A plague of Mary Sues upon thine head!

Anyone here heard of James Frey? He wrote an autobiographical account of his life as an alcoholic and drug addict in a “downward spiral of violence and destitution”. Oprah thought he was wonderful and promoted his book on her show. She wept over it, apparently. Frey appeared on her show giving a message of hope to all the viewers who “shared his pain”. Look at me now, I came good! Turns out it didn’t quite happen like James Frey said it did. He kinda exaggerated the truth. A lot. And maybe made some stuff up. A lot. Maybe.

Anyone here heard of J.T. Leroy? “He” is an autobiographical author who wrote a book about his life as a teenage boy prostitute. Hollywood stars practically fell over themselves in order to help the poor boy. Turns out “he” is actually a middle aged woman named Laura Albert, who also calls herself “Emily Fraiser”. Susie Bright wasn’t very happy about this whole thing as J.T. Leroy had fooled her too. She explains Laura Albert’s antics by comparing them to slash fiction: yet another female author living out the dream of being a gay man…

Slash fiction, if you really want to know, is a form of erotic fan fiction that is written probably ninety percent of the time by heterosexual women, and there to indulge the fantasy of famous male icons getting it together. It all began with Star Trek. For some reason female Star Trek fans get off on the idea of Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock in, well, ummm, bed together. The slash or “/” is the way it’s described on the page and depends on the particular coupling. Kirk/Spock “slash” fiction. Or Picard/Riker “slash” fiction. See? It’s by no means restricted to Star Trek. Highlander, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are apparently popular subjects too. In fact, Legolas appears to be extremely popular with the girls and the boys. But damn, he is nice to look at, isn’t he?

According to the Mary Sue Purity Test, Rickey is a borderline Mary Sue (he scored 46). I will not allow myself to find this discouraging, given that characters like Eugene Gant (Look Homeward, Angel) and Jack Torrance (The Shining) are probably also “Mary Sues” by this test’s standards.

PzB wailed defensively on her blog a couple of days ago. I’m amused by the thought that she may not have caught on to the fact that she’s spent her whole career writing original slash fiction. Mary Sue is an integral and inevitable part of slash and other forms of fan fiction. Mary Sue is all about wish fulfillment.

You see, there is a very special kind of character that’s sometimes written by a young slash writer, still on her training wheels. This is usually an original character, who becomes the star of the show. This character is beautiful (but in an unusual way), wise, kind, magical, creative – she may even have color-changing eyes or violet hair. She usually has a dramatic and traumatic past, but it has only made her stronger. She does marvelous things, saving the Starship Enterprise from blowing up, getting Methos to finally make a move on Duncan MacLeod. She is referred to, not terribly fondly, as Mary Sue.

Explains a helpful commenter Susie Bright’s blog. Mary Sue is so popular she has several fan sites of her very own.

Although storytellers have been rehashing Mary Sue since the dawn of time, she did not receive her current name until the early 1970s. The original was Lieutenant Mary Sue (“the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old”) as immortalized in Paula Smith’s “A Trekkie’s Tale,” which she wrote and published in her 1974 fanzine Menagerie #2. (According to Katherine Langley: “Paula is still active in fandom and, to be sure, suitably bemused that Mary Sue lives on.”)

Mary Sue, as this archetype became known, was at first any brilliant, beautiful young Starfleet officer who joined the Enterprise crew to be the center of attention, set everything right, make off with the main male canon character’s heart (or several of them!), and/or die dramatically in someone’s arms. I’m sure you can make a similar analogy within your own fannish experiences. Mary Sues exist in every fanficdom:

• the pretty new Immortal who stumbles into MacLeod’s (or Methos’) arms
• the uberpowered kid who joins Generation X
• the female bronzerider with her firelizard flock
• the kitchen-drudge-cum-HeraldMage out on her first circuit
• the notorious Marrissa Amber Flores Picard Gordon…

I’m sure you can think of more. And of course there are non-fanfic Mary Sues, characters who only exist in their creators’ minds, on well-worn RPG character sheets or in secret notebooks. There are even actual canon Mary Sues, though that gets hard to judge because they are canon. Good examples include Jean M. Auel’s Ayla, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, Anne McCaffery’s Menolly, and Anne Rice’s, well, anyone…

Says Kielle, author of The Official Mary Sue Society Avatar Appreciation Site. Did somebody mention Anne Rice’s name there? Well, that fits very well because not only does Rice have an irritating habit of creating new far-too-perfect characters (whom we all hate) that steal the show and the cannon character’s hearts in every book, her cannon characters are terrible Mary Sues too. Original fiction Mary Sues are all about wish-fulfillment and acting out your fantasies. They are about creating characters who are too perfect and beautiful, with tortured, secret pasts and particularly special psychic or physical powers. The author may have a Cinderella complex. The character usually has lavishly described outfits, and may even be based on someone that the author knows. Hmmm. Who does that sound like? And did you know Lestat’s character was based on Rice’s husband? Oh dear.

Anne Rice. PzB. Tanith Lee (her heroines are always wildly attractive, and they always suffer). Buffy (like a cheerleader and a vampire slayer?). Lisa from The Simpsons? All those Star Wars characters inserted into books since the start of Star Wars books. I’m thinking Mara Jade. Hey! Wikipedia list her as a Mary Sue too! Oh, and Alice from Resident Evil (and speaking of the gorgeous Milla Jovovich, who was LeeLoo if not the ultimate original fiction Mary Sue?). Let’s face it, the Brontes and Austen have also been guilty of some serious original fiction Mary Sueism.

The male version of the Mary Sue is frequently called the Gary Stu. The original fiction Gary Stu has spread himself around so much he’s invisibly common. Superman, James Bond, Luke Skywalker, every young Charles Dickens hero you ever heard of…

Suspension of Disbelief

[A]nyone who says “She’s so pretty that it’s like a disability because everyone hates her or wants to have sex with her” will be summarily keelhauled. – (The (Original) Mary Sue Litmus Test (for Gargoyles fan fiction))

If we contain Mary Sue to the fan fiction genre, she’s easy to define. But when we start talking about original fiction Mary Sues, we shortly discover that virtually every hero and heroine anywhere is a bit of a Mary Sue. Writers have a tendency to draw their heroes and heroines far too perfectly in order to impress their specialness upon others and fulfill their own private fantasies. Heroes rarely make mistakes, they are not human. That’s why Superman and James Bond can never be anything but clichés. Creating a Mary Sue is known as authorial intrusion. Authorial intrusion is when the author intrudes into their own fictional world to the point where the reader can no-longer suspend their disbelief. The whole house of cards collapses and the reader ends up laughing at the author’s poor writing.

The Plague of Mary

According to The Original Fiction Mary Sue Litmus Test, my deliberately hot-headed, selfish, self-involved, extremely flawed Lead Character actually has a number of very Mary Sue-like qualities. So does my Loveable Villain (even though he does some very bad things). I’ve also discovered that my main Romantic Interest (designed to be beautiful, obsessive, arrogant, hot-and-cold, and occasionally nasty), is so much a Mary Sue that I’m wondering whether I need to make her slightly more psychotic than she already is. But I guess this comes with the territory when one is writing gothic fantasy fiction about immortal witches and all. It’s all very illuminating.

Mary Sue Links

• The Original Fiction Mary Sue Litmus Test
• The (Original) Mary Sue Litmus Test (for Gargoyles fan fiction)
• How To Be A Mary Sue