kippurbird | canon, Sues, and canon Sues

My paper. Please Read and Tear apart! I had a dickens of a time with it.

, Sues, and Canon Sues

In the world of fan fiction one of the worst insults you can throw at an original character is to call them a Mary Sue; after all Mary Sues are found in some of the worst writing out there. They are pure authorial fantasies usually written by teen age girls. But there is something more to a Mary Sue than just authorial fantasy and poor writing; a Mary Sue shows a lack of respect to the reader because with a Mary Sue there often follows poor attention to detail and bad characterization. The forty days that it took to reach the Mine of Moria is hastened down to a week or even a day of walking. Red, black and Mood Ring colored dragons fly in Pern’s skies and Harry Potter is saved by his long lost twin sister while Draco Malfoy professes his love to Hermione.

But at least, on the bookshelves of bookstores, where authors tried and true with years of writing experience under their belts, a reader can find them selves free of the scourge that is the Mary Sue.

At least a first glance. At second glance this may not be as true. On numerous fan boards on the internet the term “canon Sue” has appeared, applied to canon characters that stretch the believability and bounds of their worlds. Usually they are the heroes of the story and thus it would be expected that they are extraordinary. But sometimes, can they go beyond the range of extraordinary and move to the realm of the unbelievable?

To figure this out and to decide if there is such a thing as a canon Sue, a definition must first be laid out, defining what is a Mary Sue, going to the heart of the character type’s problems and leaving the trappings of fan fiction behind. For this purpose a Mary Sue is defined as a character that breaks the written boundaries of that character’s world and the laws of logic. They cause the world around them to conform to their desires by sheer force of power or personality (or both) without any regards to what has been previously laid down as law. They can do anything and often do without regards for custom or tradition and have no detrimental consequences for their actions. Their flaws are inconsequential and unhindering. In short they are perfect and defy realistic belief.

The characters that I’ve chosen to examine for this paper are chosen only because I’ve been exposed to them and have had a chance to study them. They have also been accused of being Mary Sues.

The Dragon Lady of Pern

Lessa of Pern at the first surface glance seems like a Mary Sue. She is the lone survivor of her family’s massacre. She remains hidden in her family’s hold plotting revenge and living as a drudge until one day she’s rescued by a dragonrider and taken to Benden Weyr where she impresses the last gold dragon on Pern, a dragon that becomes the largest dragon ever seen on the planet. There it is discovered that she can hear all the dragons and rediscovers, or discovers the dragonic ability to travel through time. Lessa then travels back three hundred turns to bring back the missing weyrs and thus saving Pern. As the series progress, she becomes one of the most important people on Pern.

Tragic past, super abilities and saving the world, all hallmarks of a Mary Sue. But these don’t make Lessa a Mary Sue. If Lessa were to follow the traditional Sue’s path she would have been the cleanest drudge on Pern. Instead of scheming and plotting for ten turns, living in squalor, she would have been adopted by one of the craftsmen or by the new Warder himself, who would know her secret but would be so besotted with the eleven turn girl that he would keep it hidden.

She would have used her feminine wiles to ply Fax to her will, openly challenging him when he came with the dragon riders on Search. F’lar would have challenged Fax to champion her cause, instantly smitten with her unearthly beauty. Lady Gemma and her unborn babe would be totally forgotten, Jaxom never born.

Lessa’s birthright would be unchallenged and she would gain control over her family’s hold before going on to Benden Weyr where she would Impress Ramoth while still retaining her rights as Lady Holder. Instead of waiting two turns for her dragon’s flight to break the tradition that Queens don’t fly, she would have demanded and won the right to train with the other weyrlings. She would have learned to fly between normally. Her ability to hear all the dragons would have come out right away, as she would have flaunted it. As for discovering the ability to travel between times? That may occur as it did in Dragonflight, but she would be unaffected by the disorientation that other people feel by existing in two times. As the books progressed, she would have become beloved by everyone. Because of her the relationship between the modern dragon riders and the old timers would have never deteriorated.

