Tag Archives: Mary Sue

Liberal Fascism

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573Earlier this week, Brannon Costello suggested (with a hat tip to Walter Benjamin) that fascism could be seen “as the aestheticization of political life, the process by which a state-sponsored fantasy of heroic struggle overwrites and replaces real social, economic, and political anxieties.”

I was thinking about this definition in terms of C.S. Friedman’s novel “In Conquest Born.” The book is sci-fi space opera, but it functions in a lot of ways as a super-hero narrative. The main character, Zatar, is a Braxin, a warlike culture of distant human descendents who have been genetically manipulated to be superstrong and supertough. Zatar is strong and tough and cunning even by the strong, tough, cunning standards of Braxia, and much of the book is a series of vignettes designed to show just how damn awesome he is. He infiltrates the enemy Azeans and poisons a key figure; he goes on a one-person space ship and withstands high gravity pressures in a way no one has withstood high gravity pressure before, he machinates sneaky spy plots causing the death of his enemies, he wows women and has his way with them. He commits ultra-cool sneaky awesome genocide. And so forth.

Again, this fits pretty easily into superhero tropes — and/or supervillain tropes to the extent that they can be distinguished. What’s interesting, though, is that the superhero fascist undertones — the way in which aesthetics replaces politics — are here made thoroughly explicit. Braxia is fascist state. As I said, it’s a warrior empire; it just about worships war and battle. It’s organized along racial lines, too: the rulers (the Braxia) are a small minority of genetically enhanced humans. The regime is hyperbolically masculine; rape of women is legalized, and rule or subservience to women is seen as terrifying and evil.

The novel doesn’t exactly endorse the Braxian view of the world — it’s supposed to be a brutal, ugly culture. But that brutality and ugliness are in themselves an aesthetic attraction; a venue the main purpose of which is to set off Zatar’s charismatic brutality and ruthlessness all the more vividly, and therefore all the more sexily. There’s a sense in which the entire nasty race, complete with legalized rape and endless warfare, is there just so we can watch various brutal, hard warlike men and women fall to their knees (often literally) before Zatar’s bigger, badder warlike bits. The political/social trappings of a fascist state are all channeled into the aesthetic pleasure of the Mary Sue.

Zatar isn’t the only Mary Sue in “In Conquest Born.” Friedman has another; Zatar’s sworn enemy, Anzha, a member of the Azeans, a culture locked in an unending war with the Braxins. Anzha is a powerful telepath, and the part of the book that is not devoted to showcasing Zatar’s awesomeness is devoted to showcasing Anzha’s. The capstone of ridiculousness here is when Anzha, more or less at random, has to cross an ice planet and succeeds by telepathically bonding with intelligent extraterrestrial superwolves. “In Conquest Born” is from the 1980s, before fan-fic really took off, but that just shows that the tropes are of long-standing. And yes, after she succeeds, people kneel down to her too.

But despite that kneeling, Azea is a very different society from Braxin. It’s not a warrior culture. Women are equal to men. It arrives at decisions through a not-super-well-defined-but-still democratic process. It’s remarkably racially heterogeneous as well; the Anzha empire is based on equality, and many alien peoples are equal members. The society isn’t perfect by any means; Anzha faces discrimination because she doesn’t physically fit the genetic human Azea pattern, and the telepathic bureaucratic secret organization screws with her brain in unpleasant ways without her consent. But still, in its broad outlines and ideology, Anzha pursues a liberal policy of peace and inclusion, rather than a fascist policy of war and purity. Anzha, with her telepathy and her fierce love of war and killing all things Braxin (because Zatar poisoned her parents) could be seen as a Superman figure, a liberal, battling, anti-fascist fascist.

Siegel and Shuster didn’t monkey around with relativism; Superman may have been a kind of doppelganger of the Aryan Ubermensch, but that wasn’t meant to create an equivalent. Good was good, bad was bad; and if one was the mirror of the other, that emphasized the differences, not the similarities.

Friedman is less partisan. Ultimately, I think Anzha is supposed to be the force for good, not least because she wins in the end. But, again, the two characters work in almost exactly the same way — they’re both dark, heroic, angsty totems performing awesomeness in repetitive set pieces. Zatar replaces the fascist political system with the aesthetic iconicity of his coolness; Anzha replaces the liberal political system with the aesthetic iconicity of her coolness. And not just the political systems themselves, but the conflict between them, is turned into an individual matter of style, as Zatar and Anzha are enmeshed in a personal grudge feud/telepathic love thingee, which shakes the stars and keeps the pages turning, if you like that sort of thing.

You could see this as exposing the definition of fascism that we’re working with here as self-contradictory. Aestheticization of politics means that aesthetics overwrites politics — in which case the content of the politics doesn’t really matter. Fascism, liberalism — who cares? As long as you’ve got your anti-heroes, it’s trivial whether they run with wolves or commit genocide. It’s all the same marginally entertaining genre fiction, and it doesn’t need to mean anything more than that.

