I’m a nervibore (I mostly eat my own nerves) and am extremely jumping over the upcoming release, because it is of course a heart-book.
You don’t pick these, but they seem to instantly become sensitive points of your anatomy, the minute they’re done. It happens to both short stories and novels, and I truly have no clue what the trigger is.
At least in my case my heart-stories are usually also reader favorites even if a lot of them will make people wonder if I’m exactly sane. Or sometimes human.
Anyway, I’ve been eating my own nerves, not to mention having a nervous breakdown over the cover, and between all of that, I’ve decided it would be a good idea (people, I ask you!) to go read comments on my last few books.
Look, I’m not completely out of my mind. I only read fives and fours. This is not because I can’t handle criticism from the point of view that I think my work is perfect, but because I can’t handle criticism from the OTHER side. I.e. if I read one stupid comment saying everything I write suck, no matter how obvious the person never actually read anything I wrote, I decide that they must be absolutely right and am unable to write for months. (This only affects fiction, you hopeful leftists now eyeing my blow. Rolls eyes.)
Anyway, I didn’t read anything that stopped me, but I read a few comments that gave me pause. Mostly those that talk about Athena in Darkship Thieves as “A Mary Sue that works,” because she has bio enhancements.
Dudes, dudettes, dudissimos and dudelies, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR LITTLE MINDS?
I have absolutely no clue what y’all have convinced yourselves a Mary Sue means, but Mary Sue doesn’t mean “competent” or “wins fights.” Sorry to break your little read wagon, but … that’s just stupid. It’s the level of stupid that, if you think that, you really need to be watched so you don’t try to eat rocks and/or poke your eye with a stick to see how it feels.
For the children who got here yesterday — why, yes, I am taking a break from yelling at a cloud. Also, get off my lawn — the “Mary Sue” term for writing came from (I understand. It was before my time. So, yes, it was chiselled on rock) Star Trek fanfic. And the name comes from the name of the fanfic writer who committed it. I.e. someone named “Mary Sue” wrote a self insert character who dropped onto Star Trek, fairy godmother style and made everything perfect: she taught logic to Spock and charm to Kirk, and she helped the doctor save lives, and helped Scotty make the engine give it more than she got. All problems solved Kirk fell in love with this avatar of perfect and they lived happily ever after.
That’s a Mary Sue. Mary Sue is an author self insert who drops in and makes everything perfect and better, even though there’s no reason to believe that she knows her ass from her elbow.
She shares some characteristics with Girl Boss, besides the fact they’re just horrible writing, in that they both have unearned competency and success, neither is allowed to fail or have significant flaws, and the result of whatever they do is always an improvement.
To call my neurotic, borderline psychotic main character in Darkship Thieves a Mary Sue is a piece of nonsense up with which I will not put. Mostly again, because if you read that description above and think it in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM applies to my character, you should quietly go to the nearest ER and tell them you need a mental health referral because for your next trick you’re going to try flying unassisted from a tall building.
Look, no, this is not just about my feeling insulted. BEAR WITH ME because I think people have gone a little insane and in the process are convincing themselves that legitimate writing and legitimate characters are “Mary Sues” and therefore bad. I actually don’t feel insulted, because the comment is bizarro world. It’s like, I’d feel insulted if someone came up to me and told me I was ugly and dressed funny partly because both are probably true, and it’s unkind to say it. But if someone came up to me and told me I was too purple, and needed to stop growing wings, I’d be appalled for them because that’s impossible and they obviously got a very bad batch of Oxacan ditchweed.
For those who haven’t read the book, Athena in Darkship Thieves shares exactly one (and an incidental other) characteristic with me, other than being female: she has a lot of unresolved anger. (In her case, I’m not sure she wants to resolve it.)
Other than that, our entire history, abilities and predilections are different. She shares one other incidental characteristic with me: she has read a lot of vintage science fiction. That one I did to make my life easier. I can’t stop myself from making certain references while writing, and since it was first person, I invented a reason those came to her mind.
That’s it. So, she’s not a self insert.
