Captain Jack "Mary Sue" Sparrow?

[dwgm]

The Mary Sue question is an interesting one. jenthegypsy, new to fanfic (what an adventure lies ahead!!), was asking me what a Mary Sue is, and, coincidentally, a member of little_details asked about the origin of the term. The term apparently dates back to a fanfic story in the Star Trek: The Original Series fandom, which actually had an OFC named Mary Sue. However, this site referenced in a comment in the little_details post has this to say...

She (or he) is created to serve one purpose: wish fulfilment. When a writer invents someone through whom he/she can have fantastic adventures and meet famous people (fictional or real), this character is a Mary Sue. (We don't have a name for the male version -- suggestions?

and that...

storytellers have been rehashing Mary Sue since the dawn of time....

By this definition, most any major canon character would be a Mary Sue, not just original characters. Think about it. Harry Potter? Frodo or Aragorn? And, most especially Jack Sparrow, and all the main characters of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Another referenced article in the little_details post has this to say about Mary Sue's characteristics...

She has better hair, better clothes, better weapons, better brains, better sex, and better karma than anyone else. Even next to the strong and interesting heroines of twentieth-century media and fiction, she stands out. She is singular; she is impossible to ignore.

Now replace "she" with "he", and you've got Jack Sparrow all over.

You could make a case that any main character in any story is a Mary Sue, unless he or she is a true antihero, with characteristics and adventures that serve as dire warnings rather than desirable examples. And who wants to read that, at least most of the time?

It doesn't seem to me that it's possible to write any character and fail to project one's experiences and philosophies through that character, canon or otherwise. And I don't think I am alone in wanting to read stories that are uplifting, and about people who are extraordinary, in one way or another. So it seems to me we're destined to be inundated with Mary Sues, as we have been since people started telling stories.

Comments

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

I do think you can have someone be extraordinary without them being perfect

Did you read the link fabu left in her comment? It points out that female characters are often labeled Mary Sues in spite of the fact that a male character doing the same things (being heroic, or otherwise extraordinary) would not be labeled so. I think that's a dead on assessment: just look at Elizabeth being labeled sometimes, where Jack and Will never are!

It's a shame if the debate about Mary Sues makes writers hesitate to post their work, though, or if the term Mary Sue is being used for OFCs in general.

I think writers hesitate to even write them into stories a lot of times, and that's a shame because an OC can really enhance a story. One of my favorite parts of fabu's recent Benedictions was an OC, and Elizabeth's interaction with her just seemed to broaden the story and make it that much more real. These canon characters don't live in a vacuum: other people are going to come in an out of their lives, and one of the great things about fanfiction is the freedom it gives us to explore that.

[hereswith.livejournal.com]

I did look at the link and it was really interesting and thought-provoking! It's always bothered me that Elizabeth gets bashed so often, or labeled a Mary Sue, when, as you say, the men in the movie never are. There always seem to be these invisible boundaries that a female character can't cross without being faulted for it, somehow, though the male characters can and will, and it's ok for them to do it. Grrr.

I agree that an OC can enhance a story in many ways. Also, you usually have to have a certain numbers of OCs, or the story won't work :-) Unless it's a two-people-alone-in-a-room kind of thing (which I admit to have written). The trick is keeping a balance between them and the canon characters.