#such as the toxicity of certain fandom circles and various prejudices in the community

[ffwriteradvisor]

The Mary-Sue Phenomenon

What is a Mary-Sue?

Back in the heyday of the term, nobody could really agree on the exact qualifications. It was one of those ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ type things, though there were always the ‘red flags’ that most people agreed meant one was present. Importance to the plot, being favored or at least being noticed by the rest of the cast in some way or another, highly competent for their situation and background, excessive levels of detail in the design compared to everyone else, incredible powers that may or may not align with the canon up to that point, being ‘special’ in some sort of way,... and being ‘girly’ in some fashion.

Yeah.

The first and most readily visible problem with this is that a lot of this covers the standard protagonist role. More often than not, your protagonist is ‘special’ in some sort of way, possibly because they have a unique ability that sets them apart from their peers or are at least competent enough to get through the story to reach a good ending, making them both memorable and important to the plot. Being relatively important and ‘on-camera’ more, they tend to have interesting designs, though how flashy and complicated those designs are vary on creator tastes and the allowances of the medium.

The second is that this ‘list’ of qualities is that the primary ‘targets’ of a ‘Mary Sue hunt’ are going to be female or non-traditionally masculine characters who have the quality of... well. Existing. The few that I would say don’t run that risk are those that are in the background (thus being shoved out of the protagonist role or even being part of the secondary cast in most cases) or ‘prize’ characters of some description, typically some form of damsel or romantic conquest role.

Even being a ‘canon’ character isn’t exempt from this. It’s not even uncommon. You can find a dozens, if not hundreds of lists of characters canon to their works that have been called Mary Sue based on the lightest of ‘sins’. I saw Barbie make the list for having a number of movies (that are often tongue and cheek and rarely subject to any form of continuity) that put her in various careers and roles based on the various outfits she’s been put in over the years and being *gasp* blonde.

Yes, someone gave her hair color (one that a fair few real-life people have) as a reason why Barbie (a doll designed to represent a blank slate for her owners to use as whatever they need her as, who also has media based around that base concept) is a Mary Sue.

Again... Yeah.

So that gives you an idea of how meaningless the label is in practice.

Let’s take a look at a couple ‘qualifiers’ from a few different quizzes and lists concerning the subject.

‘Name is weird / name is too fitting or special for character’

‘No distinct personality / Personality traits are informed but do not actually come across in the text’

‘Too perfect / lacking flaws / stated flaws do not actually exist’

‘Dark and troubled past / backstory is contradictory and doesn’t make sense / given a mental illness’

‘Too many skills / skill set is vast and poorly defined / too competent / always better than everyone else’

‘Beautiful / fashionably or flashily dressed / unusual or remarkable appearance that doesn’t detract from attractiveness’

‘Unique weapons / unique magic / unique resources’

‘Chosen one / special destiny / has one or more traits that allows both angst and specialness’

‘Unique appearance / strange eyes and hair color’

‘Doesn’t play by the rules of the setting / changes the rules of the setting by existing’

‘In a relationship with one or more canon characters / gets special treatment from those in the setting / changes the personality of the characters in setting’

‘is clearly the most important character in the story’

Most of these - outside of the parodic Sues, who tend to be over the top by design and are usually the result of people going down lists like this while trying to check off every box - are marks of authorial inexperience, either on a technical level or with the setting they’re using. Others are simply character design choices. I’ve never noted a character as being terrible just because they were designed with blue hair or pink eyes. Yes, it could be obtrusive in a setting where nobody else has such things, naturally or not (hair dye is a thing, as are colored contacts), but it’s not an automatic fail. Some characters are going to be beautiful or care more about their appearance than others do - it helps make for a diverse cast.

And then there are things like the mental illness bullet point.

Speaking as someone who lives daily with mental illness, part of which is the result of my ‘dark and troubled backstory’ - which, while not the most awful thing that’s ever happened to anyone in real life, would be taken as over the top in fiction because there’s roughly 18 solid years of incredibly varied and occasionally absurd traumatic events, such as having a carafe of hot coffee poured over my head once during a social event while not being allowed to make noise -, I don’t necessarily have a problem with characters who have the same thing.

I do have a problem with people who make characters like that and then proceed to do none of the research and/or never bring it up outside of the one mention of it, but that trait on its own is not a sin.