BUT other than that, she is so far from perfect and fixing everything that she’s almost the anti-Mary-Sue. She drops into things and makes things unimaginably worse, or at least more complicated. She often insists on running wrong-headed with something she misunderstood and thereby gets herself and others in danger.
She has two unearned abilities (so she has more in common with a girl boss than a Mary Sue, while not being a girl boss, because people don’t immediately think she’s wonderful and bow down to her and she doesn’t always win by the power of vagina. Except getting herself a husband, a case in which the power of vagina works.) One of her unearned powers is that she can fix machinery even if she never studied it. Yes, I know that is highly unlikely, except I once knew a man with that ability (and I understand there are others.) Her other unearned abilities are all physical: speed, strength and coordination.
Mostly she uses all her abilities to get into serious trouble. Not, note, to solve everything and make the world wonderful.
Her learning curve is steep, and she needs to fix fundamental issues in her cognition and personality before she can have a happy ending.
QUITE LITERALLY the only thing she has in common with either Mary Sue or Girl Boss is two unearned sets of abilities.
First, we all have unearned abilities, even without the bio-engineering. Mine seems to be with words. It survived the change in my main language and is really something I don’t think about.
Second, those unearned abilities rarely smooth everything for us and make everything turn out perfect.
You see, my having an ability with languages, until I managed plot and how to express character on the page, just made people see the mistakes in sharper relief and therefore got me less grace than if I had been all thumbs in language too.
But the part that worries me — and not just because of this, but because of people’s comments on other people’s books and movies, etc — is that people seem to be equating characters who have any level of competence with “Mary Sue” and, if they’re women, “Girl Boss.”
Note, the competency of those two type is always out of proportion: they’re competent at everything. And everyone bows before them, as though they were supernatural.
Other than that? Characters are allowed to be competent. In what world is that not allowed? Heaven knows our Author has a lot of competent characters. (Not me, but that’s something else. Would it hurt some grand eternal plan if I had just a little bit more competence, Lord? It wouldn’t spoil me.) Meaning in the real world, people are competent in varying degrees and some people are incredibly competent, either because they’ve learned starting at an early age, or because they have the ability to stop and think, and think correctly about situations.
And in literature there have always been competent characters that stood out, and those were often the main character.
Mind you I prefer Heinlein’s style of competent character, in that they are competent, but still struggle and learn. And sometimes are boneheads in some things (Math, or people interaction, usually) to Asimov’s character in David Starr Space Ranger. I mean David Starr is given an history to explain his being extraordinary (though really, being exposed to solar radiation in childhood does not make you a genius, and this should be obvious even in the fifties, Dr. Asimov.) And I very much doubt he was a self-insert. However, he has no flaws, can do everything from fist fighting to science, to having unbelievable luck. And people — and aliens — recognize him as someone extraordinary and amazing. That annoys me a bit. But note where he still has to fight for things, and he has an history that explains it. So even if he were a copy of Asimov he would be a self-insert but NOT a Mary Sue.
Why this is important besides having got me pissed off: It is important you don’t shy away from writing characters who are special, or admirable, or have extraordinary abilities. And while you can nerf them to make things interesting — by giving them some things they simply can’t do, or something they struggle with — it’s not a requirement that you nerf them to the point of being crippled.
This is nonsense from the other side of “you can’t give a female character any flaws” which I now understand is writ in Trad-pub-that’s-not-Baen. This is “You can’t have anyone who is better than anyone else at anything, because everyone is a widget and completely the same. Else, it’s Mary Sue or Girl Boss and baaaaaaaaaad.”
Stop that nonsense. If you buy into it, you just produce gray-goo with much of a muchness of characters who are not special.
And if that’s what you’re doing, why in holy heck would I want to read any of it?
Mad Genius Club 
35 responses to “Is It You, Mary Sue?”
I’m still looking forward to “Big Mama vs The Father”. [Crazy Grin]
Okay, this has hit a subject on which I have Opinions, and I’m going to give them. So feel free to skip this comment and step gingerly away, the way you would from a homeless person ranting on the street corner.
