The Mary-Sue Mindset
An exploratory essay by CuriousLittleBird
Mary Sues. They’re everywhere in fan fiction, fan art, and all over every anime, TV, and movie bishounen in sight. I’ve seen them, and I’m actually quite proud to say that I’m among their ranks. There, I’ll say it. I’m a Mary Sue, and DAMN proud of it.
But what is a Mary Sue? To some, she is the female incarnation of Lucifer---the bane of the existence of all serious fan fiction authors and the curse of all serious fan artists. They claim she casts her dirty spell over the world of fan fiction, pairing herself with the fictional man of her choice and creating a piece of writing worth nobody’s time. They claim she draws herself standing beside her bishounen, declaring to the world that she now exists in the same dimension as he.
To others, a Mary Sue is a reflection of themselves: she is a typical fan, who just has a level of devotion that makes her obsess over a fictional character.
Let’s look at a few “official definitions,” shall we?
From “He’s Not Yours: The Fangirl and Mary-Sue Hatelisting"
( http://highpriestseto.com/marysues.html)
“What's a Mary-Sue?
A Mary-Sue is considered, by some, to be the lowest form of a fangirl. Mary-Sues are girls who place themselves in an anime through fanfiction/art. They make their "characters" perfect, and they pair themselves with the bishounen.”
From “Dr. Merlin’s Guide to Fan Fiction” by Melissa Wilson
( http://missy.reimer.com/library/guide.html )
“You already know Mary Sue. Mary Sue is the perky, bright, helpful sixteen-year-old ensign who beams about the ship. Everyone on the ship likes Mary Sue, because Mary Sue is good at everything. Mary Sue is an engineer, a doctor in training, a good leader, an excellent cook, and is usually a beautiful singer. Mary Sue often has mental powers that may manifest themselves as telepathy, precognition, or magic. Her past is tragic, more so than any other character on the series. (Many Mary Sues have a backstory that reads like a V.C. Andrews novel. This is a clue.) If Mary Sue is very young, she is often the offspring of one or two already established characters. If she's a little older, she will probably end up sleeping with the author's favorite character. Sometimes, she fills both roles. Her name is often the author's name, be it a net.name, a favored nickname, or the author's middle name (this is seen in the most famous Mary Sue of all time, Wesley Crusher, who was named after Trek creator Eugene Wesley Roddenbery). By the end of the story, Mary Sue will be in bed with the desired character, will have beamed away amid cheers from all the regulars, or will be dead, usually accompanied by heavy mourning from the cast. The reader, on the other hand, will be celebrating.”
So, as you can see, the general feeling towards Mary Sues is not quite nice in many places. What many Mary Sue bashers do not understand is the psychology behind the name---in essence, why people become “Mary Sues” in fandom.
A Mary Sue (hereafter MS, and I’m only referring to the female version here) is a real young woman who has one, some, or all of the following characteristics. Contrary to popular belief, who will have you think that MS’s are inhuman scum of the earth, they are real women, and they might identify with these:
* A very loving, caring, passionate and powerful personality
* A current obsession with a real-life man whom she cannot have for one reason or another
* A stickler-ish religion or overprotective parents who won’t let her date real boys or have sex before she is married
* A feeling of a loss of control in her life, or a sense of being controlled by many other people
I, myself, have three of these characteristics, so my reasoning may be a bit biased here. There are probably other lurking variables that come into play in the creation of a MS, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.
Case #1: "A very loving, caring, passionate and powerful personality"
In the first case, a young woman with this kind of personality has probably been taught all her life to restrain herself. She probably overreacts to emotional situations, thereby upsetting people around her, and so she’s slowly trained herself to be more docile and quiet in her growing-up years. (Prime example right here *points to self*) Even though that passionate side has been repressed, often with much force, it chooses to come out in different ways, perhaps in the MS’s schoolwork, family relations, and friendships. She may beg for friendship pathetically or form tight friendships quite easily, depending on her personality, and in love she may be cold and distant or the model of adoration and worship. This tendency for her passionate nature to come out results in fan fiction or fanart with a MS tone: since she’s been taught that her passion is not correct for polite society, she creates a world in which she is accepted just as she is.
The sad thing is that a lot of people then ridicule the young woman for writing a MS fan fiction or creating MS fanart. This forces her to repress herself further, making the problem worse and the MS-ism more intense. In short, her critics worsen the problem that they are ridiculing. Now, isn’t that stupid?
Case #2: "A current obsession with a real-life man whom she cannot have for one reason or another"
In the second case, a young woman may have an obsession with a real-life man who either does not return her affections or whom she is forbidden from seeing. In an effort to release all the sexual tension and romantic passion she feels for the young man, she creates a “safe world” for herself (again, either in fan fiction or fanart), in which she can unleash all this desire and attraction on the fictional bishounen of her choice. This way, neither she nor the real-life young man she loves are embarrassed, and her built-up tensions are still released. You might call it the fan fiction or fanart equivalent of masturbating, and who the hell can’t say they haven’t gone on a solo journey once in a while when they’ve gotten lonely? ^_^
The sad thing is that the Mary Sue’s critics just think her story or her art is stupid, when in fact it is a form of therapy, or perhaps a form of gratification that she simply cannot get in real life. Again, ahem, prime example here.
