"Mary Sue as Feminist Icon" ; a Meta Rec

[browngirl]

So, some of you have heard me rant about my problems with the concept of Mary Sue. I've seen it applied to just about any female canon character with any agency, brought forward as support for the postulate that OFCs are never worth reading, and generally used as a damper on writing about female characters by female authors. Not least since I've seen people use the gender of the term as evidence that women write more self-insert characters and therefore write less well than men do, I've sometimes contemplated making a post about the antifeminist implications of the term "Mary Sue" in its current usage. But, put bluntly, I tend to lose my nerve, decide I'd just produce a firestorm, and not write it.

fairestcat has written the essay I've been dreaming of, and hers reaches further than mine would have and is better than mine would have been. "Mary Sue is the woman who asks for and gets everything she wants," Fairestcat says, and I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly.

I don't see fairestcat's point as being that bad writing should be excused and not improved upon (as many of the responders have charged her with), but that Mary Sues are presented as the nadir of writing, when there are really many other and many worse ways to write badly, and that some of the reasons for the particular infamy with which Mary Sues are regarded are societal rather than artistic. That's my take on it, anyway.

Comments

[vass]

some of the reasons for the particular infamy with which Mary Sues are regarded are societal rather than artistic.

Oh gosh yes.

What Mary Sue would be, if I ruled the world: a useful description of one particular type of bad writing, i.e. when a character (original or not, female or not) is so special that the rules of story don't apply to her.

e.g. Harry Potter defeated Voldemort as a baby, when adult wizards couldn't, but it later turns out that his mother gave her life for his - it wasn't because he's a really powerful wizard. The Sorting Hat tells him that he has attributes from all four houses, but does not sort him into all four, or create a special house just for him; it sorts him into one house, taking into account his choices, wishes, and actions.

Or... if Robin died, and Batman was distraught and making mistakes, and suddenly this new character shows up, and he's found out their identities all by himself, and he tries to persuade Nightwing into becoming Robin again, then dresses up in the Robin suit and saves Nightwing and Batman, despite having never done vigilante stuff before... he would be a Mary Sue. Subsequent writing, from writers and fans, has fanwanked more balance and depth into Tim, thank Gods.

But since I don't rule the world, the term has expanded from its original use (lucky Ensign Mary Sue who gets Kirk (or Spock) to tell her he loves him, when he's never said that to a woman before) to women who dare to get their own plotlines. Or even women who dare to appear onscreen.

And there's this other thing: teenage fangirls as audience. For anything. At all. I believe this is less true in Japan. But in the Western world, there's this sense of "go away back to reading Sweet Valley High, it's all you deserve." Like teenage girls shouldn't get fantastic (or SFnal, or horrific) fiction about their demographic. Like they're *not* a demographic, or not at all a desirable one. Like Raven (a character many teenage girls like) is everything that's wrong with the animated Teen Titans.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I could write you 500 words which would all boil down to "I so agree, and I love the way you think." So I'll just say that. :)