Mary Sues Are Stories, Not Characters · 8:06am Jun 11th, 2016
Much digital ink has been spilled over what defines a Mary Sue. Wikipedia says they're an idealized, too-perfect character, often an author insert or serving as wish fulfillment. TV Tropes suggests it is a character "who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature". Bookplayer suggested it is a character whose power level is inappropriate for the story they're in. ScarletWeather wrote a blog post, You Are a Mary Sue (and so is Cthulu) about someone who wrote a story for the purpose of proving that a Mary Sue really is a character who has the universe stacked in their favor.
I think the reason why it is so hard to define what character traits define a Mary Sue is because Mary Sues aren't characters at all - they're stories. This is why adding character flaws to characters doesn't make them not be Mary Sues. This is why flawed characters can be Mary Sues. This is why which character appears to be a Mary Sue can rotate from character to character in a story, as each focus character ends up "being one" in turn.
A Mary Sue can have any set of character traits you want them to have. The real problem is the story they're put in. It doesn't matter how simple or how complex a character you make the protagonist, if the story is still a Mary Sue story, then the story will be a Mary Sue story. You can put the most interesting, deep character you can imagine into a Mary Sue story, and because the events happen, she "becomes" a Mary Sue.
Worrying about a character being a Mary Sue is backwards - the problem is never that a character is a Mary Sue, it is that the story is a Mary Sue story. No amount of tinkering with a character will correct the flaw. Even having another character take the lead in some crucial scenes won't fix the problem - it is the plot which is ruining the story, not the character.
It is easy to get lost in the weeds, and think about a character as affecting a story in a certain way; however, it is important to remember that when you're writing a story, you, the author, are ultimately who is making everything happen. It is the story itself which is creating the intrinsic Mary Sueness of the plot. While a character in a Mary Sue story may be poorly written, the real suspicion needs to fall on the story itself.
So what defines a Mary Sue story?
Nothing. I don't think they actually exist. Rather, I think the idea of the grouping of Mary Sues came about because many poorly written or ill-conceived stories also contain poorly written or ill-conceived characters. Wish fulfillment, political polemics, and authorial self-inserts are all common causes for "Mary Sue" stories, and often include characters who have it "too easy" and which the audience identifies as a Mary Sue. While a character being overpowered relative to the plot, or having plot elements arbitrarily solve themselves in their favor may seem to define Mary Sues, a character may still experience "real conflict" and still come off as a "Mary Sue" due to some other unbelievable attributes or aspects, or due to coming off as obvious wish fulfillment or a self-insert, even if the plot still contains real conflict which is not trivially overcome via plot contrivances or the character's sheer awesomeness.
This is why referring to a character as a Mary Sue often isn't particularly helpful - ultimately, not only is it a story problem, not a character problem, but it may not even necessarily be the same story problem.
So you can describe Mary Sue Stories as Deus Ex Machima?
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I don't think that Mary Sue stories can be easily defined because they're not actually one thing - they're a number of things. The idea of the Mary Sue spread because many poorly written stories contain poorly written characters. Wish fulfillment, political polemics, authorial self-inserts, and similar are all frequently causes of Mary Sue stories, and frequently contain characters identified as Mary Sues. However, the ultimate cause is not always all that similar, and the underlying story flaws are not, I think, actually all that universal - I think the reason why people struggle to identify Mary Sues is in part because there are multiple different story flaws which can lead to "Mary Sue" characters seeming to exist.
Bookplayer's suggestion is one cause - if you have a character whose abilities make solving the plot trivial and non-challenging, it means that the "conflict" is really non-existent. It is, fundamentally, a "fake" conflict. Deus ex machina are another way of setting up "false" conflicts, as the conflicts are solved in such a manner.
But there are other "sue" stories that involve real conflict, but in which a character is still often identified as a "Mary Sue". A story can involve legitimate conflict, but also be an authorial self-insert who goes to Equestria and bones Rainbow Dash and Twilight at the same time while fighting against some great threat. The conflict with the threat may well be real and could even be a "real" conflict, but the character would still be identified as a "Sue" due to the wish fulfillment aspects of boning Twilight and Rainbow Dash.
EDIT: I edited this response into the original post.
That was incredibly well-put. Kudos for throwing that perspective out there.
Ehh...I agree that a Mary Sue is based entirely on the writing, but I'd say it's flaws in both the character design AND the story that creates one. I think it takes a combination of a character being too versatile or powerful, and the setting lacking the means to be a real trial or challenge.
