The Romantic Bechdel Test

This story, one of countless "Facebook Love Stories" distributed by hormonal teenagers who apparently "crie evertim" they read the word "love" or "dead" and whose appreciation for the English language is underdeveloped to say the least, represents a fundamental flaw I see in humanity's collective culture.  While this is particularly narmy (and without the dramatic reading, almost painful to read), the problem is universal.

The problem is that we, as a species, have no appreciation for subtlety when it comes to love.  When we see a couple on screen, if they aren't sucking face they aren't "in love".  They're "boring".  The best they can hope for is to give the main characters bad advice (old people are exempt from this rule).

They aren't all bad, of course.  It's much like the Bechdel Test*, though: it's less a judge of a single movie and more of movies in general.  Does the movie intone that one type of love is better than another?  That's the problem to which I'm referring.

[[*At least two female characters who have at least one conversation about something other than men or a man.  Used as a litmus test of the feminism of movies: do they treat the females as actual characters, or just as accessories to the male lead?]]

Even worse, it seems like we're unable to have any movies without romance.  Again, sometimes it's okay.  Sometimes it's great.  But it gets very frustrating when every single movie decides that its lead had to close a scene with a kiss.  If there's both a male and a female in the main cast, then it's a forgone conclusion.  The last exception, at least the last exception I can currently recall, was Blade.  That came out in 1998.  It's like, no, I'm trying to get into this story, but you seem to have decided that plot isn't enough.

This also has an annoying tendency to create characters with no purpose other than being romantic partners.  This is why chick flicks like When Harry Met Sally do so much better than those like Kate and Leopold: not because of some magical non-chick-flickiness, it's because they're, y'know, good.  These characters are absolutely frustrating for me, as a connoisseur of fiction, because they are the epitome of flat characters: they don't even have that one trait that makes a flat character, their only trait is that they exist alongside another character.

Why is this so absolutely awful?  Because it means the romance won't work.  The characters aren't interesting enough for me to believe that they stand a conversation together, let alone a relationship.  Here's my "romantic litmus test", modeled after the Bechdel Test: the characters must have at least one good conversation on a topic other than themselves or each other that would work equally well (A) if they were romantically connected; (B) if they were not romantically connected and had no desire to be; AND (C) if they had already been married for twenty years.  That's what I would consider a real conversation.

If you can't fluidly do that, then don't make them romantic leads.  It would just be an awkwardly shoehorned subplot.  Next time you watch a movie, see if it passes.  Again, like the Bechdel test, it does not by itself mean the movie/romance is bad (my favorite movie of all time, Brazil, does not pass).  Plenty of wonderful movies failed the Bechdel test, too (Twelve Angry Men, any war movie).  The problem arises when you consider how rarely the test works.

It doesn't have to be a romantic movie.  The original Bechdel test used Alien as its example, which was hardly a radical feminist statement.  It was just a movie which happened to have well-written female characters.

Coming back to the "dramatic romance" part of the rant: that's just simply not how love works.  It works because two people can tolerate to be around each other so much that they begin to want to tolerate each other.  A date goes smoothly because people have common interests, not because the guy rescued the girl from the enemy ship.  I long for a movie that recognizes, yeah, just because we've done something big together doesn't mean we should get married.

Oh yeah, another pet peeve: high school romances end.  They end.  Maybe 5% of them don't.  But if your TV show or movie ends at graduation, then those romantic leads are getting married.  That's always bugged me.

Personally, I want a girl who doesn't mind that I'm flipping through Wikipedia while we talk... because she's doing the same thing.  Not someone who'd drag me to her friend's birthday party, someone whose friends are interesting enough I'd want to go anyway.  "Our Song" would be something with an awesome guitar riff and trippy lyrics, not some sappy pop ballad.  In short, the absolute opposite of nearly every rom com I've ever seen.

With the exception that I'd really like her to be hot.  Signing out.

The Mary Sue

Aah, the Mary Sue.  Bane of fanfiction readers everywhere, this horrible abomination against writing has managed to wriggle its way into every medium, dragging down its quality and ruining forever everything it touches.

Except, no.

The Mary Sue, despite all the hate against it, is a character archetype and, like any character archetype, can be used poorly or used well.  Very well, in fact.

