I’ve been revising my manuscript for “Hailey Phillips Escapes the Terran Birdcage” in response to beta readers, and I’ve come across one criticism that came across as kind of odd: namely that my main character is a “Mary Sue.” Why does this criticism come across as odd? Shouldn’t I be open to criticism? Isn’t that the point of beta reading? Because it’s followed up with “She’s really selfish and kind of insensitive.” To which I respond “So she’s not a Mary Sue. She’s like the opposite of a Mary Sue.”
A Mary Sue, if you google it, is a main character who has every possible perfection. This guy’s criticism was that my main character is too flawed, to the point of being unlikeable. So, you don’t know what a Mary Sue is. “That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
Now, I should say, that he’s not the only person to think that my character comes across as selfish. I may need to make some edits, but the experience is making me wonder that despite all the agony and dragging of Mary Sues that occurs on the world wide web, do people actually like Mary Sues? I created a character who is reckless and selfish because for a very specific reason, and people are telling me that it’s making it difficult to connect to her. Prior to this, I’ve created characters where, personally, I look at them when I’m done and said “You’re too perfect.” Nobody complains. Maybe it’s a matter of taste, but I get the idea that all the bitching and moaning over perfect main characters is actually overdone. Do people really hate Clark Kent? When Rian Johnson turned Luke Skywalker into a bitter old man, did people thank him for adding depth to the character, or did they say he ruined a classic hero? People like perfect protagonists.
Well, some people do. I’ve always been a Han Solo guy myself. Han was a very selfish guy. After initially delivering Luke and Leia to Yavin, his first instinct was to take the money the Rebellion paid him and go back to Jabba. He only came back later to save Luke after a change of heart. That shows character growth. I like the idea of main characters who start with certain deficits and overcome them.
Han’s a great character because he’s the Golden mean between two other characters. To one side of him, you have Luke, the classic Mary Sue main character. He had flaws, but they are mostly signs of immaturity. He’s whiney. He’s naive. He lacks self-confidence. These flaws are cured through the normal process of growing up. They require no great act of repentance. On the other side of Han, you have Lando, a character who commits a sin so great, that he never really wins the audience back, even after blowing up the second death star. Billy Dee Williams has said that kids have accosted him in the supermarket and asked how Lando could do such a rotten thing as sell Han and Leia out like he did. At some point, no amount of repentance will suffice.
However, I’m beginning to feel that modern audience actually want main characters who err on the side of Luke rather than Han. Take Dungeon Crawler Carl. I recently read the first book as part of my preparation for writing my own LitRPG project. Carl has no major character flaws that would alienate the audience. He’s just an unmotivated loser who recently got dumped by his girlfriend and is looking after her cat. He ends up in the dungeon because the cat escapes their apartment at 3 am after an alien invasion kills everyone on Earth who happens to be indoors.
This is the real problem with Mary Sue characters: they are very unagentic. The plot just happens to them, and they react to it. Going back to Star Wars, the same is true of Luke. When Obi Wan offers to teach him to be a Jedi, Luke turns him down and says he’s needed at his uncle’s moisture farm. Luke plans to just go back home, until he arrives at home and sees his uncle and aunt fried and their farm blown to pieces. Then he tells Obi Wan that he has nowhere else to go. Luke fails to make his own decisions. He always lets some older adult make his choices for him, at least until we get to Empire.
I get what my beta readers are saying about my main character, Hailey, being unlikeable. She’s reckless and selfish, but she kind of needs to be. The plot depends on her making the decision to hitch a ride with an alien out of the solar system. That’s not something a responsible adult does. That’s something a stupid teenager does. I’d rather have a main character who causes her own trouble than one thrown into trouble by some freak accident or some higher malevolent force. The problem is that I wonder if the audience I’m aiming for agrees with me.
Jax Book Nook 