A Guide To Redwall Mary Sue
~~~
How Not To Write A
Human Sue
I'm going to enjoy venting my spleen here. These fics annoy me more than any
other breed except possibly Reformed Vermin Sue, so this chapter is very very
long. Human Sues are very different to the other breeds, so they need their own
chapter. I have no idea why they're so popular - even I long to read a good one,
and I've been coming up with "kid drops into book" stories since I was about
six. I blame CS Lewis. As you will see in this chapter, Redwall is not Narnia,
you do not have the protection of Aslan there, and it would not be fun to be
there, no matter how much you like the books.
~Okay, start at the start.~
Mary Sue falls into Mossflower. She looks around, says "Hey, cool, I'm in
Mossflower!" Compare this with the reaction of a realistic character. Our friend
Sarah Lou is back. She is confused and shaken by her "dimension warp", and
thinks she must be dreaming. She has no idea where she is, until something
happens to give her a clue. She is now utterly terrified, which is
understandable given that she is in a world she considered until now to be
fictional, with no idea how she got there, and where she knows she could easily
be killed. Assuming she's even read a Redwall book in the first place - some
people haven't read them, or hated them. (Gasp! Blasphemy!) Her first sight of
the animals will be equally terrifying - Mary Sues are never surprised by
six-foot animals wearing clothes and talking, but I certainly would be.
Who do you identify with most? Most real people would faint or wet themselves or
be sick or even die of the shock - okay, the last option does kind of kill the
story. Do you really want your character to seem so brainless that she notices
nothing odd about her situation? Anyone who reacts like Mary Sue is either so
laid-back they're upside down, two years old or astonishingly stupid. With most
Mary Sues, I'd choose the third option.
~Transformation~
Some authors at least try to make Mary Sues fit in by turning them into animals
upon arrival. However, Mary Sue always thinks this is fun, and not a horrible
mutation. If you were suddenly transformed into a mouse, would you think "cool!"
or "help!" I know what I would think. This should by rights cause just as much
panic as the sudden warp to Mossflower in the first place. Actually it
technically does in Suvian fics, the amount of panic being zero. Plus, if you
have ever seen a werewolf film, or read Roald Dahl's "The Witches", you will
read a Suvian transformation scene and think "Why doesn't that HURT?"
On top of that, what happens if our Sarah Lou's clothing doesn't shrink with
her? Creatures are going to notice a young maiden walking around the woods while
completely naked. Even the most stupid of vermin will realise that something's
wrong with that picture. Even if her outfit does shrink with her, animal bodies
are a completely different shape to ours. Unless you imagine the Redwallers as
very humanoid, none of her clothes are going to fit any more. They'll be torn
through the back by tail growth, too.
~Clothes~
Assuming Sarah Lou's clothes came with her through the wormhole, and assuming
they still fit her if she shrank or changed species and therefore shape, there's
still the problem of style. Boys have it easy here. Male clothing in the two
eras isn't that different, although they will get asked about how zips and
Velcro work, and there will be awkward questions about leather shoes or jackets,
because that would be considered along the lines of cannibalism to Mossflower
animals. (What's it called if you wear the skin of your own species, as opposed
to eating them?) If a girl wearing trousers turns up in Mossflower, then unless
she's picked up at Salamandastron or by corsairs she will get funny looks at the
least. (Come on, can you really see Romsca in a dress? And it's nearly
impossible to fight in a skirt, even a very short one, so warrior females
wouldn't wear them.) She's even worse off if she's wearing a dress. Modern
skirts tend to stop above the knee, while ones in the Redwall time period in our
world reached the floor. If Sarah Lou is wearing a skirt or dress which would be
fashionable now, then she's going to have problems at Redwall. At best she'll be
labelled a whore - at worst, possibly a lunatic or idiot. None of these options
are a good thing, as you can probably tell. And if she "just woke up" in
Mossflower, she's only going to be wearing her pyjamas or nightdress. This way
she gets all the problems of her day clothes, on top of being freezing cold.
