On Mary Sues · 4:00am Aug 8th, 2013
Something happened at Bronycon that changed my opinion on Mary Sues. One of the first MLP fanfics I read was about a classic first-person Mary Sue—bulging muscles, godlike powers, and everypony from Twilight to Celestia wanted to sleep with him.
I'd read many comments by its author on other stories. He was smart, diligent, and generous. And he took his Mary Sue story seriously and was proud of it. He loved that story. It was pretty well-written and had many positive reviews, as well as hateful ones telling him he had written a Mary Sue and should feel ashamed. I could never tell how much of it was serious and how much of it was tongue-in-cheek. I didn’t know what to make of it all.
I met him at BronyCon and learned a little bit more about him. He had a rough childhood. He was abused. He could have used a powerful magical alicorn to come and make everything right, but he didn’t have one.
I may be totally off-base in drawing a connection between that, and his fanfic. But if he gets something that he needs out of a story in which he is powerful and loved, and other people do too, who the fuck are we to tell them that’s bad art?
Given my own, um, unorthodox aesthetic as regards character design, I generally don't look down my snout at Mary Sue, or her brother Gary Stu, and inasmuch as the very existence of an OC causes screams of "Self-insert!" and the like, I feel compelled to defend them when they're done well. (More than once I've felt like yelling "Self-insert this, pal.")
And I figure, when all is said and done, even the most reprehensible story techniques can produce something eminently readable.
People who are correct.
As someone who has spent an hour or two a day, at least, imagining a power fantasy for his entire life, I can tell you that it is enjoyable (though in my case, at least, it has nothing to do with having a bad childhood or whatever - I just like to think about how I can be even more awesome in the future in... probably hundreds of thousands of different scenarios by this point). It is even a single continuity of sorts, though it is odd because it is a continual time loop wherein the protagonist (i.e. me) may or may not be deliberately erasing his own memories of future loops, locking away his powers, and doing similar things because it is more fun to be awesome in new (to you) and different ways rather than doing a perfect Groundhogs Day loop.
It is fun. I enjoy doing it. It is without a doubt my #1 lifelong pasttime, and I will probably do it forever.
But I don't write about it because it isn't actually all that interesting or fun for other people. Sure, I enjoy the stories, overcoming adversity, coming up with ways out of jams... but ultimately it is a power fantasy.
So there's nothing wrong with doing such things. I just don't think it is good writing if you want to actually publish it for other people. In the end, the audience of such things is primarily yourself, and writing takes a very long time - if I want to actually share something, I'm going to write something that not only I but others as well can enjoy.
There's no such thing as good or bad art. That being said, if an author writes a Mary Sue, or a fluffy ship fic, or a overly wordy psudeo-intellectual story where nothing happens, and then complains that people don't like it, well, that's where the problem starts. While there's no bad art, there's stuff that people don't like to read.
If you write because you love writing, or love the story, then by all means write whatever you want! Seriously, it literally can't be bad, because its purpose is to make you feel good about having written it. If you write because you want prestige/views/money, then you have to write with an eye towards getting those things. This is where Mary Sues, spelling errors, and other thing we call "bad writing" become a problem... not because there's something inherently wrong with them, but because they limit your audience for your story, or fail to impress other people that you care about impressing.
For me the question is not Mary Sue vs Normal Character, but how well developed the story and personalities are. If the character is still interesting and the story is fun to follow, buck the fact that it's a Mary Sue, the story is awesome!
That said, Mary Sue-ness does detract from the believability and makes things harder to enjoy. But seeing as one of my favorite professional authors(David Weber) lives Mary Sues, I do not have anything agaisnt them personally.
1270211>>1270206 I think the claim that most people enjoy Mary Sue stories less than other kinds of stories is just... empirically wrong.
I like to remember this. Every time there's some guy writing really alarming stuff, or it seems very pandering, or they cheat like mad to win features and success, I tend to wonder who they are and what's driving them to take that path?
Simple pandering is not the ONLY approach to such traumas, though. When I wrote my first book it was a Gary Stu, of course, but a little different. 'Jinx' was a strong unique tiger creature created by magic for dubious reasons, and every bit as alienated as I was, but his victory was not triumphing over the human world that surrounded him. Instead, through bizarre mischance, he ended up in exactly the position of power that enabled him to basically ragequit the whole human scene and walk out of their party. And he laughed at the absurdity and did exactly that, with the black panther he'd hooked up with accompanying him.
Rather than conquering, he sorta escapes. Alternate-Stu.
1270219
Some people like all sorts of things, so you will find people who will like just about anything. It is like rule 34, but with taste instead of porn. Though it really is ultimately the cause of rule 34.
That being said, I think it is possible to write a story that a fair number of people will like with a Mary Sue protagonist. The catch is, I think, that there is some sort of curve of interest there. The further into Mary Sue territory you stray, the less people like the story (all other things being equal, of course). There are some folks who do adore Mary Sue characters, but they are fewer in number. A lot of people THINK they like Mary Sueish characters, but I think experience with television shows has generally shown that overly Mary Sue characters tend to be despised (see also: Wesley Crusher).
If Mary Sues were good writing, I'd expect to see them a lot more often than we actually do.
That being said, I suspect that their value also is somewhat dependent on genre and the purpose of the story. For example, Twilight is a fantasy story about being boned by a perfect vampire and having an interesting secret second life, so a Mary Sue there is more acceptable to the target audience than it would be elsewhere.
1270219
I think that a certain segment of the reading public likes them, absolutely. Same with the other things I mentioned. But those are all things that limit your audience to "the section who like those things" when those people who like them would also like something similar, but with the added depth that makes it appeal in different ways.
