying for their bullies' behavior.
That is Not. Okay. Ever.
ZeldaQueen: The "victims" are also the ones who made their works public. They put it up for everyone to see and criticize. And, in my experience, a lot of Mary Sue criticism comes from disappointment. Readers check out something, looking for an interesting read. Instead, they get their favorite characters twisted into unrecognizable personalities. Characters are demonized or made almost unrecognizable. The focus is shifted from the protagonist, who they wanted to read about, to some random character who just dropped out of the sky and who shouldn't matter at all in this adventure - but who somehow got herself shoehorned into the thick of the action. A character who is smug and too dumb to live, only surviving because the author favors her. A character who edges between a pair of canon devoted lovers, just because the author wanted to get into one of their pants. A character who bashes and hates on the characters the author hates and is always agreed with, even if the reader knows that the canon characters would rip this new character a new one ordinarily.
Or heck, look at the Twilight series, and all of the people who call Bella a Mary Sue. What's one of the biggest complaints about her? She's boring, she's bland, and in real life no one would look twice at her. And we're given four entire books, filled to the brim with everyone talking about how wonderful Bella is, how she's so clever and funny, how she's gorgeous, how everyone wants to get in her pants, and how werewolves and vampires will go to war for her. It makes no sense and leaves readers gnashing their teeth because no one will call Bella out on anything or react believably to her. It's that annoying.
And finally, I must repeat my previous point - what about Mary Sues that are, themselves, quite misogynistic? That is one of my personal peeves when I spork. Just because a Sue is powered and hot and gets a lot of attention doesn't mean that she's somehow a great example of a strong female character. Look at Sue-Hermione in the Hogwarts Exposed series, and how she basically adjusts her views of sexuality to fit what Harry wants, instead of doing what she wants. Or how the other Mary Sue girls live their sex lives by their own boyfriends. Or one particularly galling chapter, when Hermione is all but forced to accept her eleven-year-old daughter's offer to use her empath powers to rub her breasts and keep them firm and perky. Because Hermione will be having a baby and no one wants her to naturally become saggy or wrinkly.
So yeah, what about cases like that? If the sporker's complaint is that the work is misogynistic, is the sporking itself misogynistic? Does the misogyny balance out somehow?
And am I the only one growing kind of fond of the word "misogyny"? Misogyny!
And this, ladies and gentlemen, this is the baggage the term "Mary Sue" comes with. This is the context. This is the culture and the environment and the experience of many, and it cannot be divorced from the term itself.
ZeldaQueen: That's what the term has always been associated with. The term was first used for a parody sue, in a Star Trek fanfiction. She would have fit this author's idea of "empowered woman" - she was fifteen, the youngest Star Trek officer, ran the ship single handed, saved the crew when they were captured, and honored by all when she died. She was meant to be a scathing mockery of characters in that vein and was never meant to be taken seriously
When someone says, "your semantic choices are hurting me" the decent human being response is to access how you can stop hurting people with your semantic choices, not to throw up your hands and go:
"BUT I DON'T WANNA! I LIKE MY HURTFUL WORDS!! YOU'RE JUST BEING OVERSENSITIVE!!!"
ZeldaQueen: I'd like to repeat my previous point - what about authors of Mary Sues who do just that? The ones who refer to all criticism, no matter how kind, as hurtful flames and just throw a fit over it and flounce off instead of accepting the criticism? From what I've noticed, those are the worst Sues and those are the ones most likely to be sporked
...
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I would like to close with two quotations, one from AC Crispin, who you might know as the author of the Han Solo trilogy:
The term 'Mary Sue' constitutes a put-down, implying that the character so summarily dismissed is not a true character, no matter how well drawn, what sex, species, or degree of individuality.
Bacon-Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women, Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. via Wikipedia
ZeldaQueen: Generally, if a character is "well drawn", then people don't think that's a Mary Sue. The trouble is that a "well drawn" character depends
Another is on a fannish essay which summed up my desire to see "Mary Sue" removed from fannish parlance far more eloquently than I just have.
