Post by omega on Feb 12, 2018 9:02:46 GMT
You may be familiar with this term, but not as much so to recognise when its use is actually valid.
The term originates from a short story in a Star Trek fanzine, where the writer recognised a recurring feature in guest characters. They'd be perfect at their job, win over the good guys and generally be overqualified despite their background and age. The story in question is The Trekkie's Tale, where Lt Mary Sue is a fifteen year old half Vulcan who Kirk wants to bed (she says she's not that sort of girl and Kirk withdraws), wins over Spock because he thinks stating the bleedin' obvious is logic to be admired, holds off an alien infection longer than Kirk, Spock and McCoy while running the ship in their absence, wins two awards for doing this so well and everyone cries when she does die to the alien infection (the whole thing is only four paragraphs long). You can read it here. This kind of story was found to be common in Star Trek fanfiction, and this was written to parody that. Basically it's a self-insert character who gets to do the cool things you'd like to do.
However later on it evolved to be a catch-all used to describe a sufficiently skilled female character. Rey from Star Wars is a popular choice to point the Mary Sue finger at. Is she a powerful character with a plot convenient skill set, or has that skill set been developed from her backstory and she hasn't got a grip on her powers?
It can also come in when you've got characters with not much depth but get a lot of praise from the other characters. Lana Lang in Smallville. In later seasons she got just as bad as Clark, Chloe and Lex about keeping secrets, but never got called out for it even though it was her favorite thing to do. By season six you just want her written out because any relationship with Clark was tapped out, yet the writers kept her on until he physically couldn't be around her. Overly skilled? She kept at least a decent grade average on minimal effort (no grade dilemmas with her), ran the local coffee shop (with theatre attached), maintained her equestrian past time and got into a Parisian art summer school despite showing no previous interest in art. That's not even taking into account her fairly active social life and meteor freak related incidents (she's spend quite a bit of time in the Smallville medical center). Yes, Lana was an established character in the comics, but in the show she was pretty much superfluous after season five.
For Doctor Who, arguably Rose showed Sueish traits. Her blase attitude in Tooth and Claw has ramifications further down the line, and her romantic thing for the Doctor is definitely a low point of Series 2. It even sticks around after she leaves, where it's a huge part of the unrequited love Martha has for the Doctor (in The Shakespeare Code the Doctor, pondering on the situation, says that Rose would know while Martha is lying next to him). She even gets a happy ending in Journey's End where she not only gets the Doctor, it's a human Doctor who will age along with her and loves her. There's even a deleted scene where the two of them receive a bit of TARDIS coral that could grown into another TARDS. I guess the upcoming Short Trips will expand on this. Mickey calls Rose out on how she's changed at the end of Age of Steel, tired of being treated as the tin dog (look how annoyed Rose looks when Mickey joining them is suggested) and that the Doctor will always follow her. At the end of Doomsday the Doctor burns up a sun to say farewell to Rose. The Mary Sue aspect comes in with that while Rose is clearly flawed and is called out on it, she doesn't change and still gets a happy ending.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
The term originates from a short story in a Star Trek fanzine, where the writer recognised a recurring feature in guest characters. They'd be perfect at their job, win over the good guys and generally be overqualified despite their background and age. The story in question is The Trekkie's Tale, where Lt Mary Sue is a fifteen year old half Vulcan who Kirk wants to bed (she says she's not that sort of girl and Kirk withdraws), wins over Spock because he thinks stating the bleedin' obvious is logic to be admired, holds off an alien infection longer than Kirk, Spock and McCoy while running the ship in their absence, wins two awards for doing this so well and everyone cries when she does die to the alien infection (the whole thing is only four paragraphs long). You can read it here. This kind of story was found to be common in Star Trek fanfiction, and this was written to parody that. Basically it's a self-insert character who gets to do the cool things you'd like to do.
However later on it evolved to be a catch-all used to describe a sufficiently skilled female character. Rey from Star Wars is a popular choice to point the Mary Sue finger at. Is she a powerful character with a plot convenient skill set, or has that skill set been developed from her backstory and she hasn't got a grip on her powers?
It can also come in when you've got characters with not much depth but get a lot of praise from the other characters. Lana Lang in Smallville. In later seasons she got just as bad as Clark, Chloe and Lex about keeping secrets, but never got called out for it even though it was her favorite thing to do. By season six you just want her written out because any relationship with Clark was tapped out, yet the writers kept her on until he physically couldn't be around her. Overly skilled? She kept at least a decent grade average on minimal effort (no grade dilemmas with her), ran the local coffee shop (with theatre attached), maintained her equestrian past time and got into a Parisian art summer school despite showing no previous interest in art. That's not even taking into account her fairly active social life and meteor freak related incidents (she's spend quite a bit of time in the Smallville medical center). Yes, Lana was an established character in the comics, but in the show she was pretty much superfluous after season five.
For Doctor Who, arguably Rose showed Sueish traits. Her blase attitude in Tooth and Claw has ramifications further down the line, and her romantic thing for the Doctor is definitely a low point of Series 2. It even sticks around after she leaves, where it's a huge part of the unrequited love Martha has for the Doctor (in The Shakespeare Code the Doctor, pondering on the situation, says that Rose would know while Martha is lying next to him). She even gets a happy ending in Journey's End where she not only gets the Doctor, it's a human Doctor who will age along with her and loves her. There's even a deleted scene where the two of them receive a bit of TARDIS coral that could grown into another TARDS. I guess the upcoming Short Trips will expand on this. Mickey calls Rose out on how she's changed at the end of Age of Steel, tired of being treated as the tin dog (look how annoyed Rose looks when Mickey joining them is suggested) and that the Doctor will always follow her. At the end of Doomsday the Doctor burns up a sun to say farewell to Rose. The Mary Sue aspect comes in with that while Rose is clearly flawed and is called out on it, she doesn't change and still gets a happy ending.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
