The Mary Sue Problem

Actually, there’s two problems which are connected to the term ‘Mary Sue.’ One problem is over-powered and over-candied characters (often referred to as ‘Mary Sue’). The other problem is the way the term is often used. But let’s do things bit by bit, shall we?

The term ‘Mary Sue’ came into being through a Star Trek fan-fiction with a female wish-fulfilment character named Mary Sue, who could do everything, despite being very young and on the lower end of the hierarchy within Starfleet. Of course, Mary Sue would have been a ‘Mary Sue’ as a man, too. Just look at Wesley and the abuse heaped on him by TNG fans - and he’s way less of an over-powered and over-candied character than Miss Sue was.

So, as a such, the term ‘Mary Sue’ refers to any character who has an unrealistic amount of what Mythcreants refers to as ‘candy’ (meaning any overly positive traits, the opposite coined by the page is ‘spinach’ for negative traits). If a character is loved by all, can do everything, and is perfect in every way, he, she, or it is a ‘Mary Sue’ (which reminds me of Mary Poppins … perhaps that name could have been used instead?). So far, so good. And, as you might have spotted in the last sentence, this term can be used for every character, no matter the sex or species. An intersexual alien can be a ‘Mary Sue.’ An overly manly man can be a ‘Mary Sue’ (even though some coined the term ‘Gary Stu’ for the male variety, but it never caught on as much). So far, it’s also not that much of a problem. A term for characters which are badly written and definitely need to take their spinach is not bad as a such.

But (you knew that was coming, right?) the term still is bad, because of its usual use. Female characters which dare to break the usual expectations for a female character (quite often by being more competent, confident, or outright badass) run a much higher chance of being called out as a ‘Mary Sue’ than male characters with the same qualities. A male character can get away with a lot more candy before being called out - if they are called out at all. Let me give you an example or two.

Katniss Everdeen, main character of the Hunger Games series, is often called out as a ‘Mary Sue,’ but is she one? She was trained in archery since childhood, so it’s not as if she learned that specific skill in short time. She has survived in a dystopian future for a long time, which makes her quite adept at surviving (even though she’s pretty new at the ‘to the death’ game variety). She does have her candy and she does have the usual YA love triangle, but she’s not really a ‘Mary Sue.’ She’s competent, she becomes confident, she certainly can kick ass, but that’s not enough to make her a true ‘Mary Sue.’ Yet, people claim she is one, simply because she is a female character one might call a wish-fulfilment one.

What about James Bond? He was trained as an agent and has been on the frontlines for a long time, so high competence for his job is to be expected. Yet, he is supposed to live in a more or less realistic version of our world. That means he shouldn’t be able to survive that many bullets, that many car accidents, that many almost-drowning incidents. Yet, he does. Don’t get me wrong - Mr. Bond is an action hero and those are exceedingly resilient. But still, he should be dead. And I bet that if Mr. Bond became a Miss Bond in the next movie (or a POC, even though I think Ezra Idris would have rocked the role), people would start complaining about 007’s level of candy. As a man, he isn’t anything less of a wish-fulfilment character (all leading characters are, to a certain degree), but he’s in much less danger of being called out as a ‘Mary Sue.’

One interesting thing I saw during a recent discussion about the term was that someone claimed female badass warriors were a wish-fulfilment character for men who like dominant women. Now, far be it from me to judge other people’s kinks, but why is it more likely for some people that a woman who kicks asses and takes names is a man’s wish-fulfilment character? That she’s not someone women want to see, because they’re fed up with the female lead often only being a damsel in distress and trophy to enhance the story of the male lead?

