I’m batting cleanup on the Mary Sue roundtable with a bunt: I can’t get my head around it. “Mary Sue” as a critical term seems so particular to a certain practice, or at least so loose, as to elude me.
My critical proclivities tilt to the formal and textural over narrative, but still. I mean, I look in my toolbox, I got pomo, pron, meta, I-novel, Quijote, Pale Fire, Dante settling scores, artist-n-model, Godard in King Lear, Vito Acconci being really annoying. They’re not helping. I even got Wikis and whatnot, which tip me to:
Author surrogacy is a frequently observed phenomenon in hobbyist and amateur writing, so much that fan fiction critics have evolved the term Mary Sue… thought to evoke the cliché of the adolescent author who uses writing as a vehicle for the indulgence of self-idealization rather than entertaining others.
So it’s about amateurs and hobbyists, who want not for love, just control? Hackish pros dismiss the term so they don’t look like naked royalty? Okay.
My failing? I don’t read fanfiction or linger near.
Maybe I should. God only knows the scene’s apotheosis is Comiket, the fanmade comics festival in Tokyo (motto: “We outnumber Cleveland”). Fans don costumes, line up, engage in raw commerce. I’ve been to Tsukiji, the daily Comiket of fish. I imagine Comiket’s the same with less blood on the floor.
The spectacle’s candy for anthropologists. The works being bought and sold? I’m not so sure. What’s the breakout masterpiece? Which one will make me a fan of fanfic? I’ve never been convinced to take a look. In my experience, the activity trumps its product. I imagine it’s similar for participants, enjoying the community, the shared codes, the privacy, even. It’s why I like sports, naked tribalism for the primordial in us all. The characters, or players, become shorthand with other people who know the code. And they don’t make a lot of sense to people not clued in.
Which is why seeing my favorite piece of writing on the Net this year get its nits picked in the comments is such a pain:
How about agreeing on one definition of the concept you’re discussing at the start (the one the rest of the world uses too, preferably)?
Ah, the heartfelt meets the graceful tact of Phillipe Starck. As a term of literary criticism, “Mary Sue” has seemed an occasion, not an case study in precision. Besides, it’s very obscure. I had never encountered it prior to the roundtable, unlike “metonymy,” “inclusio” and “praeteritio,” and I suspect the rest of the world knows the latter three over the former. Perhaps using the term loosely marks one as outside the small group that birthed it, which on the Internet’s a mortal sin. So, since I can’t match Stephen Daedalus, Jeeves or Lewis Trondheim’s bald eagle with the term, I’ll bunt. Thrown out at first.
That was fun…but I think there is more Mary Sueness coming. Kinukitty has an essay tomorrow; I have my WW piece which touches on the topic; and I’ve got at least one more idea…and it sounded like Miriam might say something else too…
You can’t keep an ambiguous girl down.
Whew! I’m just the first out, then.
Does it help that the original story is very brief?
http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/dark/1000/marysue.htm
It’s about abusing a fictional world to gratify your ego. The emphasis doesn’t land on Mary Sue’s unlikely prowess (wouldn’t that be a “tall tale”?) but on the shower of triumph and admiration. The problem with some of the suggestions we’re seeing is that a derisive term that came from Star Trek fan fiction can’t be used in a way that would also describe Captain Kirk. There’s confusion because, after all, isn’t heroic fantasy designed for ego gratification? But the Mary Sue doesn’t smell right.
Noah, I do agree that you’ve identified a style in late-period DC, the endless recognition of the character’s wonderfulness, that has to be related. If you haven’t seen Superman Returns, don’t. But I think the “author’s ideal self” is a ubiquitous and often perfectly healthy part of the world of fiction- Elizabeth Bennett? If authors were as tall and attractive as they’d like they wouldn’t spend so much time at their desks.
I went through my doubts about Ghost World after Noah scolded me, but now I’ll carry the certainty to my grave: it has a hospital bed scene.
Ugh. what’s with the link? Just google “A Trekkie’s Tale”.
“The problem with some of the suggestions we’re seeing is that a derisive term that came from Star Trek fan fiction can’t be used in a way that would also describe Captain Kirk.”
You speak as if there’s some logical, obvious reason why this must be true. I don’t think there is.
“my favorite piece of writing on the Net this year”
fuckin’-A, that’s right!
“Perhaps using the term loosely marks one as outside the small group that birthed it”
I’m starting to think that the only thing tight about the definition is that (maybe) it’s supposed to imply not just narcissism but amateurism. If Mario Puzo or Alexandre Dumas do some naked wish fulfillment thru a character, it’s not a Mary Sue; if a fanfic writer does, it is a Mary Sue. The idea is that the fanfic writer has shown him/herself up as being a beginner, whereas Puzo and Dumas have simply shown that they would like to be in better shape physically, etc.
If so, it’s not much of a difference, but it would explain why Tindel was stressing how extreme a Mary Sue scenario ought to be. Puzo knew enough to treat Mary Sueism as an ingredient to be set off with other ingredients, whereas an amateur would go all out and have no idea how ridiculous the final product would look.
“I think the ‘author’s ideal self’ is a ubiquitous and often perfectly healthy part of the world of fiction- Elizabeth Bennett? “
Oh boy. The thing I hated most about Pride and Prejudice was how Austen’s smugness gathered itself in that character. But she works for a ton of other people, so I guess your point is borne out.
In fanfic, apparently, it’s easy to tell a Mary Sue; outside fanfic, detecting one becomes a matter of feel. For one person the narcissism built into a given creation may be balanced off just right; for another it won’t be.
