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MARY_SUE

                                                     June 21, 2021
                                                     March 9, 2022
My fellow literary critics of the low
lands have introduced the term "A Mary
Sue Character" to describe an                     
unrealistically perfect character that
has no difficulty solving any problem.

This is a fingers-on-black-board
phrase, for me.

    How is it an improvement on
    just saying something like:

      "unrealistically perfect"

    Or, the way I sometimes put it:

       "A superman in need of some kryptonite".
                                                 THE_KRYPTONITE_ESCAPE


   For one thing, I don't see any
   problem with idealized heroes.        This is an angle you can play,
                                         a source of energy to tap into,
                                         a vein of raw material to mine.

   Isn't there something odd about              Stories about characters
   the very *name* "Mary Sue"?                  like this are often very
                                                popular: consider, say,
   To my ear, the female name suggests          Sabatini's "Scaramouche"
   there's something particularly               (1921), who continually
   absurd about competent women.                transforms though various
                                                identies: a respectable
      (Traditionally, women aren't              lawyer, a superb orator, an
      supposed to be able to *do*               excellent actor/playwrite,
      anything, they're just                    a genius-level swordsman,
      supposed to Be Nice.)                     and a revolutionary leader.

   Then there's the "southern" sound                       SCARMOUCHE
   of the name-- does that make it more
   absurd because everyone knows those              But I guess Scarmouche
   southern hicks are dumb?                         was a *male* character,
                                                    so that makes it okay.


    I can think of one justification for
    asserting a need for imperfection --

    A common formula has it that stories are
    fundamentally about challenges to be overcome:
    The unchallenged hero may be challenged on            The one joke of
    finding challenges.                                   "One Punch Man".

           (Somewhat weirdly, I may have
           never seen this point made by
           someone shouting "Mary Sue!".)


    But even an overpowered, supremely competent
    hero can face challeges, such as:

        o  deciding what direction they want to go
        o  knowing how to feel about what they need to do
        o  overcoming an equally overpowered antagonist

           And so on.


                                http://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/09/socrates-as-mary-sue

                                Belle Warring, in "Socrates as Mary Sue":

                                "Any wish-fulfilment in SF is often derided as
                                the creation of 'Mary Sues.' When this term
                                was coined it was immediately obvious to many
                                readers and writers that this is... strangely
                                gendered at best and suspiciously misogynist
                                at worst. If people throw the word around only
   I saw a youtube              in the context of female characters, or with
   video recently where         the implicit notion that women in fantasy and
   a nerd-of-maleness           SF are the main locus of ‘Mary-Sue-ness’, then
   called the Jodie             something has gone very wrong."
   Whittaker Doctor
   "Doctor Mary Sue".

                                

                                
                                Belle Warring also provides some history:
                                
                                "The term comes from one Paula Smith, who
                                wrote a story in 1973 as a satire of Star
                                Trek fanfic (maybe life before the internet
                                wasn’t that different after all?!)."

                                           SO_SUE_ME  

                                           THROUGH_THE_BOOM_TUBE


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