Thirdly, the accusation of “Mary Sue” is most often made against those characters appearing in stories authored by young women. They are problematic (it is said) because they are shameless self-inserts and represent a female fantasy and nothing else.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?
It seems to me that male-authored literature and media is full of self-inserts that represent male fantasies. How many skinny nerds become superheroes or martial arts masters or secret agents charged with saving the world? How many of them get ripped and get the girl? How many adolescent males authoring fan fiction do you think make their male self-inserts well-rounded characters? And how much critique do you think these young men get when they fail to do so?
We not only critique young women; we made up a whole term to point out their literary sins!
No, “Mary Sue” has to go. Not only is it being applied too broadly to exclude female characters in general, but it is being used to devalue the writings and fantasies of young women. It asks, why should they be writing about themselves as an equal, as a Tenth Walker, when they could just pick one of the boys that JRRT gave them to write about?
by Tolkien fan Dawn, at The Midhavens, March 2009
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ZeldaQueen: There is nothing wrong with female fantasy, so long as it is tasteful and well-written. The reason people complain about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, as I said before, was the unrealistic reactions to Bella's character. J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, wrote Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley. Both are smart, brave, loyal, attractive, and very important. The main character is dependent on both for some degree or another. I'm not sure how much fantasy Rowling uses them for, but she has admitted that Hermione is her closest to a self-insert.
Not just Rowling though - Diana Wynne Jones, Louis Lowery, Gail Carson Levine, Patricia Wrede, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, they're all female authors who have written female leads who are strong and interesting characters. I don't hear of many people calling Sophie Hatter, Kira, Ella, Cimorene, Emma Woodhouse, Lizzy Bennett, or Jane Eyre Mary Sues though
Just a note before we go: If you are going to ~~titter titter~~ insinuate or state outright that your experience seeing "Mary Sue" used as a value-neutral term somehow invalidates my or others' experience being bullied, harassed or discouraged from writing female characters in a manner that is empowering to them: You are welcome to keep your mouth shut, and you are doubly welcome to remove yourself from my safe space in my journal.
ZeldaQueen: Did...you just pull the standard Mary Sue author "don't like, don't read" card? O_o
Return to the Sporking Chamber
Note - the essay seems to be protected now. I apologize if you are unable to read it. And if the author somehow does find this, let it be known that I am not attempting to take anything out of context
Writing these women as they appear in canon would constitute writing them as "Mary Sues" -- They're special. They're competent, they're attractive, they have weaknesses and insecurities and by virtue of being protagonists and first-string supporting characters, they warp plots and universes and other characters to their needs. Elizabeth is Peter Burke's greatest weakness; Kel talks to the king and gets him to rescind a law she doesn't like; Number One is executive officer of the Federation Starfleet flagship despite being only a lieutenant and is "the most experienced officer on the ship," second to Pike himself, to boot.
ZeldaQueen: Those things are often indicators of Mary Sues, but don't make characters necessarily Sues. The fact that you pointed out that they have weaknesses and insecurities actually goes against most concepts of Mary Sues. Yes, Sues can be overly special, competent, attractive, and so on. The problem isn't that. The problem is does it make sense. There's a difference between competent and having knowledge of future events that seems extremely unlikely, unless the author looked ahead. There's a difference between having special abilities and having abilities that make them vastly overpowered to the point of being boring.
And Mary Sues can take place in canon. They are called, appropriately enough, Canon Sues. Of course, and this will come up a lot, what constitutes a Canon Sue can vary
These characters are awesome. No really, look at these characters: how awesome are they?