The most painful application of a number of problems, collectively attributed as "Mary Sue", that I ever saw in a story was in the Demon War Saga by Salvatore. I call it painful because Salvatore is a long established author. You may be familiar with the character Drizzt Do' Urden who has become kind of the archetype of the "I go against my evil people and become good instead" variety.
The Demon War Saga is a trilogy which has been sitting incomplete on my library shelves for years now, having stopped at the second book. The reason? A farmer girl which is the childhood friend and interest of the elf-trained ranger you believe is the protagonist of the series takes his place after he bites the dust. She manages to become as good a swordsman as he is in a matter of weeks despite the fact that he had to go through training from hell to get as good. She also manages to become as good as a spell user as a monk who was the closest thing in the setting to heavenly inspired. Then, she uses her godly abilities to snipe (yes, snipe) their version of the Pope. Everyone is horrified at that act, but of course it soon becomes clear that Pony, I just remembered her name, is too perfect and good to blame for this. Then the Pope turns out to be a vessel for the titular Demon so issue resolved.
I never bought another Salvatore book again since then. Truth be told, the series had a lot of problems for me though I loved its magic system, but oh man, that Pony gal. I never expected to see something so horrendous from what I considered an implecable writer thus far.
A year ago (about) I read the Xenophilia story on this site. I expected the "Mary Sue" type of problems. A guy ending in Equestria, getting a harem? Oh boy, this is gonna be hilarious and cringeworthy.
Yet, despite the clop scenes I never had much taste for (or did I and I'm covering for myself?), it was amazingly well done. Lero wasn't perfect, not universaly loved, he made mistakes, got angry or stayed calm according to the situations he found himself in, and the story was interestingly done.
Bad Crimmar, judging a book by its tags.
I'm starting to wonder if it's not about character or story choices. You raised great points and it's true you can't generalize a slew of problems into a single tag as "Mary Sue".
There are many stories here where they try the same thing as Xenophilia and it really ends ups cringeworthy.
There are stories out there where the hero is superbly trained, established with long life, charisma, takes the most beautiful girl in the world, and ends up king. Does that make Aragorn of Lord of the Rings a Mary Sue?
Maybe it's not about plot or characters, at least not that much.
Perhaps it's only about Storytelling and how well you can weave it.
It also doesn't help that people have a tendency to cry "Mary Sue" for characters that aren't too.
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Unfortunately, any sort of simple thing tends to get latched onto and overstated as being the problem with stories. "Show, don't tell," seems to be a popular bit of often-repeated and often-misunderstood advice as well.
Mary Sue seems to be especially overused because people seem to have gotten the idea it just means "character I don't like" or "poorly written character".
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That line of thought suggests that "Mary Sue" is an author rather than a story - an author who has not reached (or chooses to ignore) the level of maturity required to take their conflict and characters seriously in the context of the story they are trying to tell.
Most of the "Mary Sue" problems you bring up are more problems with how the author handles what they set up than how the story is structured. For instance, a character only makes the conflict trivially solvable so long as the author accepts the current terms of the conflict. A Deus Ex Machina is the author setting up what could be a reasonable climax and then choosing to sidestep it instead of paying it off. The author is achievement focused instead of focusing on the journey that justifies the achievement and consequently thinks not holding up the punching bag is a credit to the character.
Your second class of problems are similar. Protagonist getting lucky with the mares (or all the power ups, or having their political views be The One True Path...) is the author giving a character results in place of the context that makes those results meaningful. I would again not call these story problems because given the core of the problem is results without context, the achievements are more often than not tangential and could be regarded the same as repeated "My character is still awesome!" footnotes. Annoying, yes, but the root problem is not on the page.
So I would say that "Mary Sues" do exist, but in every case the term would be better used to describe an author who has not yet grasped the distinction between achievement/results and the context that makes said rewards interesting to read about.
There is but one way to reverse this issue.
The author has to put this character in a situation so devastating that there is no way out, and have them struggle. Genuinely struggle, like "This is a major problem, and I am no longer so confident about getting out." In fact, have them lose... and not bounce back until MUCH later, after they have revised their strategy or world view.
I think a potential cure to this is reading. Let me elucidate.
I never realized I could write fiction where anything bad happens to the characters until I read a little pony fiction and discovered how powerful the emotional aspects of it can be.
I suspect Mary Sue stories tend to be based on the idea that your character is your baby, and you don't want anything bad to happen to them. If you were writing your future life experiences into being, why would you write anything bad happening to you? The story is then a fantasy about things going really well for the author, not much different from poorly-written pornography.
