In Which Feather Quill Rants...

[featherxquill]

I want to rant about MARY-SUES. Ergh, I hear you sigh. Not another person who found Fanfiction dot net and realised it was full of SHIT.

Well, actually, no.

This rant is in favour of Mary Sues. Well, kind of. I would like to know what Mary-Sues actually ARE. I know the 'dictionary' definition, but what that is and what it equates to in people's minds are two totally different things.

This is not something I have trouble with much anymore, since I haven't played (rp-d or fanficced) with my OFC much at all in the last six months, but it used to be something I came up against all the time. Hatred of OFCs, hatred of Mary-Sues. Being called Mary-Sue by people who hadn't even stopped to watch you play, but decided on it by simply glancing at your signature.

What exactly makes a female character a Mary-Sue? Commonly, it is the assumption that the writer/rp-er is making an idealised version of herself, that a MS is just too perfect to be real.

What bothers me is what makes a character be seen as a Mary-Sue. Any character who is seen to be both attractive AND intelligent is a Mary-Sue, any character who is more powerful than (than what? than Harry? than Dumbledore?) is seen as a Mary-Sue. And fandom hates them. Men hate them. Women hate them. Everyone seems to hate them.

What bothers me is the idea that a woman CANNOT be all of those things - beautiful, intelligent, sexy, powerful. The assumptions that these kind of women are to be bashed, flamed and put down - even in fanfiction - is distressing to me.

Thank God, women like this do exist. There are women in the world - in the workforce, in academia, wherever - that are all of these things. Flick through any glossy magazine. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Lopez. Beautiful, sexy, rich, powerful, famous. Often cut down by reporters. If these women were written into fiction, would they be Mary-Sues?

I have heard people call Hermione Granger a Mary-Sue, just for being intelligent. The most horrible thing to do to Hermione, according to some readers, is to make her beautiful. Why is that? Is Hermione only allowed to be seen as a real woman while she is either intelligent OR sexy? Why can she not be both? When is she ever described in canon as being ugly? Admittedly, there are many writers out there who completely ignore canon and turn characters into horrible parodies of the ones we know and love, but why does a Hermione who decides that hey, maybe it would be nice to straighten my hair a bit immediately become a Hermione-sue? (Go and read Anna's Roman Holiday for a story where Hermione is both intelligent and sexy, and STILL a real, three dimensional, recognisable character.

And what about the male characters? People talk about 'Gary-Stu', but hardly as often as they talk about his female counterpart. Gary-Stuism usually happens to Snape, and usually involves some sort of makeover. But I'm not really sure that's what qualifies as a Gary-Stu, in terms of the 'projection' definition.

I have a friend who RPs Snape (or at least used to), and he refuses to believe that Snape could ever fall in love. Now, is something like that really canon at all? We know nothing at all about Snape in that capacity. All information we have about him is filtered through Harry, and through the channels of student/teacher relationships. We know NOTHING about Snape's desires for romance/relationships or lacktherof. Yes, this is going somewhere.

What interests me is that for a MALE RPer of Snape (and the other male Snape rpers that I know), the attraction seems to be to play a complete and utter bastard of a man who can tell people off as he pleases, or (in the case of the foremost Snape) take rp lovers that he will never care for or want for more than sex. Is this Snape 'canon'? Is snarky!bastard!hateful!Snape more canon than one who shows emotions in private? Is he more of a believable man than a woman who is intelligent, sexy and powerful? I don't really think so. I think the desire to play a Snape who is mean and nasty stems as much from perceived 'canon' Snape as it does from a desire to inhabit a factional character and act in a way that you would never be able to in RL, and hence exactly what women are criticised for when they create 'Mary-Sue' characters.

I don't think any of these characters are Mary-Sues. Obviously, I don't extend this to include those characters who have ten animagi forms, are part fairy and part Tolkien elf, are Snape's daughter and Dumbledore's granddaughter and both Harry and Draco's sister and going out with Ron, but I heartily dislike characterisation of all beautiful, intelligent, powerful female characters as Mary-Sues. Thanks to feminism and the battles fought in the past, women are able to be all of these things in the real world. Don't crucify them when they appear in the fictional one.