That is, a fluffy romance story appeals to shippers. Trust me, I know. But a more built up romance story will appeal to people who aren't really into shipping, as well.
A pseudo-intellectual exercise might earn you prestige, but the same ideas could be written in a way that appeals to a broader audience.
So, some people will like a good, rollicking Mary Sue story, but if you want a side of prestige (and the prestige readers who go with it) you find a way to give the character or story depth.
not to be overly cynical, but it's selling the notion of human expression a bit short to say we should make concessions for personal circumstance. if i was watching Iron Chef, and one of the contestants served food made of human shit, but he only did it because his mom fed him shit every night before she died of throat cancer—why would that spare him from me judging his 'food'?
the reason people don't like 'mary sues'—or, in a less tropey fashion, why they don't like characters who are exaggerated in their amazingness and therefore unrelatable—is because they're not interesting. in the same way that a potential hell is an endless avenue of perfection and no failure, a character without flaws is boring and often sickening. if someone can think of a way to make the idea of a flawless character interesting, more power to them—but i absolutely refuse to concede storytelling sensibility and the qualities that usually make a good story just because the author is excising some pent-up demons in the process of writing that character.
Why do I get this strange feeling that I've seen this blog from you before? And that I've also seen almost these exact same comments?
Strange feelings aside, I'm curious. What is this story?
1270268
I think the point isn't to heap praise upon something just because it's creator had a hard time, but to love and tolerate anyway. This site is full of stories I dislike, yet I keep my mouth shut about them unless I feel I can offer some specific, useful piece of advice. If 'bad' writing makes some people happy, more power to them. I'll just make sure to not read their stuff.
1270284
i don't disagree with that, though i'd use different words. if i feel someone has written an irredeemable character, i won't lambaste their writing skill or call them a bad person—but i also won't say 'who am i to judge?' and refuse to offer criticism. i think the point i interpreted BH to be making that i took issue with was 'there is reason for poor decisions, therefore they are defensible'. i totally disagree with that and think that the circumstance for output don't do anything further to validate it—any other approach only promotes coddling and unequal standards based on the qualities of the participant, regardless of the medium.
that said, i'm certainly not going to go on a tear, ripping apart the egos of folks convinced their alicorn mary-sue is a good idea. i just probably won't have much positive to say if asked.
'Good' art and 'bad' art are irrelevant terms. So long as my boner likes it, I'll fap regardless of any wings+horn combo meals you may like to shove into your stupid little horse story.
... My penis makes most of my decisions for me.
Mary Sues are like syrup.
If your whole meal is syrup, well, that's generally not going to work out.
If you put syrup on a stack of pancakes, it can be perfectly delectable.
Everything can be used. Everything can be misused.
1270219
No, it's correct. No one is saying that writing a Mary Sue-fic is wrong. The thing is, that's the kind of thing you keep to yourself. Like a dream journal or something. That's the sort of thing you write just for yourself and no one else if you need that emotional pick-me-up from fantasy escapism.
But when you're posting here you're writing for an audience, as well. The collective opinion of that audience is that we don't want a story about Son Goku Dante Akuma Musclepants the Third: God Of All Horsepussy flying around being an obvious self-insert deific bastard for no real reason. No matter HOW awesome a person the writer is, we don't want the story. There are people I've protected in combat they are so dear to me, but I would not read some of their writings unless it was specifically asked of me.
Bad Horse, you know that. Rather than championing this pointless cause that most experienced readers and authors will denounce and SHOULD denounce, try stepping back and realizing how much emotional defense you're putting into this rather than rational thought. The moment you said the bit about the guy needing an all-powerful alicorn in his life, you gave it away that your mental image is now emotionally-invested. This came too far out of left field from you to be some sort of 'awakening to the Mary Sue' schtick.
Instead, looking at your post and your words here in the comments, one easily gets the feeling that you're being unnecessarily defensive. Like the subject means more to you than it should, having struck a personal chord rather than an objective or professional one. It's entirely true that I might be wrong, but please take a moment to review your innermost thoughts on the subject and see if it is the case or not. I've respected your journal musings for awhile now, but aside from this... issue, you really do sound different here than you did in previous postings.
Seems to me that most of the author blog posts and Pony Fiction Vault entries I've read have the author identify their primary audience as "themselves". I also sometimes see authors who say that they felt that X niche was unfilled and so that's who they were targeting. (Was that one of your blogs, BH? Maybe Horse Voice...)
Point is, I think arguing about audience is mostly a critic's game or (less cynically) one for people who like to recommend stories to others.
Early in my time at Fimfic, I found it fun to comment on Mary Sue stories, sharing what I felt I had in common with the self-insert. As the story went on and I found less similarity, I stopped reading. Didn't need to deride the author for not making my personalized perfect self-insert fantasy.
As for art, I don't expect to find good journalism in newspapers, but am pleasantly surprised when I do. Some expect newspapers to be held to certain standards and, for the most part, they are, but that doesn't mean everything reported is going to be good.
Good for that author to use writing as a medium to deal with his problems. I hope it helped and I'm glad there are sites like this where such a thing is possible. I probably will never read it, and that probably doesn't matter.
Personally, I can't relate to a character who is without flaw, since I am a flawed individual myself. I can understand the appeal of writing a Mary Sue, but personally, I find it more cathartic to write characters who are flawed aspects of myself. I've oft said that ever character I write--canon or OC--has a touch of myself in them, good or bad. This makes more sense/gives me more comfort than writing an alicorn with god-like powers who wooes all Mane Six at once. But I digress.
Writing--especially writing fanfiction, of all things--should be for the writer's enjoyment primarily and the reader's enjoyment secondarily. That's my opinion, at least. Of course, if one is seeking to become popular/make money, that's an entirely different story. But the success of Stephanie Myer and, to some extent, Dean Koontz (who, although I adore him, writes all kinds of Mary Sue protagonists) testifies against that.