Shameless Gary Stu self promotion: T̶h̶e̶ ̶L̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶L̶o̶s̶t̶ 7̶t̶h̶ ̶E̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t S̶u̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶T̶r̶a̶m̶p̶o̶l̶i̶n̶e̶:̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶f̶e̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶a̶i̶f̶u̶ ̶S̶t̶e̶a̶l̶e̶r̶ T̶h̶e̶ ̶B̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶S̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶F̶i̶m̶f̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n. F̶e̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶B̶o̶x̶ ̶H̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ Please ⇩vote!
I tend to think Mary Sues are characters around whom the in-story world revolves to such a degree that it breaks the suspension of disbelief. Which means that a character that is a Mary Sue in one situation would not be in another.
For example, if I wrote a story about a new pony who comes to town, instantly befriends the Mane-6, learns magic way faster than Twilight, fully understands AJ's farm and can make improvements to it, can communicate with every relevant being, including the animals like Fluttershy, and happens to be some sort of Chosen One, I'd most likely have created a Mary Sue.
That character I just described? That's essentially The Force Awakens's Rey. She pretty much knows tech backwards and forwards, instantly learns advanced Force techniques, seems to know every relevant language she comes across (including Wookie, which ought to be pretty rare), a main character hugs her instead of her husband's heterosexual life partner, and so on. And for those reasons, the term Mary Sue has been brought up in regards to her. But in general, people don't think she's a Mary Sue, but borderline at most.
So why is it that this character who, if she was a fan creation, would have people gathering pitchforks and torches to go get that Mary Sue, generally liked? Probably because the story itself was enjoyable enough that people are willing to see where it all goes, plus she has the advantage of being a canon main character (rather than usurping one's role). And so the creators of that story have time, in the next couple of sequels, to actually justify why she is what she is.
Basically, if a character takes enough people out of the story due to universe revolving around them, you've got a Mary Sue. And if it doesn't take enough out, then you don't.
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I wouldn't say no bad things happening to them. I could write a slice of life story about an OC named Lawn Mower mowing a lawn, one without much in the way of conflict. Lawn Mower would be unlikely to be considered a Mary Sue, yet nothing bad happened to him.
It is more the reverse. Cool/good things happen to them. They get a cool power. They meet all the cool ponies from the show. They are the Chosen One. The cool/good things factor can essentially create the "no bad things" situation you're talking about. Something bad happens, and their cool power fixes it, but the key lies more in that they have exactly the right cool power to make the bad thing meaningless rather than no bad thing happening.
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Salvatore has always been pretty bad, character-wise. I mean, you've got the dwarfiest dwarf, the strongest barbarian, the best swordsman, the best assassin (and second best swordsman), and the best archer (hiya, bow). Oh, and don't forget the
hobbithalfling who likes to eat and is also a thief. And his drow society is the evilest society, though utterly unworkable with how he describes it. His characters are borderline caricatures. He writes Young Adult fiction. Escapist fluff, in essence, but lacking in depth. He's a Suzanne Collins/Stephenie Meyer of an earlier generation. Popular, especially with the teens, but not exactly great.Mind you, I own a bunch of his stuff and enjoyed reading them (at the time at least), but his writing was never impeccable.
Oh, and Drizzt and the Drow? Pale imitations of Elric and the elves of Melniborne.
I agree one hundred percent that "Mary Sue" is a story problem, not a character one. People are often far too eager to mark off check boxes, like "the chosen one" or "orphan", and forget that some really great stories have been written about characters with the exact same traits. Another issue is that people want "Sue-ness" to be binary and it's not. Like most flaws, it exists on a continuum with some stories being just a touch Sue and others being overwhelmingly so.
I think, however, that saying there's no such thing as a Mary Sue story goes too far. Yes, the term is heavily overused these days and, yes, its definition was always a bit squishy. But I think at its core lies a solid idea, one 4015394 touched on in their post: favoritism. A Mary Sue story is one in which the main character distorts the world around them—in ways that stretch suspension of disbelief to the breaking point—and who does so throughout the story. The key, I think, is that the distortion focuses on just the main character and isn't an issue with the story in general. If everyone in the story just happens to figure out where to go next whenever the plot needs them someplace, it might be bad writing but it's not a Mary Sue story. If, on the other hand, the protagonist is the only character who enjoys this benefit, then we're probably looking at a Mary Sue story.
4015394 Honestly, I called Rey a Mary Sue before the movie was even over, for the exact reasons you described. The overall quality of the movie didn't excuse that fact, and I've never accepted the idea that you should hold canon sources to a lower quality standard than fanon. It's possible that future movies will redeem her by making her more complex and flawed, coming up with realistic and believable ways she could have learned all those skills, but until they come out Rey is emphatically a Mary Sue.
