I'd been meaning to write a post called "In Defense of Mary Sue" but I see that I was beaten to it

[astridv]

Fandom: where other people write meta so you don't have to.

Recommended reading:
boosette: Storming the Battlements or: Why the Culture of Mary Sue Shaming is Bully Culture.

Calling "Mary Sue" in this environment is shaming women for empowering themselves.

There is no substantive harm in writing a "Mary Sue" -- there is no substantive harm in creating a character, original or otherwise, who "warps the world around them", who is "adored by all for no particular reason", who wins the day.

There is substantive harm in bullying and shaming real people for empowering themselves through their writing. Words have power. Words cause harm. Words hurt, and the wounds they leave are deeper and longer-lasting than many physical wounds. I nearly stopped writing entirely, as a teen, after having my work and my OC called "Mary Sue". I have friends who did stop writing because of it.

Before anyone says: "Oh, they/you should just have sucked it up and grown a thicker skin! Learn to accept criticism!"

Think.

You are blaming the victims of bullying for their bullies' behavior.

That is Not. Okay. Ever.

goldjadeocean: Also, one of these days I'm going to write up a big damn meta post on why the culture around Mary Sue shaming has huge misogynist overtones all over it

Because when I was a 13-year-old getting indoctrinated into fanfic, it seemed to me that the takeaway lesson wasn't "write nuanced characters that make sense in their environment". It was, "don't write about women being awesome"

Such stuff as dreams are made on

Mary Sue these days isn't a criticism of skill. It isn't a criticism of writing ability. It doesn't teach the writer how to build convincing character detail. It teaches her to reduce her expectations for her characters.

When she sits down to write, she thinks, "I can't have this character be too awesome. I can't have her achieve too much. I need her to fail, just a little bit, so people don't yell at me."

And then she never learns how to take risks as a writer, and eventually succeed. And she doesn't gain the skills or the confidence to eventually write a woman who kicks ass, takes names, and is a real, full-bodied character while she's at it.

niqaeli: on mary sue policing and why i cannot abide it

I'm a fan of realistic characterisation but as much as I am one, I am NOT simultaneously a fan of hurting other people, of tearing them down, of saying, you are a silly and overwrought woman who needs to learn her place in life, you shouldn't have dared to even daydream about better.

Life's too short to read bad writing; it's also far too short for me to spend time and energy enforcing attitudes about writing that are on their very best days still deeply tinged with misogyny.

Some of my own thoughts, copypasted from a comment elsewhere...

I think Mary Sue is a natural phase of a young writer's develepment. Not even writer, person. When I grew up I had this Mary-Sue of sheer awesomeness that I wrote stories about in my head for years, and I wouldn't have missed that for the world. (Wouldn't have shared it with the world either; it felt very private.)

Even if someone writes Mary Sue, dear lord, have the writer have her fun and get it out of her system. That kind of fic actually finds its fans and they have a right to read their kink of choice. What happened to don't like, don't read? Your kink is not my kink? I don't like Mary Sue fic either so I skip it.

And what always bothered me about the Mary Sue hunting comms is that it's essentially older fans, grownups even, bullying young writers, often kids and teenagers.

Then there's of course the part where the term has been watered down to mean something like 'every female OC'. And every canon character who doesn't come equipped with a penis runs danger of being called a Canon Sue which is then used as a way to legitimize dismissing her, or worse. People who argue in all seriousness how Sam Carter deserves to be called Mary Sue but Rodney McKay doesn't... loose about 100 respect points in my eyes.

And now we're at a point where writers - and not just fanfic, original as well!- are so concerned that their OC will get called Mary Sue that they rather change her gender to avoid that issue. I have seen that sentiment uttered by *dozens* of authors over the past years. And we end up with even fewer female characters than before. Awesome, fandom. That sure backfired.

I was pondering an original comic, and as I was thinking about the plot I noticed that I'd made my hero default male. I was thinking, why did I do that. No reason they can't be female. More female heroes ftw! Oh shit, but then people will call her a Mary Sue. How do I avoid that?? *frets*

^ that was my train of thought. And then I though, screw them all, I'll make her female for sure and the haters can shove their unchecked misogyny and go to hell.

I have no more patience for this stuff.

[eta: Rules of this journal: do not bash Jennifer Keller or Sam Carter (or other characters for that matter). Do not call any female character a Mary Sue.]

[eta2: anonymous comments are screened]

Comments

[sasha_feather]

Well said.