There still are relatively few female characters who kick ass and take names. There’s Furiosa in recent movie history. There’s Xena, if you want to go for something classic. There’s a handful of others, too. What I mean here are female warriors who have the build and the skill sets for what they’re doing. Not Hollywood-pretty actresses who engage in the art of waif-fu and look at the same time like a strong wind can topple them over. Not characters who are all strong and self-reliant until the hero comes around, at which point they become shy damsels in need of rescue. Those badasses are wish-fulfilment characters for women as much - if not more - as for men. Women who don’t sit around and wait to be rescued. Women who go out and rescue others, men and women alike. Women who represent the often forgotten side of history, the history of female leaders, fighters, and badasses. So, yes, some men might want to see a dominant woman on the screen who deals out punishment - and they’re welcome to watch those female badasses. But don’t underestimate the number of women who enjoy seeing a Xena, a Buffy, or a Furiosa do their thing on screen.

But what, to come back to the trouble with the ‘Mary Sue,’ can be done about that? First of all, we could drop the term, because of its female connotation (since it’s clearly a woman’s name) and find something else. ‘Hairy Who’ was suggested in the discussion I mentioned above. Or just talk about over-powered or over-candied (I like the term ‘candy,’ because it doesn’t really need a lot of explanation - it’s too much of the good stuff). Both terms are gender-neutral, meaning you won’t instinctively or automatically judge male, female, and neutral characters differently when it comes to them.

First and foremost, however, stop pushing women into much more limited roles in storytelling. We’re far from the time when most fairy tales were written (and even those come with the occasional female badass), there’s no reason why a princess shouldn’t go out these days to battle a dragon and free a prince (or find another princess for the happily ever after). Once women have the same range of characters as men already do, we will only use terms like ‘Mary Sue’ or ‘over-candied’ for characters who really deserve them.

Before you call a character out for being a ‘Mary Sue,’ take a very, very close look at them. Are they really over-powered or just very competent. Are their skills and traits realistic enough for the surrounding? Because then they’re not ‘Mary Sues.’

Jules de Grandin Review

 
A little while ago, I mentioned Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories in a post about formulaic work. By now, I have worked my way through the first collection and started the second one, so I think it’s time for a first review of M. de Grandin. The first collection is titled “Horror on the Links” (after the first story of the volume) and includes all stories appearing in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1928.

I will start off with a little warning. The suggestion from the preface of the book - to read the stories in moderation and not as many as you can in one sitting - is a good one. The stories are, indeed, quite formulaic and by reading too many of them at once, you tire of them. I rushed through the first half of the book in a few sittings, but found I had to take a full break from the stories for a bit and read something else before I could return - this time reading no more than one or two stories a day, making breaks when I felt like it was getting tiring again.

Enjoyed in moderation, however, the stories are very good. Quinn has a solid grip on storytelling and knows how to use his own medical knowledge to make the stories more gruesome and interesting. He uses the ‘Watson-perspective,’ telling the stories not from the point of view of M. de Grandin, but from the point of view of his friend and colleague (both are doctors) Dr. Trowbridge. Quite often, Trowbridge is flummoxed, as Watson is from time to time. There are usually situations in the story where M. de Grandin acts on his own, so Trowbridge and the reader have no idea what he does until he explains it in the end.

M. de Grandin himself is even worse when it comes to confidence than Sherlock Holmes. He has even less modesty than the Great Detective - and, yes, that is actually possible. He is also more of a superman - while Holmes gives the impression of having found his niche early in life and trained his abilities accordingly, M. de Grandin has been doctor, soldier, detective, and many other things, despite not being all that old himself at the time of the stories. He always somehow has or gains the necessary knowledge to deal with the monster of the week (an impression coined much later, but true for the stories here as well). This is one thing which gets tiring after a while, if you read too many stories at once.

Another things which gets tiring after a while is the unfortunate habit of the author to write down accents in actual script. I have covered that problem in a post about writing dialogue already and won’t dive into it again, but I find it much harder to read a text where someone (Trowbridge’s housekeeper and one of the regular policemen are usually guilty of that) ‘speaks’ in a dialect or accent put down in actual writing. However, this wasn’t uncommon at the time at which the stories were written. Quinn also peppers the text with the most absurd French expressions used by M. de Grandin (usually in surprise), but those are funny rather than annoying and not understanding them (I speak a little French, but not all readers did or will) isn’t harming the stories, since they’re not essential to understanding what is going on.