Mary Sue: Yes, she started as a self-insert who was perfect at everything (well, a parody of the type), but at this point, the term has evolved beyond that. I would define a Mary Sue as a character who is considerably better-loved by the author than by the reader. Obviously, this is subjective, but there are definitely characters that hit that button for a lot of readers.
Mary Sue takes over the narrative, and everyone is in awe of her. If one or two people are not, they’re shown to be clearly in the wrong. She’s the center of every action in the universe. She may or may not be flawed (actually, giving her flaws can make for an even worse Sue), but she WILL be considered the most extraordinary thing that the world has ever produced. The author shoves her in your face and insists, “YOU! WILL! LOVE! HER!” And the poor reader is sitting in a corner, thinking, “No, actually I don’t.”
Girlboss: This one’s tougher. Originally, she was what happened when someone who didn’t understand strength took the “Strong Woman” character too far. She’s powerful. She beats up men three times her size. She’s smarter than any man, braver than any man, she needs no man. She has no significant flaws. The only obstacle she has to overcome in the story is her own doubt: she must realize that she has always been awesome all along.
The real problem with the girlboss thing is that it’s conditioned audiences, especially male audiences, to be wary of anything with a female lead, particularly if that female is an action character. I suspect it’s going to take a long time for that wariness to go away.
So when a reader picks up Darkship Thieves and reads that first scene, where Athena wakes up out of a sound sleep and immediately beats up a team of guards, I’m not surprised that it triggers the “Girlboss! Run away!” instinct for a number of them. It’s not true (Athena is nowhere near a girlboss), and it’s definitely not fair for people to judge Athena based on their experiences with Rey and Captain Marvel, but it’s going to happen nonetheless.
I don’t know what happens to those of us who like to write heroines who are not girlbosses, but we may be in for a rough time of it for a while.
I’m not even sure I LIKE Athena, much less make sure everyone loves her. (Yes, I’m not fond of some of my main characters, while liking the BOOKS.)
Thanks for the history of Mary Sue. I wasn’t aware where exactly it came from. That’s probably true of a lot of folks who misuse it. I whole-heartedly agree with your conclusion. Some characters, just as some people, have exceptional skills at certain things. Usually that leaves holes in their other competencies.
As to God-given abilities, I seem to have more God-given disabilities. My sense of smell, for instance, is seriously deficient. (I’ve tried to popularize the neologism dapt to go with deaf and dumb.) My vision (until recent cataract surgery) has been seriously deficient since early childhood. My wife, on the other hand, had amazingly acute senses. In addition to perfect acuity, she had an unerring sense of color. She even discovered, when calibrating a laser, that she could see into the ultraviolet. Unfortunately she was tragically sensitive health-wise. A few whiffs of chlorine would result in a persistent two-week bout of coughing.
On the fortunate side, I seem to have been blessed with robust health. Last year’s insect bite and resulting infection resulted in my first visit to the hospital since I was 8 years old, and that one was for a broken arm. She compared me to a field instrument that you could drop off the back of a pickup and still get a reading good to 2 decimals while she was a lab instrument, capable of giving you 6-decimal place accuracy, but broken if you sneezed in its general vicinity.
So if you were chosen as a Monster Hunter it would be for the elite crew sent in to deal with those who attack by scent?
You could have a lot of fun with a Deaf Squad in a monster hunting universe. Those who never heard bearing patiently with the way everyone treats their name as a joke — and those who did hear once rapidly joining them, by about the sixth time someone treats it as a joke.
And wrestling with bureaucrats who can’t tell the difference between a siren’s song and a sonic, vibratory attack.
No doubt more fun smashing up the sirens and other singers.
My grandfather brought home fresh copies hours after the first copy machine in the county was delivered.
Broken.
…. the troubleshooting consisted of yelling “Hey, Pat! Can you fix this?” and getting out of his way.
Would’ve been early 60s at the latest.
Yep. My brother had a friend who’d come over and fix… everything. Even if he’d never seen it before.
