Hi, I Guess I'm the Mary-Sue Guru In 1973, working for a fanzine that hosts Star Trek fan fiction, Paula Smith notices a pattern from writers who insert OCs (and suspected self-inserts) into the story. In order to summarize what a mass majority of these fan fictions and OCs were about, and maybe have fun by poking at some people, she wrote her own satirical fan fiction called “A Trekkie’s Tale,” starring her very own OC, Lieutenant Mary Sue, the youngest lieutenant in history with corny phrases such as “Gee, golly gosh, gloriosky,“ had all the male heartthrobs fall in love with her, was half Vulcan, succumbed to a disease slowly, helps save everyone from capture, and then dies a hero‘s death with everyone mourning for her in which her birthday became a national holiday. You would think that the source of where all of this Mary-Sue nonsense came from would be more than eleven paragraphs and three hundred words, so how did this concept get famous? Believe it or not, even without computers, fan fiction was very popular, and after that satire was published, Smith and her friends would call these horrible stories “Lieutenant Mary-Sue stories” and would critique them. Of course they got angry responses from these writers, but “Mary-Sue” began spreading and spreading. That’s all she did, though. She named this kind of character with these kinds of patterns. She didn’t define what a Mary-Sue was exactly; although she did have a couple of conditions in what made a story Mary-Sue material: The inserted character had to have room for readers to climb in—to let the readers choose for themselves whether or not they liked the character. If all the character does is do good and heroic things, it feels like the writer wants the character to be likable for everyone that reads the fan fiction. The second condition is that the other characters, the canon characters, should stay in character. Sure, an inserted character can affect the canon characters and have them change a little bit, but it shouldn’t be a drastic and sudden change. These two conditions are splendid, really. It’s not handbook specific, but it’s a good direction to go on when determining whether or not a fan fiction is Mary-Sue; however, now that “Mary-Sue” has been nabbed at people born into the internet, everyone has come to their own conclusion, and have berated other fellow writers for their “Mary-Sue” characters and story without even concerning themselves on what Paula Smith thinks, and what they are doing to other writers. So who am I, and why should you listen to my opinion on this over-sensationalized topic? I’m probably like you. Someone who likes to write, and would like to improve as much as I can. I don’t have a degree in English, Literature, Creative Writing, or even in psychology, but I’ve been seriously writing since 2005. That’s honestly not that long ago, but I have learned a lot since then. In 2009, I got my first laptop and wrote my first writing guide about Mary-Sues because I had been flamed by someone on this topic which nearly caused me to quit. That left me bitter and doing research on Mary-Sues and what they are. You can probably guess on how confusing that was. Since then, I’ve written nine more guides and nearly twenty little rants on “bad writing traits,” which seemed to have accelerated my learning curve. After all, the best way to learn about something is to teach it to someone else. Now, whether you should listen to me or not is completely up to you. Like I said, I don’t have any special degrees, nor have I professionally published anything, but I do aim to help people think about their writing and to think about how to improve. I also hope to help people understand that “Mary-Sue” isn’t a critique because it’s too vague due to all of these different definitions that seemed to have been slapped on to this label, and I also hope to help give people confidence to continue with their writing, or to get back to their writing if they had quit. I know after writing all of this about Mary-Sues, I have confidence to defend my work if I think a reviewer is too quick on that “Mary-Sue” card, which I can most definitely explain why I don’t think my character or story is Mary-Sue material. By all means, if you don’t agree with everything I’ve written, you can make your own Mary-Sue handbook to reference off of. Now, how am I a Mary-Sue Guru? To be honest, I have no idea. I wrote ten Mary-Sue guides and wrote almost twenty complaints about other people’s complaints on bad writing. OneAmahira from You-Fic also references from me in her Fan Fiction lectures at Fanime, but I don’t claim to be an expert on the topic of Mary-Sue. Rouge on Lunaescence dubbed me the Mary-Sue Guru in March of 2012, which is where I got the audacity to call myself a guru on the internet. These guides and complaints are just what I have observed from stories posted online, reviews of those stories, professionally published entertainment media, and reviews for them, along with a slice of my opinion. I still claim no expertise, but I hope that you enjoy what I have to share, and I hope you find them helpful. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, just use the “Ask me anything” tab. Anonymous users are welcome as well.