The stories themselves are interesting, going into the macabre more than once, sometimes very closely skirting outright taboos, such as cannibalism and sadism in a high degree. Not all of the monsters which M. de Grandin fights and kills (like Holmes, he sometimes is judge, jury, and executioner all at once) are necessarily supernatural. Some of them are mad scientists or criminals who use the supernatural in their plans. It’s actually a nice idea, because it means the reader can’t be sure if this week’s monster (Jules de Grandin became more and more popular over time and his stories appeared more frequently in Weird Tales as he did) will be human or really supernatural.

Like a lot of pulp authors of his time (the Jules de Grandin series encompasses the time span from the 1920s to the 1940s), Quinn worked with a lot of prejudices still found often at the time and there are indeed ‘lower people’ (like Africans, Indians, or Arabs) in his stories which are basically shown as little more than animals. There are racial slurs and behaviour which authors wouldn’t use these days. There are also content errors which can be excused because Quinn couldn’t know better at his time, since the facts weren’t yet scientifically clear. Because of this, the stories demand a certain understanding and a certain patience. If these were stories written in 1930s pulp style, but by a modern author, I’d rate those things negatively, but in this case, I won’t. I want you to be warned, though, if you decide to read the book.

What is my overall verdict, then? Is “Horror on the Links” a book to read or rather a book to avoid? The fact that I bought the second volume and have started reading it should tip you off a little, of course. Yes, “Horror on the Links” is a good book to read, if you adhere to the warning in the preface and don’t overdo it. Even though Seabury Quinn wrote formulaic, the stories themselves are interesting and well worth a read. The writing is good (apart from the aforementioned problems) and you will be hard-pressed to find authors still (or again) in print who skirted more closely to taboo with more talent for it.

I do have to admit that I picked up a certain preoccupation of the author with feet, women’s feet especially, but who am I to judge another person’s fetish (and the preoccupation takes the direction of surprisingly detailed descriptions of the feet, something which you usually don’t expect or find in regular fiction). Quinn always made sure to have a suitably pretty damsel in danger, which enabled the publisher to put a suitably suggestive scene on the title page. And most of those damsels apparently had very pretty feet. You make something out of that, if you wish to.

“Horror on the Links” is not a cheap e-book (it costs more than quite some regular printed books I’ve bought in my life), but the collection of stories is well worth the price. If you like horror, the supernatural, and a supernatural version of Sherlock Holmes, you should at least check the book.

The Thing About Plot Holes

After last week’s rant (I am still passionate about Star Wars, it seems), now something completely unrelated. Every longer story can develop them: plot holes. You set something up, you work towards it, then you get distracted, other parts of the story take over, and in the end the reader asks ‘What about that MacGuffin?’ and you shrug and act as if you have no idea what they’re talking about. You push a character to be a threatening villain, but then you remove them behind the scenes or in an anti-climatic scene, because that other villain is more promising. You put a lot of emphasis on a skill the character needs to learn, but two books into the series, you discreetly do away with it, because you’ve found something better or think it’s too overpowered. There’s a lot of ways plot holes can happen.

The obvious reason: not enough planning

As I’ve stated various times in this blog already, I’m an unorganized writer and not the only one, so for me and the others, it can simply happen during the writing process. You have something great set up, but then something twists your story and the great thing you set up is left behind. I usually try to remedy that as early as I see it and see if to remove that something great or use it somewhere else. Sometimes, things get even better when you reuse them, because the new use is even more spot-on.

If you’re better at planning than I am, you can avoid that by looking at your plans and asking yourself ‘Do I make good use of that MacGuffin there?’ and then act on the answer before you even start writing. If you’re not, you have to do it like I do - you have to hope you’ll catch it while you’re editing. If not, the audience will catch it at some point.