[autumnus]

thank you for the eloquent summary and wording of the issue.

[amaresu]

I'm confused how anyone can throw the Mary Sue label at a main Stargate character and then defend another main Stargate character. They'd all fail a litmus test and that's okay. The hero(es) should be larger than life. They should do impossible things and be liked by impossible people.

I have more thoughts, but I'm letting them percolate.

[tielan]

Good post.

People who argue in all seriousness how Sam Carter deserves to be called Mary Sue but Rodney McKay doesn't... loose about 100 respect points in my eyes.

*snorts* We're probably thinking of the same people...

Honestly, Rodney's way more of a Mary Sue than Carter. The way he used to behave (and occasionally still does) would not endear him to anyone in the real world; yet people still gave him respect when the truth is his attitude would have had him dumped no matter how brilliant he was. At least Carter's extensive skills came with civility and the ability to socially integrate.

And, I've also been having the Mary Sue argument in my head over an original female character for profic purposes. This discussion has been good for saying 'oh screw it, just write her'.

[miera_c]

Not to mention the SG-1 writers never wrote out an entire character arc for Sam finding her perfect soul mate who happened to be played by a huge personal favorite actor of the writers, whereas Rodney...

[cesare]

the SG-1 writers never wrote out an entire character arc for Sam finding her perfect soul mate who happened to be played by a huge personal favorite actor of the writers

Sam/Jack...?

I mean, I don't think that's as overt as having Kaylee Jennifer fall for Rodney. And probably was less about Sueing Sam than deciding that the male action hero should hook up with the only female star. But I read some interesting meta suggesting that the writing for Sam took a downward turn around the time that the writers began the MFEO arc between Sam and Jack.

[astridv]

as having Kaylee Jennifer fall for Rodney

I don't tolerate Keller bashing here, not even of the snarky kind. I love the character; please respect that.

[cesare]

That wasn't intended as a swipe at Keller at all, but as an acknowledgment of Miera_c's point that the actor was a "huge personal favorite" of the writers from her role as Kaylee.

[miera_c]

Sorry I hope I didn't offend you. I have Issues when it comes to Keller, though I blame them squarely on the producers, rather than Jewel.

[tielan]

Sam/Jack isn't comparable to Rodney/Keller.

The dynamic between Sam and Jack was developed from the get-go, and never seen or expressed as 'soul mates'. There were no declarations of love, mostly a lot of hedging, edging, and friendship. The fact that even at the end of the series, canon still hedges whether Carter is with Jack or not, suggests that while it's a pairing constant, it's hardly the degree of focus that Rodney/Keller received.

Incidentally, S4 was when the show began to changed. It essentially switched over to a more action-adventure and 'oh we must get out of this problem by technobabble/big explodey things' oriented show, with less cultural interaction and meet-and-greet, and that meant a corresponding change in character focus. All the characters were flattened to fit accordingly, not just Sam. But Sam tends to gain the most flak due to the fact that S4 was also when they brought the dynamic between her and Jack to a head...and then backed off.

[miera_c]

The fact that even at the end of the series, canon still hedges whether Carter is with Jack or not, suggests that while it's a pairing constant, it's hardly the degree of focus that Rodney/Keller received.

This pretty much sums it right up.

[monanotlisa]

Oh, yeah, Rodney McKay. I'm fond of the character, but boy, surely he comes right after Wesley Crusher in the True Mary Sue category...

(Astrid! Thanks for the post, and greetings from over yonder! :) Say hi to Jen for me, and you two have fun!)

[tielan]

I love Rodney. Even when you just want to smack him, there's a vulnerability about it. And he does mitigate it - he's capable of great nobility and heroism and sacrifice...even if he complains about having to do it. A lot. :D

But he can still be an asshole extraordinaire when he puts his mind to it. A kind of "I haven't quite grown up yet" self-centered ness.

Actually, a good portion of my reluctance to particularly focus on Rodney comes from the Rodney-love in fandom. I rarely tend to favour the characters that the majority of fandom LOOOOVES.

[monanotlisa]

I love Rodney. Even when you just want to smack him, there's a vulnerability about it. And he does mitigate it - he's capable of great nobility and heroism and sacrifice...even if he complains about having to do it. A lot. :D

Hee.

