On the comics blog recently, a commenter used the phrase "Mary Sue" in a way that i believe to be incorrect. But from all of his previous comments i know that person to be smart and well read, and the usage is one that i see a lot. I think of this usage as being a lot like how "beg the question" has evolved into meaning something entirely different than originally intended. But i could just be plain wrong, so i wanted to outline my understanding of the phrase and see if people agree. I don't mean to single out any commenter (especially ones whose alter egos are invading Kree soldiers); it's something that's been bugging me for a while and the fact that it came up recently just brought it to the front of my mind.

I've always understood the phrase Mary Sue to be when an author inserts themselves* into the story in a wish fulfillment kind of way. And that's how Wikipedia defines it. The name originally came from a parody of fan fiction where a Lieutenant Mary Sue joined the Starship Enterprise crew and just proved to be a wonderful officer and got to be romantically involved with William Shatner and everything else. Simple, basic fan fiction where the author is fantasizing about being a part of the story.

We really shouldn't see this sort of thing in professional writing, and i can't think of any examples where we do. The closest sort of thing i can think of in comics is Richard Rory (and to a lesser degree Howard the Duck) being a stand-in for Steve Gerber, or the Beyonder in Secret Wars II being a metaphor for Jim Shooter. But those characters don't qualify as Mary Sues because the point of them is not for the author to fantasize about being part of the story. It's to provide that external voice, or to do an autobiographical self-examination (see also every Woody Allen movie). We may or may not like the meta nature of this type of character, but it's not simply the author showing how awesome they would be if they could be in the story.

The above examples aren't really where i see the phrase being (mis-?)used, though. Where it always seems to come up is in cases where the author has what i call a pet character. One major example is Roger Stern's Monica Rambeau, aka Captain Marvel. The common complaint is that Stern made the character too powerful and too perfect and structured stories so that she could always be the hero. This post isn't about debating the merits of that criticism. I just don't think it's correct to call Captain Marvel a Mary Sue. Stern isn't trying to insert himself into the story. He's just (perhaps) going too far in trying to sell or develop the character he's created, at the expense of other characters or good storytelling.

That's a potentially valid criticism, and we do need a phrase for it (again, i use "pet character"), but i think it should be distinguished from Mary Sue. Maybe i'm fighting an uphill battle here, but i already do that with "beg the question" so i'm obviously not above that sort of thing.

*See previous post

the way i'm reading the wikipedia entry, the "wish fulfillment" and "author insertion" definition is how it's being used now, whereas the original definition of a Mary Sue character is that perfect character who is the best at everything and does everything just right and everyone loves them except there's really no reason why they should since the character has no real personality.

Over at TV Tropes there's a long entry on "Mary Sue": http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
They seem to call the original meaning (a stand-in for the writer) an Author Avatar. But it seems most people just use it to mean a character who's a little too perfect.

I guess i'm reading the wikipedia entry with my own bias going in, so that even the original definition reads to me like that character is the perfect, best, etc.. because it's being written by the "female adolescents" (per the article) who want that for themselves. But even if that's not the case, it seems the current accepted definition does include the author insertion element. In any event, i think we still need some kind of distinction between (using my words) Pet Characters and Mary Sues.

Cross-posted with you, M.S. Wilson! I do like Author Avatar.

On the subject of an author self-insert, wouldn't Terry Long and Pete Wisdom be Mary Sues in the original sense of the word? They were stand-ins for Marv Wolfman and Pete Wisdom, respectively, and got to have sex with Donna Troy and Kitty Pryde, respectively.

Well Pete Wisdom being a stand-in for Pete Wisdom would certainly qualify. ;-)

I don't know Terry Long (DC blinders activated!) but yeah, i could see Peter Wisdom as a Mary Sue. I would expect better from Warren Ellis, but i'll keep this in mind when i get to his Excalibur.

Was just reading a CBR post about Red Hulk and thought to myself "Someone is going to call him a Mary Sue in the comments." Lo and behold! "Red Hulk is absolutely the very epitome of fan fiction made canon. Red Hulk was Loeb creating his own personal Mary Sue, an “extreme” “badass” who can beat the crap out of any other character in the MU because, hey, he is badass and kewl and red and he curses and Jeff Loeb created him."

And it made me feel you on the slippage of meaning with the term. That would make just about every Rob Liefeld creation a Mary Sue, for instance.

Thanks, Fnord. I hadn't known about the term's origins or its meaning beyond "author's perfect pet character." Since I'd mostly seen it used in a comics contect of female characters, I assumed it was the kind of character the author has a crush on, loosely speaking. There are enough examples that fit both the right and the wrong (i.e., my) definitions that I can see how confusion arises.

That is, arguably Wisdom for Ellis and Thanos/Warlock for Starlin qualify as pet characters while also being mouthpieces for their authors' attitudes or philosophical speculations, if not strictly representatives the authors' picture of himself, as in fan fiction. The Beyonder/Starbrand/Jim Shooter thing is maybe even blurrier.

All characters are mouthpieces for their authors in one sense, of course, but pet characters and their relationship to authors idees fixes, or, uh, attitudees fixes, seems like a distinct phenomenon.