Mary Sue Must Die: a call to arms

It's a specific type of bad character. Jacob is a flat character in Twilight, but Bella Swan might as well be Bella Sue.

On this site we need a handy term that is not complaining about show/character/X you don't like. Wikipeida had this handy def:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fan fiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional. While the label "Mary Sue" itself originates from a parody of this type of character, most characters labelled "Mary Sues" by readers are not intended by authors as such. Male Mary Sues are often dubbed "Gary Stu", "Larry Stu", "Marty Stu", or similar names.

Yeah, the 'net has taken that and run it into the ground. Most Hatedom seems to tag any character with Mary Sue because they can point to powers or rainbow hair (even if in anime).

Now we had some free time in the motorpool today and I thought about what would be more descriptive if you took away the cliche "Mary Sue"...

and Wolf 1066 came up with very similar ideas/themes to what I had in mind:

• Destroys Willing Suspension of Disbelief

• Warps the Plot

• Pure Wish Fulfillment (Runs On Wish Fulfillment)

• Improbably Heroic/Villainous Nature

• Too Perfect/Too Flawed

Thoughts?

edited 25th Sep '12 2:10:14 AM by TairaMai

Yeah, and then that term will go the way of 'Mary Sue'- an unhelpful pejorative for shitty-ass writing. By having no term at all, critiquers and readers will have to use the extra keystrokes to explain why what were previously lumped into 'Sue traits' are bad.

edited 25th Sep '12 3:13:59 AM by CrystalGlacia

And therein lies the problem. Either we have a term to collect hackneyed characters or we spend lots of electrons trying to describe what's going on.

Okay, if you don't explain what the problem is, how the hell can you expect the author to fix it? You're basically saying a character sucks without explaining why. That's not constructive criticism. It's basically the same as flaming or just saying, "this sucks" and going on your merry way. If you simply throw a single term at them, without explaining why, you're just spewing useless garbage that literally no one will benefit from.

(Emphasis added.) I fail to see why this is a problem. To the contrary, making critics expend extra electrons to describe what's going on seems like a net gain.

Indeed.

On this site at least, we have actual guidelines. I don't care about other sites. If an author asks why their character...has issues, I'm gonna tell them:

• Mary Sue-ish because _____
• Okay, maybe this trait/background detail could use some work because of _____
• This pings the Mary Sue meter[tm] because of _____
• Why does the character have this trait? Is it consistent with the universe or is it New Powers as the Plot Demands (a dead giveaway for a Mary Sue)?

Just yelling "Mary Sue" is like yelling "This soup tastes like feet!" Okay, fair enough, but why? What did I do wrong? To much salt? Not enough?

Some of you don't like the term, YMMV. But I think that Mary Sue/Marty Stu characters exist in many works. Some are fun, some are guilty pleasures. I'm not going to claim that I'm a high brown, I love Strike Witches fer cryin' out loud, and I had this character when I was in a Whateleyverse IRC roleplay. So I'm not one to just point fingers at characters ( you might call me a Mary Sue Subject Matter Expert ).

If someone asks me about their character, I promise to be honest and give details. As I will ask when I offer my writing up.

But I promise not to just toss a label, fair enough. You guys have raised valid points.

edited 25th Sep '12 5:37:24 AM by TairaMai

Question: If you want to be concise, why bother using Mary Sue if you're simply going to explain what you mean anyway?

"She's a Mary Sue because of X, Y and Z."

Why not just mention X, Y and Z instead of calling the character a Mary Sue? It accomplishes the same thing without relying on that tired term.

It's a box to put things in, just as a Panama Hat (no connection to Panama) calls to mind a type of hat, Mary Sue is a type of character.

There are characters I don't like. Superman for instance. Why do comics insist on Shooting Superman? I find it trite, some liked the scenes in Superman I &II and Superman Returns. I liked Mari from Rebuild of Evangleion. She's the Scrappy to diehard Eva fans.

Bella? What label would you hang on her? I'm watching Doug Walker and Spoony's review of Breaking Dawn. I sat through Breaking Dawn pt 1 (Riff Trax) and I needed a drink...

Flat, boring and passive?

A character so devoid of personality that she exists only to allow readers to place themselves in her shoes?

And that's a Mary Sue Classic.