In essence everything that would have made her an interesting character or that would have caused conflict would have been smoothed away under her veneer of making things perfect and wonderful. The fact that she doesn’t like everyone, that she despised Jaxom and was spiteful, that she worked within the system, didn’t warm to the fire lizards and as the series progress moves more into the background not taking up the center stage of the series, but sharing it with the cast of other characters that populate Pern.

From the Dragon lady of Pern we move on to a different sort of dragon. The Dragon Reborn, Rand Al’Thor. Rand is the protagonist of the Wheel of Time novels and is a young farm boy pushed into extraordinary circumstances where he finds that he is the Dragon Reborn as well as being Ta’veren, someone who can affect the world around them and change people’s destinies. Kingdoms bow down to him and he will lead the world through Armageddon. From what is told in the books, he is the most powerful person the world has seen and is slowly going mad, and unfortunately he appears to be a Mary Sue.

It is not his great power that makes him a Mary Sue, for great power alone doesn’t make anyone a Mary Sue. It’s the character that comes with the power and how it is used, that makes the difference between Sue or not.

Rand defies reality in several ways beyond his powers. One of the easiest examples to give is his ability with the sword. At the beginning of the series he was not even a novice, having never handled a sword at all. By Lords of Chaos he is considered a sword master and book a Crown of Swords he is able to defeat groups of men by himself. The thing that must be noted is that all these books take place with in a span of two years. It took Inigo Montoya, of the Princess Bride, close to twenty years to become a Sword Master, yet Rand defies the natural order of things by becoming one in two years. This is similar to the fan fiction’s Mary Sue’s ability to be the best sword fighter despite being fifteen years old and not having the experience necessary to be the best sword fighter. After all, knowing the forms is all fine and good, but experience still counts.

Another trait of his Suedom is his ability to defy the laws of common sense. Common sense would say that a man traveling alone on foot would be easier to catch up to than a man traveling alone on horse, especially when he’s being tracked by people on horses and one of those people is as an experience tracker as Lan is supposed to be. Yet, in The Dragon Reborn, he does elude them. Perhaps this is meant to be mysterious, but it’s really just a dysfunction of reality. Much like what happens when the Mary Sue author makes it take only two weeks to a couple of days to get to the Mines of Moria instead of the forty days that it is supposed to.

Then there is the Mary Sue flaw that he suffers from. The Mary Sue flaw is an imperfection that the Sue author gives her creation to give it the semblance of being a real three dimensional character. The flaws given aren’t a hindrance to them or even a real flaw. Such things as being too nice or too pretty are Mary Sue flaws. It’s something that the Sue author can point to say that yes their character isn’t perfect. Rand’s Mary Sue flaw is his ideas on women. That is the idea that they shouldn’t fight and die in battle. Despite seeing that the Aiel Maidens are perfectly capable warriors, he still refuses to let them battle. Every time that a woman dies and is somehow maybe connected to him, he puts them on his mental list. He repeats this mental list to himself, never letting them go, never changing. It’s this lack of change, the fact that he keeps this list going through the books, instead of adapting his views and changing his position, which makes it a Mary Sue flaw. If he were to change his views on women, to grow accustomed to the fact that they are human and not something special as the books moved forward instead of keeping his position static, it wouldn’t be a Mary Sue flaw.

Rand’s character stays the same though out the series. He doesn’t seem to learn from his experiences, the world around him doesn’t affect the way he thinks. While this could be called stubborn, it is also unrealistic. He should change, just like any real person does. By leaving him in the same position he becomes two dimensional and a Mary Sue.

Then there are those that exist on the boarder lines. They aren’t complete Mary Sues and yet they have enough Mary Sue traits to not be considered non Mary Sues. The world supports their Mary Sue traits so that it doesn’t seem to be ridiculously impossible for them to do what they do, but still they manage to get away with some things that really shouldn’t be gotten away with.

Herald Vanyel of Mercedes Lackey the Last Herald Mage Trilogy displays many Sueish traits. He is the most powerful Herald Mage in existence and has a tendency for angst and drama. He’s also extremely good-looking and he selflessly sacrifices his life so that others may live, something that was once thought to be the supreme identifying trait of a Sue, especially since he left his beloved behind to cry and sing about his greatness.