From a bleaker perspective, though, you could argue that the banality of the genre fiction, the emptiness of its political content, is a sign not of the irrelevance of fascism, but of its ubiquity as a kind of substrate in both mass culture and modernity. Those dreams of strong warriors to whom everyone kneels; they’re as native to Azea as to Braxin, it seems like. Victory of one over the other is a satisfying denoument, not for any ethical or political reason, but simply because the strong looks stronger when he, or she, subjugates the strong.If modernity overwrites all political systems with aesthetics, then fascism isn’t just one possible political system of our day, but the blueprint for them all.

Voices from the Archive: Gail Simone on Wonder Woman and Mary Sue

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As I’ve mentioned, we have moved our archive from our blogspot address to here. I thought I’d make use of that to start a series highlighting some of the comments from back in the day. Voices from the Archive will be an occasional series; maybe once a week? We’ll see.

Anyway. Since we’re in the middle of a giant Wonder Woman roundtable, I thought I’d start out with some comments by Gail Simone in response to a post of mine in which I suggested that her version of Wonder Woman was a Mary Sue. Gail was extremely patient and forgiving, given the post in question. She left several comments.

Here’s most of her first.

This is a fun read. let me get that out first. I enjoyed it, in non-ironic fashion, honestly. But good lord, your premise is absolute and complete nonsense. I don’t like Mary Sues, I don’t believe in them, and I sure as hell don’t WRITE them. I find them intrusive, amateurish and insulting to the audience. The ‘evidence’ seems to be that:

a) I like the character, and

b) I like to show her in a positive light.

Well, dang, you caught me. She’s OBVIOUSLY a Mary Sue. Along with, oh, virtually every lead character ever written by anyone in a superhero comic. ;)

If I had a Mary Sue character, trust me on this, it wouldn’t be Wonder Woman, or Superman, or any of the other icons. I have absolutely no such connection.

Additionally, I found you REAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLY stretching to make your point in this article, which is a little funny, given the smugness that it embraces. I always say, wrong is okay, smug is okay, wrong AND smug is a little weird. ;)

I’m glad you liked some of the book, but of course sorry if you were disappointed overall. Wonder Woman is very subjective, and your piece here reminds me a lot of what I read on message boards, wherein there’s some resentment that the book’s author doesn’t write the Wonder Woman that the poster holds in his or her own imagination. It’s understandable, I’ve been there myself many times.

And here’s a bit from a later comment.

As for Mary Sues, hmm. Well, while I can see your definition, I’m not certain that it is actually the prevailing one. And there’s no question that blatant Mary Sue-ism is mostly pretty hideous stuff to actually read, even when it ISN’T amateurish fan-fic.

But simply declaring a character to be a Mary Sue doesn’t make it so, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Whether or not you believe a Mary Sue is a bad thing (and I think your article betrays you here, because in it, you certainly imply uncharitable things about the practice), the evidence is far too scant to make the case. In this particular case, I find the basic argument to be fallacious on its own merits simply because the charge could be applied literally to almost every recent lead portrayal in a superhero comic. If the definition is that open-ended, so much so that it defies sub-categorization, then I’m sure you’ll agree that it loses all potency. And meaning, for that matter. If any such portrayal can qualify, then using the term at all has little meaning….

I do find it interesting that you seem to dismiss the Circle as mostly pure pulp, as I think that story has quite a lot of interesting subtext about maternity and womanhood, in an kind of blemished manner that the book normally doesn’t embrace. I hope you pick up the next volume, as it fits more with some of your complaints about this book, and I admit it was more of a personal “I love this kind of shit” story than The Circle was, all about d-list forgotten barbarians and the like.

I completely admit that I wrote it because I do love that shit, and your charge of ‘continuity porn,’ which really doesn’t apply to the Circle (most of the elements in that book are new characters with little reference to DC obscurities) apply in godawful force in volume II, The Ends of The Earth. I admit it, and if you had written this article about that volume, I’d have to sheepishly take the heat. :)

It was worth it. Diana and DC’s Beowulf make a surprisingly strong dynamic, and it was good fun all the way through to write. Hope this volume hasn’t turned you off to that one.

You can read more of Gail’s thoughts, my responses, and the original post here.

Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson The Circle

Gail Simone Hearts Diana Sue

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I finally read the first collection of Gail Simone Wonder Woman comics, (“The Circle”). It’s definitely an interesting take on the character. In fact, among post-Marston creators, Simone is, I think, alone in avoiding the pratfalls which have plagued virtually every creator who has tackled WW after Marston. (Unless you want to count Alan Moore’s Glory.)

So how does Simone manage not to be tripped up by the bondage lasso, or the incredibly poorly defined mission to man’s world, or any number of other traps Marston has set for his unwary followers? Well, she does it primarily by writing fan fiction, and by treating WW as a Mary Sue — a character who the author loves too much. Fantasy author Mercedes Lackey says as much in the introduction to the volume, where she starts out by saying that she never liked Wonder Woman the character, and then goes on to praise Simone for creating a Wonder Woman that she (Lackey) could love. The ultimate standard, in other words, is not craft, or thoughtfulness, or originality, but loveability. Lackey wants a Mary Sue, and Simone delivers.