But she doesn't even have fifty names! D:

Honestly, the reason why I think Mary Sue is seen as useless is because it's very much a newbie writing problem. Aside from a very rare exception, very few people write perfect characters past a certain point. I've seen people making characters for the first time, and it's true. I've seen people do all the bad traits and essentially create sues or stus. What happened later? They learned. I helped a bit in some areas. Once you are aware of why a character could be a sue, you have pretty much reached the point where you probably won't be writing them.

That's my theory anyway. Honestly, I can see why some people would see this as a reason to make it useless, but personally, I think it's a word that has its place — just not amongst the actual good writers, that most, if not all, of us are. It's for the amateur groups, who still have not quite caught the memo. And as someone who has to deal with people like that, it's a handy fear to instil.

edited 25th Sep '12 9:34:27 AM by MrAHR

Instilling the fear of Mary Sues leads to a whole mess of problems. A lot of young writers go to ridiculous extremes to avoid it and wind up writing stuff that's just as bad. I'd argue that the panic over Mary Sues is worse than the Mary Sue phenomenon itself because it affects writers who actual show promise.

The term is useless among good writers and not really helpful for bad writers.

edited 25th Sep '12 10:15:43 AM by DrStarky

Except I've seen people who HAVE improved because of it. Who were told to avoid certain warning signs, and they HAVE improved. Those people still exist, whether you like it or not.

Every bad writer has a potential to become better.

But is that help really worth all the harm the harm the term causes? Isn't it just as easy to help people without it?

False dichotomy; showing promise does not necessarily exempt you from writing Mary Sues.

edited 25th Sep '12 11:15:44 AM by Night

There are so many warning signs and so many of them have very little to do with each other or by themselves aren't really that bad, I don't think a critique of a character will suffer because the words "Mary" and "Sue" aren't present.

dr starky: No, because then they get confused. People work better with terms. Further more, whether they are afraid of a term, or afraid of another term, I see no difference. I see no reason why using the term would help or hinder, much in the same way any other term could easily be replaced by another, and nothing of value would be lost (static character instead of flat character, for example). In the context I use it, Mary Sue is a convenient term because it encompasses a specific definition and covers a specific problem. It's separate and distinct from other types of writing problems, and I'm not just going to use a more generic term, because otherwise some people won't get it. People think better when specific definitions/labels are given.

edited 25th Sep '12 12:12:55 PM by MrAHR

I don't think it's distinct at all.

The whole point of this thread is that "Mary Sue" no longer "encompasses a specific definition" nor "covers a specific problem".

Eh, I'm still in the "it's a stupid term that needs to die" camp, mostly because A: no one can agree on what it means and B: It is a worthless perjorative that doesn't help budding writers because of A.

These days it pretty much means "I think this character sucks". And if you want to say something like that, you ought to be prepared to burn some electrons defending your position.

As far as young writers go; it does not serve them to say, "your character is a Mary Sue". It does help them to say, "Your character has <problem>,<problem>, and <problem>...these are all common things for writers to do, but doing them is probably not a good idea because <reasons>." They can either listen to your advice or discard it, but at least you gave them something concrete to work with rather than a vague term which as far as I've seen can mean damn near anything.

edited 25th Sep '12 9:48:53 PM by drunkscriblerian

The problem is that the term had been hijacked by the hatedom of various series. My Immortal is a blatant Sue, but there are stories or characters that divide the fanbase and are no where near that level.

Like I said, Mary Sue exists. But if a new writer asks me about her/his story, characters and setting, I'm not gonna just pull a term out of my behind. I don't care about other sites.

It's important that the meaningless shouting of "Mary Sue" has got to go. But the collection of traits and the characters are the bane of new writers. Like what Chuck Jones said about bad drawings, all of us new writers have a few Mary Sues in us. Better to get them out now.

If I call your character a BRAGOJAGHA, that helps you in no way or form.

Because that means nothing to you at all.

But the term "Mary Sue" does have some meaning, unlike that nonsense word, even if we can't agree on one real definition.

Mary Sue as a term does have symbolic meaning, like almost all things. We just finished learning about this in my sociology class- symbols have meaning, but they can be interpreted differently. It's those differences, the associated baggage and connotations associated with the Mary Sue term that do more harm than good when it's thrown around in critique.

edited 26th Sep '12 12:44:08 PM by CrystalGlacia