TL;DR I don't write Mary Sues, but I understand why some do.
First of all, anyone who quotes references that website as a source, citation of fact, critical justification, etc, is revealing more about themselves than they are saying about the target. Almost as silly as referencing wikipedia in an argument about sociology or philosophy.
Other than that, you seem to have discovered that there are real people at the other end of the internet. That sounds sarcastic, probably, but it is a truth that is hard to keep in mind and the majority of people keep forgetting or never learned. It isn't nice to be an asshole to people about their stories.
You can say you didn't like it. You can even offer an explanation of why you didn't like it, but that doesn't call for being a cunt, nor does your dislike mean anything absolute or true, just means you ain't a fan.
1270482
No one is saying that writing a My Little Pony-fic is wrong. The thing is, that's the kind of thing you keep to yourself. Like a dream journal or something. That's the sort of thing you write just for yourself and no one else if you need that emotional pick-me-up from fantasy escapism.
That was one of the first fics at the original PFA site. I remember being vaguely impressed by it, in spite of the perfect Gary Stu-ness. There were one or two moments that literally made me laugh out loud -- rare for any fic.
That being said, I'm with darf on this. The circumstances of one's life doesn't give one a free pass on any given standard in any given field. In our field, one of the standards is making interesting, relatable characters, and Mary Sues/Gary Stus by definition are not interesting, relatable characters. This is one reason I think Luna is such a popular character in the fandom. By all rights she should be perfect -- an immortal alicorn goddess with control over the moon and stars -- but she's also deeply flawed, and had to redeem herself. Maybe popular Celestia fanfics are concerned with taking an objectively perfect character and breaking her down to find her flaws.
1270499
See, the problem I run across (a lot) in talking to authors is that they all say they're writing for themselves... then whine when they don't make the feature box/ are rejected by EqD/ get downvotes etc. Saying that you're writing for yourself is one thing, it sounds like you're an artist and not concerned with the bourgeois commercial aspects, but the writers who actually are writing only for themselves are few and far between.
This happens equally among the bad writers who use Mary Sues and poor spelling and grammar and among the bad writers who write carefully crafted stories trying to express the angst of existence through multi-colored ponies. They post about how it's not fair, no one gives their stories a chance, they have 10 views while junk like that other thing has thousands of views. Then when you recommend that they write something in a way people like to read, they tell you they're writing for themselves and they wouldn't like changing anything. Which would be fine, if it were true, but it obviously is not because they're unhappy about how people who aren't themselves are receiving their work.
So if an author is actually perfectly happy with their work and the amount of attention it gets, and is only trying to please themselves, then you are absolutely correct. But that's a pretty big "if" in my experience.
Your argument is in essence the same as those suggesting everyone running a race gets a gold medal and that there are no winners really. Art represents a mythic standard, and as of such there are things that do not reach it.
Or, y'know, just reread what 1270268 said a few times.
Calling it bad art is accurate and hardly a damnation when the author's trying to write escapism: it's like accusing it of being a bad teapot. The problem comes when there's a disconnect between what the author is trying to write and what they have written, and if they are writing a Mary Sue character, they probably ain't gunning for the next [INSERT POPULAR WRITING AWARD].
Also, these -- bulging muscles, godlike powers, and everypony from Twilight to Celestia wanted to sleep with him -- aren't necessarily Sue traits. A Sue is formed when the character's abilities are such that the conflict or opposition to story progress offers no impediment. Bulging muscles are useless in a sewing competition; godlike powers... is too vague a thing for this to work; sex appeal is a conflict of its own when the character's a virgin priest and wishes to stay so.
And to be honest, the suggestion that you need to be someone in order to have your opinion taken seriously -- the "who the fuck are you" part -- is why I always post anon if the chance is offered. The words spoken should matter more than the person saying them.
1270219
That's a bold statement to make given the number of factors at play in story popularity/satisfaction.
I offer the counterpoint that there's a significantly larger amount of unpopular Mary Sue stories for every popular one. Given the large number of samples in the population, outliers become more likely.
We could always graph it, I suppose. Use thumbs or favourites as a measure of story popularity and work out an agreed upon definition of a sue. But even still, the fact that fanfiction is more often read by those perusing for fantasy escapism would offer some bias to the results if you're trying to make a statement about literature at large.
I'm wrath and in my opinion this is bad art. Anyone can tell anyone else anything, eventually people have to listen to the majority vote when it tells them their concept sucks, otherwise they'll never improve.
If they weren't prepared to accept criticism then they shouldn't have slapped it on the internet. Don't be a white knight. fgt.
1270284
Plz no.
Yea but sometimes it'll hurt people less if you be blunt with them, rather than let them allude themselves for god knows how long into the future until some asshole comes along and sets them straight the hard way (through being an asshole).
At this point one of three thing could happen:
1) The author could take notice and try to improve.
2) He could despair and swear off writing.
3) He could just call the guy a hater and become even more deluded to the point of thinking their writing is good even in the face of a wall of cricsms, this will just get worse and worse, leading down a path of frustration until the guy relapses into point 2. But in the meantime everyone will have to deal with his shit.
By all means be gentle, but it's still probably better to let the author know when they fucked up. If they didn't want your opinion they would not have put it teh internets.
1270635 1270673>>1270624>>1270268>>1270206
Well, I see I've once again completely failed to make my point clear.
First, let's agree that we're not talking about spelling, grammar, and other technical issues. We're talking about whether Mary Sue story concepts are inherently bad.