“Mary Sue” is usually a term applied to fan-fiction characters, where it tends to be seen as as a deadly insult. And there are many manifestations of it which are certainly unpleasant. I talked in an earlier post, for example, about the way in which League of One is basically all Mary Sue fanscruff pander, reveling in WW’s strength and purity and general awesomeness until you just wish she’d die tragically and beautifully already and get it over with. And there’s definitely more than a touch of that in Simone’s version too, with everyone and their aunt racing to tell WW how mega-awesome she is. Super-intelligent gorilla warriors fall on their knees before her; intergalactic genocidal Khund warriors build statues in her honor all over their planet. And while I don’t need WW to whine as much as Spider-Man or (god forbid) Greg Rucka’s version of the character does, it would have been nice to see Simone give the sainted Diana a self-doubt once or twice in the volume (and no, accepting your inevitable death without blinking doesn’t count as a self-doubt.)

Still, the truth is that WW was more or less intended as a Mary Sue to begin with. Marston loved her (even arguably overmuch) and he created her more or less to be loved by his readers — girls and boys alike. Nor was Marston’s version especially given to self-doubt (though unwavering confidence is a lot less irritating when you’re not subjected to it in internal monologues.)

So there’s a sense in which Simone’s Mary Sue pandering — her transparent puffery of the character — is very much in the spirit of the original. And Simone’s love of the character allows her to deal with the character’s structural problems as any good fan-fiction writer would — by reducing them to fan in-jokes. WW’s embarrassing bondage heritage is mentioned in passing by a callow Nazi, who cracks wise about wanting her to tie him up in her magic lasso. Then WW swoops in and threatens him with the real Lasso of Truth and he goes all weak-kneed like a baby man. The unfortunate sartorial choices Marston bequeathed are similarly deflated; there’s a really cute moment where an admiring onlooker mentions “I just want to say as a gay man that I miss the high heels on your boots…” The lesbian implications of Paradise Island get similarly defused in a joking aside (WW’s love-interest notes that courtship on Paradise Island must be between women, and WW responds “Aren’t you the observant one.”)

The humor in the book is probably the best thing about it — and the best moments of humor are those in which WW is most like a Mary Sue. Which is to say, since Mary Sue is often thought of as being an author surrogate, the high points of the book are those in which WW and Gail Simone seem closest to one another. My single favorite line in the comic comes when Diana Prince is having a birthday party at work. She’s musing about the fact that hugging her coworkers in gratitude for the surprise party would be frowned upon, and she thinks: “It is a strange culture that outlaws the hug. On the other hand…there is cake, and that excuses much.” Another gem is when WW looks at the statues the Khund have erected to her…which attempt to honor her by depicting her as a brutish looking Khund. WW looks at them, and then thinks to herself that she wants to call a friend (Donna Troy, I think) on her cell phone because she’d be really amused.

In some alternate timeline, perhaps, there’s a perfect Gail Simone fan-fic Wonder Woman, which is entirely composed of such moments — all romantic comedy banter, goofy relationship moments, and slice-of-life silliness, with the super-heroics mentioned occasionally in passing but never allowed to interfere with the real focus. Unfortunately, in the more hum-drum world we inhabit, Simone is writing a corporate comic, and there are certain hoops she’s got to jump through to get her paycheck. She has to, for example, make her story a comic, which means she needs art. And so we’ve got drawings by a number of pencillers (Terry Dodson and Bernard Chang predominantly). As mainstream illustrators go, neither is horrible. But just because they don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out doesn’t mean that they actually add anything of value to the story.

Simone also needs DCU continuity porn, and she needs pulp action. She provides the first of these eagerly enough, and with some panache. Sure, the level of background knowledge needed to follow the story is pretty much ridiculous; I was occasionally at sea, and I’ve been obsessively reading Wonder Woman comics for months now, plus I actually know who Gorilla Grodd and the Green Lantern Corps and the Khund are — lord knows what an actual novice would make of this. Still, if you’ve already decided you don’t care if anybody but die-hards can follow you, it’s pretty great to end up with gorillas fighting Nazis. That’s genuine silver-age wackiness, damn it.

The pulp action is a little dicier. Simone has a certain amount of pulp smarts; she’s able to make Wonder Woman’s tactical ability somewhat believable — but only somewhat. . Whenever WW makes a brilliant military move the special pleading is audible. When Alan Moore has Rorschach outthink people, you feel outthought yourself. When Simone has WW outthink people, you always feel she’s throwing the character a bone. “Oh, the super-villain has you by the neck in your Diana Prince form…but luckily for you, the wall behind you is rotten, and you can knock through it with your head! The alien Green Lantern is going to beat the snot out of you — but luckily he flinches every time you say “Khund”, and you can use that to your advantage!” It’s not that it’s especially dumb. It’s just that it’s advertising itself as especially smart, and it’s not that either.