First, it seems like we should describe exactly what makes a Mary Sue (which I will be using to refer to both genders; in other contexts you may see male Sues called Marty Stus or Gary Stus or some other variant).  This is not easy to do, since everyone has their own definition, and since it's hard to pin down exactly.

The original Mary Sue comes from A Trekkie's Tale and was actually a parody of other ridiculous self-inserts the author had seen in earlier fanfictions.  Some of the defining traits is that she is overly perfect, enough that he or she overshadows all the other characters.  The character does not grow or develop significantly.  The rules of the universe seem to be built or bent just for them.  We'll say that these are "the" Mary Sue traits, and the others are peripheral to it.

Her powers and abilities are vaguely defined so she can conjure new ones as the plot demands.  These powers and abilities may or may not fit in with the context of the world, may or may not be explained, and will always be more important than anyone else's.  If she dies, it's either because she was "too good for this sinful earth" or else she's coming back.

Her physical appearance is always perfect, but she'll rarely know it.  She might have some deformity (wings are popular) which she thinks make her ugly until someone tells her otherwise.

Expect them to be able to do whatever they want and no one will ever call them out if (I repeat: if) they make a mistake.  She'll probably have had a hard life, but it will never weigh her down.  She will have sex precisely as often as she wants to.  In most cases it's an insert of the author; the author's views are always exactly right in the universe in which the story takes place, and no good character will ever question them.

Sounds pretty boring, right?  No wonder every Mary Sue is a detriment to anything in which she appears, right?  Again, no.  While this describes many unpleasant characters (Ebony Raven Dark'ness Dementia Tara Way, Bella Swan, Wesley Crusher, Jenna Silverblade, SCI Spy), it also describes a surprising number of beloved pop culture and literature icons.  Don't believe me?
-Mary Poppins
-James Bond
-Gandalf (from The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit)
-Sora (from Kingdom Hearts)
-Vash the Stampede (from Trigun)
-Mary Jensen (from There's Something About Mary)

We already know James Bond will never be defeated, and he'll always pull off some daring feat in the third act that results in perfect victory after sleeping with an attractive female lead.  So why do we watch movie after movie while ripping Sonichu to shreds?

Well, to be fair, Sonichu's kind of beyond saving.  But let's ignore that for now.

I currently have a multi-part model that explains this.  The first is the setting and storyline.  If you're going to have a perfect character, then the challenges they must face must be scaled up appropriately.  They must be challenged despite their seeming perfection.  Vash, the superbly skilled gunman, must win without killing anyone, while coping with the pain he's inflicted in the past.  Mary Poppins' perfection is actually the main point of her character, and she's used as a tool to develop the others.  If the audience is more concerned about how our hero will win this time, they'll be a lot less concerned about how unrealistic it is that they've made it this far.

In How Not to Write a Novel, the authors tell prospective writers that the more improbably something is, the more important it must be to the story.  If the protagonist wins the lottery, they must win it early on and the story must center on it (was there a caper involved?  How will they spend the money?)  Likewise, the more impossible a character, the more the challenge must be ramped up.

One of the cornerstones of the Mary Sue bashing is saying that it's just wish fulfillment for the author.  This overlooks the fact that this can be a good thing--as long as it can be wish fulfillment for the reader as well.  Ultimately, James Bond is built on this.

However, the third point is far more important, and it all comes down to that cardinal rule of writing: show, don't tell.  SCI Spy isn't all that different from James Bond, to the point where it's fair to call him a straight rip-off.  What SCI Spy does wrong, however, is that it focuses far too much on telling us why the titular character is so great, while a James Bond book or movie gives us the pleasure of watching him outsmart the bad guys and charm the ladies.  Instead of having someone tell us Sora is cheerful and lovable, then making him act like a sullen jerk the entire game, we see him being cheerful and lovable.

This becomes particularly important when it comes to dialogue.  Mary Sues are often built up as witty, charming, and uproariously funny.  As Dorothy Parker said, "I have yet to have an author inform me that a character is charming, and then, by that character’s deeds and conversation, convince me of that fact."  Again referring to James Bond, we know he's witty because we see him being witty, and we enjoy it.  In fact, the problem is not the Mary Sue; no character or story works well when telling overshadows showing.

However, none of this means that your fanfiction is good.  Signing out.