The ‘long haul’ reason: the series develops differently

Especially in a long series, be it as books, games, or on TV, plot holes are almost impossible to avoid. Sooner or later what you state in your current book, game, or season will contradict something you’ve put down before. Quite often, it’s only an accident. You mentioned a person or a place in passing in book #2 or in the first season and later on you can’t remember what you said and put down something different in another passing mention. Or you set something up early, to serve as a conflict later, but by the time it is later, a better conflict has presented itself and you leave the fans wondering ‘What happened to X?’

Again, planning is your friend there, as is keeping an eye on conflicts you have started, on the story threads you already have in your hands, or on places and characters you have mentioned. Still, you will sooner or later leave something behind which you once set up as something important. You can always exchange a conflict for another one, but then keep the first conflict in the back of your head, so you can use it a little (or a lot) later.

The game breaker: something is breaking the story

This tends to happen a lot in TV series. Since series on TV (or on Netflix, Hulu, etc.) are renewed on a season-to-season basis, you can’t know in season one whether there’ll ever be a season four, seven, or ten. This can lead to you as a writer setting up a person, skill, law, or something similar which turns out to break the story in the long run. You see that in many series which discreetly removed something at some point, because it would have broken the plot of future episodes. “Stargate: SG 1” discreetly removed a hand-held alien weapon which was by far too powerful, then let it return with far less power than it had the first time around, for instance. The same might also happen with characters whose existence makes a new plot impossible. Or with a law which conflicts with later stories - such as the principle that travel between reality and the fairy realm is almost impossible in “Once Upon A Time” in the first season, which is completely ignored in the last few. The problem with long series is that they get stretched thin and any limits you put up at first might become a problem over time. Yet, in the beginning you need to frame your ideas, which is often done with limits of some kind.

In this case, planning usually doesn’t help, because in the beginning, you can’t see how long the series will be and how difficult using a specific skill or character or rule can become over time. Hopefully, a bit of bending instead of outright breaking is possible when it happens to you. Or you go the “Dragonball” way and just push the odds up further and further until your characters are ridiculously strong and new enemies would destroy the world merely by blinking.

Those three are the most likely reasons for plot holes, they surely are the most common. There are other ways a plot hole might happen and other ways to deal with them, of course. The thing about plot holes is that they are almost unavoidable, because even thinking differently than the author will bring about new plot holes. The reader simply finds a better or easier way to solve a problem and asks ‘Why didn’t they do it that way?’ In such cases, the only good answer is ‘Because.’ The character doesn’t use the door instead of the window, because they’re quirky and always come in through the window. The hero doesn’t take the five more steps to the rowboat, because it’s more heroic for him to jump into the crocodile-infested moat and swim over to save the damsel. There’s no deeper reason, it’s just what the characters do (or don’t).

You can be discreet about removing plot holes, rewriting a large amount of your story to remove all traces of them. You can be bold about removing your plot holes by using a MacGuffin to close them. For instance, you can have a sorcerer rip the game-breaking skill from your character. You can act as if there never was a plot hole and you always intended to kill off the villain in such an off-handed way - just don’t expect the audience to like it. But then, you can’t please everyone at every point. There will always be someone who expected things to go another way.

Plot holes are annoying, but unavoidable. You need to keep an eye out for them, but you will never be able to keep all of your stories completely free of them.

My Love-Hate Relationship With Star Wars

I do have a complicated relationship with the Star Wars franchise. I really, really loved the original trilogy (today’s Episode 4 - 6) when I was a teenager and I read my way through most of the EU before it was canned by Disney (well, long before it was canned). There’s still a few things I would love back in the EU which will not happen (such as Mara Jade, one of the most interesting characters in my humble opinion). I really, really wanted to love the prequels, but I couldn’t. I’m still sure George Lucas owes me 10 minutes of my life for that pod race in Episode 1 and is at fault for my tooth problems because of that horribly sugary-sweet romance in Episode 2. Episode 3 was bearable, but not something I want to watch over and over again. Because of that, I have so far kept my distance from Episodes 7 and 8 (and from “Rogue One”).

This was the fan’s view of the franchise so far. Now for the author’s. (Note, from here onwards, stuff in brackets is pretty much my commentary, so feel free to skip it, if you only want the author’s opinion.)