~Language~
Yes, okay, the Redwallers do most likely speak English. However, we still have
to worry about slang. To the Redwallers, "cool" is the opposite of warm, "gay"
means cheerful and "okay" isn't even a word yet. Sarah Lou will get funny looks
when she uses words like these, and using slang isn't an easy habit to break. At
Redwall, she will be in very big trouble if she uses the kind of language (eg
bad language) that most teens I know use, and wouldn't you swear in her
situation? Probably she'll get in less trouble among vermin for swearing, but
maybe not. "Don't you dare use words like that, missy - that's MY job!" And what
about body language? If she hasn't turned into an animal, she lacks a tail and
whiskers, and cannot move her ears the way animals do. All of the above would be
essential to body language in Mossflower. If she is now an animal, on the
other paw, she will still not know how to use these appendages properly.
~Reception~
How would the characters react to seeing Mary Sue? Well, in her fics they are
always some creature or other from Redwall, and they always go "Hi, random kid!
Want to come back to the Abbey with us?" Wrong. Any human dropping into Redwall
while the characters were not under the spell of Sue would as likely as not be
killed on sight. Why? Let's investigate.
This is not another "are there humans in the background?" debate. I am asking
"Would the Redwallers even know what a human is?" If they do, it's going to be
through folklore and nursery rhymes. Humans would have a similar status to
dragons. Not to sound like a militant vegan, but their reputation would not be
good, either. Dragons usually only eat gallant knights and sacrificial virgins -
humans kill just about any creature they find. Think about it. Fox and rabbit
hunting. Wearing fur. Eating meat. The animals would see pet-keeping as slavery.
If they ever saw a human, they would think of it as worse than vermin and too
dangerous to leave alive. Exit one human.
If humans do not even exist in campfire stories and songs, or the beasts know
about humans but don't instantly recognise Sarah Lou as being one, they are
still going to see a furless, tailless, freaky-looking monster. This may cause
them to panic and they will probably shoot or stab without thinking. If they
don't, they may take her back home out of curiosity, not through being friendly.
If they then realise she's a human, they will probably leave her alive because
she doesn't seem to be dangerous, but first hint that she might be and she's
done for. (Alternatively, they may think it's some sort of costume and laugh.
See Kanimoto's fic for this - it's done very well.) So Sarah Lou will be lucky
to get a chance to explain herself if she arrives as a human. If she transforms,
she will still have problems.
When transformed Sarah Lou tries to explain her predicament, the characters are
not going to believe her. Would you? Most likely the Redwallers would lock her
up in the infirmary for "her own safety", believing her to be insane. Vermin, on
the other paw, would probably keep her as a slave and show her off, like an
exhibit in a freak show. "Roll up, see the mad maiden who thinks she's a human!"
Remember that Sarah Lou is just as likely to be picked up by vermin as
woodlanders, unlike Mary Sue, who always ends up with the Redwallers. Whoever
she is picked up by, at the very least they will laugh at her story at first,
then tell her off for making up ridiculous lies when she persists. The best
thing Sarah Lou can do is lie; make up an explanation, or fake amnesia. Of
course the Redwaller's vivid imaginations would come up with a horrible tortured
past too painful for her to relate and they would gossip about her, but it would
be preferable to the results of telling the truth.
Then, assuming Sarah Lou has got the animals to keep her alive, in freedom, and
believe her backstory, how well is she going to mingle? She probably can't even
tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel beyond the old rhyme, "A weasel
is weaselly recognised and a stoat is stoatally different." (In case you're
wondering, stoats are about twice the size of weasels, have black tips to their
tails and turn white in winter, whereas weasels don't.) In a vermin horde,
calling a stoat a weasel will more than likely result in you being run through
with the nearest sharp pointy object.
~Health~
No, this does not encompass "how not to get run through with sharp pointy
objects by angry stoats and weasels", although that would certainly be
unhealthy. This means personal hygiene and so on.
Redwall is set in the Dark Ages. This means no indoor plumbing, but that doesn't
make much difference as half the characters live outdoors all the time anyway. A
little history research will give you some idea of what to expect in this area.
I know we don't especially want to see Sarah Lou going to the bathroom,
but Redwall-era sanitation has to be taken into account somehow. Again, boys
have it easy here. Aside from the obvious physical differences which make going
to the bathroom outside slightly easier for males, teenage girls who are not
Mary Sues also have to worry about their menstrual cycle. I shall skip that
discussion, as you most likely don't want to hear about it and I don't want to
scare off my male readers. I don't even know if Redwall's mice do menstruate.
