How I Define The Dreaded Mary Sue

My post on TFU the other day started a rather interesting discussion on what constitutes a Mary Sue or its male counterpart, a Gary Stu.

I first heard the term shortly after I started reading Star Wars fan fiction in the early 1990s and I quickly learned one thing about it. "Mary Sue" is a bit like how Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once described hardcore pornography...it's hard to define but you know it when you see it. One snarky definition I heard was "when a (fan fiction) author inserts herself into a story and inserts several canon characters into her." That doesn't necessarily need to happen though for a Mary Sue to exist.

The term "Mary Sue" originated in a 1970s Star Trek fic that parodied a particular kind of fan fiction where it was painfully obvious the original character was an all-too-perfect, spotlight-stealing stand-in for the author. In a nutshell the original character in question, Mary Sue, was the youngest person ever to graduate from Starfleet Academy and gets placed on the Enterprise. Everybody who matters in Star Trek gravitates to her. Kirk naturally hits on her but Mary Sue isn't that kind of girl. Mary Sue is brave, heroic, and just all around awesome. She bravely sacrifices her life for the crew and a holiday is created in her honor.

I've read a number of fics over the years that featured painfully obvious Mary Sues. Luke Skywalker seemed to be a popular target for these kinds of fan fics. Poor guy. Though I've read a few "Spacer Sue" stories involving Han Solo and have seen quite a few Obi-Sue stories online post TPM. I think the grand prize winner for worst Star Wars Mary Sue story ever goes to a tale called "The Destined One," shockingly written by someone who taught creative writing at a small college somewhere. It was like a textbook Mary Sue. The original character is a teacher from "Terran" who ends up in the GFFA. As it turned out, Obi-Wan hid her there decades ago because she was Luke's Destined One. Once she meets up with Luke, they start calling each other Destined One. Of course she is gifted in the Force and she goes with Luke to Yavin IV to train Jedi. Everybody gravitates toward the original character and one Jedi student falls in love with her. She flips out when he hits on her and when she rejects his advances, he turns to the Dark Side. She could be doing more to train Jedi but all she wants to do is have Luke's babies. (There's a funny bit at the end where she gives birth to twins and shortly thereafter, defies medical reality and gets pregnant again.) That story along with the original Mary Sue Star Trek story inspired my Star Wars Mary Sue satire, "Hello, Jedi Sue." In that one, Jedi Sue is Obi-Wan's secret daughter, her midichlorian level is two times Luke's and Anakin's combined, she leads Rogue Squadron to victory, she flies the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field AS she saves Han from a heart attack, she becomes Leia's BFF and Leia gives her the only memento she has of Padmé, and of course, she is Luke's one and only TRUE love. She dies at one point and Leia declares it a worse tragedy than Alderaan. But she resurrects herself and everyone lives happily ever after.

fernwithy wrote a great piece in 2005 on what is and what isn't a Mary Sue:

http://fernwithy.livejournal.com/205497.html

I come from the old school on this one; a Mary Sue is a fan fiction or outside-the-canon error. It's a failure to make a character believably fit into a particular universe because the author's motivations are to remake the universe in her image. A Mary Sue is an intruder. It's a literary bull in somebody else's china shop. A Star Wars Mary Sue is a better lover to Anakin than Padmé, wiser than Yoda, a more powerful Sith than Palpatine or Darth Vader, Han's one true love (not named Leia), or the real savior of the Alliance. A Twilight Mary Sue is the secret love that has haunted Edward all of these decades and completely affects his relationship with Bella. A Potter Sue would be the real chosen one who shadows Harry Potter all of the way, making decisions that affect the outcome of the story. They upset the order of the story and the relationships in it for the glorification of the author's original character.

Self-insertion or modeling a character after the author is often associated with Mary Sues but it's a bit more complicated than that. Plenty of authors have created canon characters that are idealized versions of themselves or at least inspired by the author's experiences. By that definition, who isn't a Mary Sue/Gary Stu? Does anyone really think Ian Fleming was as suave as James Bond or that either George Lucas or Steven Spielberg are as sharp or knowledgeable as Indiana Jones? Gene Roddenberry sure had his luck with the ladies but he never had Captain Kirk's swagger or Jean Luc Picard's gravitas. Tabula rasas like Bella Swan aren't unto themselves Mary Sues either. They're there for any reader to identify as the character and well, she's supposed to be there in the first place. There's no story without her.

That's the distinction I make between characters who are the author's creations as opposed to a fan's or paid-for outside author's creations. A canon protagonist is part of the fabric of that universe; the creator put him there so he belongs there. A character may be annoying, a little too perfect, or in some way unlikable, but it's the creator's universe. It's his or her prerogative to define it as he or she sees fit; you can decide whether you like it or not. Some of you guys have said, "What about Wesley Crusher? What about Ginny Weasley?" They have all of the trademarks of a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu, yet they are also canon characters. So what are they? For all I know, Wesley Crusher might be kind of a strange parody of the original Mary Sue story. But Roddenberry put him there. You don't have to like ol' Wesley, he may be or may not be a terrible and annoying character, but he's as much a part of Trek as anyone else. Ginny may be an annoying or bad character and fixing her up with Harry might be have been a poor decision, but it's Rowling's call to make. She created that world.

Now I have seen fans take canon characters and turn them into Mary Sues, but those are usually peripheral and not-terribly-well-defined characters. It was almost as though the author was too lazy to make her own character or figured using a canon bit player would throw off the critics.

I have of course seen Mary Sues/Gary Stus in Star Wars pro-fic, otherwise known as the Expanded Universe. A lot of people cite Mara Jade or Grand Admiral Thrawn but for my money the biggest Mary Sue of them all is Bria Tharen. Tharen was not only Han's true love and broke his heart, she also charms Boba Fett into not capturing or killing her, and she is even more instrumental to getting the Death Star plans than Princess Leia. She totally usurps Leia's role and it got annoying as hell by the third book in the Han Solo series. Of course, she gamely sacrifices herself for the Alliance.

So that's how I see the whole Mary Sue thing. In recent years it's almost become a label for "a character I don't like." I've seen plenty of original characters I don't like; in fact I find most OCs really boring. Yet not all rise to the level of Suedom.