Next, let's throw out the argument that people don't like Mary Sue stories. A lot more people love straight up Mary Sue than like the literary stories found in the New Yorker. You can't condemn Mary Sue stories except by claiming to have special, revealed knowledge of Right and Wrong in stories.
Let's say that a story is good art when it finds an audience for whom it has relevance, significant meaning, emotional impact. Someone who finds some message that they need to hear, or something that helps them make it through the day.
Mary Sue stories have that. They are not relevant, significant, etc., to you folks. You have your own needs, and you find them met by different story types. But how different are they really? I don't see much difference between a Mary Sue and a Luke Skywalker or an Ender Wiggin.
So you've discovered by now that things are going to come easy to you in your life, but you hope that maybe if you work very hard, things will get better. So now you want to read stories about people who work hard to overcome their obstacles. Well, newsflash: That's no more realistic than the Mary Sue story. Most successful and happy people are Mary Sues. Their wealth, brains, and good looks were handed to them at birth. Your narrative about overcoming obstacles with grit and determination is just a different kind of wish-fulfillment than a Mary Sue story.
Or maybe you like a different kind of story. Whatever kind of story you like, it's catering to you, possibly for reasons that would be embarrassing if you understood them. When we say a story is good or bad, the only information we actually convey is that we think the people who like that story are good or bad. We pride ourselves on being more complex people who therefore like more complex stories. But we are all still humans, trapped in a tiny space of possible minds. Someday, someone will build an artificial intelligence that goes beyond this, and it will read our stories, and find all of them pathetic infantile drivel. In the long run, looking down on people who like Mary Sues is at best taking pride in being a point 1 inch further to the right than some other point, on a measuring stick that goes to infinity.
Better simply to recognize that there is no such thing as a good story, there is only a good story for a particular person. Even if there is a simple linear process of development, from child to adult, or from fool to wise man, we should then say that one story will help or hinder some particular person from advancing further along that path, not that it is a good or bad story. Instead, all I see is people arrayed along different points on that line, and calling everything out of their grasp in either direction "bad".
TL;DR: Saying Mary Sues are "bad art" is like insisting two-year-olds should watch Apocalypse: Now because Teletubbies is "bad television".
1270795
I guess it sounds like you feel there's some sort of cognitive dissonance or mutual exclusivity between the ideas of "bad art" and "something of value", but I don't see any problem with letting them overlap. If something gives someone enjoyment or pleasure, then by all means they should be allowed to enjoy that thing freely without repercussions. I watch mindless Bayesque summer blockbusters and have a great time doing it, but I'm not operating under the illusion that I'm enjoying fine art. If writing a Mary Sue escapist wish-fulfillment fic allows someone to deal with their own demons, that's fantastic! If other readers enjoy the story, even better! But that doesn't make it good art. There's nothing wrong with that, mind -- it is what it is, and that's fine, and people shouldn't be looked down upon for writing it or enjoying it.
But don't put lipstick on a pig and try to tell me it's a lady. If you tell me that you feel Transformers was a cinematic masterpiece on the level of The Godfather or Citizen Kane, I will laugh in your face. I won't be laughing in your face because you watched Transformers and enjoyed it; I've watched it and enjoyed it too. I will be laughing because it is objectively not good art.
TL;DR: IMHO not all "enjoyable art" is "good art", and that's perfectly fine.
1270635 And to be honest, the suggestion that you need to be someone in order to have your opinion taken seriously -- the "who the fuck are you" part -- is why I always post anon if the chance is offered. The words spoken should matter more than the person saying them.
What I meant was, if you had the advantage of growing up with parents who loved you or at least fed you and generally remembered your name, you don't have the right to tell someone who didn't that they have bad taste in stories. You may have no idea what it's like to be them or what they need. It's not a question of getting them to listen to you; it's a question of whether you know what you're talking about.
1270795
As a concept, absolutely, they are definitely inherently bad because the majority of people dislike them.
Besides, the very few good mary-sue fics (if there are any) are not enjoyed because they're about mary-sues, but rather because they have other elements that make it enjoyable for the reader, probably. otherwise it is my opinion that the reader is a troglodyte who loves DC superman for reasons completely outside of explosions, violence and villains (who the fuck enjoys animated gary-stu superman for superman? syrusly).
Just because someone disagrees with your point of view does not mean that they fail to understand said point of view. i think most people get that you are emotionally invested, other people are not and therefore do not care.
Yes, there is no such thing as quality, right or wrong, good or bad fanfiction, it's all subjective. However there comes a time when you just have to say, this concept plain sucks because the majority of people hate it, ect. At the very least you should realize the folly in trying to argue a point to a large crowd when they think you're strawmanning. Then again arguing opinions without facts is a hopeless endeavor to begin with.
I've discovered that I can no longer talk about Mary Sues without short-circuiting to a link to Chuckfinley's deconstruction of the concept:
Read the whole thing. (note: nsfw language, and discussion in comments)
1271001
> if you had the advantage of growing up with parents who loved you or at least fed you and generally remembered your name, you don't have the right to tell someone who didn't that they have bad taste in stories.
Are you saying that we do generally have the right to tell someone they have bad taste in stories, but here's an exception? That moral line seems pretty squiggly.
Regardless, we absolutely have the right to say: this story is flawed, and here is a calm and logical explanation of why. Their opinion of enjoyment does not invalidate our opinion of dislike, any more than the reverse.
If someone enjoys a flawed story, then clearly it's done something right to have gotten the upvote — but it does not remove the flaw, no more than people liking misspelled stories makes the spelling correct.
1271143 It's hubris to call a story concept a "flaw" because it happens not to be what you personally need at this time in your personal development. Or else you're conflating whether Mary Sue is an inherently bad story concept with whether it is well-executed. The description you quoted from Chuckfinley is good, for what it is, but it has nothing to do with this discussion. Chuck is talking about poor execution, not about whether a story about a Mary Sue is inherently bad, whether he realizes it or not.