Looking at the arc of the trilogy, the first and last books are the most important in regards to his Sueish traits. These traits are mitigated somewhat, however. For example if Vanyal was a complete Sue he would have gotten access to his powers much earlier in the first book, or he would have been Chosen for his sheer untapped potential. But he’s not. He doesn’t even get into the Bardic College. Instead he plays the snob as he tries to fit in with court life.

When, he does find love, it is like a Sue’s love, a True Love. A life bonding even, with Herald Trainee Tylendel, this is something that every Sue wants and usually gets (even if it isn’t a homosexual relationship). The relationship, however, is doomed, at first by the fact that they can’t let anyone know that it exists and then by the fact that Tylendel actually does die, leaving Vanyel suicidal and alone, after only being in the relationship for several months. Despite this drastic turn of events, Vanyel eventually finds love once again, though it takes him many years to do it. During those years he is alone and aloof, afraid to get close to anyone least they too die on him. But once he does find love again, it’s not just anyone, but the reincarnation of his first and only love, Tylendel. Once again, it’s a bitter sweet romance because Vanyel still feels afraid to love the Bard Stefan (Tylendel reincarnated) and once they really get beyond that Vanyel sacrifices his self to save Valdemar. This would be completely Sueish except for the fact that Vanyel genuinely does block and fend off everyone’s attentions, including Stefan’s as opposed to a Sue, who’s attempts at blocking off attentions usually lasts no longer than the Love Interest saying hello or something to that effect, even when she has vowed never to love again.

Another thing that keeps Vanyel from becoming a complete and total Sue is that when he is Chosen and when he does get his powers, he doesn’t automatically become the best Herald Mage that there ever was. In fact he rejects the idea of becoming a Herald, once he becomes coherent enough to think about such things. It’s an idea that he rejects and doesn’t understand through out much of the book. That is he doesn’t understand how a person could want to be a Herald. He’s too self involved to think about the greater good. Unfortunately instead of eventually learning about becoming a Herald Mage and learning to become unselfish he has a somewhat unbelievable epiphany when people look to him for protection from a sorcerer and he’s all alone. It happens so suddenly and is such a 360 degree turn around from his previous position, that it seems to be almost forced upon him by the author. That the author wanted to make him a Herald but didn’t want to have to go through all the necessary steps to take him from spoilt brat to Herald trainee.

It is those sorts of moments as well as his overall character – the overtly pretty, powerful, angsty man - that keeps Vanyel straying into the land of the Sue. But the fact that there are reasons for it, and that he doesn’t always lose himself in his angst nor does his need to find love or be the best Herald Mage drive him. He is a human being and fallible.

The problem with Mary Sues is that they are unbelievable characters. In fantasy unbelievable characters are expected… at least they are supposed to be larger than life. So it’s a hard line to draw where the Mary Sue starts and the good Fantasy Character ends, when a character is very fantastic and very powerful. The trick is to draw away the fantastic elements, the powers, and look at the character’s development and their personality, both physically and mentally. Thus it is possible to find Mary Sues in published fiction. Rand tracks as a Sue because he doesn’t develop emotionally and he does do things that are physically impossible. Vanyel is on the boarder line because he does mature but has turnabouts that are too quick to be natural. And Lessa is not a Sue because she does grow and mature and is effected physically by things that are supposed to effect her and everybody else.

Does this make Rand less of an effective character than Lessa? In a way yes, because the reader finds it harder to relate to Rand because they can’t believe what he does. It takes them out of the realms of possibility in into the realms of illogic. In fantasy worlds, logic is one of the most important things there is. The world has to make sense for the reader to believe in the magic. They have to believe that there are rules and familiar laws of physics even when there might be two moons over head and dragons in the sky. The underlying logic of how it works helps support and fosters a belief in the magic. When things start to act illogically the world becomes less real and less successful.

Characters have to make sense. Their actions and desires have to be believable and they have to grow and change, just like ordinary people in the real world. Mary Sues do not make sense, and they are stagnant characters. In published fiction they hold the story down and make it harder to believe in the world around them. So, just like in fan fiction, then, an author needs to be wary of the characters she creates and makes sure that they don’t end up as Mary Sues, and completely unbelievable.