Reforming Mary Sue
Sep. 21st, 2005 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyThe Virtu, Chapter 5: 50 ms pgs., 11,205 wds
Running total: 239 ms pgs., 54,563 wds
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sosostris2012 made a post the other day about Mary Sues and the process by which a Mary Sue can become a real character--or at least a lens to examine the phenomenon of Mary Sues through. I commented with a link to this post of mine about Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the great Mary Sue-ness of its protagonist, and rereading that post of mine (and nattering at the ever-patient matociquala) prompted me to start thinking about Mary Sues, and Byron, and just what's at work there.
I use the term "Mary Sue" rather broadly, to indicate any protagonist1 who is clearly wish-fulfillment, whether she2 is the author thinly disguised and inserted into a daydream or whether she's a conglomeration of characteristics that the author, and the author's intended audience, are predisposed to consider "romantic." (And I use, as Cordelia says, sarcastic quote marks.) This is where Byron comes into the picture, because a lot of Mary Sues, especially in genre fantasy, are really Georgie Sues, in exactly the mode that Georgette Heyer pokes fun at in Venetia via the juxtaposition of Damerel with Oswald Denny.
The distinguishing features of this type of character, whether an uncomplicated Mary Sue or a Byronic one, go something like this (and feel free to add to my list--I don't pretend to completeness):
1. She's either extremely tall or extremely short. Height extremes are always a dead giveaway.
2. She is always thin, and usually stronger than she looks.
3. If she is in fact a she, she is very likely a tomboy. Or at least impatient with the normal lot of a girl trapped in a cod-medieval world.
4. If a he, he may be rather girly (e.g., Mercedes Lackey's Vanyel), though I don't know that this always holds true.
5. Long beautiful hair. Usually red or blonde. Or raven-wing black.
6. Tragic, guilt-ridden past. With scars. The degree of trauma depends on the inclination of the author and genre.
7. Unappreciated orphan child.
8. SPECIAL. Magic powers are good, or being especially empathic (Talia, also Lackey), or musically talented (Anne McCaffrey's Menolly). Or, you know, the long-lost heir to some kingdom or other, or the possessor of a miraculous birthright. It's not the specifics that matter; it's the Specialness.
9. Everyone who meets her either adores her or hates her. If they hate her, it's out of envy. People frequently adore her despite her acting like a spoiled bitch, because they can see the pain that causes her to lash out (see #6).
10. Drop-dead gorgeous. Often with peculiarly colored eyes.
11. A handicap or physical defect that nevertheless never impedes her in doing anything she wants. Myopia is a good one here, or some interesting illness, especially if you can finagle it to where the character coughs up blood on a more or less regular basis. (E.g. Raistlin Majere in Dragonlance, and hell YES Raistlin is a Mary Sue. And dripping Byronism all over the place with it.)
12. The more Byronic of the sisterhood frequently have borderline-psychotic tempers. Those who did not get the Curse of Georgie Sue are unfailingly gentle and sweet-natured and make friends with no provocation.
Now, it's easy to see why characters like this are appealing, especially if you're a teenager. (I loved Menolly and Raistlin in my time, so I'm not pretending to any moral high ground here.) They pander to the part of us that knows we are Special and misunderstood, and hold out hope that we will eventually, after suitable perils and suffering (which we endure bravely and from which we emerge possibly bloody but definitely unbowed), find a community or a person who will understand us and love us for what we are. Which is what we all hope for, and actually I don't have any problem with that as a plot arc.3 The problem is back there with the Special.
The message I wish The Incredibles had offered is that everyone is special, regardless of whether they have super-powers or not. Sadly, the movie only went with the inverse formation, and put it in the mouth of its villain, who wants to be sure no one is special, leaving the movie to assert that if you're special, you should be proud of it, and sure, using it to cheat is just fine, as long as you don't go overboard. Which is not a message I like very much. Being Special is a chimera, a mirage; even if you are special in some way or another, it doesn't make you a better human being or entitle you to anything more than the kid next to you. And being special in one way does not bring with it the attendant cluster of characteristics that make up a Mary Sue. That's the real problem with Mary Sues: they heap perfection upon perfection, or Byronism upon Byronism, until there's no room left for anything real.
Mary Sues also, as a species, have no sense of humor, and especially not about themselves.