Considering my own writing, if my characters were to ever automagically become real and alive, they’d torture and murder me. No question. I do bad things to them. Because my characters… Well, most of them wear the flaws on their sleeve. Doc Z is an arrogant introvert with PTSD, but he knows it and is trying to change. Painfully slowly. Most of my MCs have similar issues.
The intelligent zombies are amnesiacs with murderskills, but they are often hated and coveted because they can’t die or speak. Obsessive behaviors, blindness to social cues, no sense of smell or taste, but otherwise pretty good dudes. Just not human.
The animals stories are the least flawed, for the most part. They have to be. Most of them are innocent of human cruelty. If anything, they are closer to YA.
Mary Sue is one of those characteristics that is thrown around, some with justification some without. I haven’t got that one yet, though “terrible writing” and “hard to get through” are common enough complaints, those that aren’t saying it’s awesome and too good to quit (sounds like I’m writing drugs, tbh).
Comments and feedback are nice, when they’re nice. I need to start working on the next chapter, since the last mammoth awfulness is mostly done. It needs to sit for a while before the big edit.
I’m mostly too obscure to attract comments. I do have one person who was so insulted at one of my political posts on my blog, that he made it a point to give everything I wrote one star. I doubt he read any of it.
On the humorous side, pity poor Jeff Duntemann whose collection of short stories got all 4 and 5 stars except for one poor dyslexic fan whose review called it “brilliant and beautifully written” and gave it one star. 🙂
John Van Stry was just ranting about this same thing (and “copying/ripping off” various stories if you write a story that has ONE thing the same as another older story (or even a new story that you time travelled to rip off), so it seems to be going around.
I think it’s coming from the participation trophy crowd. If someone is better, then they must be dragged down to be the same as everyone else (crabs in a pot), or else they are neuro-divergent, those are the only ways to handle something that has existed for 1000’s of years. Some people are on each side of the bell curve, or else we wouldn’t HAVE a need for a bell curve. They always want to flatten the curve. Like someone else said, widgets must be exactly the same! Because it hurts someone’s feelings when someone can do something better than them.
I look at the lives of some of the folks from WWI and WWII, not just the soldiers/airman, but some of the “ordinary people” from around the world and the mind-boggling lives they led, it’s fantastic! I really hate that saying “fiction has to make sense, real life doesn’t”, I feel like that was the beginning of the downfall. (Unless you are always writing for the lowest common denominator.)
So, my final thought of the issue is that maybe it’s Editorial Insert that is the issue – if they can’t do it, then no one can! And they have convinced the world that is the case, too.
There are those who seem to think that any character that is both reasonably competent and reasonable honorable is a MarySue/MartyStu.
Those would be the same people who vote for Noah Ward at the #Hugos and have destroyed modern SF publishing in English. Also movies, television and comic books.
Fortunately these idiots seem rather few in number, so if we ignore them hard enough they’ll go away.
Personally I make my characters toweringly competent, scrupulously honorable and fabulously attractive. Because why would I want to read about horrible people doing horrible things, when I could have amazing people doing amazing things?
Do they have flaws? Yes. Do we linger on the flaws and roll in them, like a pig in a wallow? No we do not. We adapt, we overcome, and we get on with things. Sometimes we sacrifice our comfort or even well being for others, that’s another one I don’t see much of out there in Western media land.
For example, Charlotte Smith has quite a temper. Does she lose her schlitz and act out when things are not going her way? No, she does not. Because it would be undignified, foolish and not constructive. Instead she saves being angry for later. She waits for an appropriate moment to express her discontent, if you will. Because that’s just how she is.
Somewhere an idiot is saying “MarySue! MarySue!” like a cantrip. Dear idiot, that is simply the expression of good manners and the most basic self control. Two things you have probably never seen before, poor thing.
My fairytale fantasies have heroines who are, indeed, Typical Fairytale Heroines. (Even the one with an army.) This makes them unique nowadays.
There’s obviously a market for “horrible people doing horrible things”. And some of the people who enjoy that, actively resent more aspirational fare.
But as to flaws, characters are often defined by their flaws. This is especially blatant in the Superhero genre. Spider-Man is defined by his guilt complex. Batman is defined by his trauma. Characters without that handle are a lot harder to get right. (See also: most movies featuring Superman.)