ZeldaQueen: That would depend on the opinion of the viewer. What is a Sue to some people is a fantastic character to others. I know a lot of people who think Amy Pond of Dr. Who is flipping amazing. My mother can't stand her. She thinks Amy is extremely annoying and smug and thus probably would consider the amount of attention she gets as unnecessary and undeserving. To my mother, I'm sure Amy would qualify as a Sue
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Once upon a time, the term "Mary Sue" was a value-neutral genre descriptor: Original (female, let's be real here) characters who entered the story, won the admiration of all the canon characters around her, who won the day and maybe developed a romantic relationship with one or more of said canon characters (usually the author's favorite).
Pat Pflieger writes her paper, 150 Years of Mary Sue:
The Cinderella portrayed by Drew Barrymore in the movie Ever After, especially, is everything that defines the Mary Sue -- intelligent, funny, beautiful, physically strong, competent, lovable -- but there isn't the hint of self-deprecation we see in some of the Mary Sues cited above. From Schumann's paper, we get a sense that young teenaged girls now aren't as willing to abdicate their natural powers as were girls of previous generations; it's their right to be competent and strong, and to carry off the occasional prince over their shoulders.
ZeldaQueen: One would probably say that the reason Drew Barrymore's Cinderella is not a Mary Sue while others (say, Disney's) are has to do with the characters. Danielle was strong and competent, but she didn't singlehandedly solve every single problem that came her way. She didn't give her stepmother a speech that caused the Countess to renounce her wicked ways. While the prince was interested in her, he didn't fawn over her twenty four-seven. She defended her honor by pointing a sword at a man's throat, but didn't defeat a trained soldier in armed combat.
The term was coined in 1974. It is not the value-neutral term it once was, and you only have to look so far as Protectors of the Plot Continuum (PPC) to see this for yourself. Or Godawful Fanfiction. Or
marysues, or
deleterius, or ...
Let's look at PPC. The website intro reads:
But changing the *main plotline* of the canon story is ridiculous. (Except in speculative AU "what-if" type stories.) And Mary Sues upstage the canonical main characters, which really should not happen. If you want to be the main character, try doing original fiction. Then you can even publish it without breaking copyright laws, maybe even get rich. But if you do that, please knock your character down a few notches from "angel".
The Fanlore description of PPC reads:
Protectors of the Plot Continuum, often abreviated PPC, is a cross between sporking and an RPG. The PPC is an organisation dedicated to the elimination of badfic. It is divided into various departments such as the Department of Mary Sues and the Department of Bad Slash. Writers create characters called Agents who go into badfic, spork the story, and fix it by killing Mary Sues, exorcising OOC characters, and otherwise restoring the story universe back to its original state.
Translated, roughly: PPC goes around bullying tweens, teens, young women and yes: older women, too -- for daring to write fanfiction not up to their (dubious) standards. For writing original female characters, minor canon characters and major canon characters in a manner that is empowering to them.
ZeldaQueen: I fail to see how they are any more "bullying" than the cast of MST3K was to the movies they rifted. Or reviewers of Channel Awesome are to the games and movies that they scream about. As they - and many other sporkers - point out, the authors who write Mary Sues put them online. They are inviting commentary. They are making their works public.
As for empowering - there is a difference between a liberated, empowered woman and a female character that is so overpowered that it just isn't funny. Take, for example, the infamous Rose Potter. She has mental abilities out the wazoo, can transform into various stuff, and has kung-foo abilities. The author also takes every minute available to describe her breasts and other private bits, basically devoting her and almost every other female character to personal fanservice. Is that "empowering"? Jenna Silverblade was most definitely a Mary Sue and acted like June Cleaver. Is she empowered? What about Holly Potter, who has mental powers and strong magic, but is always crying and wangsting and never doing anything, instead letting her multitude of male friends take action? Hell, what about Bella Swan? Case in point. In fact, that is one of the reasons so many people hate Bella - she lives her life in the service of men and doesn't think for herself at all
For writing Tenth Walkers, for writing fourth members of the Harry Potter trio, for making Christine Chapel an Olympic-level figure skater before she entered nursing. For empowering themselves through their writing.