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As far as holding canon sources to a lower standard, I don't think that is the case so much as that canon sets the boundaries and rules. Like FIM canon establishes Twilight as being exceptional. But if the canon sets those boundaries, and someone blows those away, then it becomes problematic. If Twilight was at Trixie's power level, and someone wrote a story about a unicorn who could rival the alicorns... potentially problematic. Of course, it can also be problematic within canon, as well. Starlight is a prime example of it done poorly, as there we have a unicorn who is self taught who can stop the magical learning obsessed Twilight who has benefited from years of schooling by the best Equestria has to offer. Magic Duel handles it better, because the cursed artifact provides the reason why a regular unicorn can exceed Twi.
Which is a large part of why Rey is problematic. We were told the Force was strong with Luke, and he didn't learn it that way. We were told Anakin was exceptional, the Chosen One, with crazy high levels of Force potential, and he had a decade of teaching and still routinely got his butt handed to him, still needed to learn. And then we have Rey, who just does stuff. If the others had learned the same way, we'd have fewer problems with her. But instead, she breaks "the rules". But the movie hints that there are reasons for it, so that's what pulls her back over the edge.
So yeah, it will come down to if the future movies can justify her abilities, thereby changing the canon rules, or at least firmly establishing her as a super-duper, ultra-rare exception. But the hints of reasons, combined with canon setting the rules, means final judgement on her has to wait a bit. Hopefully, too much of it won't be due to Abrams wanting a shortcut to the next "cool" sequence, a flaw of his that negatively impacts the Star Trek reboot movies as well.
4015862 I agree partially with what you're saying. Canon does set the "rules" that we generally use to judge if a character is a Mary Sue, and canon Mary Sues are usually labelled as such because they violate the rules the canon has previously established. Some settings do tend to lend their protagonists a Mary Sue-like quality as a matter of course (action movie protagonists would often be called a Gary Stu if they were written in a fanfiction setting.
That said, I don't think a work of fiction, even a sci-fi or fantasy fiction, can completely ignore either the real world or common fantasy tropes in being judged, even if the work is careful to set the rules fairly around its protagonist. Part of why people thought Rey was a Mary Sue wasn't just because she wielded the force and light sabers in a way that other Jedi couldn't without training (a story-specific issue) it was that she had all these skills and abilities that were impossible for someone with her age and educational background to attain. That's based on common sense and real life experience. If the answer is "actually all Jedi can learn those skills that fast, we just hadn't seen it before," then I would be forced to say that Jedi as a whole are rather Mary Sue, and agree with the post author, that is an indicator the Star Wars Saga as a whole may be a Mary Sue Story.
I too hold out hope that Rey's skills and abilities will be adequately explained in future films. That said, a Mary Sue is more than just Overpowered. A true Mary Sue is someone who everyone around them focuses on, in defiance of logic, like the examples you gave for Rey. I can see future movies believably explaining Rey's abilities. (A fancy learning bed that taught her stuff in her sleep like the Venture Brothers, perhaps), but I can't imagine how they would explain everyone loving/hating her at first glance. So even if we get a very good explanation for why Rey is so overpowered (one that doesn't just turn it into "all Jedi are overpowered," which raises the question of how they were all so easily killed), I would still consider her a Mary Sue for the reactions of all the other characters towards her.
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Well, all flaws in stories ultimately stem from the author. That being said, there are people who have written Mary Sueish characters in some works and not others, suggesting that it is not just bad writer syndrome. Wesley Crusher, for instance, sometimes had Mary Sue episodes, but Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't struggle with the problem on the whole. While many people who write Mary Sues are inexperienced writers, clearly even people writing for major television shows or films can slip into Mary Sue territory.
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Really this just underlines the fact that Mary Sue isn't necessarily a very useful description of a character. Rey is a poorly written, unbelievable character, but I think that the movie is shoddily written in general. If she was the only main character, she'd be an obvious "Mary Sue", but she isn't. She shows many of the same problems Mary Sues have, but because the movie isn't wholly focused on her, people don't identify it as a Mary Sue story. It is also worth remembering that Finn shows the same instant mastery traits - he knows how to operate mounted guns on spaceships right off the bat, and knows how to use a light saber the first time he picks one up.
I think the presence of Han and Chewie as more grounded presences keep people from identifying the movie as a Mary Sue story, as the Mary Sue stuff only crops up with two of the main characters.