There's a reason why fandom likes him; I just studiously and very happily avoid certain subsets of it. ;)

But the self-insertation, the unusually jerky characterisation, and the over-emphasis on his woobie storylines are all canon elements that make me roll my eyes and wish I could do the same to the show writers...

[astridv]

Jen says hi back. :) We had fun! We did sightseeing by bike. :)

[astridv]

The way he used to behave (and occasionally still does) would not endear him to anyone in the real world; yet people still gave him respect when the truth is his attitude would have had him dumped no matter how brilliant he was.

Very good point.

'oh screw it, just write her'.

That's where I am right now. Nyahah! And I think my story will actually work better with a female character in the main role, too. But I found it enlightening that I cast the main role with a male character before consciously reflecting on it. Still a ways to go... ;)

[miera_c]

I think Mary Sue is a natural phase of a young writer's develepment. Not even writer, person. When I grew up I had this Mary-Sue of sheer awesomeness that I wrote stories about in my head for years, and I wouldn't have missed that for the world. (Wouldn't have shared it with the world either; it felt very private.)

This. I do think fully fleshed out characters need to have flaws as well as virtues, but you don't just start out doing that from scratch. You have to learn to do it. Also, it can depend on the genre you're writing in, since "flaw" translates different ways in scifi versus romance novels. (You could make an argument that Bella from "Twilight" is a blank slate type of Mary Sue, which is a reason why the series is successful - every woman who reads it can imagine herself in the heroine's place. [I haven't read the books and I have problems with them, but they are a major success story].)

Also, if you don't feel your character is awesome, you won't want to write hir in the first place.

[cesare]

I'm ambivalent about this whole thing. IMO, telling someone that you think they're writing a Mary Sue isn't automatically bullying, any more than telling someone that her shirt is on backwards: you can do it in a mean and derisive way, or you can do it in a kind way, with good intentions.

You're right that writing Mary Sues is a common (though not universal) phase. It's also common to learn that Mary Sues are considered to be poor characterization, and to learn from it. That was an important step in learning how to write fiction for me, and I imagine it was like that for a lot of writers.


People who argue in all seriousness how Sam Carter deserves to be called Mary Sue but Rodney McKay doesn't... loose about 100 respect points in my eyes.

That's a shame, because this can be a feminist argument. Explaining how got long, so I put it over in my own journal if you care to read it.

The short version is: both of them are Mary Sues sometimes. But I believe Rodney is a Mary Sue less often, because he has flaws and is confronted with his mistakes. Samantha seems to be confronted with mistakes far less often and flaws are seldom acknowledged.

And I think that's sexist. Because it suggests that Rodney can be petty and arrogant and screw up repeatedly, and still be a hero. Samantha, on the other hand, has to be nigh-flawless to be a hero.

I think on some level the SG writers believe that men can achieve great things despite their flaws, while a woman who achieves the same greatness would have to be flawless-- would have to be a fantasy.

[sholio]

To be honest, I think that Sam and Rodney, for all they're generally used as one, aren't a good test case to be compared on the Sue axis because they're such radically different characters from the moment they're introduced, with such different goals and different places in the cast -- and they spend most of their time on two shows that tend to handle problem-solving in different ways. Rodney was brought in as an antagonist, and a fairly unlikable one; from there he had a built-in trajectory from massively flawed quasi-antagonist to hero, which did a lot to cement the fans' fondness for him (people like underdogs, and characters that grow and change). Sam was brought in as a heroic character. She doesn't screw up as much as Rodney because she's always been portrayed as a careful scientist who doesn't jump into things without thinking them through. And she's on a show that tends not to do things like have their characters accidentally commit genocide. (Though she did blow up a sun one time! On purpose, though. I think.) If she ever did something like unleash Replicators on the Milky Way, it would be radically out of step with how the other characters behave.

The area in which Sam and Rodney can be usefully compared, IMHO, is in fans' reactions to their relative competence as scientists. (Is Sam "too smart"? How about Rodney? Does Sam have a a ridiculously wide array of scientific competence? More than Rodny?) But if you're going anywhere else with it, you're comparing apples to oranges, because they are drastically different characters and Sam's hero role on a show full of heroes is different from Rodney's zero-to-hero role on a much more humor-oriented show that mostly celebrates slightly incompetent underdogs. I think if you're trying to draw a one-to-one correspondence between Rodney and a similar SG-1 character, he aligns most closely with Vala (both originally antagonists, both fantastically competent at their areas of expertise and pretty incompetent elsewhere, both with major emotional flaws that are often played for laughs and tragic pasts, etc). Now comparing those two, and fan reaction to those two, might get you somewhere. Or you could compare Sam and Daniel on their own show, and how TPTB handled Sam's love life vs. Daniel's, or Sam's personal tragedies (death of her father) vs. Daniel's (death of his wife, etc). Maybe there are some useful conclusions to be drawn there regarding sexism of TPTB in the way that they deal with similar characters' storylines and backstories and the compromises that they have to make in order to achieve hero-dom (because I do agree that there are problems of sexism in the writing of both shows).

