Accusations of Mary Sue
Who or what is Mary Sue? Do people even know? Or are they just using it to trash characters? If you ask me, Mary Sue has become the ultimate insult for characters without people really knowing what their accusation actually is. Characters who aren’t Mary Sues are accused of Sueness.
Mary Sue, in actuality, is a character that is the center of the universe in such a heavy way that they transcend that and become the only real thing in the universe. Mary Sue warps the world around them in such a way that absolutely everything leads back to the Sue. The start of their character is how amazing they are by default. What matters is not their motivation or their backstory, it’s how much the audience is supposed to care. A character like this creates a story that has no actual plot or well-written characters around them, since the universe-warping leads even the plot and other characters back to glorifying the Sue. Because of this, identifying a Mary Sue actually becomes very easy, so is telling when a character isn’t a Mary Sue. All you have to ask is “Is there an actual plot?” and “Are there other characters who exist without the central character?” and if not “Is that because of the central character?”
But the problem isn’t with people not knowing what actually makes a Mary Sue, or even using it as an accusation when they don’t know what it is they’re accusing characters of. The problem is what kind of characters they’re accusing with Sueness. In my experience, only female main characters with autonomy get accused of Being Mary Sues. These female characters often are capable fighters without the use of superpowers, who possess leadership qualities, self-sufficiency, and strong drive.
Superpowers I point out, because in the eyes of society, for whatever reason, female characters can’t be capable fighters without some outside circumstance. They always need to have some kind of superhuman abilities in order for their fight capabilities to be accepted. If they can fight without them, even if they use some kind of weapon, it is deemed unrealistic, as if women are incapable of fighting on a global scale. The Mary Sue accusation comes with a certain unreality. Which she is. No person has the entire world around them existing to glorify just them, so obviously, Mary Sue is unrealistic. Characters who get branded as a Mary Sue are, in part or in whole, declared unrealistic. Fighting in women is seen as unrealistic. Regardless of character, culture, species, story, or necessity.
Female characters are rarely leaders. Another thing our society doesn’t take as realistic is women as leaders. This is strongly seen in our everyday lives. But it also reflects in our stories. Female characters are rarely leaders. If they are, they often hold no power over the male main characters. If the main character of a story is female, she often still isn’t the leader. Because of this, female characters who are leaders of pretty much all, are seen as unrealistic. They can be the best leaders in all of history, they will still be seen as unrealistic.
A pretty much universal, and insanely false perception, is that women aren’t self-sufficient on their own. People believe that women need to be led, don’t really care about anything actually important, and can’t take care of things on their own. Self-sufficient women in real life are often looked down upon and in media are declared as unrealistic. The idea that women and female characters can exist without the assistance of a man or mentor is something that people can’t seem to comprehend.
Having a driven female character is nearly suicidal. Driven heroes are often stubborn and stick to their mission, whatever it may be. Because of social stereotypes and expectations, female characters aren’t supposed to be stubborn or driven. Women in real life aren’t supposed to be. A drive toward ANY end is seen as something that is an unnatural state for a woman, and therefore female characters. A female character’s drive is often seen as stubbornness and the character being unreasonable. Rather than seeing a character, their mission, and whatever causes them to be driven toward their goal, people see an unreasonably stubborn character and say they are insufferable.
An important part of this debate is that male characters don’t get accused as Mary Sue. The female characters that get accused as a Mary Sue have male counterparts who are just like them, yet the traits that get a male character branded as a hero, cause a female character branded as a Mary Sue. Basically, society has strong stereotypes and expectations about men and women that are false and ridiculous. And the way this translates into storytelling is by using a random term, that nobody seems to know the meaning of, as an accusation. Female characters that possess certain traits that women “aren’t supposed to possess” get accused of being Mary Sues in order to take away the impact of their characters.
This royally pisses me off, in part because I hate it when people talk about things they clearly know nothing about, and in part because it doesn’t only trash the characters. The accusation of Mary Sue accuses a certain type of character of being unrealistic and a result of bad writing and anyone that shares those traits, as a result, is being insulted and trashed. Any girl or woman out there who is self-sufficient, possesses leadership qualities, has a strong drive, and whatever else may cause female characters to be called Mary Sues, like myself, is told their existence is wrong in a way.
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