Mary-Sue: Who is She?

How Much Power is Too Much Power?

So if I make a character that is immortal and can use magic, but is susceptible to death just as easily as any human, maybe even more, what’s the problem?  Well, long lives equals more time, more time equals more practice, more practice equals more skills, thus more power.  If the character had already lived millennia of learning and practicing, then the person would have found different ways of protecting their life.  So what?  That sounds like a reasonable thing to do.  So why can’t the character I created be powerful?  He’s definitely had plenty of time and practice.  

Oh, I know!  With all of the time the character has lived, he’s too powerful when comparing to other characters and it’s especially bad when it’s in fan fiction comparing to the canon characters.  

If you’re a fan fiction writer, don’t worry about overpowering the canon characters.  They aren’t brittle!  If the character you created is more powerful in his or her own right, then it’s fine if he or she can beat one of the good people, is faster, or can mimic whatever they do.  It’s fine as long as there is a good explanation and a reasonable amount of time for the practicing to sink in.  If the original creators didn’t want us to create a more powerful character they could demand that right, just like J. K. Rowling doesn’t want to see any explicit pictures or writing (and yet I see that rule broken quite a lot), and Anne Rice doesn’t want fan fiction at all on the internet or published.  These authors have the power to limit what kind of fan fiction is out there, and it’s their right to make whatever rules they want.  Have you ever heard an author make the rule, “No one can create other characters more powerful than mine”?  I haven’t, and I think it’s because these authors don’t want to limit our creativity, but it is acceptable to limit the content.

Immortality is a door that is there in plain view, not even locked, but since it has so many possibilities for powers, other people tell you not to open it.  These people are trying to limit your creativity by slapping the Mary-Sue label.  Don’t be scared of them or the label.  The only thing you need to worry about is your character development, and how immortality affects them.  That is the real question here.

In Time (yes the Justin Timberlake movie), had a great sci-fi twist on the idea of immortality.  Everyone is born with a time limit glowing on their arms, and when they reach the age of twenty-five, they stop aging, and their one-year of time starts counting down.  As soon as a person’s clock hits zero, the person drops dead.  Instead of money, the economy works on time, so the ghetto people die and no one cares because they have to live with the risk everyday, and the rich never die and never share their wealth.  If the character was born poor, how do you suppose they lived?  How did they get around town?  What skills do they learn?  If the character was born in the more wealthy family, what was their life like?  How did they react when they turned twenty-five?

Getting off the movie and more into the fantasy genre, did the character want this immortality?  If they are around mortals, they have to watch all of their friends die eventually, and that’s heart wrenching.  Maybe the character has attempted suicide a few times, but was too afraid to go through with it and called for help just in time to save his life.  If the character does like being immortal, may be all the power he has gained goes to his head, so he’s careless and ends up dying on accident.  Indifference to being immortal isn’t an unreasonable idea either; it’s just one more day at a time after all, right?  Immortality can be a great thing in writing because the character can change and develop in so many ways.  

How Many Powers is Acceptable?

Now that I’m finished with the immortality subject, I’m going to talk about just how many powers a character is allowed to have.  Superman’s powers consist of super strength, heat vision, x-ray vision, super vision, super hearing, invulnerability to physical attacks in the form of force, extreme temperatures, diseases, and aging (effectively giving him immortality, but he does age, just a thousand years slower); super speed, superhuman breath, super smell, and has eidetic memory; along with other mundane powers like self-telekinesis enabling him to fly, and hypnosis enabling him to effectively disguise himself with only a pair of glasses, or throwing his voice to give Clark an alibi.  With all of these powers, his only weakness seems to be Kryptonite radiation, the red sun or the lack of the yellow solar energy that Earth has, the use of magic, great force will temporarily stun him, and he won‘t be able to see through lead.  Over the decades since his creation, the publishers for Superman have wondered if he was too strong since they found it hard to provide challenges for him, and while that can be difficult for the plot, does it make him a Gary-Stu?