(You can actually ignore it safely if you want to keep the rating down.
Just say Sarah Lou is too young, or is in Mossflower for less than a month.)
Also, the drinking water is none too clean, but the Redwallers don't know about
germs, so Sarah Lou will get funny looks when she refuses to drink it, or asks
to boil it first. And would you want to bathe in river water? If you're living
outside and can't wash, you're going to get very dirty very fast, and with dirt
comes bad smell and disease.
Then there is the problem of the immune system. Modern human's immune systems
aren't really up to much, because everything is so clean. We never get exposed
to severe illnesses, so we can't build up antibodies against them. That's why
asthma is so much more widespread now than in your parent's youth. Therefore we
have to worry about illnesses that Sarah Lou wouldn't have been exposed to and
would therefore have no natural defence against. Things like mange, rabies and
Black Death would be rife in Mossflower, particularly among vermin. Although if
Sarah Lou dies it wrecks the story just a bit, so we can use a little artistic
licence here.
As for wounds, what happens if they become infected? She may have picked up that
sanicle cleans wounds from the books, but she is unlikely to have any idea what
sanicle looks like, and there sure won't be any "real" medicines out there.
~Food~
I know, Redwall food is supposed to be famously good. But Sarah Lou is unlikely
to like it. The Redwallers do not have access to flour, coffee, tea, sugar or
milk. Instead they use, respectively, arrowroot (whatever THAT is) and pollen,
ground-up acorns, mint, honey and greensap milk. Greensap milk is apparently
made of root juice. You would probably find these things disgusting - well,
maybe not honey or mint tea, but that's not the point here. Even if Sarah Lou
transforms, her tastebuds are not likely to change very much, except if she
becomes a carnivore. Then she's going to get cravings for raw meat. No wonder
the foxes are always so cranky, they're surrounded by rats which they aren't
allowed to eat. Nor do they have chocolate, Coke, lemonade or chips (French
fries to Americans). No, I do not care if your fic is a "near-future Redwall"
which supposedly allows you to introduce chocolate and lemonade. The climate in
Mossflower is entirely wrong for chocolate plants, citrus trees, etc, so if they
had these foodstuffs they would have to be imported. Poor Sarah Lou, suffering
so much from lack of sugar and caffeine. Poor animals, in fact - they now have
to share their lives with a teenager with unresolved junk food cravings.
~Survival~
Even if Sarah Lou does not go insane from lack of junk food and television, she
does still have to stay alive. Remember, Mossflower may look all happy bunnies
and Sylvanian Families, but it is in fact NOT AT ALL SAFE.
Rarely in Mary Sue fics does Sue ever have to fight for her life. If she does,
she always wins. Wrong again. In a straight fight, a teenage kid of either
gender has no chance whatsoever against a fully grown male. Depending on the
species of the attacker and victim, the sheer size difference would increase the
odds somewhat. The attacker has received a lot more training and probably has a
weapon, which Sarah Lou may or may not, depending on the scenario. Maybe Sarah
Lou has had karate or fencing lessons, but those would be no help in a real
fight as you are actually trained not to cause any real harm with them.
Self-defence lessons may help a little, but they are designed to escape from
being pinned down by an unarmed opponent, not for use in a free-moving fight
with swords. Not to mention, if Sarah Lou does have a weapon, real swords are
much harder to use than they look. If you tried to use a real sword, with no
previous training, your arms would probably dislocate, and your hands would
certainly blister. If by some horrendously unlikely fluke she does manage to
overpower her opponent, what is she going to do next? If he is a vermin he will
definitely kill her unless she kills him. Most kids I know are capable of a lot
of things, but murder isn't one of them. In short, Sarah Lou is pretty much
doomed from the start in a real fight. And there will be real fights. This is
Redwall, after all. She could possibly talk her way out, but it would take some
doing. Fights are all too easy to get involved in, especially for someone who
doesn't know how to fit in with Mossflower life. One mess-up and she'll be
strung up.
Even if she doesn't get into a fight, how will she manage out in the woodlands?
