Why mary sues are bad

What makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue is that her looks are downright impossible —or at least, highly unlikely. Or she might possess physical traits that seem out of place: perfect teeth and skin in a famine-stricken kingdom, for instance.

A fall that would seriously injure another character only leaves a Mary Sue with superficial scratches or scars that, against all odds, only make him or her more attractive. In short, a Mary Sue possesses near-supernatural ignorance of her own positive qualities —to the ire and annoyance of your readers. Being selfish is a flaw. So is difficulty expressing strong emotions, or being immature, or a hypocrite. Not only are these hindrances self-inflicted, but they can be overcome after sufficient character growth, adding much needed color to the dramatic thrust of the story.

Imagine if your protagonist was a great big jerk and bullied the other characters in the novel, but nobody ever called him on it, and he still gets his way by the end of the story. Rather, destiny or a ham-fisted author is practically forcing her into greatness. And while another character might have to, you know, struggle to reach his destiny, a Mary Sue can just let fate come to him.

She can fly a spaceship with no practice, or use powerful spells moments after discovering magic exists. She speaks several languages, especially the ones vital to the story. She sings beautifully.

She can communicate with animals. A Mary Sue can do whatever the plot demands —with no explanation as to how she learned these skills or gained these powers. Can you guess which character is more likely to be called a Mary Sue? Janeway is overwhelmingly the Mary Sue favorite. This pattern repeats over and over again. It even happens within the same franchise, as people compare Rey to Luke and the Ghostbusters to the original team.

You can do it, but it will never have the same cutting power as it does against women, except when it indicates that the man is feminine in some way. There is no good-faith way to use gendered slurs like this, and trying only legitimizes their use by bad actors.

Either way, this is a waste of time. It does not matter if a character is a stand-in for the author or not. It has a negative reputation for two reasons. First, people only discover a character is an author insert if they already disliked the character. Few people dig into the background of characters they like.

Second, author inserts are mostly associated with women. Consider Kvothe, protagonist of the extremely popular and critically acclaimed The Name of the Wind. Many people love this character because of his wit and daring deeds. Many others hate him because of his arrogance and extreme competence.

Of course not. Some authors enjoy putting themselves into their stories, and some do not. Other people will hear it regardless of what you meant to say. And yet, most of us keep such slurs out of our vocabulary. Respectful language is only one of many steps in eliminating bigotry.

In a world free of Mary Sue, people will still hold female characters to a double standard. These characters will be judged more harshly than their male counterparts, whether they have legitimate problems or not.

But at least in that world, people will have to say what they mean. Regardless of what anyone intended, Mary Sue is widely seen as an attack on female characters, and many women are simply tired of it. They feel these attacks the same way they feel all the other gendered insults floating around the English language. This does not imply any weakness or fragility — simply fatigue. Dropping Mary Sue is the decent thing to do.

The big question whenever we drop something from our vocabulary is what to replace it with. In the case of Mary Sue, that will depend on the specific context. If you mean that a character is a stand-in for the author, just say that. If none of that works for you, the key is to drill down to whatever is bothering you about a character and put that into words.

Describe whatever the problem is. It takes a little more effort than a term like Mary Sue, but your discourse will be more productive and less sexist. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in? Mythcreants is an ad-free publication. If our work has helped you, please keep us going by chipping in. Your patronage keeps this site running. Become a patron. Most characters, of every distinction generally have a central role in a community, often in our rush to paper we forget to show even an inkling of how our characters earned gold in their friends or their enemies.

I guess the main thing is letting a character have context. Also thanks for providing other ways to discuss the problems which might lead to people considering a character a Mary Sue. A character needs to eat their spinach first before they get their candy. Over-glorified is also a good way of putting it and easy to understand for everyone. Dude, I love this website, but you lost me when you brought up Ghost Busters. The leads in the remake were fantastic but no amount of talent will turn a turd into a fruit tart.

If some guy had invented the term Mary Sue, and applied it to… well, Mary Sues, that would be sexist. What you are doing is dumping on a womans contribution to the zygist. They are very useful. My only issue with them is that they can subtly shift one to a very specific mindset; That of thinking flaws are an absolute requirement, and consequently losing sight of why flaws are good to have. I am of the strong belief that flaws are advisable in most cases, but not absolutely essential. For example, Atticus Finch.

He has a lot of candy going on. Despite appearing to be over-candied he is a beloved character. What constitutes being overcandied is often sensitive to context, just like any other character quality. Interesting article, I think you are right that the term Mary Sue is outdated and mostly used as a shorthand dismissal without explanation. Writing stories solely for author appeal is like writing porn. It limits your audience to the people who share your specific kinks. I do however disagree with the idea that the concept has a gender bias, or at least one based on sexism.

Fanfiction, as a whole, is a majority female hobby. This could be one of the reasons that so many male given names have migrated to become almost exclusively female names Ashley, Kelley, Madison, Hillary, Dana, Alexis, Bailey, Brook, Cassidy, Lauren, Lesley, Lindsey; probably a hundred more.

Under imperial weights and measures there are pounds in a ton not Ah, the self-insert character, defined as a literary device in which a fictional character represents the author of the piece and is usually an idealized character within the fiction, either overtly or in disguise.

Within the world of fanfiction, that character, when it appears, is usually considered an OC original character and exists for purposes ranging from romance to spiritual exploration. In the beginning, there was Dante. The proliferation of fanfiction brought in a new era of self-insert storytelling where writers would craft a character who would seamlessly fit into a pre-established world and quickly outshine the lead or romance the bad-boy, which led to the creation of our namesake, the Mary Sue.

For those who may not know, the term comes from a character from a Star Trek fic the origin point of most things fandom. Lieutenant Mary Sue was a character in a parody fic who was made to represent all unrealistic characters in Trek fanfiction. She makes her way onto the Enterprise and the entire crew falls in love with her. They then have adventures, but the remarkable thing was that all the adventures circled around this character.

We like Archer because he is a fun train-wreck of a man. We love Bond because he is a well-oiled, villain-killing steamroller. A compromise between the two simply ruins both genres.

Jane Austen, a notable recluse and spinster, created a fictional Jane who despite her, at times, off-putting and judgemental nature still manages to find and marry a rich, educated, and gentle gentleman. With whom she lives happily ever after. This is a perfect example of a Mary Sue wish fulfilment scenario. Unlike Mary Sue, Elizabeth is clever, witty, and complex. Her personality is well-balanced and her achievements are more reasonable. Of course, she still shines in areas she in talented in.

Luke Skywalker is my favourite Mary Sue. This poster boy of a Mary Sue has captured the hearts of generations of fans. Fans who cried out in rage and were silenced when Disney decided to reverse these traits in an unfortunate series of events.

Regardless, for decades Luke has been a shining example of good to the world and we were all made a little bit brighter by his shining light[4]. By using Luke as an example, we can see just how this trope should be implemented: As the basis for strong, dynamic, fast-paced story.

Having a competent protagonist who can solve problems quickly will cut down on dead space in your writing. It should not be used in every situation. Flawed protagonists are interesting. But you are the only wizard who is his equal. I need you to fight him. The plot should always have the illusion of choice. A book can only have one outcome, but several choices should be made available for it not to seem contrived. For example, in the Star Wars movies we have seen that not only the main characters can save the day.

Luke only blows up the first Death Star. The next two planet-killing weapons in Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens are dealt with by side characters.