ZeldaQueen: I repeat, there is a difference between empowering a character and making them so teeth-gnashingly angsty or smug or undeserving of so much attention. In a way, it's like how people think that just because a female character beats up men, whether or not the men deserve it, it's "feminist". It doesn't work like that
The Call of Mary Sue isn't just limited to PPC, of course, nor is the mission directive: Check out
deleterius's userinfo page:
If you find your story here and are upset about it, try to relax.
There are reasons you should try to relax:
1. Throwing a tempter tantrum will only serve to amuse us further.
2. Amusing us further will cause us to sink our claws and teeth in deeper.
3. Throwing a temper tantrum will not incite me to remove your fic. So long as no LJ TOS issues are being violated, it will stay posted. Don't like it? Sucks to be you.
4. "But it's fanFICTION, I can do whatever I want!" No, you can't. Move along.
And from the linked rant, by
magdaleina (in 2005, I will grant you: ancient internet history, back before we talked about why this sort of thing was even discussed, before anyone had bothered questioning whether this behavior was bullying, was harassment, was anything other than okay.).
What those intimidated by criticism fail to realize is that they needn't remind anyone -- specifically not a fan of a book who actually read it -- that their work is fiction (because half the time, the reviewer would rather not believe the story was ever written, much less whether it's real or not). What a reviewer is actually questioning is the merit of the writer's fandom; whether or not they are a true fan.
Instead of, "write to the best of your ability", the message is: Don't you dare write characters who are too perfect! Don't you dare write characters who are too flawed! Don't you dare make your characters too forthright or too timid, too connected to canon characters or not connected enough!
ZeldaQueen: I once wrote a rather awful Mary Sue. She was a first-time Pokemon trainer who snuck out on a journey against her parents' wishes, had more Pokemon than I could count on one hand before reaching the first city, had bright pink hair, and could talk to her Pokemon. Looking back, that fanfiction makes my teeth ache. I'd hardly call something like that writing "to the best of my ability"
There's also the fact that a lot of Mary Sue writers have no shortage of fans and positive reviewers. Rose Potter, one of the most notorious of Harry Potter Sues, has an entire Yahoo group dedicated to her. Any time there is a rare criticism, all of the other members swarm to accuse that person of being a troublemaker, asking why they're there if they don't like the story, to go read something else if they don't like this, and if they know so much, why don't they go write somethin better?
Don't you dare put any of yourself into your characters, lest you commit the crime of pepper jack cheese!
Pepper Jack Cheese, from the Godawful Fanfiction Dictionary, linked above:
Pepper Jack Cheese = Where a badfic author includes silly little details that have nothing to do with the plot, for his/her own amusement. Well known sporker Pottersues came up with the term from a Harry Potter fanfic where the author repeatedly mentioned that Hermione liked pepper jack cheese (which isn't available in the UK) just because it was the author's favourite cheese.
And if you do, if you dare: we'll make fun of you for it, we'll mock you for it, we'll question your worth as a writer and as a person behind your back! We'll dogpile you and we'll get all of our friends to tell you you're wrong-wrong-wrong for daring to question us, to defend yourself, and if we're feeling really ambitious we'll make you cry and then laugh about it!
ZeldaQueen: I personally don't care about stuff like that, depending on the context. I know that there are people who like to write fics where Harry and Malfoy face off on American Idol. If a fic's supposed to be silly, I personally don't care. I know some people do, I just don't.
Here's the rub though - if one is writing in a fandom, one is usually expected to stay within the realms of what is available and acceptable, given the time and place. To use an example, My Inner Life is set in the quasi-medieval setting of the land of Hyrule, yet the writer felt the need to continue to put in things like Christian wedding ceremonies, modern kitchen appliances, heated baths, and the like.