As a writer, you start with Mary Sues because you have this nagging certainty that you have to make your character interesting, but you don't quite know how to do it. So you give her a shiny shiny surface and let her float through life without her feet ever quite touching the dirt. Byronism is actually a step up from that, because it grasps, however dimly, that making a character interesting has something to do with their interior life. So you go overboard, because you're still not quite sure what you're doing, and heap on the trauma in the hopes of generating sympathy.
And then one day you wake up and realize you've overloaded your poor suffering protagonist with attributes and traumas to the point that neither he nor you can keep the story moving for all the weight bearing it down, and you realize, blushing hotly, just what a little idiot you've been.
And you start over.
Which brings us to the idea of reforming Mary Sue. Because Mary Sues frequently do have an interesting character trapped somewhere inside them; it's just a matter of getting rid of the baggage. Or of letting the baggage be identified for what it is. Admit that your charismatic and beautiful character is an asshole. Admit that a Byronic past more often leads to PTSD than to romance. Like I said in my earlier post today, think things through. Let the consequences play out. Let go of the idea that Special equals worthy. Let Mary Sue get dirty; let Georgie Sue be laughed at. They won't thank you, but, you know, you're not in this business to make your characters happy.
Letting characters be real means letting them not be perfect. It means opening the carapace of Mary Sue and letting them come out. It means letting yourself breathe.
---
1Let's stick to protagonists for this post, although secondary characters can certainly also be Mary Sues.
2I also refuse the masculine back-formations such as Gary Stu or Marty Stu. A Mary Sue is a Mary Sue, regardless of the character's sexual equipment.
3Actually, I think that's one of the best plot arcs there is.
Running total: 239 ms pgs., 54,563 wds
sosostris2012 made a post the other day about Mary Sues and the process by which a Mary Sue can become a real character--or at least a lens to examine the phenomenon of Mary Sues through. I commented with a link to this post of mine about Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the great Mary Sue-ness of its protagonist, and rereading that post of mine (and nattering at the ever-patient matociquala) prompted me to start thinking about Mary Sues, and Byron, and just what's at work there.I use the term "Mary Sue" rather broadly, to indicate any protagonist1 who is clearly wish-fulfillment, whether she2 is the author thinly disguised and inserted into a daydream or whether she's a conglomeration of characteristics that the author, and the author's intended audience, are predisposed to consider "romantic." (And I use, as Cordelia says, sarcastic quote marks.) This is where Byron comes into the picture, because a lot of Mary Sues, especially in genre fantasy, are really Georgie Sues, in exactly the mode that Georgette Heyer pokes fun at in Venetia via the juxtaposition of Damerel with Oswald Denny.
The distinguishing features of this type of character, whether an uncomplicated Mary Sue or a Byronic one, go something like this (and feel free to add to my list--I don't pretend to completeness):
1. She's either extremely tall or extremely short. Height extremes are always a dead giveaway.
2. She is always thin, and usually stronger than she looks.
3. If she is in fact a she, she is very likely a tomboy. Or at least impatient with the normal lot of a girl trapped in a cod-medieval world.
4. If a he, he may be rather girly (e.g., Mercedes Lackey's Vanyel), though I don't know that this always holds true.
5. Long beautiful hair. Usually red or blonde. Or raven-wing black.
6. Tragic, guilt-ridden past. With scars. The degree of trauma depends on the inclination of the author and genre.
7. Unappreciated orphan child.
8. SPECIAL. Magic powers are good, or being especially empathic (Talia, also Lackey), or musically talented (Anne McCaffrey's Menolly). Or, you know, the long-lost heir to some kingdom or other, or the possessor of a miraculous birthright. It's not the specifics that matter; it's the Specialness.
9. Everyone who meets her either adores her or hates her. If they hate her, it's out of envy. People frequently adore her despite her acting like a spoiled bitch, because they can see the pain that causes her to lash out (see #6).
10. Drop-dead gorgeous. Often with peculiarly colored eyes.
11. A handicap or physical defect that nevertheless never impedes her in doing anything she wants. Myopia is a good one here, or some interesting illness, especially if you can finagle it to where the character coughs up blood on a more or less regular basis. (E.g. Raistlin Majere in Dragonlance, and hell YES Raistlin is a Mary Sue. And dripping Byronism all over the place with it.)
12. The more Byronic of the sisterhood frequently have borderline-psychotic tempers. Those who did not get the Curse of Georgie Sue are unfailingly gentle and sweet-natured and make friends with no provocation.
