To Sookie or Not to Sookie: That is Not Yo Mamma’s ‘Mary Sue’

February 7, 2019

Lovely Readers,

I hope you are enjoying my writing renaissance. It’s nice to be active and hear from all of you. You’ll probably know that I don’t usually use my blog space other than to announce new chapters. A reader recently made a comment on one of my stories, however, that made me want to share something with all of you. The comment was complimentary and completely innocuous: ‘I’m glad your OC Ros isn’t a Mary Sue.’

If you have a moment (or ten minutes because this is long), pause with me. Let’s think about popular uses of “Mary Sue” as an adjective, and what we mean when we level that term at a writer. Here is my take, if you’re curious. It ultimately has to do with why we write fanfic, the task of feminist writing, and my thoughts on the True Blood/SVM novels endings.

Why do we assume a female OC is a Mary Sue when a woman is writing? Why is Ros of Into the Mystic a potential Mary Sue? Why isn’t Amleth a possible candidate? Because he’s a man and I’m (readers assume) not? As it happens, none of my original characters are Mary Sues, if by Mary Sue we mean that a character is just a stand-in for an author’s own kicks and giggles. If by Mary Sue, we mean to point to how an author’s desires, as expressed in the stand-in character’s mouth and activities, are incongruous to the universe or otherwise narratively jarring, then hopefully mine aren’t apparent. I try to write internally cohesive stories, not personal wish-fulfillment pieces, so the Reader is right in thinking Ros isn’t a Mary Sue. Insofar as any author writes characters that make sense within a given world, they are all Mary Sues. They all ventriloquize the author and jump into experiences she would like them to have, because the author chooses their words and deeds. I mean, if we’re being honest, I really need to loosen up and write some real quality, free-form trash like the inner craven woman inside me would like. But no, I get all disciplined and try to make porn meaningful and plot-driven.

Which brings me to my point: what is so wrong about a wish-fulfillment fic anyway? Screams of ‘Mary Sue’ doth protesteth too much in my opinion. It’s a way of undermining what women authors desire to see and express in a story. It’s a way of undermining women’s right to articulate their desires. It’s a crappy attempt to hamstring women’s comfort with inserting their desires into other universes. And who typically writes those universes, you ask? Who so often determines the stories we (women) tell ourselves about ourselves? What term do we call men’s OCs?

We call them Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and yes, True Blood, among a sea of others. We call them empires of male heroes in male mouths and female heroines…in male eyes. Far too often, we call it canon. Male hopes, dreams, and lusts aren’t problematic in canon or, seemingly, in fanfiction. It’s female desires that are suspect, perhaps less believable, ought to be questioned. A reader wonders: is this a Mary Sue?

It’s typically massive frustration at seeing a female character like Sookie do impossibly stupid shit at the tip of someone like Brian Buckner’s pen that makes us turn to fanfiction. Fanfic creates the space to recuperate a more satisfying Sookie. That’s fix-it fic and there’s plenty that great about it.

But then, it can also be a female character inked by a woman in equally crap ways that sends us reeling to our keyboards. Feminist Simone de Beauvoir gave women novelists hell for adopting the literary conventions and narrative tropes of men in their work. She claimed they were writing desirable women based on men’s desires rather than their own. The gal wasn’t wrong. Fifty Shades of Grey, I’m looking at you, with fifty shades of side-eye. Yeah, I read it. Yeah, it was arousing at points. And yeah, I’m all too aware that it’s growing up in a world that constantly tells us male domination and male wealth is sexy that triggers that response. It’s the extent that we’ve internalized the male lie about how we should desire their domination which triggers the ‘oh what the hell just enjoy it, don’t overthink it’ dismissal of those books’ deeply dangerous message. Because, and here’s the sick part, even the fantasy of getting to have the male lie about their power is real. Many of us like to imagine having a hot, rich man. What’s so bad about that? Well, a lot, unfortunately. Not calling the lie out but accepting it hook, line, and sinker, is how women subjugate themselves. We cut our dreams short in favor of helping others’ live out theirs, for one. We insert other folks’ dreams into our own and can’t quite figure out why we’re miserable, for another.