Bottom line is that there's a difference between putting "any of yourself" into a character and fitting your character around yourself to the extent that it noticeably is anachronistic.
I'm also sort of getting mixed messages from the "behind your back" thing. To me, that's the point of sporking - it's a private way to let off one's frustrations at an unbelievable character or story. It's a way to release steam without directing it directly at the authors of the works (and, at the risk of sounding like a bitch here, it also seems to me that a lot of the more prominent Mary Sue writers are also rather snitty when it comes to criticism of any sort, flames or not, so it seems that criticism, however snarky, is only best behind closed doors). There's also the fact that this essay continues to act as if sporkers are waving their products in the authors' faces, go "nya nya, lookey what I did!", but then implies that sporkers are sneaky bastards for doing it in private. If they keep it hidden, how the hell does it cause all of this self esteem ruining or whatnot? The authors shouldn't know about it. The only way they would is if they're shown it (which, I'll admit, is bad taste) or if they themselves actively seek it out. If it's the latter case, then they have no right to complain, because the sporking was done in private and intended to be kept private and the authors would essentially be pitching fits over the literary equivalent of eavesdropping. And, as Aslan reminds us in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, eavesdroppers rarely hear compliments about themselves
And yeah, this bears a remarkable resemblance to the bullying a goodly number of us experienced as geeky misfits, growing up.
ZeldaQueen: And what about the aforementioned authors who throw snit fits at the first sign of criticism, period. What about the many, many authors who have dozens of fans for their Mary Sues? If someone has two hundred reviews praising their Sue to the high heavens, then I don't have much pity for them getting one or two mocking sporkings any more than I feel sorry when a handful of people say that Meyer or Rowling or Stephen King is a hack writer, amidst their respective ginormous fanbases
This is the environment of Mary Sue. This is the context and the history, today, of Mary Sue.
ZeldaQueen: Yes, how dare people make fun of poorly-written characters? The nerve!
So to abandon for a moment my quasi-professional tone:
If you think that you can use "Mary Sue" as a value-neutral term in this environment, and with this history, you are contributing to the environment which approves and encourages the bullying and harassment of women for the sin of daring -- daring! -- to write characters in such a way that is empowering to them.
ZeldaQueen: What.
I'm personally wondering why the author of this essay keeps insisting that Mary Sue was ever a "value neutral" term. It has always referred to the same thing. If anything, the only difference is that it has became more common to label men with the title as well.
Second of all, I've already addressed the fallacy of assuming that Mary Sues are automatically empowering to women. No, author, they are not, no more than Bellatrix Lestrange or Saffron from Firefly are "feminist" just because they beat up people indiscriminately.
Now see, the logic failing I see here is that the author seems to be going under the idea that "empowered female = Being Called Mary Sue = Misogynistic". That is not true. She pointed out that a good many strong female characters are not Mary Sues. Even within fanfiction, there are a lot of original characters or even rewritten canon characters that are empowered and not Sues. A Sue is not made through her power or connections or attractiveness or intelligence. She or he is made through how those qualities are applied. If a character is allegedly uninteresting and unattractive but gains the instant adoration of everyone in the room, if a character is way overpowered without any drawbacks or compensation, if a character's only flaws are ones that aren't their fault or aren't truly flaws to begin with, if a character is a complete and utter jerkass to everyone for no reason and no one ever blames or calls them out on it - those are signs of a Sue
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Writing "Mary Sues" is empowering. Writing them being awesome is empowering. Calling Mary Sue, and contributing to an environment such as the above, which encourages the denigration of female awesomeness in fiction, which encourages the bullying and harassment of participants in female awesome, is participating in that culture.
Calling "Mary Sue" in this environment is shaming women for empowering themselves.
There is no substantive harm in writing a "Mary Sue" -- there is no substantive harm in creating a character, original or otherwise, who "warps the world around them", who is "adored by all for no particular reason", who wins the day.