Now, it's easy to see why characters like this are appealing, especially if you're a teenager. (I loved Menolly and Raistlin in my time, so I'm not pretending to any moral high ground here.) They pander to the part of us that knows we are Special and misunderstood, and hold out hope that we will eventually, after suitable perils and suffering (which we endure bravely and from which we emerge possibly bloody but definitely unbowed), find a community or a person who will understand us and love us for what we are. Which is what we all hope for, and actually I don't have any problem with that as a plot arc.3 The problem is back there with the Special.
The message I wish The Incredibles had offered is that everyone is special, regardless of whether they have super-powers or not. Sadly, the movie only went with the inverse formation, and put it in the mouth of its villain, who wants to be sure no one is special, leaving the movie to assert that if you're special, you should be proud of it, and sure, using it to cheat is just fine, as long as you don't go overboard. Which is not a message I like very much. Being Special is a chimera, a mirage; even if you are special in some way or another, it doesn't make you a better human being or entitle you to anything more than the kid next to you. And being special in one way does not bring with it the attendant cluster of characteristics that make up a Mary Sue. That's the real problem with Mary Sues: they heap perfection upon perfection, or Byronism upon Byronism, until there's no room left for anything real.
Mary Sues also, as a species, have no sense of humor, and especially not about themselves.
As a writer, you start with Mary Sues because you have this nagging certainty that you have to make your character interesting, but you don't quite know how to do it. So you give her a shiny shiny surface and let her float through life without her feet ever quite touching the dirt. Byronism is actually a step up from that, because it grasps, however dimly, that making a character interesting has something to do with their interior life. So you go overboard, because you're still not quite sure what you're doing, and heap on the trauma in the hopes of generating sympathy.
And then one day you wake up and realize you've overloaded your poor suffering protagonist with attributes and traumas to the point that neither he nor you can keep the story moving for all the weight bearing it down, and you realize, blushing hotly, just what a little idiot you've been.
And you start over.
Which brings us to the idea of reforming Mary Sue. Because Mary Sues frequently do have an interesting character trapped somewhere inside them; it's just a matter of getting rid of the baggage. Or of letting the baggage be identified for what it is. Admit that your charismatic and beautiful character is an asshole. Admit that a Byronic past more often leads to PTSD than to romance. Like I said in my earlier post today, think things through. Let the consequences play out. Let go of the idea that Special equals worthy. Let Mary Sue get dirty; let Georgie Sue be laughed at. They won't thank you, but, you know, you're not in this business to make your characters happy.
Letting characters be real means letting them not be perfect. It means opening the carapace of Mary Sue and letting them come out. It means letting yourself breathe.
---
1Let's stick to protagonists for this post, although secondary characters can certainly also be Mary Sues.
2I also refuse the masculine back-formations such as Gary Stu or Marty Stu. A Mary Sue is a Mary Sue, regardless of the character's sexual equipment.
3Actually, I think that's one of the best plot arcs there is.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 04:30 pm (UTC)Except...it was never a difficulty for me. Braid it, ta-da, no problem. I even fenced with it (the braid was like a gorget; many a time it saved my neck). And throughout history, thousands of imperial Chinese guards never had a problem, either.
I'm on the fence about the long hair. It seems like it should be a problem, but empiricism suggests otherwise.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 04:39 pm (UTC)So, yeah. It depends.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 07:55 pm (UTC)Yes. Also yes to the heavy and headachey. Some days I wander around cranky and snapping and then realize that my hair is clipped too tight and it's given me a headache.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 05:15 am (UTC)E!
do you know how many people have to wrap their braids 'round their necks like a gorget to fence?
how many people automatically reach behind them to drape their braid over their arm when walking down stairs - or running down an escalator?
how many people have developed a hairstyle-and cover-designed specifically for shmpooing the scalp while leaving the ends dry?
how many people who simply CANNOT EVER go without amish hair pins on their person, just in case the emergency updo is required?
it's not really that it is difficult - to the owner of the hair. the owner of the hair has had years and years to work out exactly how to care for it, unthinkingly, genuinely, and automatically.
it's that it's *uncommon.* I don't remember - did you have hair to your knees? I seem to recall it being knee length, but I could be out to lunch on that.
but if we grabbed a woman with even waist-length hair and suddenly she had hair down to her calves, she wouldn't know the first darned thing to do with it. but the longhair *does* know - and so I've been conscious of working those details in.
Because a character with a crazy length of hair who *doesn't* mostly keep it braided and do those automatic little things has at the very least mary sue hair.