It's Not Mary Sue Stark!

A couple of clickbait sites decided to start up a fake controversy that Arya Stark is a Mary Sue. There are two basic problems with that: 1) The definition of “Mary Sue” is pretty vague, and 2) she doesn't match any of the definitions.

The major problem is that “Mary Sue” has become about useful a term as “anime”; seriously, try to get two animation fans to agree on what exactly “anime” is, and start with the question, “Is Avatar: The Last Airbender anime?” Trust me; the blades will come out at some point. The usual bit of history: “Mary Sue” started in Star Trek fanfiction as a term for the insert character that was the center of attention, and who happened to have the answer or skill for any crisis. That is, the author would insert an idealized version of herself into her Star Trek stories, and that version kicked butt.

Over time that definition has fluctuated, but there are several hallmarks of the “Mary Sue” character. While she isn't always an insert character, she does tend to be over-powered; she isn't just the master of one or two skills, but is master, or pretty close to it, of every important skill in the story she's in. She also has some sort of additional perk or three, such as virtually immune to prosecution, the power of flight, or some combination of the strongest traits in her world.

In short, she is one of the most powerful beings in whatever world she appears in.

She is also the emotional center of her universe. That is, she is usually the center of some sort of romantic triangle, is the most popular girl (or is working her way there), and somehow wields a lot of social power, be it because of her father, her popularity, or because she's the teacher's pet. The bottom line is that she is the center of her universe, either because she is just so interesting, she's the Chosen One, or she's basically the sole remaining goddess in an otherwise godless world.

In short, she's pretty powerful, solves all the problems just by showing up, and is surrounded by a lot of fake drama that wouldn't exist if she would just make a bloody decision.

That is so not Arya. She has one special talent: She can disguise herself perfectly as someone she kills. Sure, she can fight, but she is hardly even among Westeros' Top Twenty Warriors. Also, she isn't the series' Chosen One; she cold live or die and nothing would really change. She just isn't the center of her universe, and she's not exactly Miss Popularity; in fact she takes pains to stay out of the limelight. Heck, she only has one guy pining for her, and she put the kebosh on that as quickly as she could.

In short, Arya does not meet any of the qualifications for a Mary Sue character; heck, even if you define it as an insert character, that's Samwell Tarly's job. As such she's hardly a Mary Sue just because she killed a powerful enemy; that's just people trying to drive hits, and such people are a waste of your time.

Arya Stark and That Welcome Uncomfortable Feeling

Fans can be weird when it comes to their favorite characters. Arya Stark made love to Gendry on Game of Thrones and fans lost it. While it was sort of funny considering the usual amount of sex on the show, it did bring home just how emotionally invested people were in the character of Arya Stark. Keep in mind that people have been watching her since early adolescence, so to see Arya going full out with Gendry was discomforting, to say the least. It's not so much because of the setting, but Arya just wasn't seen as a sexual character before that scene; it just felt strange to see someone cross that final threshold into womanhood.

And that discomfort is something we need to strive for as writers. There are a number of things that characters do that cause us to feel uncomfortable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Casting dark magic, having sex, even using an unexpected swear word; there are always going to be weird thresholds that the audience is not going to want to see crossed. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it just means that you have done your job as a writer and have established rules about how your world works, and that you've consistent with those rules. The discomfort of your audience is your reward and it can feel sort of nice.

That's sort of an important point. There are two ways to do character development: Deep end style and frog style. Too many writers have been taught that if you want to develop character you need to do it through crisis; nothing builds character like tossing the character into an emergency and see what happens, much like you would toss a kid into the deep end of a pool in order to teach them how to swim. The problem is that you can't do this all of them; throwing your characters into crisis after crisis gets boring and it makes your writing predictable. It also eliminates any point of reference, and those are necessary for suspension of disbelief.

On the other hand, there's frog style. If you heat a frog slowly in a pan of water it will never feel the rise in temperature; it becomes a major shock to realize that the frog dies from the heat when you saw it doing pretty well. Sometimes you need to have the character develop surely and slowly over a long period of time, and then force the audience to realize that the character has undergone a major personality change over time; the realization that a character has changed before your eyes can be all sorts of fun, especially when the audience has gotten used to a certain concept.

This is sort of where people are with Arya. While we've seen her become more than the frightened little girl of the first season, the changes have been so relatively gradual compared to the rest of the GoT cast; we've seen her mature and become a formidable warrior over the seasons. However, we forgot that she was also maturing and becoming a young woman in her own right. The sex scene was the culmination of a long character arc, and one that needed to happen so that the audience would finally see her as that powerful young woman instead of the girl; it was a necessary scene in order to put the finishing touches on that character.

It was an uncomfortable scene to watch not because we disliked the character, but because it forced us to accept that the character has undergone some major changes since her introduction, and some of us just weren't ready for it. Just like our real-world daughters and nieces, we didn't want to see her cross the threshold into womanhood; no one ever really wants to think about the sex life of teenagers but it's part of their growing up. And that's not a bad uncomfortable feeling...it's also something that we need to use in our own works more.