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the Sue in the Mary Sue
Sep. 4th, 2004 05:53 amSome of you will be aware that I have a fondness for the Mary Sue. I do not mean by this the kind of Mary Sue that is an ideal, pretty, popular, constantly victorious projection of the author's misguided ego (e.g. JKR's Harry Potter -- for me the Mary Sue par excellence). No, I mean a different kind of Mary Sue, and to differentiate between the two kinds I will call 'my' Mary Sue simply Sue.
So what do I like about the Sue, and how did I identify her to begin with?
I first became aware of the importance of the Sue (for me) when writing a long and abortive Dom/Karl fic at a time of difficult psychological depression. I poured a lot of my own emotional troubles at this time into that fic, and I thought I was pouring them into the Dom-character. Two betas separately pointed out that the fic felt wrong, and it was because I had misidentified my Sue. I was actually pouring my emotions into Karl, and the fic would have worked much better if I had noticed that early on and switched to Karl pov.
For me (and I don't know if that's the same for anyone else), the Sue is the character who is my libidinally cathected site in this particular fic. (Die Sue ist für mich libidinös besetzt.) To explain: Libido is Sigmund Freud's term for the sexual drive which is also the life-creating drive (as opposed to the death-drive: eros vs thanatos). Cathexis is Freud's term for the libido's charge of energy. A cathected site or a cathected object is a love-object, an object or person that is invested with strong libidinal energies. So for me, the Sue-character is the one I invest most of my psychic energy in. I could say that the Sue is the character I 'identify' with most, but that would be simplifying the quite complex interactions I have with my Sues. And anyway, it still begs the question how 'identifying with' someone actually works in practice. Especially if that someone is nothing but a collection of words in a piece of fiction.
Now, I personally tend to have rather passive Sues. This is why I am talking about Sues as opposed to Mary Sues. My Sues are not at all glamorous, successful or beautiful. They tend to be odd-looking, let life pass them by, miss opportunities, wallow in guilt or repressive activities. I have to spur them into action. I have to take great care to round them out. This is why I find it crucial to identify my Sue early on: so that I can take the care required, so that I can 'know myself' and thus know my characters better, so that I can refine the Sue-character's interactions with the other characters.
In slash, characters tend to come in pairs. So there tends to be the choice between an A and a B for Sue. I find that my Sue tends to be the character who needs most pov-sections of text. Sometimes I mistake my Sue for the one whom I desire most, the good-looking one, the sex-object, the one whose physical appearance and habits in bed I swoon over. But that is not the Sue! That is the man desired by the Sue! So to me it's one indication: if I find myself thinking a lot about A's appearance and ways of moving and shape of penis, and if I have to force myself to think about B in these terms: then B is almost certain to be my Sue in that fic.
For me, it does not work if I force my way into a non-Sue. If I take the sexy guy and make him the exclusive focaliser, through whose viewpoint we see nearly all of the action: then something will go awry quite soon. If I stick with the true Sue and make him my main focaliser / pov-character, the prose tends to flow. By the time I came to write my present HP-fic, I was alert to the issue and figured out fairly early that my Sue was not at all Harry (as I had expected) but most overwhelmingly Draco. This helped the whole plot fall into place.
I've learned quite a bit about myself through careful attendance to my Sues. I've discovered that I go for passive Sues, and that's made me realise something about myself irl. It's partly to do with myself often feeling controlled by life and not in control of it. It also has to do with my sexual inclinations veering more towards the sub of the spectrum rather than the dom. And it also significantly has to do with the way I can control my fictional characters. Making a character very passive and at the mercy of outer forces can almost be a form of character-torture. So there's an interesting split between me-as-my-Sue and me-as-author. Because the author, of course, is never passive and controls every aspect of the fic, including all of the characters.
Anyway, this is why I love the Sue. I find it endlessly fascinating and illuminating to speculate and think about who my Sue might be and how the whole Sue-thing works, what fictional ploys to use to get around thorny issues, what weaknesses to uncover and correct and what strengths to exploit.
So what do I like about the Sue, and how did I identify her to begin with?
I first became aware of the importance of the Sue (for me) when writing a long and abortive Dom/Karl fic at a time of difficult psychological depression. I poured a lot of my own emotional troubles at this time into that fic, and I thought I was pouring them into the Dom-character. Two betas separately pointed out that the fic felt wrong, and it was because I had misidentified my Sue. I was actually pouring my emotions into Karl, and the fic would have worked much better if I had noticed that early on and switched to Karl pov.
For me (and I don't know if that's the same for anyone else), the Sue is the character who is my libidinally cathected site in this particular fic. (Die Sue ist für mich libidinös besetzt.) To explain: Libido is Sigmund Freud's term for the sexual drive which is also the life-creating drive (as opposed to the death-drive: eros vs thanatos). Cathexis is Freud's term for the libido's charge of energy. A cathected site or a cathected object is a love-object, an object or person that is invested with strong libidinal energies. So for me, the Sue-character is the one I invest most of my psychic energy in. I could say that the Sue is the character I 'identify' with most, but that would be simplifying the quite complex interactions I have with my Sues. And anyway, it still begs the question how 'identifying with' someone actually works in practice. Especially if that someone is nothing but a collection of words in a piece of fiction.
Now, I personally tend to have rather passive Sues. This is why I am talking about Sues as opposed to Mary Sues. My Sues are not at all glamorous, successful or beautiful. They tend to be odd-looking, let life pass them by, miss opportunities, wallow in guilt or repressive activities. I have to spur them into action. I have to take great care to round them out. This is why I find it crucial to identify my Sue early on: so that I can take the care required, so that I can 'know myself' and thus know my characters better, so that I can refine the Sue-character's interactions with the other characters.
In slash, characters tend to come in pairs. So there tends to be the choice between an A and a B for Sue. I find that my Sue tends to be the character who needs most pov-sections of text. Sometimes I mistake my Sue for the one whom I desire most, the good-looking one, the sex-object, the one whose physical appearance and habits in bed I swoon over. But that is not the Sue! That is the man desired by the Sue! So to me it's one indication: if I find myself thinking a lot about A's appearance and ways of moving and shape of penis, and if I have to force myself to think about B in these terms: then B is almost certain to be my Sue in that fic.
For me, it does not work if I force my way into a non-Sue. If I take the sexy guy and make him the exclusive focaliser, through whose viewpoint we see nearly all of the action: then something will go awry quite soon. If I stick with the true Sue and make him my main focaliser / pov-character, the prose tends to flow. By the time I came to write my present HP-fic, I was alert to the issue and figured out fairly early that my Sue was not at all Harry (as I had expected) but most overwhelmingly Draco. This helped the whole plot fall into place.
I've learned quite a bit about myself through careful attendance to my Sues. I've discovered that I go for passive Sues, and that's made me realise something about myself irl. It's partly to do with myself often feeling controlled by life and not in control of it. It also has to do with my sexual inclinations veering more towards the sub of the spectrum rather than the dom. And it also significantly has to do with the way I can control my fictional characters. Making a character very passive and at the mercy of outer forces can almost be a form of character-torture. So there's an interesting split between me-as-my-Sue and me-as-author. Because the author, of course, is never passive and controls every aspect of the fic, including all of the characters.
Anyway, this is why I love the Sue. I find it endlessly fascinating and illuminating to speculate and think about who my Sue might be and how the whole Sue-thing works, what fictional ploys to use to get around thorny issues, what weaknesses to uncover and correct and what strengths to exploit.