Vinay Tummarakota: "To Elsa Sjunneson-Henry: 99 Problems and Mary Sue's might be 1"

99 Problems and Mary Sue’s might be 1

By Vinay Tummarakota

Feedback and criticism are two of the most important words in my life right now. When I write a terrible paper for a history class, I use feedback to fix my mistakes. When I hit a volley into the net in tennis, I get feedback from my coach to fix my technique.  When I create a project to improve my school as a member of Student Council, I use feedback to make sure that the project is feasible and effective. So when I initially read over this question, I became apprehensive after seeing the statement, “get rid of calling things a ‘Mary Sue,’” because I am of the – admittedly optimistic – view that feedback and criticism can only serve to help the person/literature/genre/whatever that’s being criticized. When a reader calls an sf work a ‘Mary Sue’, it’s because they are evaluating the realistic-ness of what they are seeing, and not because they intend to demoralize the character who is overcoming their oppression. An example of misusing the ‘Mary Sue’ archetype that comes to my mind is from a disabled Palestinian comedian named Maysoon Zayid. In her TED Talk, 99 Problems but Palsy ain’t one (it’s super funny and you should check it out at https://www.ted.com/talks/maysoon_zayid_i_got_99_problems_palsy_is_just_one ), Maysoon talks about an experience where she was auditioning for her college play, and the main character of the play had cerebral palsy. But when she found out that she didn’t get the role, she was absolutely stunned. To her dismay, she learned that she didn’t get the role because, “she couldn’t do the stunts” that the main character could. To which Maysoon hilariously responds, “Well if I can’t do the stunts, the main character can’t either!” Similar to Maysoon’s situation, marginalization-based narratives that follow the Mary Sue archetype are just unrelatable and incomprehensible to the average reader. It doesn’t make sense for a character to suddenly overcome a marginalization that oppresses an entire group of people. Additionally, I think that more readers would prefer to have characters struggle with their marginalizations and understand how those marginalizations compose their identity as opposed to having the character act as though their marginalization means nothing to them because they’ve already overcome it.

Now after saying all of this, it’s probably very easy to make the counterargument that, “Of course these characters don’t need to be realistic. The genre is called science fiction and fantasy for a reason.” But, I think this kind of reasoning misses a few points. First, if an author is including a character from a marginalized background, they likely want to give that marginalization some sort of purpose in the story, otherwise it becomes meaningless and ends up looking like the recent Power Rangers movie where every character had a wild assortment of backgrounds that made little sense together. And with such a strong emphasis on character development, a story with this kind of marginalized character is likely going to be on the softer part of the sff spectrum, meaning that the character development needs to be emotional, moving, and able to capture the audience’s attention. In order to stop readers from being disaffected by the story, this character development also has to be realistic and relatable. As a reader, if I see a Mary Sue character in the story, I can’t empathize with their experiences because I don’t overcome every obstacle that I face. I don’t know how to deal with every situation in life that I’m placed in, so seeing a Mary Sue just makes me think that the author is conveniently giving their character everything that the character wants all in the name of a “happy” ending.

Life is more complex than always granting people what they want, and I think that a character from a marginalized background especially should know this. That character likely already understands the pain and suffering that accompanies their marginalization. So shouldn’t they have to deal with that marginalization throughout the story? Shouldn’t they have to struggle with their marginalization in the beginning? If the answers to these questions are yes, then it makes sense for critics to question the prevalence of Mary Sue’s in sf literature. Ultimately, I want to see the characters fight their obstacles – and sometimes fail – to make the character’s triumph against their obstacles the most rewarding payoff imaginable. In this way, critics of the Mary Sue mentality are not striving to hurt characters/writers coming from marginalized backgrounds, but are striving to improve the quality of literature throughout the sf canon.