Requiem for Mary Sue

I promised you an actual topic & I've kept my word, dear reader. Today I'd like to take a moment to attempt to help stamp out a vile scourge that plagues the literary community from prize winning novels to the campiest fanfic; the Mary Sue.

I've mentioned my game on occassion & how it's where a lot of my writing ends up, but what I may not have mentioned is that I'm also a member of the admin team. One of my jobs as co-runner-of-the-realm is bio review. This is where potential characters are submitted to the admin & we critique them & help players hone them into chars that are (in theory at least) better, more streamline & more likely fit to our collective vibe. This is where today's was born, a marathon review session with one of my players. The Mary Sue, for those five of you out there unfamiliar with the term, is a char that is too perfect. Everything goes swimmingly for Mary Sue, her life is unencumbered by strife or conflict or flaws of any kind thus making her the postergirl of the Vanilla People. She's bland, she common & she just doesn't try very hard. Mary Sues tend to be inoffensive to the point of coma inducement. Everything they touch is golden. They're the perfectly coiffed neighbor with the perfectly behaved children, the one you just want to strangle so something would happen.

I'd like to extend the definition a bit further though, I think our Mary Sue has her fingers in more pies than just banality, I think she could well be cliche incarnate. Let me give you an example. Last night review session involved me giving notes to this player & attempting to help her make changes to her proposed bio, rather like a cooperative editing session. This particular bio needed many, many edits. It had everything, sentence fragments, dangling modifiers, confusing descriptions, over worked imagery...the works. But, at the heart of the problem, I think, was Mary Sue. This char wasn't perfect, far from it. She was, in fact, the anti-perfect. Street kid, attitude problem, drug culture, gang member, broken home...she had the lot. And that, I think was where little Mary Sue was hiding. The cliche! She used every cliche in the 'Troubled Teen' handbook all on this poor char. She had abandonment issues & was afraid she'd die alone & unloved, but she never listened to anyone & got distant to downright violent with anyone that would try. She was an "edgy" alternative kind of girl, with her dyed hair, multiple tattoos, leather jacket & fishnet stockings. And of course, what true reble is without that classic bit of exotica, that daring glimpse of lesbian chic that emblazens you as a true original; "I'm bi".

Oh yes, dear reader, this girl had it all. It was a 10+ page bio, so I'll spare you the extended highlights, but sufficed to say, she was a sight. So, with that in mind, let me place upon you this most humble of entritise, please, please make the people in your writing actual people, not caricatures! Give them depth! Give them humanity & quirks & spark! Remember that it's the foibles, not the dazzling talents that shine above all others that make someone worth reading! Good girls may go to Heaven while bad girls go everywhere, but chars that are so predictable, so much literary bromide aren't going anywhere but flat.

We can do better.