2010/03/11

Corroded by a Base Hurts Just As Much As Burned by an Acid

Before I kick this off, I just thought I'd point out that Avatar is basically a knockoff of The Word for World Is Forest, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Except TWFWIF doesn't have the "natives still need a honky to lead them" trope, and Avatar is harder SF. It's hard to say whether Cameron or LeGuin should be more ashamed. Also, is the fact their word for "world" also means "forest" supposed to be some Sapir-Whorf thing? Or is it just a coded message to intelligent people that LeGuin isn't their kind of writer? Then again English's word for "world" also means "dirt" (earth), so it's not far-fetched—it's just irrelevant.

Anyway. Much is made of Mary Sues, but, like so many terms, what does it really mean? The term gets bandied about quite a bit—"litmus tests" for their presence give this post its name—but people seem to be using it rather ambiguously.

Let's be all Maimonidean for a moment (except for the part about becoming pantheists without noticing it), and say what a Mary Sue isn't. She isn't any character with many advantages and few flaws. The mere fact a character is extremely attractive, strong, and/or witty doesn't mean they're a Mary Sue—it doesn't even mean they're bad. It just means they're in a romance rather than a novel. A novel's characters need to be flawed, because the story is about exploring their flaws. A romance's characters don't need to be, because the story is about them doing things.

Basically, characters only need flaws that serve the artistry of the piece; there's no real rule, because artistry is a matter of proportions, rather than observing taboos. This is why it's so common for people to call any character that lacks major flaws a Sue: because tabooing categories of traits is simpler than learning how to observe right proportion. It's the same idiocy as defining female beauty by thinness or large breasts—excessive thinness is not only unhealthy, it's ridiculous, while large breasts with narrow hips is nearly always hideous (wide hips are, in and of themselves, nearly always attractive, but there are attractive narrow hips, as well). Beauty is a function of proportion, and art is the creation of beauty.

If your story is about people doing things, it merely matters that them doing those things be interesting, and that should be the criterion for both their abilities and their flaws. If the source of drama and conflict is the character overcoming their own flaws, then they obviously need flaws to overcome. Personally, though, I consider novels about people whose only problems are of their own making to stem from the arrogance of a decadent civilization, the worldview that believes itself so invincible that all its problems must come from its own flaws, rather than outside. You can also see it in politics.

Obviously, then, we may say that a Mary Sue is "a character whose flaws and abilities are inartistically proportioned"—but that is simply tantamount to "badly written character." What sets the Sue apart is why her flaws are ill-proportioned to her abilities.

A Sue's abilities are not chosen because they improve the story; they are chosen in a vacuum, without reference to the story. If a character has color-changing eyes (a classic Sue trait) in order to set up a scene where someone notices her eyes change color, then it's fine. If they change color for no plot reason, or for a plot reason that's just as tacked on as the eyes themselves, they're Sueish. Incidentally, color-changing eyes aren't actually that far-fetched; my little sister's eyes are green, gray, or blue, depending on the light.

It should be pointed out that a Sue's flaws are also chosen like this—at best. And yes, Sueishness is just as much a function of flaws as of abilities; disproportion can be defect, as well as excess. Actually, as the matter currently stands, a Sue is even more her flaws than her abilities. The reason I said Sue flaws were chosen in a vacuum at best is that often, they're chosen for worse reasons. Frequently Mary Sue flaws are chosen in some strange attempt to "balance" the abilities—newsflash, it's not an RPG, you don't have to take Flaws to buy more skill points. But that too is innocent.

All too often, Sue flaws are chosen for the sake of cheap, angsty melodrama (a past involving sexual abuse is nearly always this), or in an attempt to be grown-up (concern with which, as Lewis has noted, is always a sign of childishness), or, worst, an attempt at "deconstruction" or "social consciousness".

The problem with the melodramatic and "mature" facet of Sue flaws is, they fail to grasp the purpose of fiction. Fiction is art, and art is Beauty, before it is Truth—and it is only the Good to the extent it is also Beauty. As Samuel Johnson put it, "The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it." I don't know about you, but I do not find the real world to be lacking in misery; I see no reason to make up more of it, unless it is as something that will be savagely avenged by the end of the book. Is that unrealistic? Mercifully not as much as you think, and to the extent that it is, so much the worse for reality.

As for the deconstruction and social consciousness: you're only allowed to deconstruct something you understand, and most writers understand nothing. Aside from the fact deconstruction is tainted at its source, a disingenuous Marxist procedure designed to ruin art, to do it at all requires more knowledge than is possessed by most people who attempt it. Most "deconstruction" is flat-out demolition, a task for sledgehammers and C4, not surgical implements.

Gandalf really has my final word on deconstruction:
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
As for social consciousness, most writers aren't really conscious of anything about their society. Most of what they know of its history is a mythology that would make the Whigs blush, and their conception of its wrongs and rights is tainted by their ignorance of what is meant by "wrong" and "right". In terms of consciousness of society, writers, as Buddha said of the gods, are in the same condition as us (if so high), and therefore cannot help us.

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