With Superman being ‘a hard character to get right’ — is that because of his lack of flaws, which isn’t true, as more than once he’s been shown feeling pain over not being able to save everyone he wants to save? Or is it because most writers in comics, or outside them, can’t ‘get’ the idea of someone who wants to help others because they can and because they have the power to do so?
Even some comics writers have gotten tired of it. I’ve read about one Daredevil comic where someone starts talking to DD about how “all heroes are defined by great tragedy”. And DD tears into them for how ridiculous that thinking is, pointing out that there are tens of thousands of people like police, EMTs, firefighters, and more, who help others without having suffered any tragedy.
Mercedes Lackey had one of her urban-fantasy characters say that she had to use her special powers to help people by fighting evil magic users because if she didn’t, she would become vulnerable to said evil magic users (as well as being attractive to them).
Her friend said that he could never understand why Superman didn’t use his powers to get rich and retire.
Personally I thought that conversation said more about Lackey than about Superman. ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️
That sounds like her. I used to read a lot of Lackey’s work. I look back and I feel embarrassed that I wasted so much time on her work.
Ugh. That was so very petty of me. My apologies to everyone. Can that comment of mine be removed or deleted?
You’re fine. You’re a reader and allowed to have opinions.
“Or is it because most writers in comics, or outside them, can’t ‘get’ the idea of someone who wants to help others because they can and because they have the power to do so?”
It’s a policy. They could, but they don’t. I strongly think this is an industry-wide problem in Media, from music to comics. It has been decreed from on high, as they say.
The last couple weeks, Disney has been getting trashed by all the nerds for finally admitting they have a problem attracting young men. All the nerds stood up in unison and shouted “Ya think?!!!”
That, and never being allowed to kill the villains. No matter where they’re locked up, they always manage to escape and murder more innocent people. After that happens 2 or 3 times, any sensible person would declare “No more!” and whack the bastards.
Parole boards should be held responsible when the criminals they set free go back to looting, raping and murdering.
As one of my characters puts it: “This is why you kill the enemy. But you won’t allow it. Now two innocent people are dead and a dozen more are held hostage because coddling a violent psychopath made you feel better about yourselves. You share the guilt for this atrocity.”
There is a happy ending, though:
“Me? I didn’t burn anybody alive. The little turd shot me in the back while I was defusing the bomb, the bullets reflected off my force shield, one of them hit the wheelchair’s battery pack, and it caught fire.”
Nod, I understand why heroes should not kill the villains as the primary means of stopping the villains (especially when they don’t have anybody to hold them accountable), but killing the villains should never be “off the table” especially if their own lives and the lives of innocents are at stake.
Oh, the Joker isn’t Legally Insane and should have been executed decades ago.
I can recall one Batman/Joker story that got even worse. In it, Mistah J once again went on a killing spree. Only this time he murdered the son and wife of a very wealthy philanthropist who basically said that “This animal needs to die,” and who then put a $100 million bounty on Laughing Boy’s head. Which leads to every wanna-be bounty hunter and even some of Gotham’s supercriminals to hunt him down.
So Batman catches the Joker and hides him out in the Batcave. To protect him. He then kidnaps the man who put the bounty on Joker, drags him to the Batcave, gives him a (supposedly) loaded gun and tells him that if he wants the Joker dead, he’ll have to do it himself. And of course he can’t. Joker goes to Arkham, and Mister Philanthropist spends the cash on aiding the Joker’s victims. Given how many people the Joker kills, he better have a lot of money.
Frown.
Joker is a character that plenty of people would want to have a fatal “accident”.
Oh, there was a more recent story where Batman had to make a choice between saving Joker and saving an ally (the ally put Batman into that situation).
While Batman saved his ally, Joker managed to survive but left Gotham City.
Oh, apparently Joker kept a low profile after leaving Gotham City.
It gets even better. Years ago there was a story line called “Joker’s Last Laugh” where he thought he was dying, so he decided to cause as much damage as possible. Including ‘jokerizing’ some of the most powerful supervillains on the planet, who created disasters that must have killed thousands at the very least.