1271027 As a concept, absolutely, they are definitely inherently bad because the majority of people dislike them.
This is the opposite of true. If you go by what most people like, then Mary Sues are the best thing ever. Superman is the ultimate Mary Sue, and he's one of the most-popular characters ever invented.
1271153
But superman is shit. Besides we're talking in terms of fanfiction.
1271153
I'm with Chuck: I'm arguing that the entire concept of "Mary Sue" is misframed and badly defined. That what people hate about "Mary Sues" when they argue against the concept is not the power fantasy, but that it is poor execution, full stop. The reason people hate Alicorn McAwesome but not Superman* is that the former is poorly executed in the ways Chuck describes.
If you're rejecting Chuck's formulation, you clearly have a different definition of what a "Mary Sue" is. I'd appreciate it if you'd define what you're defending. I can take a guess that you're talking about power fantasies, but I'd rather hear it from you.
(If that's the case, I'm also agreeing with you, because the Chuck Formulation of Mary Suedom is entirely, 100% neutral on whether power fantasies are legitimate stories. Well-executed ones are, absolutely.)
(edited to add: The point which I was leading up to, but never made, was to defend calling Suedom a "flaw" — because if it's poor execution of character actions vs. character traits, then by definition Suedom is a writing failure rather than a matter of values, taste, or need. See also: 1271224.)
--
* Okay, "people" is weaselly, so let's say "I". I dislike Mary Sue stories but not Superman, and I think that's a position well-represented among the readers speaking up in comments here. Now, Superman stories "are not what I personally need at this time in my personal development", and I find them boring** (it's an apathy rather than a dislike, which I think is a useful distinction to draw), but on the whole I do not find them flawed.
** For the same reason that it's very difficult to write a compelling Celestia story. If you can't challenge a character you don't get to see their growth.
I was gonna leave an opinion, but 1270211.
I'm not remotely convinced that "is a Mary Sue" is even a useful thing to evaluate. Framing the discussion that way just seems to promote a checklist-based approach to character creation that doesn't capture the things we actually care about.[1]
Maybe Sueness is correlated with some other things that are important. A lot of stories with Sues lack conflict, and that's bad. The problem is the lack of conflict, though, not the Sueness. Some Sues are unbelievable characters, which is bad, but would also be bad if the character were unbelievable and not a Sue. Some Sues feature in compelling power fantasies, which is good, but those would also be good if... you get the idea.
Why focus on whether the story has a Mary Sue? Wouldn't it be better to just talk about the things you care about? If an author replaces their Sue with a non-Sue and the story still has no conflict, has anything improved?
tl;dr: I don't actually understand what people are arguing about in this thread. I think the problem lies in the question that was asked, not the answers given.
[1] Checklist-based approaches that do capture the things we care about are great.
Revised my opinion, sueness doesn't necessarily mean a bad story (the vast majority is shit though mind you), but you really can't say people have no right to tell other people that they can't write to save their life. Your argument on that approach is just ridiculous.
It's just not something you can expect to argue about and 'win'.
1270749
Fix'd.
1270795
And you were teasing me not that long ago about using excessive length to ensure clarity
I don't think anyone in their right mind's suggesting that people don't enjoy Mary Sue stories -- any audience at all would be enough to dispel that. The argument's more that a majority of people don't, and I don't think you've really thrown the argument out here. Pitting the most popular Mary Sue stories against the most niche intelligentsia doesn't really convince me that the number of people who find it boring is oft bloated out of proportion.
Ok, you've given us your working definition of art here. That clears a few things up.
I think this runs the risk of making art a synonym of popular. Is a story art or not if it's never published? What I currently associate with the word would suggest yes to me, that whether or not a story is art is independent of its audience. In order for us to be able to judge if it's art or not requires people, yes, but I can't help but feel that whether it's good or bad art shouldn't.
I have never understood why people like Ender's Game without having to resort to "they see themselves as one of the intelligent children: it's a book that gives an ego massage". So you won't get much objection from me here.
Luke's just bland, though. Han's way cooler.
And before I go any further into your reply, I need to address this:
1271153
What, exactly, do you think a Sue is? 1271197/Chuckfinley has a point in that we're working without a clear definition here. The birthing one is entirely to do with fanfiction, and so a statement like "Superman is the ultimate Mary Sue" becomes nonsense because Superman is not a fanon character.
Superman's character works best through following a different character arc than the current vogue: rather than starting flawed and overcoming it, he starts flawless and is tempted to devolve/lose his moral standing (see What's So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way?). Through the definition I use -- the match of strengths to conflicts -- he is not a Sue because in many ways, his strengths lead to his conflicts.
I'm becoming concerned that you may be using a different approach, that you're treating a character without flaw in certain areas -- fighting, smarts and sex for the main part -- as being a Sue. If this is the case, I have no arguments against you: a character who can kill anyone, out think anyone and seduce anyone is still a valid character.
Provided it's not just a story about how they kill, out think and seduce everyone else, 'cause that's just a series of events.
Moving back,
I'd hate to think I look down on anyone.
Actually, hells, I have edited the first chapter of a Sherlock Holmes crossover featuring a beautiful alicorn Night Guard (back before bat ponies became a thing) who had Holmes (or Watson, I forget) falling in love with her at first sight, Princess Luna as a best friend and her performing a spell Twilight Sparkle struggled with that it then turned out she'd invented. After mentioning it was basically a classic Sue, the author replied that they didn't care, and I calmly went on with reviewing the rest of the chapter taking that into account.
So no, I do not judge people for what they do and don't want in their story. I will warn them that they will get heat for a Mary Sue esque character, and that is it.