Research and respect make for a world of difference when it comes to writing, if nothing else because it’s better than just using something that many other people deal with on the daily as a source of draw-and-discard drama or a quick and easy path to character sympathy.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of the most ‘obvious’ Mary Sues tend to be parodies. Even the one that originated the name ‘Mary Sue’ was so over-the-top that nobody in their right mind would think that the author was doing anything else than sporking the archetype they had just named. There’s other cases that are less obvious, but I prefer to defer to the law of ‘Is it hurting anyone? No? Then mind your own business and don’t ruin anyone else’s day’ when it comes to such things.

Sure, I have a marked dislike for a few particular ‘Sue’-types - Possession Sues, INOS (In Name Only’s), and Gary Stus are a particular annoyance to me, usually because they enjoy a level of popularity for things I don’t appreciate, such as harems, casual douchery, and ‘hard men making hard choices’, often at the cost of characterization or a decent plot. But that’s more a matter of taste than anything else.

Now, if there’s one take away that I would say everyone should avoid (not just as a matter of taste, but from a point of view of an author that likes to make quality work), it’s to make a character who warps everything around them to the detriment of everyone else. There’s no problem with a little wish fulfillment - hell, there’s no problem with a lot of it either! Go wild, have fun! Don’t make fun of other people for doing that too, so long as you’re all following the laws of common decency! - , but you should always remember that no character is perfect and that the rules set for the story (regarding other characters, the society, the plot, and the physics) should apply to all of them.

If you so happen to pick a silly version of those rules because you are writing a silly story / just out to have some silly fun, GO FOR IT. It’s all fanfiction. It isn’t ‘real’. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, even if there are some people who really want to start that fight.

As a final point - I’d like to say that the only unifying trait of ‘Mary-Sue’ characters is that someone decided to call them that at one point or another and that there’s nothing wrong with having a little Mary Sue as a treat.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Why do we feel such strong emotions to not existent people? How do people have crush and /or other deep feelings for... for example, Lotor?

Hi, anon! Wow, great question! A lot of researchers and psychologists have asked similar questions. The term “parasocial relationship” was coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956 to describe the deep relational emotions that fans were attributing to celebrities who had never actually met them before. Over time, the phrase “parasocial relationship” has moved to also mean the one-sided relationships that viewers can make with fictional characters as well, whether those bonds are based in friendship, romance, or even vicariously living through that character (kinning).

So when you talk about a fan connecting deeply with Lotor, then we’re talking about that fan’s parasocial relationship. And that phrase might help you find more psychology research about this if you’re interested!

To answer your question about “why” people make these kinds of bonds:

A 2018 academic article (Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in Therapy) by Kathleen Gannon states, “Parasocial relationships can build overtime, and the more that someone is viewing, playing or reading about a character’s story the more likely that this connection to them will become more intense (Hall, 2017).” In other words, the more you’re exposed to the story of a character, the more likely you are to develop emotions for that character, and for those emotions to grow.

The types of emotions you might have for a character can depend on many factors, of course. But Gannon’s article and various others go on talk about how you might see yourself in a character, or see them experiencing a struggle you’re facing in real life, and those details inspire you to create empathy bonds. Some people admire the looks or traits of a character and want to be them, etc.

So that emotion you have for a character, whatever the emotion, is real, even if the fiction inspiring that emotion isn’t. And those emotions then help to dictate the type of bond you might have toward that character.

This article by Catherine Anillo (”Why we mourn fictional characters: The very real emotion behind fake death”) adds that the social phenomenon of several people coming together over a character further heightens that parasocial relationship. Because now, even if that character is fictional, the community based around them is in fact real, and your conversations about them are real, etc. That character becomes part of an actual, real-life culture and can even inform the real-life friendships and relationships you build, as well as your own personality or identity. 

But is “level of exposure” the only factor for why someone might build a parasocial relationship? 

Tilo Hartmann in his 2016 paper, Parasocial Interaction, Parasocial Relationships, and Well-Being, explores this:

There’s some research about how parasocial relationships may be a stand-in for lonely people who don’t have such relationships in real life, have been rejected in real life, or don’t have the social skills to have real relationships. This is called the Compensation Hypothesis, and it’s a little controversial. While there are some studies supporting this, there’s also several other studies showing that the Compensation Hypothesis can’t explain why so many well-adjusted people engage in parasocial relationships. In fact, Hartmann reveals that a lot of people who engage in parasocial relationshps aren’t lonely in real life and showed strong interpersonal skills during the study:

“Contrary to the skill-deficit compensation idea, research has found that people who are both motivated and able to develop social relationships, e.g., extro-verted individuals, may develop both more intense real and parasocial relationships. For example, in a study by Vorderer and Knobloch (1996), individuals who were not very motivated to mix with other people, but also were not shy, maintained the strongest parasocial relationships. Likewise, Tsao (1996) found that socially skilled people, i.e., individuals with higher cognitive and affective trait empathy, maintained the strongest parasocial relationships. In addition, in his study, trait extraversion was positively related to parasocial relationship intensity, whereas trait introversion was unrelated. Taken together these findings suggest that, contrary to the skill-deficit compensation hypothesis, people with greater – not weaker – interpersonal skills develop more intense parasocial relationships.” - page 135

Hartmann’s collected research overview goes on to suggest that there are levels of parasocial relationships and different kinds of attachments—in that some people have very, very intense attachments while others have a milder form of attachment. The research does seem to indicate that people with social anxieties might experience a more intense parasocial relationship with a fictional character or celebrity, compared to a person who is not as afraid of social rejection. And that explanation makes sense because…in a parasocial relationship, you’re the one in control of the relationship. The fictional character can’t actually say “no” to you or disagree/be cruel unless you envision them doing this. The fictional character satisfies the need to belong.

But according to collected research in Hartmann’s paper, it seems a willingness to engage in a parasocial relationship at all is part of what drives the entire entertainment industry and makes fiction a fun pastime for everyone (mentioned on page 137). If people can’t build a parasocial relationship with a show’s characters, then that show isn’t going to be seen as particularly likeable either. And even having relational emotions about social network blogs or twitters, etc. is a form of a parasocial relationship.

But is all of this bad?

That first article I tossed out, by Kathleen Gannon, talks about the use of parasocial relationships in therapy environments. So it seems that psychologists have become increasingly interested in plugging into this social phenomenon to help patients overcome things like trauma and anxieties, etc. And even Gannon herself acknowledges the type of fun and enjoyable communities that people build within cosplay circles, conventions, which also can feed into one’s own career.

So it seems like the answer to “why do we do this” involves a combination of these things:

Humans can make pack bonds with literally anything because we are emotional jelly bags, and very few people are immune to creating empathy bonds. The whole entertainment industry feeds off this very basic phenomenon and actually tries to hook you so that you’ll support a show or celebrity.

Parasocial relationships can help people overcome or face real-life issues or have an escape from real-life pressures.

Parasocial relationships are a known means of accessing fun communities and friendships with other like-minded people and can healthily add to a sense of well-being, social community, and identity.

(Note, the research from Hartmann does caution that a parasosocial relationship can become unhealthy/pathological, such as in the case of people who fully substitute real-life relationships for parasocial ones and isolate themselves from real people, or delude themselves into expecting that the character/celebrity can and should reciprocate the relationship. - page 138. So just like any relationship or social bond, a parasocial relationship has to exist within certain parameters for it to be a healthy and fun/meaningful addition to your life.)

But “why do people make a parasocial relationship with Lotor” specifically?

It seems the Lotor fandom is composed of many people with many different reasons for why they like this character:

The Lotor character is dynamic with several talents and flaws, so that makes him feel more real to begin with, as opposed to some wooden/static heroes or comic book villains. He’s very complex with a wide range of emotion and thought processes and motivations. He’s relatable because he’s imperfect, more fleshed out. More capable of being unpredictable, like real people are.

People seem to identify with his struggles as a person of mixed heritage and as a person who has suffered abuse and psychological trauma from his parents.

A lot of people admire that this character also doesn’t allow himself to be defined by a victim card. So for many, he takes on even a “role model” vibe in relation to overcoming abuse or prejudice.

A lot of people like that he has nerd vibes while also being physically powerful and commanding with weapons. So he’s both mentally and physically capable as a character. They might either want that for themselves or else are attracted to those traits existing in the same character.  

He’s a very aesthetically pleasing character to many, with a complex visual design, so I do think people admire that about him, and that inspires other types of emotional bonds as well.

His darker, more dangerous side makes him an interesting springboard for typical power fantasies, potential Jungian “Shadow Confrontation,” or some kind of wish fulfillment.

The VLD show itself really played on viewer emotional bonds with this character by consistently showing his backstory in a sympathetic light, down to even flashbacks of him as an innocent child being brainwashed by toxic culture and growing up in an environment without Voltron to save him. So the way the show presented Lotor really heightened people’s already established connections with Lotor.

There’s probably other reasons that I’m just not thinking about why people connect with Lotor, lol. But either way, I hope at least some of this info helps answer your question or gives you resources or ideas to research further!