But I think it's far too simplistic - and wildly misrepresents the characters - to use Sam and Rodney as case studies to draw the conclusions that you do - because they are such vastly different characters with such divergent roles in their shows. Maybe Sam could have been conceptualized differently from the beginning (as a petty, arrogant, impetuous egotist who has a lot of growing up to do) but that would have put her terribly out of step with the rest of Team SG-1, who are all major hero types - then you'd have the opposite problem, that their only major female character is also the only one who screws up on a regular basis. It would only have worked if the rest of SG-1 were conceptualized differently as well. Petty, flawed Rodney works because most of the people around him are also flawed and make mistakes. Petty, flawed Sam wouldn't have fared so well, on a show where the heroes usually behave like more traditional heroes and don't suffer as many Pyrrhic victories as they do on SGA. Sam's a hero like the rest of SG-1 are heroes ... but you don't tend to hear the Mary Sue accusation directed at Jack, Daniel or Teal'c. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard any of those three called Mary Sues, where Sam gets it all the time. (Daniel, who speaks and reads nearly every human and extraterrestrial language, and can communicate with any and all aliens upon meeting them for the first time ...) I don't see Sam as a totally flawless character - she's certainly less flawed than Rodney, but that's true of nearly every other character on both shows. And suggesting that she has to be MORE flawed than her male teammates in order to achieve some sort of gender-balance-ideal - well, isn't that exactly what the above-linked posts are complaining about?

[monanotlisa]

Insightful analysis - I really like the wider picture, the different hero types of these shows referenced.

[astridv]

Thanks! You saved me a bunchload of time, and this is one argument I so don't care to get back into. I'm really burnt out on that whole debate right now.

And suggesting that she has to be MORE flawed than her male teammates in order to achieve some sort of gender-balance-ideal - well, isn't that exactly what the above-linked posts are complaining about?

Well said. Again, thanks for stepping in and taking the time to make that point. Very much appreciated.

[cesare]

Good points all. I compared Sam and Rodney because, well, that was the quote I was responding to; I agree with you that they are radically different characters in ways that make the comparison uneven. In my own journal, I also mention Teyla and Elizabeth as female characters who suffer the same neglect, inasmuch as they're not shown making mistakes and growing. Of course they're also wildly different characters from Rodney; most SG characters are, which is probably what made Rodney so popular in the first place.

Comparing Daniel and Sam would be interesting. His facility with all languages parallels her expertise with all sciences. I haven't seen a lot of SG-1, but it seems like Daniel is idealistic, which can also make him overly trusting or naive sometimes, in ways that cause problems for the team; and over time, he toughens up in response. Flaws don't have to be as flagrant as Rodney's, they can be good qualities that become handicaps in a different context.

If she ever did something like unleash Replicators on the Milky Way, it would be radically out of step with how the other characters behave.

Heh. I recently read meta about how she did something like that (it's near the end of the article), and how it was radically out of step with how the other characters were written, as if the writers didn't care that they were having Sam do something nonsensical.

Anyway, I'm interested to talk more with you about it, but I see Astridv mentions that she's burnt out on this discussion, so if you'd like to chat more in comments on the post I made you're more than welcome!

[sholio]

Thanks! I've kinda burned myself out on the whole thing too by this point, though ... and also, I think that debating SG1 character dynamics would end up being frustrating for us because I think we've probably watched different parts of the show -- I missed big chunks of the later seasons, and you said that you hadn't seen that much of the show at all. It'd probably just be frustrating if we're working off different parts of canon; it'd be like trying to debate SGA character dynamics with people who haven't watched season 5 - there are huge chunks of context they'd be missing. ^^

(Incidentally, that is an absolutely adorable icon with the boys and the little flying Teyla! I've seen that cartoon of the flying Teyla by herself in icons, but I hadn't actually recognized it as Teyla 'til seeing her in context.)