She has probably lived in a city all her life, and therefore will be almost
incapable of telling dock leaves from dandelions. If she's American there are
even more problems, because British and American plants are different, so even
if she's a country kid her knowledge will be nearly useless. How is she going to
avoid poisonous plants? What is she going to do if she gets injured? To quote
Disney; "It's either education or elimination!" She won't last long on her own.
And if she's picked up by vermin she may last even less time, since their idea
of fun is to torture creatures to death just to see how loud they scream. Many
woodlanders aren't very trusting of strangers, so her life expectancy with them
is not great either. Admittedly, they would probably leave Sarah Lou alive out
of sheer fascination with this wandering loony. I hope so, or we wouldn't have a
story.
~Miscellaneous help~
Come up with some kind of reason why Sarah Lou is in Mossflower. Even if it's
lifted directly from the Chronicles of Narnia, or it's something ridiculous like
alignment of the planets when the full moon is rising, you need an explanation.
Universes do not mix up on their own, and Sarah Lou liking Redwall is not in
itself a reason. If it was, Brian Jacques would have to take notice of the
dozens of human kids hanging around at the Abbey - probably including most of
us.
You should have a better plot than just "Mary Sue falls into Mossflower, talks
to animals, goes home". Fics which contain no more happenings than that are
painfully boring. Use ideas which you've never or rarely seen done in Human Sue
fics. It's a good idea to include situations where Sarah Lou has to use some
kind of modern knowledge to get out of danger, but use them sparingly or Sarah
Lou will become a Mary Sueish "deus ex machina". Make sure there's some
character development too - a teen girl thrust into Mossflower would be forced
to toughen up just to stay alive. Never mind whining about having no boyfriend
or too much homework, in Mossflower you have to fight for your LIFE.
What is happening at Sarah Lou's house while she's in Mossflower? If she's there
for days at a time, her family and school will notice that she's missing and
worry. If it's like Narnia and her month-long adventure only lasts seconds in
our world, she will most likely have changed physically and people will still
notice. "Hey, have you got thinner overnight? You didn't have that scar
yesterday, did you? Why do you suddenly smell of rat cages?" Even if this
doesn't happen, her adventures will have changed her outlook on life (eg made a
dizzy teen more sensible, because genuinely stupid creatures in Mossflower have
the life expectancy of a glass mallet) and she will act differently. It is
possible to do both of these concepts successfully. For the love of random
fluctuations in the space-time continuum, do not just have her in
Mossflower for weeks, then come back home without her family noticing anything.
If Sarah Lou is dropped in during one of the books, she does not have the right
to mess with the plot. She is not allowed to save the lives of creatures who
die, or steal the limelight from the real heroes. She can try, but the Theory of
Canon/Historical Reassertion will foil her attempts. So she saves Rose from
Badrang, everybeast's happy - and then Rose falls down the cliff and dies. Okay,
that's a simplistic example, but you get the picture.
Although it may seem like it, I did not write this chapter to prove that the
Human Non-Sue cannot be written. She can, but it takes one hell of a lot of work
and just as much knowledge to make it convincing. Far too many of these fics
just come across as annoying. Once again quoting Fanficrants; "Make it
interesting, not mere wish fulfilment." Although why anyone would wish to be put
in situations where they could be killed in any one of a million gruesome ways,
with no access to TV or chocolate, beats me. Just remember the Redwallers will
not see Sarah Lou as a sweet, talented little lost maiden. They will see a
wandering idiot, dressed in funny clothes, who panics when she sees them, who
has no idea how to do things which are second nature to them, like wielding a
dagger or bandaging wounds, who refuses to drink or wash in water unless it has
been boiled to kill the invisible demons called "germs", who claims to be a
mythical monster called a "human" and who generally makes a nuisance of herself.
Sarah Lou would, at least at first, hate being at Redwall, no matter how big a
fan she is, and the animals would be none too fond of her. Take as many of the
points above as possible into account somehow or your story will be exactly like
every other Human Sue out there, and will be hideously, horrifically boring.
~~~
Combining the ideas of Kanimoto Thunderkin Riryoku and JulyFlame, the next chapter will be an in-depth analysis of the Mary Sue's mind and personality. Miniscule as the two may be.
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Questions? Comments? Email me at wordsmith101NOSPAM@btopenworld.com (don't forget to delete the NOSPAM first).