Balls, I'm being bitter. Apologies. I'm too tired to edit it out without losing the point, though.
1271001
I know what you meant. I still object to it and how it seems to act as if relevance to a conversation is dependent more on who you are than what you're saying.
You're skimming close to telling me to "Check my privilege" with this.
1271485 I'm becoming concerned that you may be using a different approach, that you're treating a character without flaw in certain areas -- fighting, smarts and sex for the main part -- as being a Sue.
Yes. We have character archetypes, like the wise old man, the magic
negrozebra, and the Mary Sue. And we have known failure modes for stories, such as implausibility, inconsistency, and lack of conflict. Using categories this way allows us to analyze a story by its character types and success or failure. Defining "Mary Sue" to mean the intersection of an unnamed character type with some unnamed set of common failure modes would be a silly thing to do, as it would require more work to define, and would only confuse us if we tried to use that definition to talk about actual stories, as we would use the word to describe characters who shared only some of its aspects, and the definition itself would then obscure the relationship between character and story that we wished to discuss.1271224 Why focus on whether the story has a Mary Sue? Wouldn't it be better to just talk about the things you care about? If an author replaces their Sue with a non-Sue and the story still has no conflict, has anything improved?
Yes to all that. There are at least two points of contention here. One is that there is a kind of character called a Mary Sue, which is often found in stories lacking conflict, suspense, and grammar. Some people simply group all these aspects together because they are correlated, rather than constructing categories on orthogonal dimensions so as to be useful for discrimination and discussion. This leads to people seeing that a story has an alicorn OC and immediately denouncing it as a bad story, because they have pattern-matched it to their overly-specific, not-very-useful definition of "Mary Sue". Several people above say that what is important is how well the story is written, yet this is not what people on fimfiction say when they leave nasty comments on alicorn OC stories. They generally say, "This is an alicorn OC, therefore it is bad," because their mental category of "Mary Sue" doesn't allow them to perceive "This is a super-powered character" without also filling in the claims "This story lacks conflict and has poor grammar".
The other main point of contention is about the objectivity of "good" vs. "bad". You could say that art is objectively good or bad regardless of who views it. I don't think that view makes sense. You could say that art is subjective regardless of who views it, and nothing is good and nothing is bad. I would quit writing if I believed that. The only workable option for me is to say that art is good relative to a viewer. The easiest way for me to conceptualize this is to imagine the viewer and the story as both having positions on a line, which stretches from infantile on the left, out to greater sophistication, comprehension, and wisdom on the right. A story is good for a reader when it is a little bit to her right on that line. Mary Sue stories may be far to your left on that line, but I guarantee there is somebody even further left than that. You shouldn't try to force them to read War and Peace anymore than you should force a two-year-old to watch Apocalypse: Now.
1271485 I know what you meant. I still object to it and how it seems to act as if relevance to a conversation is dependent more on who you are than what you're saying. You're skimming close to telling me to "Check my privilege" with this.
I don't see why that's a problem. The value of my contributions to a conversation about quantum physics depend mainly on the fact that I know almost nothing about quantum physics. The same applies here. If art is relative to the observer, and you can't imagine what it is like to be that observer, or know what issues matter most to her, you should refrain from claiming to know what's good for her.
Yes, we're talking about whether Mary Sue story concepts are inherently bad. And yes, they are.
Being a self-insert is not what makes Mary Sues bad; John Dies At The End, for instance, has Dave (who is, in fact, David Wong) as the primary protagonist, and is actually narrated from the first person perspective. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas is another example of a story like this, and there are some other tales which are solid stories and qualify as having authorial self-inserts.
The real key to what makes Mary Sues bad is the idealization. The character is "too perfect". It is this trait which defines the Mary Sue, and it is this trait that makes them bad.
"But," you say, "Superman is a ridiculously idealized character! He is pretty much always right, is always powerful enough to win, ect." And I would agree with you: Superman sucks. And this is true.
"But Superman is popular!" Well, sure, to some extent, but he is less so than his prominence would suggest. Batman, Spiderman, the X-Men, and Iron Man are all less prominent than Superman is, but they are all more popular than he is - Superman is iconic, but he isn't widely viewed as an awesome character. He is like Mickey Mouse - he represents something, but he himself isn't really anything special.
The problem with a Mary Sue is that, ultimately, the outcome is already known and the story is distorted around them so that they win. Either they are overwhelmingly powerful or excessively perfect, or sometimes both. Their character flaws are marginal to non-existent, or are not story relevant and are merely an attempt to pretend that they aren't perfect, even though they don't matter. There is no real struggle.
Luke Skywalker is not a Mary Sue. He has character flaws which are relevant to the story and indeed which cause trouble for him several times. He also is hardly the only character who is important in the story; the story doesn't revolve around him, and while he is well-regarded, so are Han Solo and Princess Leia. Being The Hero and being a Mary Sue are not the same thing, even though Mary Sues are frequently The Hero. Is Luke the most boring character in the original trilogy? Of the main cast, probably. But that's okay, and he fits into the story just fine.
Ender Wiggin is a weirder example. I have only read Ender's Game, but in that, he certainly isn't a Mary Sue. He has severe psychological problems throughout the book which cause all sorts of interpersonal problems and while he is competent, it is clear that he also is messed up in a lot of ways. Maybe he becomes a Mary Sue in the later books - he certainly has the capacity for it - but I wouldn't call him a Mary Sue in Ender's Game, because he is genuinely disturbed and imperfect, and in the end, his imperfection leads him to commit genocide. Ender is Mary Sueish in competency in battle, perhaps, but the book is actually mostly about the psychological struggle between Ender and those around him - that is the "real" conflict, not the wargames, which are merely an aspect of his deteriorating mental state.