ZeldaQueen: There is no harm in writing Mary Sues, no not at all. There is no harm in engaging in fantasy. The thing is, when you write such a character and put it on the internet, for all of the public to see and criticize, you are asking for people who don't like it to make fun of it! If you want to have fun and write something that's not to be taken seriously, keep it on your computer in private. Or in a journal in the bottom of your closet. But don't write something and then complain when people pick at it.
Also, why does the author keep only referring to female Sues? What about Gary Stus? How do they fit into the equation?
There is substantive harm in bullying and shaming real people for empowering themselves through their writing. Words have power. Words cause harm. Words hurt, and the wounds they leave are deeper and longer-lasting than many physical wounds. I nearly stopped writing entirely, as a teen, after having my work and my OC called "Mary Sue". I have friends who did stop writing because of it.
ZeldaQueen: Again, if you put your work in public, for all to see, expect people to criticize it. People will call Mary Sues for what they are, even if it is not in sporking.
And that Mary Sue of mine, in that Pokemon fanfiction I mentioned? I put it up when I was fourteen. That was when I got the only review, which said in the first sentence that she was a Mary Sue and pointed out all of the many plot holes I had in the first chapter alone. I was a bit stung, yes, but I realized that the guy was right. If you can't survive your characters being called a "Mary Sue", I don't know what to say. What this comes across as is that those works got bad reviews which couldn't be dealt with. I don't know. I don't know what those reviews were like. But it doesn't help when you pull the "fit and flounce" card
Before anyone says: "Oh, they/you should just have sucked it up and grown a thicker skin! Learn to accept criticism!"
Think.
You are blaming the victims of bullying for their bullies' behavior.
That is Not. Okay. Ever.
ZeldaQueen: The "victims" are also the ones who made their works public. They put it up for everyone to see and criticize. And, in my experience, a lot of Mary Sue criticism comes from disappointment. Readers check out something, looking for an interesting read. Instead, they get their favorite characters twisted into unrecognizable personalities. Characters are demonized or made almost unrecognizable. The focus is shifted from the protagonist, who they wanted to read about, to some random character who just dropped out of the sky and who shouldn't matter at all in this adventure - but who somehow got herself shoehorned into the thick of the action. A character who is smug and too dumb to live, only surviving because the author favors her. A character who edges between a pair of canon devoted lovers, just because the author wanted to get into one of their pants. A character who bashes and hates on the characters the author hates and is always agreed with, even if the reader knows that the canon characters would rip this new character a new one ordinarily.
Or heck, look at the Twilight series, and all of the people who call Bella a Mary Sue. What's one of the biggest complaints about her? She's boring, she's bland, and in real life no one would look twice at her. And we're given four entire books, filled to the brim with everyone talking about how wonderful Bella is, how she's so clever and funny, how she's gorgeous, how everyone wants to get in her pants, and how werewolves and vampires will go to war for her. It makes no sense and leaves readers gnashing their teeth because no one will call Bella out on anything or react believably to her. It's that annoying.
And finally, I must repeat my previous point - what about Mary Sues that are, themselves, quite misogynistic? That is one of my personal peeves when I spork. Just because a Sue is powered and hot and gets a lot of attention doesn't mean that she's somehow a great example of a strong female character. Look at Sue-Hermione in the Hogwarts Exposed series, and how she basically adjusts her views of sexuality to fit what Harry wants, instead of doing what she wants. Or how the other Mary Sue girls live their sex lives by their own boyfriends. Or one particularly galling chapter, when Hermione is all but forced to accept her eleven-year-old daughter's offer to use her empath powers to rub her breasts and keep them firm and perky. Because Hermione will be having a baby and no one wants her to naturally become saggy or wrinkly.
So yeah, what about cases like that? If the sporker's complaint is that the work is misogynistic, is the sporking itself misogynistic? Does the misogyny balance out somehow?
And am I the only one growing kind of fond of the word "misogyny"? Misogyny!