Joker also makes it look like he’s killed the latest Robin, which causes Nightwing (Dick Grayson) to beat him to death. But Batman resuscitates the Joker. That was the point where I gave up on the whole Batman-Joker thing in disgust. Not killing someone is one thing, but making sure to save the life of a mass murderer who’s just been responsible for mass murder across the entire planet?
The never-ending series is to blame. Imagine trying to keep on inventing villains like the Joker for years on end.
Indeed, I believe in the first story, he did die, except that the writer or editor or someone decided he was too good to throw away, and put in an epilogue where a doctor said he would live after all.
You might get something good out of a Spirit of Insanity that homed in on whichever evil man willing to play the part, so that killing the last host didn’t end it, but it’s hard to write a series about such a grim, never-ending duty.
DC Comics keeps trying to make a ‘new’ Joker, but they go to such extremes with the characters that they become too disgusting to read about. Like guys who eat women’s faces, or who mutilate and lobotomize people into becoming their doll-faced slaves, or even worse.
They can’t seem to find the dividing line between ‘horrible but readable’ and ‘just plain disgusting’.
I had a reader trash an early book because he/she/whatever missed the several pages of “MC trains very hard and tries to allow for her known weaknesses by not brute-forcing things.” The reviewer walled the book and accused me of Mary Sue-ing, and of creating a perfectly competent female warrior. Oddly enough, the ‘Zon later removed the review, and I have no idea why. (Elisabeth von Sarmas, for those wondering. Rada ni Drako would have been a better Mary Sue candidate if you mean “author insert.”)
I had a two-star one like that on Unfair Advantage. The guy was all mad because the nerd gets a robot girlfriend, and because George’s girlfriend doesn’t ditch him when he turns into a monster. Seems bro never had a loyal girlfriend.
I think it’s possible he was upset because every other robot girlfriend out there is Frankenstein, and mine aren’t. (Has anybody seen a female robot in fiction who isn’t Frankenstein, either forwards or backwards? So tiresome.) Also, monsters never win, but mine does. Legitimately, not by plot armor.
Review since removed. I wonder if Amazon times them out?
Darkship Thieves are my lowest rated books. Most of the bad reviews are idiotic.
The original “Mary Sue” was a famous parody of such all-powerful self-inserts, Paula Smith’s 1973 short story “A Trekkie’s Tale”
And there is this web comic… https://www.kevinbolk.com/comic/ensign-sue-must-die/
I can’t read comments on my books either, pretty much for the same reason. Writing’s hard enough without spiraling into “nothing I write is good!”
You’re overthinking it.
“Mary Sue” Is a magical incantation that lets you dismiss a work of fiction.
That’s really all there is to it.
When I say Ms. Marvel is a Mary Sue, I’m saying that she’s a bad character in a bad show that isn’t worth my time to dissect. It’s not hard to argue that an omnicompetent reality-warping character cannot be a self-insert. But making that argument is badly missing the point.
It may be used for that, but then, any critical term can be thus used. That doesn’t mean that works do not have flaws — and that works did not have these flaws before the term was devised.
Check out Silly Novels By Lady Novelists if you doubt:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28289/28289-h/28289-h.htm#page178
It’s not the term, it’s the user.
There are midwits, always, who will latch onto the pejorative du jour and tar everything they don’t like with it. Ten years ago, there was an idiot on Facebook who would post “GRIMDARK!!!!!11111!!1!!!!” any time he didn’t like something, regardless of whether the term actually applied or not. Didn’t matter if it was Hello Kitty, he’d start chanting “GRIMDARK GRIMDARK GRIMDARK” and how much he hated grimdark.
(For some irritating reason, this sort is almost always theatrically performative. They can’t just state their opinion, they MUST make it LOUDLY and PLAY TO THE CROWD to try to get the crowd on their side.)
This seems to be an extension of TVTropes Expertise, or Wikipedia Expertise. People don’t actually KNOW anything, but they read something on TVTropes or Wikipedia, and demand to be treated as experts because they can spout back what they found.