Character Discussion: Estrid

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

So...Mary Sue or not Mary Sue, that is the question. I have seen a lot of different reactions to her, although I didn't have any sort of really strong one. I do think a case could be made for the writers going overboard a bit, but IDK one way or the other.

Comments

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

Since according to current fandom trends, a Mary Sue is pretty much any female character under the age of 85 who can successfully walk home alone without dying . . .

Sarcasm aside, not every character needs to be fully and completely developed in a piece of fiction, and it's only when a sparklingly flawless character completely eclipses all other characters that the term really applies. I'm voting no on the Mary Sue thing.

[blue_rampion]

Despite popular misconceptions, a Mary Sue isn't defined by their traits. They're defined by their role. Sure, certain traits can be a symptom of a Mary Sue, but they do not in and of themselves make the Mary Sue.

If Estrid had been a Mary Sue, she would have been loved by everyone regardless of whether it makes sense for them to do so. Ax certainly has a crush on her, but even he says at the end that he doesn't like her. The other Anis certainly don't show any level of adoration towards her. She would also have been implied by the narrative to be perfect and wonderful and flawless, but that isn't the case. If anything, she's portrayed rather negatively. Estrid is unlikeable, and more importantly, she's unlikable by design.

So yes, I'm voting 'no' along with you. I'm not sure where this perception apparently came from, but I get the feeling it derives from people going assuming that a Mary Sue is just anyone who happens to possess a particular list of trait and not considering the character's actual treatment.

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

. . . unlikeable by design . . .

Yes, exactly.

And thank for so clearly stating what I've grown so weary of explaining to deaf ears. (Not the people here, specifically, but too many people in all corners of fandom.)

. . . defined by their role . . .

Perfect.

[blue_rampion]

I think a lot of people generally have just...either forgotten or never really understood what a Mary Sue is.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

eh idk. She might not be a textbook-definition Sue, but she did get a super unnecessary amount of *super speshul awesome* powers heaped on her for no particular reason. And Ax did get a crush on her approximately .45 seconds after she appeared, saying something like "we gotta go now Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill but yo we gonna be right back." Mary Sue THE ROLE is certainly number 1 or 2 in the fandom dictionary, but Mary Sue THE FORCE has got to be 3 or 4. And by THE FORCE, I mean that the narrative seems to bend to her whim more than it should, or at least more than is believable. And I think Estrid fits that definition pretty closely.

Now, of course, I think there can be some very textual, in-universe explanation for most of her Sueish traits. Ax is pretty damn isolated, and we never get an exact age estimate for him but he is pretty young, so it's reasonable to assume he'd go all stiff and awkward at the slightest whiff of female pheromones. As for why Estrid has to be so super special good at everything, maybe this is the part that really annoys me about her, and Mary Sues in general--it's almost implied that if Estrid were not a super genius, a super talented tail fighter, super cute, a super good morpher (even better than Cassie, who we already know is talented, and seems to have a little more applied experience than Estrid) and super redemptive in the end, she would have no reason to be there. There's actually a good blog post kind of about this, let me find it... (http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/)

Though that post's thesis is more that perfect female archetypes are still male fantasies rather than fully fleshed out characters, it almost seems to be implied instead that the military would allow no woman into their ranks UNLESS she incredibly outstripped any male competition in almost every single category, and served to please the eye as well. And I mean, I guess this could be a critique of modern day militaries and human sexism, but it never seemed pushed far enough to earn that credit. Estrid is perfect because she wouldn't be there if she wasn't.

Much of this is coming from my pent-up femrage that I haven't released in a while, so idk, TAKE WHAT YOU WILL FROM THAT. Mary Sue most definitely means more than it meant when it was invented, but that doesn't mean its current definitions are null and void or anything.

[blue_rampion]

She did get an unnecessary amount of abilities - her intelligence made sense, because that supported her role in the story. The tail fighting and morphing abilities wasn't necessary though. And yes, Ax's developing the hots for her makes sense when he hasn't seen an Andalite female in yonks.

And the narrative doesn't really go Estrid's way. Sure, it might look like it at first since you've got Ax apparently ditching the Animorphs for her, except then it turns out that Ax is just pretending. Really all she gets is to survive at the end. That's...about it.