The real problem, though, is with the handling of one of the characters central contradictions: she’s supposed to be an avatar of peace, but she constantly is battling costumed yahoos. To her credit, Simone confronts this problem directly: every time WW goes into battle, she starts thinking about how much she likes fighting and how, at the same time, the Amazon code calls for ending fights as quickly as possible.

The problem is that repeating something and actually thinking about it are two different things. The issues of peace, violence, and non-violence which Simone raises are both complicated and (to me at least) important ones. They’re worth struggling with. But neither Simone nor WW struggle with them; instead, they merely present facile answers and treat the problems as solved. This is irritating and, frankly boring; it robs the narrative of much of its tension. For example, in the last story, WW is faced with a situation where she has to try to save the Khund, even though if she does so they’ll return to their genocidal ravaging of neighboring stars. The alien Green Lantern I mentioned before is all for wiping out the Khund, who murdered his daughter and threaten his homeworld and the rest of his space sector.

I mean, I am adamently opposed to the death penalty, and I think genocide is A Bad Thing. But…the way Simone structures the problem here, there is a pretty fucking good argument for allowing the Khund world to be destroyed. Reinhold Niebuhr would almost certainly say pull the trigger; I think you’d have a really good case under Just War theory as well. Gandhi would no doubt say you shouldn’t do it — but Gandhi was an extreme pacifist, and Wonder Woman is , you know, not. So you’d think, given all that, that our heroine might have doubts, or be conflicted, or have some level of moral conflict. But WW and her loyal sidekick Etta Candy don’t even hesitate; they’re just like — no, no, we have to show mercy to the Khund, that’s obviously the right thing to do. And not only are they certain down to their socks, but they convince everyone else too! Etta talks to a godlike ichor for five minutes and, hey presto! Godlike ichor reverses its position on capital punishment. These moral problems are just that simple. If only Orson Scott Card had known; Ender’s Game could have been a lot shorter and less tortured.

In the end, then, maybe I spoke too quickly when I said that Simone managed to avoid the traps Marston laid for her. She does outmaneuver several of them…but she’s left with maybe the biggest one of all, which is that, unlike most any other super-hero outside of Mr. A, Wonder Woman was actually about something. Marston had stuff to say, in his cranky way, about real issues, peace and war among them. His solutions to these problems were more or less crazy (have woman rule over the world and teach men submission and love as a way to combat war), but they were thought through and existed in a coherent (if cracked) belief system. Marston, in short, wasn’t glib. Simone, at least on these issues, is. When you write a comic about the glorious icon that is Superman, you don’t need to really think too hard about what the character means, because the character has always been vacuous. Writing Wonder Woman, though, forces you to confront some actual content — which is unfortunate when all you really want to do is love her and maybe create some entertaining genre product, more or less in that order.

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This is the latest in a series on post-Marston version of Wonder Woman.

Update: Simone herself has a gracious note or three in comments (keep scrolling.) She points out that there are currently two volumes of her WW series available, and that a third is forthcoming shortly.

Jeff Autosue

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I keep promising this, but I think this is really the last entry by me in our Mary Sue roundtable. No, really.
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I wrote a brief review of Jeff Brown’s new book Funny Misshapen Body for the Chicago Reader a week or so ago:

With his relentless grid lay-outs, charmlessly crude drawings, and solipsistic subject matter, Jeff Brown has long embodied the most predictable tropes of sensitive alternative comic cartooning. His latest volume is, in every sense, more of the same: a series of short stories dedicated to rigorously chronicling every possible hipster autobio cliché. So we get one story about how Brown felt awkward around girls as an adolescent; one about how he came to draw comics; one about medical problems (Crone’s Disease, in his case); one about his experiences with alcohol; one about his experiences with drugs; one about how his teachers didn’t understand his art; one about how he finally started to be successful with his art, and on and on and on. As is de rigeur for this sort of thing, nobody else in the book is ever graced with either a personality or any sustained interests; it’s all just about Jeff’s ambivalence, Jeff’s bittersweet life lessons, Jeff’s struggles with his art. Through it all, Brown is careful to add that extra detail— the smug smile when he renounces pot; the fifteenth Chris Ware cameo — which pushes his work past tedious and right on into insufferable.

To expand just a little — one of the things that I like least about Brown’s work is the extent to which it mirrors the flatulent self-congratulation of super-hero decadence. These days, Justice League comics are often little more than long puff pieces about how great is the Justice League; Wonder Woman comics are often little more than long puff pieces about how great is Wonder Woman; and Jeff Brown comics? They’re just puff pieces about how great is Jeff Brown.

Photobucket

Here is Jeff Brown himself, chronicling his encounter with a rapturous Chris Ware. “Follow your bliss! Be honest!” Ignore the haters!” Ware asserts, while Brown stands by, presumably thinking “Shit yeah! I can totally use this in my next comic and then everybody will know how great I am because Chris fucking Ware! said so! And in clichéd terms too! Awesome!”