And this, ladies and gentlemen, this is the baggage the term "Mary Sue" comes with. This is the context. This is the culture and the environment and the experience of many, and it cannot be divorced from the term itself.
ZeldaQueen: That's what the term has always been associated with. The term was first used for a parody sue, in a Star Trek fanfiction. She would have fit this author's idea of "empowered woman" - she was fifteen, the youngest Star Trek officer, ran the ship single handed, saved the crew when they were captured, and honored by all when she died. She was meant to be a scathing mockery of characters in that vein and was never meant to be taken seriously
When someone says, "your semantic choices are hurting me" the decent human being response is to access how you can stop hurting people with your semantic choices, not to throw up your hands and go:
"BUT I DON'T WANNA! I LIKE MY HURTFUL WORDS!! YOU'RE JUST BEING OVERSENSITIVE!!!"
ZeldaQueen: I'd like to repeat my previous point - what about authors of Mary Sues who do just that? The ones who refer to all criticism, no matter how kind, as hurtful flames and just throw a fit over it and flounce off instead of accepting the criticism? From what I've noticed, those are the worst Sues and those are the ones most likely to be sporked
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I would like to close with two quotations, one from AC Crispin, who you might know as the author of the Han Solo trilogy:
The term 'Mary Sue' constitutes a put-down, implying that the character so summarily dismissed is not a true character, no matter how well drawn, what sex, species, or degree of individuality.
Bacon-Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women, Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. via Wikipedia
ZeldaQueen: Generally, if a character is "well drawn", then people don't think that's a Mary Sue. The trouble is that a "well drawn" character depends
Another is on a fannish essay which summed up my desire to see "Mary Sue" removed from fannish parlance far more eloquently than I just have.
Thirdly, the accusation of “Mary Sue” is most often made against those characters appearing in stories authored by young women. They are problematic (it is said) because they are shameless self-inserts and represent a female fantasy and nothing else.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?
It seems to me that male-authored literature and media is full of self-inserts that represent male fantasies. How many skinny nerds become superheroes or martial arts masters or secret agents charged with saving the world? How many of them get ripped and get the girl? How many adolescent males authoring fan fiction do you think make their male self-inserts well-rounded characters? And how much critique do you think these young men get when they fail to do so?
We not only critique young women; we made up a whole term to point out their literary sins!
No, “Mary Sue” has to go. Not only is it being applied too broadly to exclude female characters in general, but it is being used to devalue the writings and fantasies of young women. It asks, why should they be writing about themselves as an equal, as a Tenth Walker, when they could just pick one of the boys that JRRT gave them to write about?
by Tolkien fan Dawn, at The Midhavens, March 2009
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ZeldaQueen: There is nothing wrong with female fantasy, so long as it is tasteful and well-written. The reason people complain about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, as I said before, was the unrealistic reactions to Bella's character. J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, wrote Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley. Both are smart, brave, loyal, attractive, and very important. The main character is dependent on both for some degree or another. I'm not sure how much fantasy Rowling uses them for, but she has admitted that Hermione is her closest to a self-insert.
Not just Rowling though - Diana Wynne Jones, Louis Lowery, Gail Carson Levine, Patricia Wrede, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, they're all female authors who have written female leads who are strong and interesting characters. I don't hear of many people calling Sophie Hatter, Kira, Ella, Cimorene, Emma Woodhouse, Lizzy Bennett, or Jane Eyre Mary Sues though
Just a note before we go: If you are going to ~~titter titter~~ insinuate or state outright that your experience seeing "Mary Sue" used as a value-neutral term somehow invalidates my or others' experience being bullied, harassed or discouraged from writing female characters in a manner that is empowering to them: You are welcome to keep your mouth shut, and you are doubly welcome to remove yourself from my safe space in my journal.
ZeldaQueen: Did...you just pull the standard Mary Sue author "don't like, don't read" card? O_o
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