But, I don't think that there's no sexism implied in Estrid's character - far from it. She's kinda like what you get when you try to illustrate what's wrong with sexism but you end up just being sexist in an entirely different way. I think she's not so much designed as Super Special Awesome to justify her being in the military, as designed to be a romantic foil for Ax. I think what Grapplegate had in mind was a character that Ax would find attractive & would challenge his notions of what female Andalites could do. Hence, the tail fighting and the morphing ability and the high intelligence. She's meant to bring out the flaws in Ax's thinking, but she does end up reinforcing other parts of sexist thinking instead.

She's a character that could have been designed better, yes. She could have used more depth, and less unnecessary abilities. She definitely could have used more thought put into the implications of her and her role. But, she's not a Mary Sue.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

ehhhhhhhhhhhhh idk. "Really she gets to survive at the end" is kind of putting it lightly. She was on a top-secret, morally questionable mission and was the only one of her contingent (well I guess Gonrod survived, right? To fly the ship? I guess she wasn't a star pilot too) to get off scot-free. And it seems to be implied that she'll face no negative consequences for using a method very similar to the Quantum Virus, which made Alloran universally abhorred and was something the Andalites denied ever doing. So, really, it was like nothing happened at all. I guess Ax didn't like her in the end.

I guess since at that point in the series, we had our pointer fingers pretty much glued to the reset button after the end of each book, we couldn't really get that deep into anything. Requiring all of those obnoxious traits just to make her a romantic foil for Ax is kind of an insult to Ax's character. That the only girl Ax would fall for would have to be some kind of Michael Bay heroine only proves he is shallow and maybe even sexist, and you know what? That actually would have been an interesting flaw for the series to explore. But sexism isn't really touched on much at all in the series, actually, now that I think about it. I mean, Aldrea wanted to be a warrior and was kind of told "yeah whatever" but aside from the sentence or two explaining what she should be doing, since she was a girl, that bit of information was really only there to set up that she'd have no problem running a totally isolated, resourceless war on the Hork-Bajir homeworld. Aldrea being a girl wasn't really essential to her character, but being a warrior was.

So I mean, I guess my question is--what purpose does Estrid really serve in the narrative? I don't agree that she is a romantic foil for Ax, because her overwhelming positive traits basically make her a nonentity. Him being attracted to perfection doesn't tell us anything more about him as a character--who wouldn't want to fuck Don Draper knowing him only surface-level? I don't think her character particularly was necessary to the whole black-ops-double-crossing plot, either, since Arbat could have been a schmoozer + evil military genius to pull off all the necessary elements. Hell, I was more interested in the fact that he was Alloran's brother than that Ax had the hots for some Sueish-whatever. The best I can think Estrid did was remind Ax what he was missing being marooned on Earth, that yes, if he were back home he probably would have a girlfriend and it might be a girl like this, that even though he loved his human friends and was learning a lot about their culture, it was at the expense of a normal Andalite adolescence, but hell they didn't even have to hook up to get that development out of it.

I mean, if we're quibbling over the term "Mary Sue" itself, fine, she's not a Sue in the strictest definition of the term. But whatever she is, it's not a fully developed character, it is a character that gets undue, unjust, unnecessary, and kind of mysteriously warranted preference from the fictional forces that be, that has all these obnoxious traits for no other reason that I can see than to serve as filler. Because I guess it would have been uncomfortable for Ax to win that tail fight, and for Estrid to morph human without a full set of clothes, chastity belt included. I really don't get why Estrid was even there, and I REALLY don't get why she needed to be the best at everything.

[blue_rampion]

Well, a character doesn't have to be a Mary Sue to be a flawed character. They are many, many, many other ways you can screw one up. She is filler, like a lot of the later books were filler. She exists purely for a romantic subplot. She perpetuates sexism. All of that is definitely part of her character.

But I do think sometimes the term "Mary Sue" gets attached to any female character that the fandom dislikes or who has too many abilities, and I think that that kinda devalues the meaning of the term by making it so broad that it doesn't actually tell you anything about the real issues with the character. You can apply the label to a character like Cassie, who does function like a Mary Sue at times, and the term can be used to give a valid criticism on problems with her portrayal. For Estrid though, the Mary Sue label just misses what actually is the problem with her.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

I think what I'm trying to say, and it isn't coming out well for whatever reason, is that the plot revolved around Estrid even though she really had nothing to do with it. And to be honest, that's what I think the definition of a Mary Sue is, not just one who is loved by everyone. I can think of a character who is loved by everyone and is not a Mary Sue, like idk, Fonzie? Though he turned into one later, because the show became entirely about him even though that wasn't the plot of the show.