At least I can understand the appeal of the Justice League and Wonder Woman versions of self-puffery. Some small subset of people feel nostalgic for these characters; they have a relationship with them; they want to be told that Superman is wonderful, or Wonder Woman is wonderful, or whatever, because they like thinking about Superman and Wonder Woman. As I said in posts here and here, it ties into the Mary Sue trope; a kind of love/identification with a character. There’s a romance there which, especially in its corporate super-hero manifestations, tends to make for bad art…but at least the impulse is comprehensible.

But…why on earth would anyone want to read about how great Jeff Brown is? People don’t have childhood associations with the character; he’s not somebody who’s ever had good, or even marginally better, stories written about him. What is the percentage in having him preen in public? Are people really identifying with him as a Mary Sue; a character to love and to dream about? Are they actually seeing themselves in this anodyne hipster; or imagining themselves meeting him and engaging in orgies of self-regard? It all seems too repulsive to even consider. I’d much rather believe that people buy his books just because Chris Ware inexplicably told them to, period. In any case, give me an idealized Mary Sue any day over this image of smugly complacent mediocrity.

Everybody’s Talking About Mary Sue

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Not sure about everybody else, but I’ve really enjoyed the Mary Sue roundtable…not least because it’s prompted so many thoughtful comments. I thought as a conclusion to the festivities I’d collect some of them here.

Mark Andrew

Backing Craig L. up here: I’ve heard – and I don’t have a source, and it could be an urban legend – that as soon as Robin was introduced the sales on Detective Comics skyrocketed from “good” to “amazing.” Even if this ISN’T true, comic companies obviously thought sidekicks sold – look how many of ’em there were back Golden Age comics. Expanding the point a bit, Jimmy Olsen (the original Snapper Carr) had his own comic for decades, so he must have had some kind of fan support.

And a Snapper/Jimmy Olsen/Robin can be useful to have around for other reasons, as well.

A) Someone for the hero to talk to. A Holmes to their Watson, someone in the know who will listen patiently while the hero drops exposition.

B) Handy comic relief, quick defusing of narrative tension. (Think Etta Candy here. WHOO! WHOO!)

BC) To paraphrase Frank Miller “There ain’t nothing like having Robin in the panel to make Batman look BIG.” They’re a visual device to make the hero look bigger/more powerful/less dorky in his silly 19th century carny costume ’cause he’s standing next to Jimmy Olsen and his doofy bow tie.

D) Older comics tended to aim for an audience that wasn’t necassary skilled at parsing both the pictures and the text at the same time.

Which means that it’s REALLY useful to have someone around to say “Holy Mother of Fuck! Superman just turned coal into diamonds! Superman is awesome!” to let the people who are JUST reading – not looking – know what’s happening. And even with today’s storytelling it’s useful to underline an awesome Superman moment by having Jimmy hang out and look awestruck.

And, for the record, I like Robin more than Batman. Always have, and still do.

Menshevik

Speaking of teenage sidekicks, it is worth recalling that Stan Lee, who was a teenager himself when they were first in vogue, confessed to hating the concept and saw to it that Bucky was wounded and replaced by a female, somewhat older sidekick towards the end of World War 2 and who in the early 1960s had him retroactively killed. (And I don’t care how much praise people heap on Brubaker, Bucky should’ve stayed dead, dammit). I am not sure if Rick Jones was meant as a substitute for Snapper Carr; at least to begin with he probably wasn’t since he was created as part of the origin of the Hulk (where Rick’s criminal recklessness, driving into a nuclear bomb testing range, led to Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk).

Matthew J. Brady.

I wrote about this a while back, but the example of a Mary Sue that I think of is The Sentry, the Superman-like Marvel Comics character created by Paul Jenkins. He’s a pretty stupid character, but the audacity of his introduction was notable, with Marvel even waging a promotional campaign that posited him as a lost creation of Stan Lee. The idea was that he was the first Marvel superhero. He was insanely powerful, and he inspired all the rest of the heroes in the Marvel universe. He was a smarter scientist than Reed Richards, he found a way to cure the Hulk, etc. And then everybody forgot about him and history was rewritten, but he came back, and, I forget, it was stupid. The thing was, Jenkins created a new character that was not only supposed to be the greatest ever, but he rewrote history to ensure that he would be greater than everybody else as well. And who knows, maybe that’s kind of clever, but the execution was pretty terrible, and that’s where the real Mary Sue-ish-ness comes out: he’s supposed to be great and awesome, but we never see him actually do anything. It’s all hushed, reverential tones, with everybody assuring us that yes, he is wonderful and perfect, but there’s no story there. The entire comic is an introduction that makes sure we know how great he is.

Of course, he did have flaws, and that’s what allowed him to remain in the Marvel universe, since if he was as perfect as the text says he is, he would solve all problems and there wouldn’t be any plot conflict. So now he’s crazy, or amnesiac, or under other people’s control, or something; whatever they can do to keep him around and usable. Maybe he’s ceased being a Mary Sue (he’s still a shitty character though), but at least in that story that introduced him, he was a doozy of one.

