It could also be said that there are a lot of poorly conceived characters with an unrealistic abundance of flattering attributes who are not Mary Sues. My hunch is that the whole Mary Sue thing began as a legitimate shorthand to call out fanfic writers who inserted themselves into, say, Star Trek slashfic, with Kirk and Spock falling in love with them, or some such thing. But then it spread to professional fiction, where the use of Mary Sue as a pejorative, even if accurate in some cases, carries a sexist whiff because it's almost always aimed at female authors: See, these dizzy broads can't resist making little cute versions of themselves in their little stories. (Of course, the pejorative is just as often wielded by female critics.) Why are male writers' idealized Tek Jansen heroes not also called Mary Sues? (Actually, they're called Gary Stu. Groan.)
Setting aside the legitimacy of the term, or lack thereof, the discussion interests me because it gets to deeper issues about what we want from fictional characters and what function they serve for their creators. Sometimes the two agendas, for want of a better word, dovetail nicely; other times, the writer might go a step too far and the reader gets that 'Oh, gimme a break' feeling. But to what extent does a writer go against idealization to the point where it becomes almost inverted idealization, i.e., this character is the worst, stupidest, most flawed character ever to appear in print? Like, how far can we go with this fucked-up character and still get you to care about what happens to her? Or, how far can we idealize her and still get you to identify? Is identification necessary to begin with? And so on.
I suspect that you're rejecting Mary Sue as a valid criticism on some level because you don't want to be thinking about it the next time you sit down to create a character; you don't want it, unbidden, anywhere on your radar, and you certainly don't want any possibility of some potential fanboy/fangirl snark to influence you one way or the other. So, okay: Mary Sue is a pretty weak criticism much of the time. The funny thing is, none of your characters have ever struck me as being remotely Mary Sue-ish, so why dignify it at all? It's not something that has anything to do with what you do. What would Harlan say? Probably 'What the fuck is a Mary Sue and why are you even thinking about it?' Interspersed with 'kiddo' and various uses of 'fuck.'
no subject
Setting aside the legitimacy of the term, or lack thereof, the discussion interests me because it gets to deeper issues about what we want from fictional characters and what function they serve for their creators. Sometimes the two agendas, for want of a better word, dovetail nicely; other times, the writer might go a step too far and the reader gets that 'Oh, gimme a break' feeling. But to what extent does a writer go against idealization to the point where it becomes almost inverted idealization, i.e., this character is the worst, stupidest, most flawed character ever to appear in print? Like, how far can we go with this fucked-up character and still get you to care about what happens to her? Or, how far can we idealize her and still get you to identify? Is identification necessary to begin with? And so on.
I suspect that you're rejecting Mary Sue as a valid criticism on some level because you don't want to be thinking about it the next time you sit down to create a character; you don't want it, unbidden, anywhere on your radar, and you certainly don't want any possibility of some potential fanboy/fangirl snark to influence you one way or the other. So, okay: Mary Sue is a pretty weak criticism much of the time. The funny thing is, none of your characters have ever struck me as being remotely Mary Sue-ish, so why dignify it at all? It's not something that has anything to do with what you do. What would Harlan say? Probably 'What the fuck is a Mary Sue and why are you even thinking about it?' Interspersed with 'kiddo' and various uses of 'fuck.'