featherxquill | In Which Feather Quill Rants...

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Okay, I'm admitting it. I am both a Mary-Sue and a Gary-Stu (I'm bi, so I figure nobody really cares about the gender of the characters I create even if they're based on myself). OC's are fun to write, create, etc. but as was stated above, they can't be perfect or they're stupid. My current OC, for example, is named Raven Knight (okay, okay, it's a stupid pun . . . but I couldn't think of anything better) and is the lead singer in a "local" band (you know, the kind that plays in pubs and probably never puts out an album) that Remus plays guitar for. She's sexy, she's smart, she's a good singer. But she's also a touchy little bitch. (Think Snape on one of his really, really, really bad days.) Cross your eyes at her and she's liable to go nuts on you. I've had several people tell me (since I openly admitted that she is in fact a self-insert, even though she looks very little like me and I deliberately made her vocal abilities better than mine) that she is one of the best self-inserts/Mary-Sues/OFC's they've ever seen, and when I ask why, they say it's because she acts real. She's a Muggle and although she's been exposed to the magical world via Remus and his friends, she's not entirely accepting of all of it. She's not ready to believe at the drop of a hat that it might be all real and not just a joke. Her only magical powers consist of having an extraordinary ability to make everyone within a 100-mile radius run and hide when she slams a door just right (PMS ROCKS). She's not related to any of our dear heroes or heroines.

I think the people who make themselves into Dumbledore's daughter, Snape's daughter (yes, I've seen that happen when a rather lurid Mary-Sue outlined her genealogy - she somehow ended up with three parents, all of whom were male - James Potter was the other one), McGonagall's niece, and then said character is 17 but only starting now at Hogwarts because she THOUGHT she was a Squib all this time and really isn't, but in spite of that she knows more about magic than the entire Trio combined, is better in Potions than even Snape, and SHE is the one who REALLY has to fight Voldemort because she was ACTUALLY Harry's "identical" twin (I hated to point this out to the poor girl, but identicals are ALWAYS the same gender . . . ) - what they're out for is to say "Nyah, nyah, look, I'm better. I'm more powerful. I can do so much better than (insert author's name here, including JKR's name) because *I* know how to create an all-powerful character!" and they miss the point that the HP characters are so poignant, so endearing, so REAL because they ARE real - everyone knows the bossy know-it-all who can quote Shakespeare (Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, whoever) at the drop of a hat; the overshadowed, hand-me-down-world adventurer; the perservering kid from a shitty background; the playground pariah who grows up into a son of a bitch because he doesn't know anything different; the Mr. Chips who, in spite of his great advice and warm, calming demeanor, can never be quite right because he cares too much; the practical joker who stops at nothing for a good laugh. They're part of the life of EVERYONE. I could in fact take my own social circle and rename everyone in it to fit a Harry Potter character - even Dumbledore.

I think there is a difference between OC's, self-inserts, and Stues (my word that encompasses both genders): self-inserts may or may not stick around for a long time (Raven's shown up twice in a 21 chapter story, and her part is usually comic relief), but they're essentially you, as you truly are (unless you give yourself black hair instead of blonde *coughcough*), faults and peccadilloes and everything. OC's may or may not be based on you, yourself, as you are, or on anyone you know. All characters start as OC's, even Harry and Snape and Dumbledore. They are JKR's OC's. Stues are the annoying characters who can do all and see all and be all because they (think) they kick ASS, y'all, and who's going to stop them?

Wow - I'm sorry, I wrote you a novel! (geez . . . I guess this explains why all my friends encourage me to write fanfiction.) Anyway . . . okay . . . I commented . . . I think I'm going to just slink away in shame now . . . because my mouth is too big . . . *snort*

"I think the people who make themselves into Dumbledore's daughter, Snape's daughter (yes, I've seen that happen when a rather lurid Mary-Sue outlined her genealogy - she somehow ended up with three parents, all of whom were male - James Potter was the other one),"

did you ever see this (http://piratemonkeysinc.com/ms1.htm)?

OMG YES!!! I have! But the daughter of Snape-James-Dumbledore was the weirdest. She even had a hyphenated name. *shakes head to rid it of disturbing images*

..as if Snape would even go *near* James Potter in "that" way...I'm sure he'd rather shack with a piece of mummified roadkill.

Yeah . . . the weirdest part was this flashback, where it turns out that this girl is genetically engineered (that's where her Dumbledore heritage comes from, how convenient) and James and Severus had sex to escape from Moony, or something weird like that. It's like "okay, so instead of just dragging him back down the tunnel, James, you're going to give the wolf an even stronger scent to follow. How smart."

And then of course Snape topped, but he was the one who got pregnant. EXPLAIN that to me.

"And then of course Snape topped, but he was the one who got pregnant."

Yeah, that is something I havnt worked out yet - why is it that he's the one who always 'gets it'. Tension of contrasts, maybe? ;p

No idea. It seems to me that Remus gets preggers a lot, too, though, and that one I can see. I mean, he's obsessed with chocolate, he hates to see people unhappy, he's got these uncannily "sixth-sense" modes of emoting (WHY did he hug Sirius in the Shrieking Shack when there was no real proof of his innocence yet?), and he turns into a real bitch once a month.

You can't tell me those are male habits.

lol - point taken. but it'd be one hell of a rough ride for the ... um .. offspring with the change. Actually (slightly off the subject) I've sometimes toyed with the idea of putting Remus into a SF/crossover setting. It'd mean that he could avoid suffering lycantrhopy so long as he only went to worlds that didnt have a moon. But then ... what if he had to go to one? And can simply seeing a moon from a spacecraft bring on an attack? the mind boggles.

I don't know what SF is, but you have some good points there.

SF = Science Fiction ^-^

Ahh, okay ^_^

Personally I like keeping my sci-fi and magi-fi separate, but that's just me.

Actually, some of the devices mentioned in the HP books almost cross over into an alternative form of science (like DD's magical instruments & the silver spidery thing that Sirius swiped off Harry). Magic-based technology.

Hmm, good point. Still, most of it is just magi-fi, and I like that.

What I find sad are fics where people separate the characters via sci-fi methods, and the characters can never find each other again . . . I read one where Remus and Sirius were a couple from something like fifth year (and mind you, Azkaban never happened in this story and they're now in their late thirties), and then suddenly they're both pulled into other universes. By the end of the story they didn't even remember each other, only a vague feeling that something was missing remained. It was HORRIBLE. (Actually the writing was quite good, but the plot depressed me.)

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