Craig L.

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.

Cerusee

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.

John E.

Back in the early 80s an author named Vonda N. McIntyre wrote what was then (and probably still is) one of the better Star Trek novels, The Entropy Effect, and followed it with adaptations of the second, third and fourth Trek films. In Entropy we are introduced to Security Chief Mandala Flynn and Captain Hunter, two strong female characters who are Captain Kirk’s subordinate and former lover, respectively. For my money, both characters — who are for all intents and purposes the same character — are the ultimate feminist Mary Sue. Both possess superb abilities, hair-trigger tempers, intimidating personalities, and a severe animus towards that cement-headed sexist James T. Kirk. Now, there are few fictional characters who could use a good feminist ass-kicking more than our good Captain, but with McIntyre it becomes almost an obsession. In her version of The Wrath of Khan (in which Mandala and Hunter are prominently mentioned) Saavik can barely suppress her burning rage against the Admiral, and Dr. Carol Marcus is simply a milder version of Hunter. In The Search for Spock we meet Scotty’s willful, angry niece Daneen, who gives her uncle an earful about what an asshole Kirk is (her brother was the young cadet who died in the previous film). McIntyre’s version of Gillian Taylor in The Voyage Home is a bit mellower Mary Sue, but still more rebellious and quick to anger than her film counterpart.

If the standard Mary Sue is intended to be loved and/or romanced, Vonda McIntyre’s Mary Sue was intended (I think) in great part to correct or avenge the inherent sexism of Gene Roddenberry and of Captain Kirk specifically. (Spock and Sulu are treated in a gentle and greatly respectful manner by the other characters.) I’m not sure this was at all a bad thing, except for it becoming slightly tiresome to have nearly every female character possess so many similar traits. And often the thoughts and backstories of these characters at times threatened to drag the story to a halt. But if you’re gonna have a Mary Sue, I’d prefer McIntyre’s version over the fan fiction variety.

Vom Marlowe:

I was going to comment something like this on Kinukitty’s post, but then I deleted it.

As someone who writes the occasional Mary Sue (amethyst eyes!), I think part of what is going is that Mary Sues are the adult equivalent of loving sparkly unicorns. Look, I adored unicorns. I still might. I had purple unicorn shirts as a kid, and I was ruthlessly mocked by many. Sometimes by other people who also had purple sparkly unicorn shirts.

If we mock our Mary Sues, then we’re saying “We know these are just worthless toys, ha ha ha” and it’s like we’re in on the joke. Even though our own laughter might be uncomfortable and insincere, it’s a way to get the critics to back off. Bold and shameless enthusiasm is simply not considered a serious thing (as a girl, anyway). A more staid, critical approach is more acceptable.

There are lots more, but my cutting-and-pasting digits done got wore out. Thanks again to all who commented and all who read.

The Sue That Dare Not Speak Its Name

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Bill and Kinukitty both posted fine conclusions to the Mary Sue roundtable. Both of them said they were sick of thinking about it, and intimated that maybe we could stop now, please? But unfortunately for them, I am like the evil terminator…except for maybe without the suddenly appearing from the future in the nude thing. And also not governor of California.

Where was I anyway? Oh right. A couple days ago I posted here arguing that Mary Sues are less venal, and more ubiquitous, than they are usually given credit for being. Several people have protested that I’ve expanded and abused the term to such an extent that it’s useless.

Be that as it may, I think the core of what I’m seeing as Mary Sueism, partially based on Miriam’s post is a character who seems brought into being to be an object of love — either self-love, or romantic love, or a mixture of both. The character is treated the way loved ones are treated; with excessive care and admiration. In some instances this can be annoying; in others it can be moving or beautiful.

My argument is bolstered by this essay by Pat Pflieger Pat Pflieger linked by Cerusee in comments, which argues that, rather than being an aberration, Mary Sue is a central trope of romance:

Mary Sue is more a placeholder, a term apparently used by writers of romance fiction, as mentioned in several essays in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Despite appearances, the essay authors agree, readers of romance fiction aren’t identifying with the heroine of the work; their real focus is on the hero, with the heroine holding open a spot in the novel into which the (usually female) reader can slip mentally. Though this argument may seem simplistic in regard to romance novels, it does seem the basis for the Mary Sue: she holds a place open in the story for the author — and presumably for the reader. She can be successful: fan fiction abounds in examples of original characters who are interesting in their own right. All too often, however, the character is a failed placeholder; her very obtrusiveness keeps readers from slipping into her place and into the adventure they have come to enjoy, as she shifts the focus from the media characters readers want to read about.

I think that who the reader is identifying with is maybe more complicated than this suggests; still, the general point is that Mary Sue is about, or tied to, the romance genre; it’s a device which allows reader and author to have, or which indicates that they have, a romantic investment in the story.

With that in mind, I think I can point to a couple of characters who, despite appearances, really aren’t Mary Sues at all.

The first is Sherlock Holmes. Tom mentions Sherlock Holmes as a Mary Sue on the strength of his hyper-competence; Holmes always wins and always has the answer in a way that is certainly suggestive of Mary Sueism.