Except, of course, that lots of amateurs write much better than lots of professionals…even quite acclaimed professionals. There just aren’t many people out there who write worse than Ian Fleming.
it sounded like Miriam might say something else too.not so much. turns out that was just me breaking promises like i love to do.
i’m glad i managed to get what passed for a post in when i did, cause now i’ve got all sorts of preparation to do for my con this weekend (tcaf, which i also have been derelict in my duty to hype as much as possible).
Oh well…how much more is there to say about Mary Sues, anyway?
Happy conning and hyping! (Or something like that…not sure than came out ideally….)
I don’t think anybody referenced this elsewhere in the roundtable, so I thought I’d delurk and mention it–there is a nice, if now somewhat old essay on Mary Sue that traces her as far back as 19th century literature: 150 Years of Mary Sue. When I originally read it–probably back in 2001 or so?–it was one of the first things I’d encountered that made me think twice about the MS phenomenon as some kind of a prima facie evil. The many qualities that people identify as MS in one interpretation or another are both very old and very widespread in fiction, which is just damned interesting, too interesting to dismiss or simply demean: there’s clearly something psychologically important going on.
I don’t really endorse Pflieger’s definition of What’s a Mary Sue–she’s trying to trace a character type, not unpack the whole idea, and to do that, she narrows it more than I’d like–but it’s interesting anyway.
I personally gave up on Mary Sue as being a useful term for discussion a long time ago: the many, many overlapping definitions of the folk term make it too vague to be used for any prescriptivist advice to writers (I think, anyway), and since many people in fandom are wedded to the idea that a Mary Sue is a Bad Thing, it fuels a kind of witchhunt mentality–fandom writers and readers are socialized into constantly hunting for signs of Mary Sue, whose presence, even in small doses, renders a work unfit for enjoyment, whether it’s a fanwork or an original creation. You’re not supposed to enjoy a Mary Sue–to be gratified by something so gratifying shows you’re immature, unsophisticated, childish (I could go on forever about the age-related stuff but it’s tangential to this). If you don’t enjoy a work, it’s enormously satisfying to be able to point to some perceived quality of Sue-dom, and say, that’s why! Not that such behavior is exclusive to fandom or anything–but I have reached a stage in life where I have to roll my eyes at anybody who works so hard to limit their enjoyment of the culture of which they partake.
I do enjoy discussions like this one, though, where there’s more interest in examining the functions of MS and related things than in hammering out a strict definition for the purpose of being able to shake our fingers at perpetrators for Doing Culture Wrong.
Just skimmed the first bit of that essay, but it looks fascinating. Thank you for linking it.
The amount of vitriol Mary Sue seems to generate is kind of amazing. Fan-fic will eat its own….
Great points, Cerusee, though I’d imagine that a poorly done Mary Sue would be unbearable and that there might be a ton of them in fanfic if they weren’t pointed and laughed at. But, like Bill, I haven’t read any fanfic, so this is just guesswork on my part.
Manifestations of Mary Sues (and related phenomena) can certainly be godawful, and render something unreadable, although tolerance for Sues naturally varies from person to person. But there’s lots of ways for a piece of writing to go horribly wrong, or at least to be unreadable to somebody. I’m inclined to think that MS is weighted too heavily as an evil by fandom, and that that’s partly just received wisdom, fandom mores reinforcing themselves. Fandom is a subculture, after all, and subcultures work pretty hard at defining and policing identity and behavior.
Fanwork is a wonderfully complex topic, but my very quick, flippant notes on the vitriol that Sues can draw are this: first, fanworks are very much acts of self-indulgence on the part of fans, and fans are sensitive to the nuances of self-indulgence; second, personal fantasies vary widely, and what is a gleeful pleasure to one person can drive someone else up a wall. Fandom is a culture that encourages very direct communication about what we do or don’t want to see in fanwork, and our immediate, emotional responses to things that please or displease us as readers.
The more uninhibited and unsophisticated the writer, the more obvious the personal fantasy, and the less likely that other people will be able to share the author’s pleasure in their character. But as always, your mileage may vary–I noticed Noah’s not a big fan of Peter Wimsey, and has commented on Sayers’ evident love for her character–that’s a fair observation, certainly, but the character’s perfection and the author’s adoration for him in that case totally works for me as a reader! I love the character and the books. Whereas, while Noah’s posts have made me appreciate Marston’s Wonder Woman stories in a removed sort of way, I don’t share Marston’s very blatant kinks, and thus don’t get any personal satisfaction out of them.
(Whoa, I talk a lot.)
You don’t talk as much as me, though.
You make some great points. The one thing I don’t agree with is when you say that “uninhibited and unsophisticated” writing is less open to others, or less likely to be popular. I don’t think that’s true. Obviously, at some level, if you’re so unsophisticated that you can’t make yourself understood at all because of grammar or spelling problems, that’s going to put people off. But, on the other hand, I think a lot of folks like unsophisticated and uninhibited. And there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that.
My understanding is that the Sayres novels get better as they go along; I never managed to make it that far, though.
Maybe I should say the more unsophisticated/uninhibited/blatant you are a writer, the more necessary it is that the audience share the kink in order to be able to enjoy it?
Stephanie Meyer is wicked popular. I don’t have any interest in reading her books because I don’t really go for vampires and my impression is that her prose is kind of lame, but she’s obviously very accessible to many, many people. So yeah, uninhibited (and I think unsophisticated, with the caveat that I haven’t actually read the books) writing clearly appealing to a large audience. Good point.
This is great, I leave for a day and a half and everyone’s talking.
Craig L and cerusee, thanks for the links and the grist. I’m surprised that the original’s so clearly satire; no matter the definition, it seems that Mary Sue’s got some deep roots.