And in the end, Ender loses.
Now, is it true that characters who are Mary Sueish appear in broadly read works? Sure. Twilight would be a good example of this. The problem is that such series are tripe, and while they may be popular, they aren't actually very good.
"But TD!" you cry, "How can you say something that made literally a billion dollars isn't very good?"
"Uh, Titanic," I reply.
The truth is that goodness and commercial success aren't the same thing. Many things are commercially successful but fail to resonate through time, and as such, ultimately have little impact on the world. Other things are not successful commercially (initally anyway) but end up having a cultural impact later on and being regarded as great works. And then of course there are things which are commercially successful AND matter later on (Star Wars is a good example of this).
If it doesn't end up mattering, if no one really cares in the end, then it wasn't all that great.
As for "realism": Stories aren't about realism. This is a basic principle of storytelling. Our goal is not to tell the most common stories but the most interesting ones.
goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Plot-vs-Time-1.png
If you violate this (though it really should start with a high point, then descend after the intro before rising into a new one, ect.), then your story is probably poorly paced.
And in reality, let's face it, most people -aren't- Mary Sues at all. Very few people are. Most of them have flaws, but a lot of them aren't very -intresting- flaws. Normal people - even normal successful people - aren't heroes, and frequently their rise is eventually stopped by the limits of their ability rather than character flaws.
And in any case, the idea that what are "good stories" is purely subjective is objectively wrong. If this were so, people could not practice writing and improve their writing ability. But people do practice writing and DO improve their writing ability.
This is more towards people obsessed with fictional characters or waifus, but I think it can apply here.
When people turn to fictional characters, it’s often because they want an escape. The stories of these people shelter us from the storm of our daily lives; they save us, if only for a little while. But when we really give in, become invested, let ourselves be vulnerable, something changes. We begin to feel that we know them. It’s no longer just an escape, but part of us, something that makes us who we are.
These characters teach us that incredible adversity can be overcome. That people can love each other forever. That life can be an adventure. That magic can be real. And even if these miracles have never happened to us, we begin to go through life believing that, someday, they could.
1271742
Okay, so let me see if I've got this straight: the Bad Horse Mary Sue is a character archetype, in which the character is idealized and flawless. Mary Sue stories are stories which contain that character archetype. The whole thing is orthogonal to writing quality. Is that more or less correct?
> Defining "Mary Sue" to mean the intersection of an unnamed character type with some unnamed set of common failure modes would be a silly thing to do … the definition itself would then obscure the relationship between character and story that we wished to discuss.
Yes, it would be a silly thing, but that's exactly what people do when talking about Mary Sues. The default definition, which both you and I reject (in orthogonally different ways), is exactly that problematic mishmash*, which is why I asked you to set out your terms.
Personally, as an author I find more value in discussing Mary Sue in terms of failure modes than I do in discussing it in terms of character archetypes, because it's more fruitful to improve a story by fixing its failures than it is to change its characters (and rebuild from scratch). We could quibble over the relative merits of the potential terms "Mary Sue" should map to, but that's not a useful discussion here.
> Several people above say that what is important is how well the story is written, yet this is not what people on fimfiction say when they leave nasty comments on alicorn OC stories.
Amusingly, I left this concrit on a
alicornSue-pony OC story just last week (and followed the author). For all we're disputing here, I think we're really on the same page wrt not making the mistake of conflating archetype with quality, and wrt the sad reality that most readers do.--
* Witness the reaction to your naming Superman as a Mary Sue (or Chuck's pointing out that Tony Stark and Sherlock Holmes share most of the Sue character traits). Bet you $10 that the majority of the readers leaving scathing anti-Sue comments on FIMFic stories would not consider any of those three "Sues".
We are the readers, and as a group, we decide what is good and what is bad. That's what the thumbs are for.
I suppose you could argue this, but putting value judgements entirely in the hands of the individual consumer makes it difficult to analyze art. When we say that a particular piece is good, it's generally understood that we mean there are certain desirable attributes that have been delivered well (e.g. coherence, grammar, relatability, and lasting impact), and that the work is entertaining or enlightening to the average audience member.
I think you're trying to argue that all art may have some value to someone, and that we should not call it "bad" for this reason. I agree that someone, somewhere, may actually like My Immortal and Uwe Boll and 2 Girls 1 Cup, but this is not sufficient reason to withhold all judgement. Sue fics are often lacking in vital story components like conflict and spelling, as many others have pointed out. I think these missing values can make a story truly, objectively bad.
If you narrow the Sue concept to "someone good at fighting or fucking or thinking", then yes, it's possible to write a good story with a Sue in it. But to ignore the attributes that so often accompany this narrow definition is to impose such artificial constraints that it's hardly worth debating.
This is dangerous thinking.
You have not been formally trained in literary criticism, but you do very well with your tools of computational analyses and subject of pony fiction. I did not go to Le Cordon Bleu, but I know when my steak has been overcooked. My friend has not given religion much thought, but they are perfectly qualified to decide that Scientology is bad.
I may not fully understand every social and psychological aspect of someone's life and upbringing, but I know enough to deem a story with poor grammar, no conflict, and ten alicorns bad.
1272772 You have not been formally trained in literary criticism, but you do very well with your tools of computational analyses and subject of pony fiction. I did not go to Le Cordon Bleu, but I know when my steak has been overcooked. My friend has not given religion much thought, but he is perfectly qualified to decide that Scientology is bad.
I may not fully understand every social and psychological aspect of someone's life and upbringing, but I know enough to deem a story with poor grammar, no conflict, and ten alicorns bad.