However, if you look a little closer something is off. As one example, in the first Sherlock Holmes adventure, Watson, quizzing Holmes, discovers that the detective doesn’t know that the earth goes round the sun. Moreover, Holmes is irritated to have been told this information. Holmes, you see, only cares about information that helps him with detection. Everything else, he tries to forget as quickly as possible.

In other words, Holmes is a a freak. He requires constant stimulation, to such an extent that if he doesn’t have a case, he turns to cocaine. He has no interest in women…and while his bachelor status might suggest homoerotic subtext, compared to, say, Poe’s Dupin, this subtext is really quite muted. Watson, the obvious person to slash Holmes with, actually gets married during the course of the series…and in general, the whole point of the Holmes character is that he’s so obsessed and monomaniacal that he doesn’t have time for any romance, gay or straight.

Nor is that monomania necessarily supposed to be appealing: you get the sense from the books that Doyle is interested in Holmes, that he admires Holmes to some extent…but you never exactly get the sense that he loves Holmes. Indeed, often he doesn’t even seem to like him all that much. There’s more than one Holmes story where Doyle really seems to enjoy giving the detective a comeuppance. And, of course, Doyle tired of the character quite quickly, even trying to kill him off so as to move on to other projects. Yet Holmes survived, not because Doyle stacked the cards in his favor, but in spite of the fact that he stacked the cards against him.

Overall, the point of the Holmes stories always seems to be the adventure much more than relationships, and Holme seems more a plot contrivance than an actual character. The fun is in watching the unwinding of the plot, and the clever, gee-whiz gimmickry of the machine that is Holmes. He’s a dues ex machina, not a Mary Sue. (Hercule Poirot works in the same way; Agatha Christie often said that she didn’t like him very much, and reading the books, that seems clear enough — she often went to some effort to keep him off stage as long as possible.)

Another false Mary Sue is Asterix. Asterix, like Holmes, is super-competent competent, super-clever, and always victorious. Furthermore, it’s clear that Goscinny really does have a good deal of affection for the character. And, of course, through the magic potion and numerous other means, Asterix and Obelix and all the village have a hugely unfair advantage against Romans, Vikings, and any other adversaries who are unfortunate enough to fall afoul of them.

What’s missing, though, is sentiment. Asterix’s prowess isn’t supposed to inspire wonder or pull at the heart strings; it’s supposed to make you laugh. The fact that this little Gaulish village is constantly beating the tar out of the Roman empire is the central joke of the series. It’s hyperbolic French boasting; it’s like when _________ raps, “you’re addicted, to what my dick did, the pain and the pleasure that the whing-ding inflicted!” Romance requires uncertainty and longing, and there’s neither of those in Asterix.

There’s a similar dynamic with Jeeves (who Bill mentions as a possible Mary Sue) and with that ultimate avatar of unfair advantage, Bugs Bunny. Both have God on their sides, obviously…but the machinery of divinity is so clear that it can only be played for laughs. Those characters are there to amuse you by their triumph, not to impress you with it. You don’t envy or desire Jeeves or Bugs Bunny because they’re not designed for that kind of emotional investment. They’ve been given power and brains, but no hearts.

Which brings me to the final false Mary Sue — Mary Sue herself. Here’s the story that supposedly coined the term, (hat tip Craig L.

A TREKKIE’S TALE

By Paula Smith

“Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky,” thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. “Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet – only fifteen and a half years old.” Captain Kirk came up to her.

“Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?”

“Captain! I am not that kind of girl!”

“You’re right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us.”

Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. “What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?”

“The Captain told me to.”

“Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind.”

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship.

But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies , Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood.

However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.

The thing about the Mary Sue in this story is that she’s a parody. She’s played for laughs, like Bugs Bunny or Jeeves. Her prowess is supposed to elicit groans and chuckles, not wonder or awe or love. As such, she isn’t a Mary Sue at all.

To parody Mary Sue, in other words, you have to go outside the Mary Sue genre. You may say, “well, of course” — but the fact is that there are a lot of genres where this isn’t the case. Take science fiction, for example; Douglas Adams’ books are science-fiction parodies, but they’re also science-fiction. The super-hero genre is arguably defined by its parodies (and I make that argument here). Mary Sue can certainly be funny (like, perhaps, Elizabeth Bennett) but she can’t be a self-parody. A caricature of Mary Sue isn’t Mary Sue.

I think the reason for this is, again, that Mary Sue is, perhaps, another way of saying “romance.” A parody of romance, one that really sneers at the genre’s tropes and ideology, is no longer a romance — it’s bitter realist screed, or a farce, or something else (though Northanger Abbey does walk the line, I guess.) Romance is just, at its core, fairly earnest. You could say that’s because it’s humorless and stupid, I guess. But you could also argue that it’s because it deals with stuff that actually matters; not spaceships, or giant goombahs in tights hitting each other, but with relationships, and love. I think a lot of the loathing of Mary Sue that Kinukitty and others have discussed has to do with the general discomfort with romance as a genre — a discomfort that seems to extend even to its practitioners. Writing about something you care about is embarrassing. Censuring the Mary in your neighbor’s eye, then, may be a ritualized way of distracting from the love in your own.