Fanfiction is a place where a lot of push-back happens. It’s great to have people rework patriarchal lies into unexpected angles. Why do you think there’s such an explosion of fic about creatures? The fish-humping, tentacle-riding, demon-loving stuff that’s even made it into mainstream media creates possible alternative avenues beyond the white prince savior culture. That’s good for everyone (cheers to you Guillermo del Toro, for giving us a really different kind of masculinity). I say that straight-faced as someone who loves me some Eric Northman. He’s a goddamn hero and I will fight you. But he’s also dead. And that is the twist that gives us something empowering to work with. Unfortunately, these possibilities and avenues get co-opted. Eric did. When we write Eric, we’re not just rescuing him from an unacceptable fate. We’re rescuing ourselves from being forced to accept someone else’s myopic vision. To understand what I mean, let’s look at Harris’ Sookie, because she’s the narrator of the SVM books and she determines Eric’s story to a large extent.

Sadly, sometimes what masquerades as an independent, strong-willed woman in a woman’s work disappoints, none more pertinent an example than the Southern Vampire Mysteries. Sookie pogo-dicked her way through a series of strange in the SVM novels. Hold my beer, readers, because there’s a lot I haven’t publicly said about the ultimate lesson of her adventures. I’ll keep it concise.

She was attracted to strange men because of their difference (vampire, werewolf, weretiger, shifter). That’s great. Curiosity and a willingness to learn about people is super important. Let’s not squash that joy ever.

She rejected those strange men because of their difference. Uh oh. It’s not alright to sexualize someone as exotic because they are different and then not try to understand them beyond their sexuality. That’s called a fetish, and Sook, intimate play with fetishes needs to be consensual. Wanting somebody for their exotic body alone looks an awful lot like what Sookie always accused Eric of doing to her. I’m no psychologist, but isn’t that classic projection? She refused to admit Eric loved her, and off she skipped to try out some new, different supernatural-flavored dick. Sookie, you suck, but not because you like sex. You treat men like bad men treat women. Remember that whole ‘internalization of the male lie’ bit? Yeah, this is it. It’s Harris’ fantasy – to be “free” to behave like a crappy man. That’s not freedom, that’s acting out a male fantasy that’s already been scripted for us by men for themselves.

She blamed dangerous situations on others’ difference. And there we are. Sookie chalked up all her troubles to the fact that other, strange people’s difference itself – the fact of being a vampire, a were-whatever, etc. – was inherently dangerous. She blamed her circumstances on their makeup, not the content of their character. She never tried to communicate with her new friends. She never tried to learn from or about others. She was a “I’ll think about that tomorrow” kind of girl. She was, in fact, quite self-congratulatory about listening only to herself. Well, Herself was wrong. Most importantly, she rejected her own roots as a person of difference (a gifted telepath with Fae heritage) to live out the fantasy of a “normal” pantomime of a non-supe life – with another supe as equally in denial about himself as her. You know what a very brilliant psychologist named Fanon called that? A colonized mentality. It’s an ugly business where you oppress yourself by wanting the same things as your oppressor, including your own oppression. It’s a creeping horror show of of self-loathing. It’s enslaving yourself to someone else’s idea of what your happiness can potentially be. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a happy fucking ending.

Remember how Harris subsequently okayed that dictionary of loose ends epilogue book? Eric LITERALLY tells us he loves his enslavement. The proof is right there in vomitous black and white. It’s a separate and unequal tale, a know your place moral of the story. I still to this day cannot quite fathom it. It makes me physically ill. We were sold a bag of the oldest racist, sexist lies around. Then told not to think too hard on it because it’s “just” fun beach reading. Told to stop whining because fans aren’t entitled to read their desires.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? We are entitled to read our own desires. Too often what we get served in canon are “Mary Sue” puppets voicing racist, patriarchal desires that make us uncomfortable, oppressed, exhausted, and uninspired. So what is canon and what is a Mary Sue? The difference is hopefully not so clear now.

It’s true, Reader. My OC is not a Mary Sue. And she’s not a Sookie either. The “real” Sookie left me speechless she was ultimately so villainous. The only satisfying Sookies I’ve read live in fanfiction. She’s wildly AU and thank goodness for that. The authors in our community give her bigger, better desires and a more open, accepting character. If their desires make fanfic Sookie a Mary Sue too, then surely it’s different from the canon Sookie, who as I’ve shown, is a Marie Sue loudspeaker for a racist, big-boobed male perspective that has no place on my bookshelf. Let’s have no more of “Mary Sue.” It’s not a helpful way to talk about what we do.

Written by melusine10 Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with charlaine harris, fanction, mary sue, original character, patriarchy, racism, Sookie, sookie stackhouse, true blood, writing