Mary Sue (Yes I am taking a break from schoolwork just to rant about this)

[sisterjune]

Mary Sue
I hate hate HATE this term. Just about every fandom I have been in has used this term to either discredit and undermine a female character and her numerous accomplishments or skill or to justify their dislike of her. Usually both. Yes there are underwritten, poorly developed female characters on tv. I can understand not liking them or feeling indifferent to them or if you are like me secretly resenting the writers for doing a shit job with their female characters but putting more effort on the male ones.
However I have rarely in the many years I have spent in fandom, felt the term Mary Sue was ever justified. I am sick to death of hearing this term, it is used frequently by just about everyone in every fandom imaginable. and It's been annoying me for years but after seeing it once again in the comments of a blog for a writer of (one of) my favorite shows (Leverage) I'd finally just had enough. So I am going to rant about it big time right now. If no one wants to read it, feel free to scroll past.

Some asshole was saying that a new and temporary character who appeared the last episode of Leverage was a Mary Sue. She was only around as herself for less than a MINUTE whereas the rest of the time she was in disguise. The person took issue because she was able to fool the entire team of thieves of cons (who are the best out there) for a whole job. and She is supposed to join the team, how the hell can she join the team as a competent reliable member of said team, if she cannot do her job well enough to fool people who would normally be very difficult to fool? How does that work? She needs to prove she like them, is the best of the best. Had she not succeeded in fooling them, would that not prove she cannot play at their level? The people the Leverage team usually target are often very sly, sneaky, and cunning if not always smart (but sometimes they are) so if she cannot fool these people who do not even excel at this what she excels at (she is a grifter and excels at reading people and she can usually play the right character that would best allow her to get what she's after. none of the other members of the leverage team are grifters) furthermore, the "Mary Sue" in question was sent by the team's original grifter member, and this women is amazing and feared far and wide in the underground/among other thieves and cons. So again it makes perfect sense to me that this "Mary Sue" would be very skilled and capable and if she was anything less it would just be narratively ridiculous! But this does not matter to people. What matters is, they do not like this new character or the actress, therefore her character being intelligent and capable is a horrible abominatoin and she must be a Mary Sue.
Honestly I was less annoyed by the people who said they just outright hated the actress or didnt care for her character, which was quite alot of people btw. and I found them very annoying but yet nowhere near as annoying as those who shouted "Mary Sue" as if that somehow justifies their seething hatred. (Although why comment to the writer to tell him how much you hate the actress? Are you hoping he will fire her? How about fuck you?)

What is so much more irritating about the Mary Sue label instead of just saying you hate the character is that fanboys/girls think that by calling a character a "Mary Sue" they have therefore justified their outrageous hatred. I am waiting for the day when people realize that hatred is an irrational emotion and there is rarely a true logical explanation for hating someone, in fact if you can logically explain burning hatred for anyone fictional or otherwise than you may just be a sociopath. Barring a situation where the person who is being hated has A- killed your loved one or B-abuses/mistreats you repeatedly, there is rarely ever a sane explanation for hatred. Yet people try to sanely explain their reasons for hating a female character and all I see everytime is "blah blah I'm an misogynist asshole blah blah" and sometimes I could insert racist in that sentence but it's usually women who get the bashing in fandom, regardless of the color. I know some people here will say but "Hey Tai, why cant I hate a character without it being a misgyny/racism/other form of discrimation thing?" See dislike or disinterest, for any character I can understand. That happens, it's normal, we cant like everyone. Be it in fiction, fandom or reality. However, HATRED is an intense emotion and to spew paragraphs of vitriol about how much you hate a particular character and why (Yes I have seen this many times) usually means there are some serious issues going on here. Whether the person doing the hating/bashing is aware of it or not. and I mean this for any character not just female ones. However it's particularly a problem amongst female characters and considered acceptable.

