{"id":2311,"date":"2014-11-17T18:28:11","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T18:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/11\/17\/the-importance-of-mary-sue\/"},"modified":"2014-11-17T18:28:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T18:28:11","slug":"the-importance-of-mary-sue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/11\/17\/the-importance-of-mary-sue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Mary Sue"},"content":{"rendered":"

tamorapierce<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

unwinona<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When I was in Ninth Grade, I won a thing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That thing, in particular, was a thirty dollar Barnes & Noble gift certificate.\u00a0 I was still too young for a part-time job, so I didn\u2019t have this kind of spending cash on me, ever.\u00a0 I felt like a god.<\/p>\n

Drunk with power, I fancy-stepped my way to my local B&N.\u00a0 I was ready to choose new books based solely on the most important of qualities\u2026BADASS COVER ART.\u00a0 I walked away with a handful of paperbacks, most of which were horrible (I\u2019m looking at you, Man-Kzin Wars III<\/a>) or simply forgettable. \u00a0<\/p>\n

One book did not disappoint.\u00a0 I fell down the rabbit hole into a series that proved to be as badass as the cover art promised (Again, Man-Kzin Wars III, way to drop the ball on that one).\u00a0 With more than a dozen books in the series, I devoured them.\u00a0 I bought cassette tapes of ballads sung by bards in the stories.\u00a0 And the characters.\u00a0 Oh, the characters.\u00a0 I loved them.\u00a0 Gryphons, mages, but most importantly, lots of women.\u00a0 Different kinds of women.\u00a0 So many amazing women.\u00a0 I looked up to them, wrote bad fiction that lifted entire portions of dialogue and character descriptions, dreamed of writing something that the author would include in an anthology.<\/p>\n

This year I decided in a fit of nostalgia to revisit the books I loved so damn much.\u00a0 I wanted to reconnect with my old friends\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026and I found myself facing Mary Sues.\u00a0 Lots of them.\u00a0 Perfect, perfect, perfect.\u00a0 A fantasy world full of Anakin Skywalkers and Nancy Drews and Wesley Crushers.\u00a0 I felt crushed.\u00a0 I had remembered such complex, deep characters and didn\u2019t see those women in front of me at all anymore.\u00a0 Where were those strong women who kept me safe through the worst four years of my life?<\/p>\n

Which led me to an important realization as I soldiered on through book after book.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I needed them.\u00a0 Because they were<\/em> Mary Sues.\u00a0 These books were not written to draw my attention to all the ugly bumps and whiskers of the real world.\u00a0 They were somewhere to hide.\u00a0 I was painfully aware that I was being judged by my peers and adults and found lacking.\u00a0 I was a fuckup.\u00a0 And sometimes a fuckup needs to feel like a Mary Sue.\u00a0 As an adult, these characters felt a little thin because they lacked the real world knowledge I, as an adult, had learned and earned.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the thing\u2026these books weren\u2019t FOR this current version of myself. \u00a0 Who I am now doesn\u2019t need a flawless hero because I\u2019m comfortable with the idea that valuable people are also flawed.<\/p>\n

There is a reason that most fanfiction authors, specifically girls, start with a Mary Sue.\u00a0 It\u2019s because girls are taught that they are never enough.\u00a0 You can\u2019t be too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid.\u00a0 You can\u2019t ask too many questions or know too many answers.\u00a0 No one is flocking to you for advice.\u00a0 Then something wonderful happens.\u00a0 The girl who was told she\u2019s stupid finds out that she can be a better wizard than Albus Dumbledore.\u00a0 And that is something very important.\u00a0 Terrible at sports?\u00a0 You\u2019re a warrior who does backflips and Legolas thinks you\u2019re THE BEST. \u00a0 No friends?\u00a0 You get a standing ovation from Han Solo and the entire Rebel Alliance when you crash-land safely on Hoth after blowing up the Super Double Death Star.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about you.\u00a0 Everyone in your favorite universe is TOTALLY ALL ABOUT YOU.<\/p>\n

I started writing fanfiction the way most girls did, by re-inventing themselves. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mary Sues exist because children who are told they\u2019re nothing want to be everything. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As a girl, being \u201cselfish\u201d was the worst thing you could be.\u00a0 Now you live in Narnia and Prince Caspian just proposed marriage to you.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Your SELF is what saved everyone from that sea serpent.\u00a0 Plus your hair looks totally great braided like that.<\/p>\n

In time, hopefully, these hardworking fanfiction authors realize that it\u2019s okay to be somewhere in the middle and their characters adjust to respond to that.\u00a0 As people grow and learn, characters grow and learn.\u00a0 Turns out your Elven Mage is more interesting if he isn\u2019t also the best swordsman in the kingdom.\u00a0 Not everyone needs to be hopelessly in love with your Queen for her to be a great ruler.\u00a0 There are all kinds of ways for people to start owning who they are, and embracing the things that make them so beautifully weird and complicated.<\/p>\n

Personally, though, I think it\u2019s a lot more fun learning how to trust yourself and others if you all happen to be riding dragons.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the best explanation of the Mary Sue phenomenon I have ever read, and I should know, having written my share of Mary Sues once upon a time (and no, you\u2019ll never see them, because of dark heartbreaking psychological reasons).\u00a0 Moreover, unlike so many other things I\u2019ve read about Mary Sues, it\u2019s generous.\u00a0 Thank you!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tamorapierce: unwinona: When I was in Ninth Grade, I won a thing. \u00a0 That thing, in particular, was a thirty dollar Barnes & Noble gift certificate.\u00a0 I was still too young for a part-time job, so I didn\u2019t have this kind of spending cash on me, ever.\u00a0 I felt like a god. Drunk with power, … Continue reading The Importance of Mary Sue<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}