Case #3: "A stickler-ish religion or overprotective parents who won’t let her date real boys or have sex before she is married"
In the third instance, the young woman’s parents or religion may forbid her from dating until a certain age or engaging in intercourse until marriage. With teenage hormones rushing like it’s going out of style, this can be quite a problem. You see, the young woman feels the need to please her parents/religion, but at the same time she has human nature’s primal sexual desires for a man pulsing through her blood. (You girls know what I’m talking about. Don’t even deny. LOL!) Here, as in the case of the young woman who is obsessed with one man whom she cannot have, the young woman creates her “safe world,” in which she can imagine all the pleasures she can have with a man (both romantic and sexual), without losing her physical virginity and betraying her religion, or dating a real-life boy and breaking her parents’ rules.
The sad thing is that most critics don’t see this. They only see a fan fiction or a piece of fan art that displays herself and the bishie of her dreams together, and they scream “Mary Sue!” and virtually stone her, often killing her confidence in the process.
Case #4: "A feeling of a loss of control in her life, or a sense of being controlled by many other people"
The fourth case is probably the most common of all. Most women who write or draw Mary Sues are teenagers or preteens, or still under a parent’s control, perhaps. Perhaps they work at a job that forces them to be something they’re not. Perhaps they aren’t satisfied with their lives as they are, but can’t change it because of circumstances beyond their control. Whatever the reason, the young woman goes home at night, to her haven of rest---this may be a bedroom, a computer, or something else---and creates a world in which she is finally in control. Within the sanctity of her fanart or her fan fiction, she controls the environment, controls the fictional characters’ responses to her, and perhaps she may even feel genuinely loved for the first time in her life, if only by a fictional man or fictional friends.
I will be honest here: it’s a very sad mind that must resort to such actions, but in a world like ours, it’s no wonder we’re all half-crazy, as my grandmother used to say. With teenage depression and suicide running rampant, our minds must adapt and change to fit the times. And unfortunately for Mary Sue-haters, some products of the mental states of many girls is Mary Sue fanart and fan fiction. I’m not saying all MS’s are mentally ill---they are just using an age-old coping mechanism, creating their own worlds to escape from this one. Under that context, aren’t all writers and artists doing the same thing? Why should we then ridicule a young woman for just trying to get by and just trying to live her life without going fucking nuts?
There’s no reason why. There’s no damn reason why Mary Sues should be reviled as they are. Like it or not, her fanfiction and fanart is a form of therapy. You know damn good and well that therapy costs nowadays, and prescription medicines for depression are even more expensive. Why would you deny a young woman this free therapy, just to get her thoughts out? Hell, Mary Sue’s fanart and fanfiction might even be a catharsis for you, if you stopped stoning her long enough to let her speak.
You might think, “Well, therapeutic benefits are all well and good, but she doesn’t have to dirty up our sites with it.” Not true. That is the very essence of art----the point at which artist and artwork fuse and become one. If you’re too uppity and haughty to understand it and let some real, emotional art become part of your world, then I feel for you. The real reason she posts on fan fiction sites and fanart sites is because she is desperate to know that she is not alone, that other women feel the same. She is desperate to find her kindred spirits, who have felt the same anguish of the repressed soul, the pain of unrequited or forbidden love, or the pressure of having to live up to an ideal or go along with someone else’s program. Since the whole world runs on the Internet now, she chooses that medium to get her cry of help out. I know that this is the psychological motivation behind my Mary Sue fan fiction, and I’m sure other girls can at least identify with, if not see themselves in my descriptions. Again, I may be a bit biased, since I am one, but I still think I can see it objectively enough that I can prove my point.
Look at what the critics have done to Mary Sue. Her face is shattered, bleeding, dripping her lifeblood onto her chest. Her arms are broken in many places from trying to shield herself from the stones flung at her. Her legs are badly bruised---the whole of her skin has turned a dark bluish-purple from the impacts. She can’t even stand by herself anymore---she can only lean against the wall she’s backed up against, weakly crying out as the last of her haters’ stones strike her body.
Look at her. Mary Sue does not live in just the fan fiction world. No, she is a stereotyped and perfected version of a true woman, a real woman, and she takes on the names of many women worldwide. She is the ideal female stereotype that real women everywhere strive to reach, and they even create her for themselves, knowing their own capacity to be Mary Sue someday. That real woman is the accomplished artist behind the screen name you’re flaming on a fanart site, the budding writer behind the offending fan fiction on Fanfiction.net or wherever. This girl is a real woman, and she felt the need to write this or draw this, perhaps for her own sanity’s sake. Would you punish her, then, for trying to keep that sanity which is required in our society today?
You have a stone in your own hand, but wait. The poor child is bruised and battered all over from the world’s treatment of her, but her face is a mirror of yours---yes, yours. You, who hate her and have trod upon her limbs and crushed her heart, are still reflected in her face, in her eyes. No, she’s not so perfect now, is she? She’s human, just like you, just trying to get along in the world. That’s the real reason you hated her, isn’t it? You hated her because she was something you’d never be---perfect. Now, I’m a perfectionist, but I don’t hate Mary Sues because I am one. You have an inferiority complex, and I am employing a complex coping mechanism to deal with all the stress in my life. Do you wish to kill me because I’m struggling to keep my sanity, struggling to stay afloat?
I am just one of the Mary Sues floating around in the world today. Many other girls and young women suffer from the attacks of people who don’t understand them, and don’t understand the true purpose of their art. Do you wish to kill all of us? Is that how your heart will be eased? Will you be happy once we are all chased off your fanfiction sites and erased from your fanart sites? Will you be happy then?
I sincerely doubt it.
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