This is what I was talking about when I said that defining "Mary Sue" as a combination of character traits and story flaws is bad, because it prevents people from thinking about the issue. I specifically said, repeatedly, that I'm asking whether an overpowered wish-fulfilment character is inherently bad, and that I'm not not talking about flaws such as poor grammar. Because you're using the phrase "Mary Sue" to mean a mishmash of character traits and story problems, you can't have that discussion--I'm trying to isolate the character traits and talk about that, but the minute you begin, your mind fills in the story flaws that are part of your definition, and this leads you to writing an argument that doesn't apply to this conversation.
My opinion is that there are some people who need simple wish-fulfilment stories, and such stories, if well-written, are art for them, for now. Criticizing a story for merely having an overpowered alicorn with little conflict, rather than on how well the author did what they meant to do, is really just criticizing the people who like it for not having what you consider virtuous preferences. I also think that most stories are wish-fulfilment stories of one kind or another, just not as blatant as the Mary Sue. Star Wars and The Godfather don't seem to have much to say to me, but I still recognize them as art because they do have something to say to some people.
1273351
Professor Whooves didn't frame this discussion in terms of Mary Sues. You did. If using that phrase predictably results in discussions you don't want to have, stop using that phrase. (Words mean the thing the listener actually hears, not the thing you meant. If you have to backtrack and explain where definitions differ, something has gone wrong.) I think this conversation would've been a lot more productive if you'd called it "On Wish Fulfillment" or something, since it seems like that's what you actually wanted to talk about.
1273480 I'm using the term as writers have been using it for the past 40 years. The association with bad grammar, lack of conflict, and poor technical skills are not part of the definition, I didn't expect so many people to think it was, and I'm fighting against that sloppy erosion of the term. That is not what writers outside fimfiction mean when they say Mary Sue. Check Wikipedia for the history of the term. Or check the Trek Creative Lexicon.
1273493
Ah. I'll leave you to it, then. I'm not interested in fights over definitions.
I think it's important, when evaluating a story as good or bad, to ask "How is this story changing me as I read it? Is reading this story making me a better person? Is it making me smarter? Braver? Wiser? Kinder?" and so on.
One criticism I would make of Mary Sue stories is that most often they do none of these things. Two essential components of good storytelling are change and conflict. The protagonist encounters conflicts that change him as a person; his struggles force him to undergo character development, and by the end of the story he is a better person than he was at the beginning. And the readers, who follow along with the protagonist through all this, get some of that character development transferred onto them, whether they realize it or not. This mechanism is part of what makes stories so powerful: We get to go on an adventure, filled with blood and sorrow and difficult character growth, without leaving our cozy chair by the fire.
This is my argument against Mary Sue stories: By the definition of "Mary Sue", the character is already perfect at the story's beginning (or perfect enough that the author has no interest in changing them). Mary Sues never undergo character development. Because of this, they have little to teach the reader.
Now, that's not to say that writing a Mary Sue may not be therapeutic. In the example you brought up in your original post, the writer had a very difficult childhood, and writing about an imaginary character who overcame all his problems effortlessly helped him get through that. Good for him! Seriously. If it made him a stronger, happier, more effective person, then that can only be a good thing. And it's possible that his story may find readers who are at a similar stage in their life and that the story addresses their problems specifically enough that they may get some comfort out of that. But it's important that people move on from reading and writing Mary Sue stories, because about all they have to teach us is "Wouldn't it be nice if you were as strong and smart and beautiful as this character?"
Mary Sue stories give people a model to look up to (which is why Superman is so popular), but it's an unattainable model, and they give absolutely no guidance on how to grow and become like the character they're holding up. Mary Sue stories can serve as a great hook to get people interested in reading (much like Dragonball Z is good at getting children hooked on anime), but they do little to feed their audience. If readers (and writers) are to mature and grow and be fed by literature, they have to eventually move past Mary Sue stories and move up to stories that encourage them to embrace character growth.
1271742
Apologies for the late response: spent most of Friday travelling and most of today working.
Still, it gave me a lot of time to decipher that last sentence. I mean,
This is a paragraph masquerading as a sentence.
I'm not sure how it would obscure it if the relationship between the two is in fact what we want to discuss. Isolating character from story for analysis is not something I'm certain would work given that you can only refer to a character as being good or bad for a certain story in terms of the failure modes Why are we using terms from Reliability Engineering? Is it a LessWrong thing? Knowing a character archetype is only the starting step; knowing how a character archetype usually reacts within a story, how it relates to it, is key.
We're still meandering away from the original issue, though. Back to that using your definitions:
Is it correct to refer to a story containing a Mary Sue character archetype as bad art, or that it has no relevance or meaning or emotional impact to anyone (which is what I'm assuming your definition of bad art is). No, it is not correct, but equally, I think this renders the terms "good art" and "bad art" meaningless and makes it so that there is only art and not-art. And even then, I'm unsure about that last one.
Perhaps you had a different meaning of bad art, but even still, I'd probably agree. Defining a story as being bad art purely through possession of a character archetype is nonsense unless your idea of bad art coincides with the possession of that archetype. Doing it in a hurtful manner is even more damning.
Unless you are saying that who you are is directly related to what you know, you are making my argument for me. What you say in a conversation reveals more about what you know than whether or not you happen to be a member of a group: being male does not make your contribution to a talk on the Y chromosome more relevant than a female geneticist. Better to not try and preclude anyone from the conversation and only discriminate on the basis of what they say.
Also,
>Being a member of the her using anti-patriachy group
>Not a member of the they using anti-sexism group
Your choice in gender neuter pronouns is inelegant.
That conclusion you came to reminds me very much of Blueshift's The Star in Yellow! Just a thought :P
Long live the singular "they"!
So who is this author you're talking about? You made me wanna check out his story. Can I know? Pleeeaaase?