The Evolution of Mary Sue: A fandom history

It is a truth universally acknowledged that just about everything in fandom can be traced back to Star Trek (1966-1969). From fan-zines to the omegaverse, it all stems from our fandom foremothers and their tireless love of the show. This International Women’s Day, I thought I might look into another Star Trek fandom product, the best and most loved woman of all time, Mary Sue, and how her legacy persists to this day.

‘Mary Sue’ as a term dates back to 1973, but her spirit predates her name. Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, Star Trek had So Much Fanfiction written about it. Genres, tropes, and writing conventions varied wildly, but the most influential in our case was the self-insert.

A self-insert fanfic is exactly what it sounds like, the author inserts a stand-in for themselves into the setting of their chosen media, in a way allowing them to interact with their favourite characters. Oftentimes fanfics marked as ‘OC’ (original character) are just self-inserts in disguise, but it’s usually pretty easy to tell when it’s actually an OC vs when it’s not.

Despite being based on the individual authors, early Star Trek self-inserts often had quite a few character traits in common: she was beautiful, she was very skilled at just about every job she was given, everybody loved her (especially the author’s favourite character), and she often saved the day. These tropes, though not always making for the most interesting story or dimensional characters, were a harmless way for the young and primarily female authors to feel like part of their favourite show, and by extension stake their claim in the male-dominated space of science fiction.

And then, one fateful day in December of 1973, parody fanfiction A Trekkie’s Tale by Paula Smith was published in the fan-zine Menagerie which Smith was a co-editor of. Meant as a satire of the types of stories Smith would see in other zines and while reading through submissions for Menagerie, the 300 word fanfic followed Mary Sue, “the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old” as she fulfilled all of the Mary Sue checkboxes before dying and being mourned by everyone in the fleet.

And the rest is history!

It didn’t take long for Mary Sue to become recognised outside of the context of A Trekkie’s Tale, helped by Smith’s co-editor Sharon Ferraro adding a “no Mary Sue characters” rule to a list of submission guidelines in an editorial note at the front of Menagerie. From there it was passed around the Star Trek fandom before eventually branching out into the greater fandom lexicon.

By the advent of the internet and fandom chat boards, it was an author's greatest fear to post a fanfic they had worked hard on and get dozens of comments accusing them of writing a Mary Sue. Yet, they still exist in droves and always will. As Smith said in a 2010 interview, “the Mary Sue seemed to almost be a necessary stage for a writer.”

True Mary Sues are most commonly perpetrated by young women and girls as they start out their writing journey. The reason they’re so one-dimensional is because the authors haven’t yet learned how to inject life into their stories. And that’s okay! Nobody is perfect the first few times they try something! And how can we expect them to improve without learning from their failures? That is why Mary Sue will always be a part of a healthy fandom ecosystem.

So what happens when Mary Sue steps out of the purely fandom space and into media criticism at large?

If I were to take an educated guess, I would say that one of the most common contexts in which people have heard about Mary Sue was in 2015 when Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was released, introducing us to Rey No-last-name-yet. 

The moment the movie started its promotional campaign, the internet was ablaze with neck-bearded, fedora-wearing fanboys decrying a female lead for a Star Wars movie. In this sci-fi universe with aliens and literal space magic, how dare a woman be more important than a man?!

When the film was actually released, most of the critical response was on the positive side. Yet, there was a sect of upset fanboys who complained so loudly that their minority opinion entered the mainstream anyway, labelling Rey as a Mary Sue to the point that publications like Forbes, Vox, and Time Magazine all published articles discussing and debunking these claims.

Whether Rey is or isn’t a Mary Sue almost doesn’t matter (though I personally don’t think she is, Luke Skywalker is more Mary Sue than Rey). What matters is that this incident is indicative of the current state of the Mary Sue label.

Once a satirical take on a tweenage fantasy, Mary Sue is now a label slapped onto any capable female character by the incel fanboys who decide whether or not her skills are justified. And that is a damn shame.