Which leads me back to the Mary Sue thing and how utterly arbitrary the conditions for being considered a Mary Sueish character are. The way I understood the definition of a Mary Sue back when I first saw the term being thrown around, was to describe made up female characters in fanfics that were usually self inserts for the preteen authors writing them. Usually these women/girls had ridiculous names, exaggerated descriptions of beauty, and excelled in everything no matter what, as well as being the apple of every man's eye. As far as that term went for fanfic, I was totally ok with it. and More often than not the claim of Mary sue was a way to weed out the good fics from the hopelessly bad. However somewhere along the line this became a popular term to throw around for the ORIGINAL work and the characters in visual media, ie tv and film. First of all a big part to me about the Mary Sue issue was that it 1 was a self insert for the author and 2 there was alot of gushing about how great the female in question was and she was often ridiculously better than everyone else. Both of these are RARELY the case in Tv and Film which is more of a show not tell media and I highly doubt the men who write most of the tv shows around now are using their female characters as self inserts (I have a feeling if they did they would be written better) and rarely ever does a show that is not centered on a female character or characters, portray any of their female characters as better than the male ones. Anyway, so when and why did Mary Sue become a term to use for ANY female character fans felt were too pretty/skilled/liked to be acceptable?

Something I saw the other day when I was passing through the Pirates of the Carribbean fandom that just BLEW my mind, so many people going on about how Elizabeth Swann is a Mary Sue....UH WUT? Compared to WHO? All the crazy heroic acrobatic death defying shit that Will and Jack do (especially Jack who is never wrong, always two steps ahead of everyone, gets all the ladies etc etc) and they are ok but Elizabeth who doesnt get to do HALF as much shit is the Mary Sue? SERIOUSLY? But it's obvious to me that anyone who sat and thought about it would know what a piece of shit that claim is but most people in fandom ship Jack/Will, which ok fine but people cant just ship what they want and have Elizabeth as their partner friend who goes off and decides to be lesbian or something, instead Elizabeth has to be discredited as a Mary Sue and pushed aside as unworthy even when the stuff she is "guilty" of the boys are guilty of twice over. Do not even get me started on the wank that has gone around Uhura from the new star trek film cause I can go on about that shit all day and the only reason I'm not is that many others have spoken about it in their own journals far better than I could.
But really this is what is so maddening about the word Mary Sue. This double standard. So many male characters over the years, particularly in action and sci fi films/tv would be categorized as Mary Sue's under the ridiculous and arbitary standards that are used to qualify female characters as such. I mean especially in superhero series, which are more often than not male wank fantasies about amazing buff men who save the day and get all the ladies and cool powers etc etc.
There is so much gender bull shit that makes fandom biased against women, particularly strong prominent ones, that very few people seem to really see or acknowledge. What is sad is that by these impossible standards with that female charas are judged, even iconic female characters like Buffy and Xena would qualify as Mary Sues. In fact the only reason they dont I believe is because they are the stars of the show, this is the only time I've seen that a woman can be strong, beautiful, confident and competant and NOT be called a Mary Sue by the majority.

The thing I hate the most though? If a female character in a show full of strong people is less than competant, people will STILL bitch and call her a waste of space. Which just goes back to how arbitrary and nonsensical the whole Mary Sue thing is. and I'm so so sick of hearing that fucking term. I wish people would just be honest and say "gosh I dont like her cause she's new/gets in the way of my ship/rubs me the wrong way/makes me feel insecure/I always prefer male charas to female ones/I hate women" it would make fandom so much more tolerable. But of course I know, I am asking way too much.

Comments

hi tai! <3

[nekokonneko.livejournal.com]

We American visual media has many writers, but British programmes usually have just one head writer who overseas the whole thing and single people who write episodes, so it's more likely to happen there. I've heard people call Rose Tyler and Gwen Cooper [Doctor Who and Torchwood respectively] avatars of RTD. God damn, I bring everything back to DW @.@

You read my mind! James Bond is EXACTLY who I was thinking about when I wrote about Gary Stus.