4016093 Finn is actually pretty bad with a light saber, so not quite the same, and he at least has martial training (which based on TR8-R, includes some melee weapon training). Likewise, as a Storm Trooper, he could feasibly have some heavy weapon training. And again, he isn't that good to start with (as seen inside the hanger). He's also an idiot, going to the bottom gun instead of the top gun, and not swapping to the top gun when the bottom gun gets damaged. Of course, the latter is probably so Abrams can get one of his cool moments. The bigger problems I have with Finn is "I'll just put everyone in jeopardy so I can go rescue the girl" thing. But again, that's just more Finn incompetence.
Anyway, I do think Mary Sue is helpful description, but it is a general thing, rather than a specific. It identifies that a particular character has most of a particular set of flaws in their characterization that can break the readers'/viewers' suspension of disbelief. But it isn't a be all and end all type of thing. Just a way to describe a common issue in two words.
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My biggest problem with Finn is that his establishing character moment is when one of his stormtrooper buddies gets shot and dies, and leaves his bloody fingermarks on his helmet, and Finn is all "I don't want to kill anymore," and then goes off and kills a bunch of his stormtrooper buddies while escaping.
4016179 That's why you don't wear armor that obscures your human features. Makes it easier for people to overcome the human tendency to not want to kill fellow humans ;) And also further proof that Finn is the least intelligent sapient creature in the Star Wars universe this side of Jar-Jar.
Yes, the problem of the Mary Sue extends well beyond the character. In fact, focusing on the character as the problem is somewhat ironically the same type of mistake that makes the character a Mary Sue in the first place. It isn't about traits/faults/abilities/attitude/etc. It's about how the story warps itself around the character to the point where it destroys any suspension of disbelief. I could go on, but instead I'll refer to this post which explains it better.
Ultimately, what makes a character a 'Mary Sue' for me is something entirely subjective: the degree to which I'd enjoy slamming said character's face against a wall. That might sound harsh, but it is a common reaction to encountering a Mary Sue story.
For what it's worth, there are other types of 'badfics' which make similar mistakes:
• Romance stories that exist only to float the ship.
• Fix fics that focus so blindly on fixing one thing that they ruin everything else.
• Headcanon dumps and/or rants that masquerade as stories.
• Strawman stories where the message is all that matters.
...to name a few. The key idea is that there's one idea (or character) the story focuses on promoting at the expense of everything else. At least with a Mary Sue story, I can vent some steam by envisioning the character sinking into a vat of acid. The others... not so much.
This character / story debate might be a distinction without a difference.
A Mary Sue is a character who warps the plot, the logic of storytelling, or physical reality so that it is all about her. She is out of balance, improbably superior to others for reasons that seem illogical and contrived.
In a fanfic with canon characters, the Mary Sue alters the personalities of the canon characters so that the story revolves around her. That's why Gary Stu Human in Equestria gets ponies to fall in love with him, despite the fact that none of the Mane 6 have so far recognizably fallen in love love with anyone. In a fanfic without canon characters, the laws of the fictional universe or probability or storytelling are violated; for instance, a Star Trek story about an alternate ship where the captain is an immortal vampire, the first officer is a Borg who fought his way back to humanity without help, the doctor is a member of an alien species that can just heal people by touching them, the engineer is a Vulcan comedian, and so forth... No canon characters are being warped to tell this story, but the improbability of having so many unusual characters aboard the same ship, and the fact that some of them have done things no other character in universe can do makes the story problematic.
In an original story, the Mary Sue has to blatantly violate laws of storytelling, such as having no real conflicts and being able to solve everything easily; or, the Mary Sue has abilities that seem to violate a sense of balance. For instance, Nancy Kress' Sleepless are genetically engineered to not have to sleep. This makes them hard-nosed Ayn Randian rationalists who succeed in business because they have an extra third of the day to work in. Makes sense. They're also immortal. Doesn't make sense. They weren't engineered to be immortal; that's an accident, but there's no science that suggests that genetically removing the need to sleep from a species would improve self-regeneration or end aging. The author pulled it out of her ass.
Most Mary Sues fall into one of these categories. In general, no matter how powerful your character is, as long as they are faced with reasonable conflicts that they must struggle to overcome and all canon characters in the story are in character and none of them have been displaced from what should have been their role in the story and the canon characters are capable of resolving conflicts as well, they are probably not Mary Sues.
A bit late here, but I thought I'd add; I think you're forced to draw this conclusion:
because essentially what you're doing here is proposing a genre. And genre can be wickedly difficult to really nail down, especially small ones.