There can be no doubt that the prequels were bad. They did a bad job at characters and at story-telling, putting far too much emphasize on effects instead. Don’t get me wrong - effects have always been important for the franchise, Industrial Lights and Magic was, after all, founded for Star Wars (today Episode 4, “A New Hope”). But if you spent more time playing around with what the computer can do than with developing your story, your characters, and their relationships, you end up with something like the prequels.

By today’s standards, the original trilogy is slow. It is, by the standards of 2015 and counting, but not by the standards of 1977 to 1983. What it did do better than the prequels, however, was develop its characters and its universe. Politics lingered at the back, when we learned right at the beginning of “A New Hope” that the senate was down, which apparently meant the Galactic Republic was over. We learned the Galaxy Far, Far Away was now an empire, even before we met the Emperor (who first shows up in Episode 5, “The Empire Strikes Back”). It makes a lot of sense to have a resistance there, the Rebellion which will, of course, play a major role in the trilogy. After all, directly or indirectly, all our major players (except for the villains, of course) are working for the Rebellion and they are the Good Guys.

And that is where politics stayed in the original trilogy: in the back. From the beginning, we knew there was some kind of central government, the same government which sent out its troops in Star Destroyers (which, to be nit-picking, can’t destroy a star). We knew this government was composed of the Bad Guys.

Speaking of villains: Darth Vader was a lot cooler before we saw Anakin Skywalker for the first time… He was literally someone behind a mask, someone nobody could really ‘face’ off. The black mask and helmet, the black robes, the obvious technology, the breathing noises, everything about that guy was threatening. Including the voice, of course, which was why they had one actor providing the voice and another (a professional bodybuilder no less) providing the body. Even when his face was finally uncovered, it was a face which kept the viewer a little uneasy.

Cue the prequels and whiny kid Anakin who was conceived by the Force (something I still don’t believe, his mum was just making it up for some reason). What was wrong with the idea of Anakin just being someone - a normal boy in Jedi training, perhaps a little younger than Obi-Wan, perhaps the same age? Why start off with a kid who was both a slave (can we dig deeper into the melodrama, really?) and conceived through some kind of celestial force (in the real sense of the word Force, of course)? Why build the whole prequels around the fact that he wasn’t wanted as a Jedi and people made his life harder than necessary from the beginning (and feeding us that ‘Chosen One’ stuff)? Why spin it so Qui-Gon basically had to push him into training by making it part of his legacy? (I bet Yoda gave him quite some gripe about it after he died himself.)

And it didn’t exactly get better from there. Yes, the original trilogy not only established that Luke is good with everything which flies, but that the same goes for his father. What real use does the pod race in Episode 1 serve? It’s not part of an action sequence like some stunts Anakin pulls off in Episode 2 or 3. It’s just 10 minutes we spent watching a race where the outcome is pretty clear from the start. Of course Anakin will win, gaining his freedom and that drive for our heroes.

We are talking about the queen of a planet and two members of a galaxy-wide order. Each of them should have access to enough money to buy that drive (and, if absolutely necessary, both Anakin and his mum - Padme could make good use of another maid, I’m sure) from its current owner. So the main currency of the galaxy is not used on the planet (which is illogical by itself - a central government would guarantee a strong currency, which is important in every economy)? Go to the Hutts (who clearly are present on the planet) and exchange it. Their crime empire runs through most of the galaxy - they’ll find use for it, I’ll guarantee that. Even if that is not an option, that spaceship has a lot of luxury items the Hutts would pay top prices for.

But any of those solutions would, of course, rob us of those 10 minutes which George still owes me. We have that flight sequence in the end to establish Anakin is a piloting genius (and that would have been more impressive, hadn’t we seen him pilot before), so the pod race serves no real purpose in establishing his character, except of flooding the already over-filled prequels with more characters we’ll never see again.