So yeah, I guess I stand by the fact that Estrid is a Mary Sue. Being loved by everyone and being able to solve any problem/escape unscathed from any situation despite there being no logic or reason behind it (Cassie) or being good at a lot of stuff so you have something to do in the plot (Estrid) are all certainly symptoms of Mary Sues, and any one particular symptom does not necessarily mean the character is a Sue, but they're all symptoms because they are tools used to thrust a character in the focus of the story who really has no right or reason to be there. If book 38 were done well, it would have been about Ax. As it was done, we learn nothing more about Ax and are left with no real plot or character development at the end of the book. The book served Estrid as a character, in the form of screen time, ability, looks, and redemption in the end, rather than Estrid serving the book like she should have. A Mary Sue is not just a perfect princess, but a perfect princess, or Anti-Sue, or Villain Sue, who is thrust into the center of events without having a reason to be.

The twist that Ax was actually working for the Animorphs the whole time is CLOSE to being a Sue-subversion, which actually would have been a clever, genre-savvy twist on the whole Sue phenomenon (you THINK Ax is just the victim of a Sue, but he actually knew she was a Sue THE WHOLE TIME!) but it doesn't quite get there. He mourns her departure not because he lost an Andalite companion, a kindred spirit, but because he really did like her because she was so super speshul and awesome.

The more I talk about this book the more I hate it. Yuck.

[blue_rampion]

I never watched Happy Days (that is what Fonzie is from, right?) so I can't really comment on that particular example.

Obviously, we're working on different definitions here. I see a Mary Sue as being all about portrayal. Someone who is good at everything or has more focus than they need to might be a Sue, but they might not be. What makes a Sue a Sue is a how the narrative treats the Sue as if they are perfect, and whether other elements of the story are warped in pursuit of that. A Mary Sue is at root about an author not being able to let go of their own belief in the wonderfulness of their character. A Sue, therefore, is always portrayed by the narrative voice as something positive, whereas Estrid was presented negatively.

Done well, she could have been...well, perhaps not an interesting character, but the cause of some very interesting development for Ax. Ax's mix of attraction and dislike could have been fascinating to watch, and it would have been awesome to see him genuinely rethinking his own attitudes towards Andalite females. And I think this was meant to be Estrid's purpose. But...well. Execution counts for a lot.

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

If book 38 were done well, it would have been about Ax. As it was done, we learn nothing more about Ax and are left with no real plot or character development at the end of the book. The book served Estrid as a character, in the form of screen time, ability, looks, and redemption in the end, rather than Estrid serving the book like she should have. A Mary Sue is not just a perfect princess, but a perfect princess, or Anti-Sue, or Villain Sue, who is thrust into the center of events without having a reason to be.

....This is such an excellent point.

[rena-librarian.livejournal.com]

I remember having a pretty strong reaction to her--I was mad that she and Ax kissed as humans. I think it was because that if Ax was curious about females, it would've made more sense to me if he wanted to kiss Andalite-style (which, really? Hand to face? I hope their cheeks are an erogenous zone, then). I had a really hard time buying that he was really that curious about kissing with mouths "for science!" I think it would've gone down like...

ESTRID: That's...kinda pleasant. I guess? Maybe?
AX: You don't taste as good as food does. Humans are weird. Weeee-ird. Let's morph back to our regular bodies. Bod. Deeeeees. Deees.

But then maybe, like any other morph, instinct would've kicked in.

(Also that makes me wonder if rubbing faces cheek-to-cheek is to Andalite kisses as French kissing is to human kissing...yeah okay this is now my headcanon. *nods*)

As far as her being a Sue, she did strike me as unusually-well-gifted/abled/whatever, but she also struck me as the perfect example of a spoiled brat. So if a Sue has to be universally liked (in universe, and by the reader), then no, I guess she isn't.

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

ESTRID: That's...kinda pleasant. I guess? Maybe?
AX: You don't taste as good as food does. Humans are weird. Weeee-ird. Let's morph back to our regular bodies. Bod. Deeeeees. Deees.

Haha, chica you crack me up ^_^

[rena-librarian.livejournal.com]

=) I try.

[lisacharly.livejournal.com]

Your last sentence forced me to suddenly double over coughing in class to cover up for the fact that I was giggling hysterically.

[rena-librarian.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally agree! It's pheromones--biological chemistry, not emotional chemistry. =)

[almighty-patsy.livejournal.com]

"OH MY ELLIMIST! I AM SO LONELY! LET ME SMELL YOUR FUR!"
loling forever