In Defense of Mary Sues
In this article, Averie fights hoards of cringe culture lovers to reclaim creativity, and poorly written characters, for fandom kids.
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In Defense of Mary Sues
In Defense of Mary Sues
By Averie Black
By Averie Black
In a world where uploading self-insert fanfiction and furry art for millions to indulge in is a common practice, there are bound to be some less-than-artistic endeavors. From the oldies of FanFiction.net and Bullet Board System chat rooms to the new age Wattpad and DeviantArt, there are even older accounts of Mary Sues and fandom culture than could be imagined. Stories centering around a Mary Sue character tend to be a target of hate reads and general cringe but, in defense of Mary Sues, they hold the future of creativity.
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of a Mary Sue is “...a term used to describe a fictional character, usually female, who is seen as too perfect and almost boring for lack of flaws, originally written as an idealized version of an author in fanfiction.” As long as fanfiction and self-published work have been around, so have Mary Sues. In more modern terms, these characters can also be referred to as “Y/N”, which stands for “your name”, or more simply, a self-insert. These characters tend to have many more interesting characters falling all over them and are obscenely special in some sort of way. For example, a widely regarded ‘cringe’ fandom, Gatcha Life, often has main characters who are brutally bullied at school and have horrible home lives, but turn out to be demons, angels, and wolf princesses with color-changing eyes and mind-reading abilities.
In Dec. of 1973, a satire article written by Paula Smith, published in Menagerie 2, would coin the term Mary Sue. Smith was far into the Star Trek fandom at the time, and would buy many zines, self-published fanfiction, to read. Smith stated in an interview with Cynthia W. Walker, “Some of it was pretty good. Some of it was extremely good. But an awful lot of it was just plain awful.” These horrible zines were the inspiration for Smith’s satire “A Trekkie’s Tale”. In this short story, Lieutenant Mary Sue is a 15-year-old girl on the USS Enterprise whom Kirk immediately falls in love with. They get captured by aliens, but Mary Sue escapes and contracts a dangerous illness. As said in the original text, “In the Sick Bay she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty.” The name Mary Sue quickly caught on and became the universal name for a poorly written self-insert character.
The extent of Mary Sue’s reach is not limited to fanfiction or self-insert characters. Mary Sues can also be found in published books and art. For example, Bella Swan from the Twilight Saga is often considered a Mary Sue due to her lack of personality and many supernatural love interests. Many people in fandom, or geeky spaces also make art on sites like DeviantArt, which every young child has been scarred by, and create original characters that are considered Mary Sues. Within the furry community, these are called sparkle dogs because they are often brightly colored with glitter and are, overall, visually traumatizing. For example, these characters may have four tails, seven colors, a mohawk, boots, a bandana, multi-colored eyes, etc.
Sure, Mary Sues are fun to laugh at, but why do so many people hate them with a passion? In an interview with a GPHS sophomore who is involved in fandom culture, they say that Mary Sues “waste space. They slow down the story a lot, and they’re not that valuable to the overall plot…They usually aren’t likable.” When asked about whether or not they would consider these characters ‘cringe’, the sophomore answered, “I don’t like the word cringe because I feel like everything in ten years is gonna be cringe. So, I wouldn’t consider them cringey. I would just think that, like, they’re poorly written, and in fanfiction, when everything is poorly written, they stand out.” It seems like, overall, the biggest complaint about these characters is that they drag down the story.
Unsurprisingly, many of the people writing these are children and teenagers, and out of those minors, a lot of them are women, LGBT+, and/or POC. Writing self-insert characters can often be comforting to young artists because they are given the ability to write their own representation. If a young person grows up in a certain fandom that doesn’t cater to who they are-- LGBT, a woman, POC-- then it can be freeing to just do it themselves. The people writing Mary Sues are mostly children exploring writing and art in the easiest way they know how to, and, yes, it can be “cringey”, but they do not deserve to be bullied off the internet. For example, Mariaseelie on Tumblr posted, “Do you ever feel like you are scared of creating OCS because everyone is gonna perceive you through characters and judge very personal things about you and then call you a self insert mary sue”. Once again, these are mostly children bullying other children for artistically expressing themselves, even the work-at-hand is not super-quality art.
Art by Emo, Middle School Me
As it became more common to hate on Mary Sues, people became nervous that their own characters were Mary Sues, and so came the rise of the anti-sue. An anti-sue is exactly what it sounds like: opposed to bright colors, rejecting elaborate designs, and denying all of the superpowers. Anti-sues were just like…normal, boring people. According to TV Tropes, “Rather than admiration, some Anti-Sues instead have their peers' intense hatred and dislike of them be what overrides any other plot in the story — that is, they'll drop everything they're doing just to make the Anti-Sue's life that much more miserable and keep them around solely for that purpose…” In contrast to the Mary Sue’s goodness, anti-sues were often rude, bitter, and overflowing with character flaws. Anti-sues also became the subject of bullying, which left these children the only option of creating well-rounded, reasonable, characters that were not self-inserts-- which, to be honest, sucked all the fun out of it. It is not a stretch to imagine many young creative people giving up art or writing due to the bullying or potential bullying they have faced.
Image by Fred Seibert on Flickr
In reality, many beloved authors started out writing cringey fanfiction that later helped them in publishing. For example, Ali Hazelwood, a well-known romance author known for Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain, started off by writing Reylo-- Rey and Kylo Ren, fanfiction. E.L. James also wrote a bestselling book that was originally Twilight fanfiction. Do not Google the E.L. James book. Please. Rebecca Sugar was also into fanart and fandom culture long before storyboarding for Adventure Time and creating Steven Universe. Once again, do not Google Rebecca Sugar’s early fanart. Please. Poorly rendered fandom work is a gateway drug into the world of writing, animation, and overall creativity. It may not be great starting out, but before deciding to brutalize children, remember that they may end up writing a bestseller or animating your favorite cartoon.
Despite the funny origins of Mary Sues, the concept grew into a toxic culture within fandoms, and encouraged bullying of youths and underrepresented communities. In reality, Mary Sue characters are another form of self-expression and have helped many young artists on their way to successful careers. So, in conclusion, let children have weird phases and make horrible fanfiction and original characters so that, in the future, they can become well-rounded people.
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