Cue Episode 2, which is set a staggering ten years after the first one. That made me wonder why they had to make that jump - but the answer to that is obvious: for the love story that made my teeth hurt. By cutting out all of that ‘Chosen One’ tripe from the first movie, there could have been (I don’t know) two years between the two movies, because Anakin would have been older in the first episode. Two years would have been somewhat similar to the first trilogy. For me, Episode 2 is totally overshadowed by the romance, which is not why I watch a Star Wars movie. There’s loads of romance movies around, if I want one (and usually I want a romance movie about as much as a root canal treatment without anaesthetics). Underlying romance is fine, the original trilogy had Han and Leia (clearly a bad pairing, as we can see now in the new trilogy - something I learned even without watching the movies). But Episode 2 and, as a result, Episode 3 as well latch so much onto the emotional problems of Anakin that one wonders why they did actually boost the political background for the prequels in the first place (but, of course, the senate scenes bring in even more characters for a trilogy which needs them like a fish needs a mountain bike). Nothing bad in Episode 3 would happen without this ‘forbidden love’ romance and marriage situation. And with giving Anakin a normal upbringing instead of the whole ‘Chosen One’ tripe. (Which is now apparently making people annoyed that the central character of the new trilogy doesn’t seem to be related to anyone ‘important’ in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.)

But then, that’s all necessary for the trilogy to work, right? No, it’s not … and that is where it becomes annoying. If you put more politics in, make those count. Yes, we know the Republic will be dismantled over the next 20 or so years, because Vader touts its demise when he catches Leia at the beginning of Episode 4. Or pull out the politics completely and focus more on the demise of the Jedi and on the Clone Wars - which are mentioned in the original trilogy, so already established as something which happened. That will create lots of action and lots of drama. The Emperor doesn’t need a target as big as Anakin’s emotional problem with being left by people he loves to manipulate him. Give that man some credit for his abilities in intrigue and manipulation, honestly - in  addition to being a Sith Lord, he’s also a consummate politician. A first-year Slytherin could do something with Anakin’s problems (wrong fandom, I know).

Another problem I have with the prequels? They did their best (or, rather, their worst) to bring in everyone and their mother from the original trilogy which were alive already when the prequels happened. They have Greedo in the prequels as a kid, for heaven’s sake! His only job in the original trilogy was to be shot by Han Solo about ten minutes into the first-ever made movie (and Han shot first). They have a younger (but not really slimmer) Jabba the Hutt. They made Anakin the creator of C3PO (who is introduced as a regular protocol droid model in the original trilogy). While I give R2 a pass (there’s lots of astromech droids in the movies, quite some with a higher production number than his), there was no real need to bring in Chewbacca, too. All those characters are just taking time for development from the characters the prequels should be focusing on, such as Anakin, Padme, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine.

Then there’s jumping Yoda, which is one of the worst things which the prequels did. You have two elderly people (Count Dokuu isn’t that spry, either) and make them duel like they were 20 (or 200 in Yoda’s case). Both of them should have the experience to get at each other through tactics and not bouncing. Even if we accept that medical treatments in the Galaxy Far, Far Away and the Force give the elderly so much energy, it’s simply not befitting either of them. It’s not the way they are portrayed before. The prequels spend ages building up Yoda as the calm thinker and Mace Windu as the badass doer. They show us Dokuu as a tactician who commands others to do the actual work. That duel basically undoes the whole setup for both characters in one bouncy jump. Sure, Yoda’s ‘I’m a harmless, elderly alien with a walking stick’ spiel is fun, but still…

I get it that the prequels have the problem that everyone knows what will happen in the end: the Republic will become a democracy in name only, Anakin Skywalker will end up as more machine than man behind a mask, and his children will be split up and raised on two different planets. But the way there could have been a lot more enjoyable and that’s why I hate the prequels. Not because the ending was predictable - that’s pretty much the point about prequels. But because the way to that ending was so unbalanced and badly told.

I could come up with better stories for all three movies, if you gave me a piece of paper, a pencil, and ten minutes. Someone who created the whole universe this is set in should be able to do better than that in about 20 years.