Is the concept of Mary Sue Sexist?

As someone whose first fanfic was undoubtedly a Mary Sue, I don't have the knee-jerk hatred of this kind of character that many people do (I just wanted Luke Skywalker to love me. Is that so bad?). I think it's a fairly common way to get started writing fanfiction, and it's sad that so many new writers are persecuted for doing so.

That said, I do avoid reading stories with original characters that take over the story. It's just not the kind of fanfiction I'm interested in reading. Sometimes I do give these stories a chance, and if I don't like something then I leave a review explaining why, but I don't use the term Mary Sue, and I try to give constructive criticism.

It's hard sometimes when you have a cool original character in mind, and you want to see them interacting with your favorite characters from fiction. Go ahead and write it, but don't be surprised if you don't get a lot of readers. Keep improving your writing, and keep notes on your OCs. When you start imagining your OCs interacting with each other, this is when you should start writing original fiction!

I think Mary Sue has become an overused term these days. People call everyone and everything a Mary Sue just because they don't like them. Everyone talks about how Rey masters the Force in a few days (she doesn't, just look at Snoke messing with her) or how she was a brilliant mechanic (and Luke and Waaaaaah!nakin weren't?) while conveniently forgetting her life was literally scavenging, and so on. They did it to Harry Potter, as noted before, someone's doing it to Batman, and so on and so on.

People need to learn what makes a Mary Sue actually a Mary Sue. Read My Immortal. Read My Inner Life. Read legolas by laura. THOSE are Mary Sues. They have super-unique appearances (at least, I assume for laura), they get romances with main characters with zero effort just because of how totes magotes beautiful they are, they get everything they ever want including plot-relevant items that are already established to be owned by main characters in those works, the villain is an inconvenience as opposed to an actual threat, and so on. The Common Mary Sue Traits page exists, and most of the characters people like to shout "MERRY SOO!" at tick maybe five or six boxes, but that's it.

While I'm not disagreeing that Mary Sue is used too liberally, in that example with Rey, Anakin, and Luke:

• Anakin is a good pilot and good with machines and strong with the Force; but his biggest character flaw is/was his personal attachments, the loss of which caused his downfall - he is brilliant and prophesied to bring change and it all falls to pieces.
• Luke is good with machines, a good pilot, and okay with the Force; he has an immediate flaw of being too gung-ho in Episode V. Luke's actions lead to him losing his arm and then, and only then, becoming wise and compassionate.
• Rey is a good pilot, is strong with the Force, and her only apparent flaw is lack of training, which is later revealed to not really be a problem for her at all, and she's the heroine. There's no dramatic backslide of her character to put all of those awesomesauce points into perspective.

Mind, I don't dislike her on principle, but I can sort of feel why people give her more crap than Anakin or Luke.

I'd argue she also has a flaw of being too idealistic. She seems to think the best of anyone she meets, even Kylo Ben even after he stabbityed his dad, and it leads to her getting burned. Everyone around her has cynicism out the wazoo in TLJ (some more warranted than others), and even though the movie ends on a... saccharine idealistic note (saving what we love), she gains some cynicism for her trouble after her experiences with Snoke and Kylo Ben disillusion her. It'll be interesting to see whether Episode IX allows that cynicism to stay deconstructed or rebuilds it by movie's end.

Idealists tend to get put through the ringer in a lot of more cynical toned stories so yeah I can see that as her main flaw.

I just read this excellent article about how to write good characters.

How well-written/developed a character is really doesn't depend on how much virtue vs. flaws they have, but how realistically they influence the way the person makes their decisions, and how the people outside reacts to it.

Given Rey's backstory, I'm not sure being "idealistic" is a believable trait for her to have. And is Star Wars meant to be a cynical series? I certainly didn't get that impression watching TLJ. Especially since Rey doesn't show any changes even after failing to redeem Kylo Ren.

As someone who doesn't like Rey because I think she's uninteresting, I find that more often than not the vitriolic dislike of her is rooted in nerd sexism. The force stuff involving her is lazy, but sometimes people exaggerate how competent she was with that and the general mechanic stunts she pulled during the film solely to have more of a reason to hate her. In general though, she has a very male story arc that the worst Star Wars fans couldn't accept with a female character and they reacted childishly to it. It's so bad that anyone who criticized the handling of Rey's character is assumed to be just like them.

The point I'm making is that "Mary Sue" as a term is more often lodged at female characters because of men who prefer certain aesthetics that don't like seeing them on women. You can easily say most popular male characters out there are Mary Sues, but these types of men will argue tooth and nail why they aren't while sharing the opposite feelings on female characters who fit those same aesthetics regardless.

Edited by VeryMelon on Feb 18th 2019 at 11:14:52 AM

That's a great way of putting it!

The concept itself isn't sexist, but they're right in pointing out how people only seem to notice female Mary Sues.

Also, I think that the same TV Tropes page says that a character isn't a Mary Sue just for having those traits.

Not really, considering that there's a Spear Counterpart called a Marty or Gary Stu because being a bad character is universal thanks to shitty writing.

Like, I'm not going to say that the reason why there are more Mary Sues isn't sexism, that is some part of that but it's arguably deeper then that because it's not really just sexism on just female's side but on male side as well.

The typical power fantasy lead is male because in all honesty most of the people who enjoy those are male. Not that I'm saying that women can't or don't enjoy these stories but the people who typically do enjoy these kind of stories are male. I personally think that almost anything can be enjoyed if they're that good (See: Jo Jo, Star Wars, Lupin III and John Wick.).

This is just the universal societal demands of gender roles that we inherited since caveman times mixed with the wish fulfillment parts and the likeable or having a borderline blank slate that people can project themselves into them.

Males wanting to be powerful, wealthy, strong, wise, intelligent, kind, charismatic is fine and is perfectly healthy. Wanting character's like that in your escapist fiction is fine. The thing in the fine print is that they come with weaknesses (Lupin's arrogance, Luke's naivete and cocky, all the Jo Jo's hangups*, and John Wick's sorrow for his wife and later his wrath.) to make them believable.

Rey is just a badly written character with a writing team that in all honesty doesn't how good character writing works and being directed by someone who hasn't made really anything that he could possibly call his or Rian Johnson, all the while being lead about by a showrunner who doesn't understand or cares how the franchise works or what the fans want from it. Just her shit.

But yeah, Rey, by herself doesn't work because she is a massive case of not showing, just telling and any sort of, well, humanity from her whether it's simply her not showing the strain or stress on living on a planet like Jakku by herself or really any sort of trauma from her parents abandoning her? Like, if that's lost potential, it's Rey's parents.

We could had so much more, even if they weren't there for Rey to acknowledge them and their influences on Rey. But like everything else, the staff ignored it because they wanted her to be a female role model in the most artificial and fake af way possible.

• Eight characters with all their own flaws and hang-ups.

Edited by heliosKAISER on Mar 5th 2021 at 3:53:22 AM

Not necessarily, but it's not a good concept in general.

Not necessarily sexist. However, the concept just don't hold the water.

The concept in and of itself isn't sexist - Just because the term comes from a female character doesn't mean that it only applies to women. (Why did that term catch on so much, anyway? Was A Trekkie's Tale really that iconic?)

THAT SAID, though, I do think how people use the term tends to lean into sexism/misogyny unfortunately often, because some people just apply that term to any female character who has the audacity to be slightly better at something than someone else, usually the male characters, regardless of how they're otherwise written or the narrative treats them.

Or, even "better", I've also noted that it's often used as a blanket term for "(Female) character that I don't like".

So, the concept? Not sexist. The misuse of the term? Very often (Way too often) sexist, but not always.

Exactly that