Mary Sues are something created by bad writing, however what we perceive as Mary Sues and what we don’t persevere as them is deeply effected by the stories we were told growing up.
By: Eda 10.2
You may have just read the title of this and gone, “What even are Mary Sues?” Well, that’s the thing: nobody can really explain what Mary Sues are. It’s easiest to describe them as a trope of characters- not necessarily a good one- but it’s generally where the lead (usually female) is a character who is an idealized version of the author: a character with no flaws, a “perfect” character. They are the main character or given the most spotlight to. As there is no concrete definition if a Mary Sue but its use as given above should give you a general idea of what type of character they are. The origin of the Mary Sue archetype (a stereotype or a type of character) is widely believed to come from self insert storylines where the author would write a novel where the main character would be a version of the author where their flaws are removed. A form of wish fulfillment and and idealized version of themselves. As for the name of the actual term, it’s believed to be from a piece of parody fan work from the (then popular) Star Trek series, where it was used to mock the way that many people wrote their own fan-works back then and show how ridiculous some of the storylines would and could become. But why are most female characters called and/or considered as Mary Sues? A primary example of this issue is Ray and Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars saga. In essence, their stories are the same, but one gets called a Mary Sue while the other does not. In this case it’s because at its peak, Star Wars is a fictional universe, and when Luke was first introduced the whole storyline was new and well written, but when it came to Ray, the storyline had already been done and it felt repetitive to see the whole thing over and over again. And the people decided that the reason it was so badly written wasn’t because it was a repeated story line with little changes, but because it was now basically a gender bent form of the first main lead. and yes, the character may have also been written badly, making them stand on the line of Mary Sue.
So let’s make a bingo card for the characteristics of a Mary Sue:
Dead, and/or abusive family
Little to no flaws
Doing impossible things, even in the cannon of the series.
There are many examples of this trope. Matilda from the book “Matilda” fits all of the items in the checklist: abusive family? Check. Little no no flaws? Also check. Doing impossible things/ having inhuman skills? Check, she made a piece of chalk float only using the power of her mind. Harry Potter- abusive and dead family? Check. Little flaws? Somewhat check. Doing impossible things? Check: he survived the certain death curse, TWICE. As can be seen here, a lot of character have features that may cause them to be called “Mary Sues” and it wouldn’t be wrong, but only calling one character a Mary Sue while ignoring the fact that many main characters from many beloved books and series are Mary or Gary Sues in practice. And even though Mary Sues are generally female, Gary Sues (male versions) also exist. However they are much harder to identify as the trope of “strong male lead saves the day” is more widely accepted in society as the expectation for male characters is “a character with little flaws that can save the day no matter what.” Whereas the female characters are more widely considered as “weak and full of flaws” as that is what has been in stories for a very long time now. So when a female character is shown with the male expectation, it breaks the female characters expectations and are considered as as Mary Sues as she “has no flaws” but when the same thing is done to male characters they aren’t considered Gary sues. It would be nice to believe that such things don’t happen anymore, but they sadly still do. What we consider to be a Mary/ Gary Sue is widely effected by what sort of culture we had grown up in and what we were taught to consider as “normal” from a young age. Looking at this situation from this angle, we can see that most expectations set for male and female characters differ drastically. As much as we can’t re-write these classical pieces of literature, we can tell others stories where female characters are able to be strong but also have weaknesses and stories where male characters are allowed to have flaws with out being called weak or pathetic. This might be the final stepping stone in order to truly show the world just how many Mary and Gary Sues there are in literature, even in the stories we call masterpieces.
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