Gluey Tart: Mary Sues

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This post is part of a roundtable on Mary Sues. You can read the rest of the posts here.

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Frankly, I resent being forced to think about the concept of the Mary Sue. As a writer of fan fiction, it’s something I’ve come across. Thought about. But not, like a certain number of my brethren, complained bitterly about.

Here’s the thing. Tastes differ. My Mary Sue might be your favorite original character ever. I’m not going to say both of us are right. Well, I sort of am, God help me, but I promise to be snarky about it.

There are literary standards. Some writing is good, and some writing is bad. Just because some people enjoy lousy writing (you say Danielle Steele, I say John Updike; neither one of us gets to call anything off), it’s still lousy writing. But. If lots of people enjoy it, good on ’em. I don’t have to read it. It’s especially easy in fan fiction, which is online, and behold! There is a miraculous thing called the back button. You don’t have to invest $20 in the thing and then realize it sucks. Or that you don’t like it. Or both. You scan a bit, you say, “Oh, God, I’m going to scoop my brain out with a melon baller if I have to read another word of this,” and you hit the back button. Problem solved. If only all disputes could be handled so easily!

Of course, it can’t be that easy in the fan fiction universe, either. In addition to “Mary Sue,” there is another term fan fiction will quickly acquaint you with. That term is “wank.” “Wank” is what happens when fangirls come together to defend their particular worldview against anyone who might see anything about their chosen fandom differently than they do. People get upset. People talk about how stupid and horrible and possibly evil the person who got it wrong is. Nastiness bubbles to the surface like gas escaping from six-month old chili in the back of the refrigerator (sadly, I know whereof I speak).

The Mary Sue thing is a time-tested allegation, often part of a checklist people consciously or unconsciously apply to any piece of fan fiction they themselves have not written (and I mean the checklist thing literally; I’ve seen them posted). It’s a very blunt instrument, is all I can say. Literature is rampant with Mary Sues. Also comics. Television. Movies. Much-loved characters across the centuries, and lots of them are Mary Sues. Dickens cranked out Mary Sues. Esther Summerson in Bleak House? Big old Mary Sue. Superman? Well, what are his flaws, exactly? Besides a highly questionable fashion sense? There are many examples given in the previous posts in this roundtable; you should read them all, if you haven’t already. Anyway, these characters are all re obviously much loved by their authors. They are loaded with virtue after virtue (and I think we should keep in mind that what counts as virtue can be highly individual). They are saddled with very few, if any, significant flaws. Maybe they pout or something. But they do it prettily. Exactly who decided it was categorically wrong?

You’re telling me I’m missing the point, aren’t you? You’re thinking, doesn’t she realize people rail against Mary Sues because they’re one-dimensional and boring and painful? And that fan fiction writers tend to be sensitive about this topic because society in general thinks we’re a bunch of losers whose social status ranks, possibly, just above that of people who play Dungeons & Dragons. To the extent that society knows we exist, of course. No, I get it. The thing is, nothing is always bad in a story. You just can’t prepare a list of “Things That Are Automatically Bad” and say, “Ah, a Mary Sue! D-!”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I write slash, which is fan fiction in which two same-sex characters from the source material are thrown together, in the Biblical sense. I won’t get into the controversy over slash’s place on the “Things That Are Automatically Bad” list (the idea is that if you decide two established canon characters are having a queer relationship it is, by definition, out of character); I think it’s a related topic, but really, there are only so many hours in the day. I mention it because one might think it makes me more sensitive to this kind of criticism than the average fan fiction writer. Whatever. I’m always bemused by charges of Mary Sue-ism in my own fandom, though. Said fandom (Weiss Kreuz, a late-80s anime of more-than questionable quality about beautiful young men who are florists by day and assassins by night) features a protagonist who is such a Mary Sue it’s ridiculous. He is perhaps a bit brusque and moody, but he is handsome and loyal and brave and strong and true and selfless and so very, very tough that in one episode he basically defeats an army division by himself. I mean, really. After that, what’s wrong with introducing the occasional largely flawless original character?

Fandom is highly suspicious of original characters, though, and especially female original characters. That isn’t surprising, given our society, which is – and pardon me if you hadn’t noticed this – sexist. It is perhaps another reason to think before you label, though.

But I’m starting to get a very Mary Sunshine feeling about all this. I think it’s starting to sound like I don’t believe there’s any room for criticism, and I certainly wouldn’t want to imply that. No, no, no. There’s plenty of room for criticism. What I object to are knee-jerk dismissals, blind application of unquestioned criteria, and an inability to appreciate anything that doesn’t match up one-to-one with your point of view. All I’m saying is give Mary Sues a chance? Eewwwww. But, yeah. Kind of. Give writers a chance, anyway.