God, What a Mary Sue or Wish Fulfillment Stories for Female Writers are Nothing More than a Joke

A Mary Sue, according to TVTropes.org is a female character in a story who serves as a highly idealized version of the author, primarily for wish fulfillment. While you may not have heard the term before, you might've seen a (female) character written by a female author that you find unrealistic with a perfect life and perfect hair and perfect everything and you've written her off as an author self-insert - the kind of person the author wishes she could be.

A fairly obvious author insert/wish fulfillment character: Bella Swan.

Here's a description of a Mary Sue character from adventuresofacomicbookgirl:

"So, there’s this girl. She’s tragically orphaned and richer than anyone on the planet. Every guy she meets falls in love with her, but in between torrid romances she rejects them all because she dedicated to what is Pure and Good. She has genius level intellect, Olympic-athelete level athletic ability and incredible good looks. She is consumed by terrible angst, but this only makes guys want her more. She has no superhuman abilities, yet she is more competent than her superhuman friends and defeats superhumans with ease. She has unshakably loyal friends and allies, despite the fact she treats them pretty badly.  They fear and respect her, and defer to her orders. Everyone is obsessed with her, even her enemies are attracted to her. She can plan ahead for anything and she’s generally right with any conclusion she makes. People who defy her are inevitably wrong."

Sounds kinda overdone and a little terrible, right?

Well here's who was just described.

Mary Sue is a term slapped onto a female character when they sound "too perfect" or they have a life that sounds "too good to be true". But consider a typical male action hero: solves the problem with superhuman strength/intellect/etc., saves the world, gets the girl, lives happily ever after.

Consider James Bond for a moment. Why is he so beloved when female wish fulfillment characters are hated?

Why is it that now that said character is a female this is suddenly a problematic trope that no one will ever read or watch. Hmm. It's actually something that is actively encouraged against for young female writers. It's the worst thing they can do. Besides pushing women out of writing fiction, it also pushes internalized misogyny into these girls. I hated all female characters until I was about 13 because too many of them were too perfect and unrealistic and I didn't like that - and I know I'm not the only girl who felt that way. I don't know about you, but there's a major problem with that.

Wish fulfillment is not a new aspect of fiction, it's what fiction is. The next time you go to write a female character off as unrealistic in any way, consider Batman or James Bond and pause before you make your decision to hate a female character based on her perfection.

The Mythical Friend-Zone and You!

You might have heard it before, whether in your daily life or in pop culture: a guy insisting that a girl only dates “assholes” and that if she would just give him a chance he could show her how great “nice guys” really are - how she’s being a bitch by not dating him and instead dating other men.

I don’t know about you, but that really doesn’t sound like a nice guy – in fact, it sounds like a Nice Guy^TM which, as described by Jeff Fecke is: “A Nice Guy^TM is a guy who tells you, in a bitter, resentful tone, that women don't date "nice guys," they only date "bad boys," and because he's "too nice," women only view him as a friend”.

These men often accuse women of putting them “in the friend-zone” because they are simply too nice so they must not be dateable material for these women who only like “assholes”.

Similarly to the Twilight Zone, it doesn't exist.

Why is believing in the friend-zone a problem?

For one, it implies that friendship is a stepping stone to romantic love and sex and not just its own form of relationship with no higher level to get to. Befriending someone with the purpose of eventually having sex with them is honestly not a great way to go about things (or, if I’m even more honest, really gross).

Unlike in video games, women are real people and aren't an achievement to unlock!

If someone thinks that being friendly and nice and supporting you through their hardships entitles them to sex, they are not your friend. That is not friendship, that is a form of manipulation.

It can and likely will turn into a poisonous cycle where the woman will date someone then break up with them, then go to the Nice Guy for comfort. The Nice Guy thinks he’s racking up points that he can eventually turn in for an all-expenses-paid trip to that woman’s vagina, rather than just being a good friend who is there for his friend, no matter their gender.

The misogyny comes from the expectation that women owe men sex – for being friends, for what they’re wearing, for a ride home. It comes in many varieties and it all adds up to rape culture. Nice Guys expecting sex for being “nice” just perpetuate the culture that women owe people sex for anything at all. Fun fact: no one ever owes anyone sex for anything, even if they’re married, even if someone is wearing revealing clothing, even anything. Sex is not a reward for doing something nice, it is something to be given when someone wants to give it and is not something that should be taken.

Another frankly misogynistic aspect of the friend-zone is that the expectation from Nice Guys is entirely for women – their male friends don’t have the same expectation of sex for friendship. Why is it suddenly okay to expect your friend to have sex with you for being nice just because your friend happens to be a woman?

Expecting sex for being nice is not being respectful. And to even consider having sex with someone one must first respect them.

If you’re only nice to someone because you want to have sex with them, you are neither a friend nor a nice guy – you’re a Nice Guy^TM.

The Bechdel Test - Fun for the Whole Family at the Movies

If you've never heard of the Bechdel Test, an idea popularized by Alison Bechdel's comic Dykes to Watch Out For, in a 1985 strip called "The Rule", let me lay it out for you. The Bechdel Test is a (fairly low) bar set for movies (and, if you want, TV shows) in which to pass the test a piece of media must have at least two named female characters who speak to each other about something other than a man. Sounds like a lot of movies should pass that, right? Seems simple enough. Yet many movies fail to even reach this low bar.

The comic that started it all.

Let's take a look at the movies nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars this year:

American Hustle: passes, but just barely. Jennifer Lawrence's character and Amy Adam's character speak once, almost exclusively about Christian Bale's character, and only at the very end change the subject enough to count as a pass.

We could have had it all, rolling in misogyny.

Captain Phillips: fails. It contains more than one female character, but they don't speak to each other.

Dallas Buyers Club: passes. However, a huge issue with this movie that has to do with misogyny (specifically transmisogyny or misogyny against transwomen) is that Jared Leto was cast in a role that should have gone to an actual tranwoman, not a cisman (a person assigned male at birth who continues to identify as male). However, it passes.

Laverne Cox as Rayon would have made me pay to see Dallas Buyers Club.

Gravity: fails. However, there are only really two characters in the movie.

Her: fails. Has two female characters, but they only speak to each other about a man. If you do not consider the OS voiced by Scarlett Johansson to be a female character then the official verdict would be "has two female characters, but they do not speak".

Nebraska: passes, but just barely again. Contains a few sentences of gossip between two female characters - the rest of the movie focuses on the relationships between males.

Philomena: passes.

12 Years a Slave: passes.

The Wolf of Wall Street: passes, again just barely. The movie focuses on the males, leaving the female characters who are present to remain mostly objects.

I would personally love to watch a movie that was entirely this scene.

Perhaps it's just me, but in the year 2014 this is a disappointing spread. While six out of the nine movies pass, most pass due to a few throw-away lines of dialogue - if you have to argue something like "oh no wait this female character talked to a waitress who was wearing a nametag while ordering dinner so technically it passes" then you know there's probably a problem with the portrayal of females in Hollywood. These movies, considered the best of the best from the year, focus heavily on men, full stop. In fact, in a study done bythe Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film of the 100 highestgrossing films in 2013 Females accounted for only 15% of protagonists (as compared to females accounting for 50% of the population of the world - funny how that works).

I'd like to see more movies that feature female characters having strong relationships with other female characters. Leave the male characters as objects for once. How about an action movie with an all-female cast save for the token male? I'd pay the ridiculous price for a movie ticket to see that.