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 think the human tendency to jump on the labeling bandwagon is often taken too far, and this Mary Sue thing is really a prime example. I think the world would be a poorer place without the Emilys and Aylas and Harry Potters. Not every story or every character is going to have universal appeal. I feel, to be fair to authors, new or experienced, we need to avoid labels that hinder or even squash the urge to tell a tale, and simply judge each story on its own merits. Admittedly, with everyone having computer access, this results in sites like Fanfiction.net, where one must sift through a great deal of dross to find the gold. But maybe the dross-writer of today will be the best-selling author of tomorrow. It could happen!

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I think the world would be a poorer place without the Emilys and Aylas and Harry Potters.

I might be biased by the fact that I very rarely like the protagonists of a story, because my spontaneous reaction is "my GOD no!" :-) But then, I understand that to some people, characters like this hold an appeal, and then the Mary Sue label might be more of a burden than anything else.

I think the problem doesn't really arise until the author has some skill - that a poorly written, impossibly fantastic character is a Mary Sue is a lot less controversial than when the character might be considered well written (but still impossibly fantastic). Can s/he still be a Mary Sue if one likes him/her?

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

Can s/he still be a Mary Sue if one likes him/her?

A good question. I'm wondering just how bad that original Lieutenent Mary Sue was. It would be interesting to read the story and see what brought on all this controversy. In any case, it is obvious that the term is highly subjective in application.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Well, the "original" Mary Sue was a parody of characters that had already started showing up in fan fiction, and of course there's no way of knowing how bad they were. But here's the Mary Sue, in any case, and she'spretty bad:

A Trekkie's Tale (http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/dark/1000/marysue.htm)

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

LOL!! That is pretty bad. I can remember reading a couple of ST:TOS stories (published ones) with a similar character. Except the one in particular I'm thinking of ("Uhura's Song"?) is one of my favorites. Maybe I just have really bad taste, eh?

Thanks so much for the link!