Mary Sue - the thread.
POSTED BY: AgentRouka
UPDATED: Monday, April 2, 2007 19:42
VIEWED: 24098
PAGE 3 of 9
I think River was a great character for driving a story-line. Quite apart from the fact that we do not know what her ultimate purpose was to be, or even if whatever process was in progress was completed, we now have someone on the verge of adulthood. I like your take on the conflict between the gentle little dancer and the weapon (I have used something similar myself.) And there is the fun part about mind-reading - how much can she read? In what depth? And does she know what she is reading? There are things that she will not have come across - can you visualise or process things you don't have experience of? The weight of a dead world nearly broke her mind, and I think it is possible that until they actually landed on the planet and saw the bodies, she still had a deep fear that she was imagining it all.
Anyhow, that is rather wandering off the original MS discussion. I wrote an OC, because I wanted to put the Wash point of view, the 'let's not kill everybody in the room' voice, and I was unsure of my ability to write Wash. And I wrote an older female OC because I could to some extent think what would I do in a situation - given that I had a background and upbringing consistent with the 'Verse as it stands. That I think is a MS downfall - present-day personality in an already fully-realized and different reality.
In my own defence, I have also written fic from multiple first-person viewpoint, male, female and all ages. Sometimes from the view of aliens, wizards and anthropomorphic personifications, too. I've built up a whole world of my own to write in, which I have had since the age of ten or so. (I still maintain that giving a seven-year-old 'The Hobbit' to read does not affect their development...)
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Quote:
Originally posted by SpaceAnJL:
I still maintain that giving a seven-year-old 'The Hobbit' to read does not affect their development...
Hey, I was five. The younger the merrier.
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Not trying, probably writing one anyway. Sigh. Hey, Joss I ain't.
Trying to back my OC off and dig into the canon characters which are much harder for me because if I get it wrong *everyone* will know.
(But I LIKE my character.)
Thanks for the laugh. I tried to picure a Simon orgasm face and got the giggles. Human facial expression at its most uninhibited can be amusing.
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The whole issue of Mary Sue is something that I inadvertently dealt with in my writing fanfics for this site.
For my first real story of my own, I decided to incorporate my experience as a wedding videographer in telling the story of Simon and Kaylee's wedding. I'm a big S/K shipper, but I always like to approach it from a different angle. I find most of these stories are fluffy "I love you Simon/Kaylee, let's fuck each other's brains out" stories, which after a while get's incredibly boring. So I decided to tell the story of their nuptuals from an outsiders P.O.V., which lead to the creation of Shooter. Now, at the time, I basically wrote Shooter as myself, more or less. And many of the experinces and emotions I felt as a wedding videographer (especially during wedding where I actually knew the people there and grew up with them), I decided to incorporate into the story in order to make it more emotionally true. So at the time, me having Shooter be a friend of a cousin of Kaylee's whom Kaylee would visit during the summer when they were kids didn't seem to be a big deal at the time. But when I actually read up on Mary Sue fanfics and all that, I immediately went "OH GOD, I just commited the biggest sin of any fanfic writer."
But after talking to misskitten, she calmed me down and explained that THE SERENITY GIG was really an anti-Mary Sue story. That the character of Shooter (ie. myself) doesn't fuck Kaylee, but is there to document her first day of unavailability. Which was never really my intention for the character anyways. When I brought him back in YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, I made him merely the catalyst of the whole story, since he's a guy who can cross between the Core and Rim worlds with ease. I always thought of him as being a witness. That his whole purpose is to be the physical incarnate of the Heisenberg principle. That by watching something, he'd inadvertently change the outcome of it. Also, I imagined him as kind of a daredevil cameraman/director in the vein of Werner Herzog or Orson Welles. Whenever on FIREFLY or SERENITY when you saw the "hand held" shots of the ships in outer space or the Reaver battles or whatever, I always thought that Shooter would be the person filming that.
And when I finish YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, I have an idea for a stand alone story about one of his adventures, involving an Alliance battle cruiser, Reavers and a rocket jet pack, ala THE ROCKETEER.
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"I have no reason to believe you and every reason not to."
"Why's that?"
"You work in television."
STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP
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Yeah, but the thing is, though she is a plot device, she also has like...actual depth to her. She doesn't really overcome her tragic flaws, she more just uses them as an excuse to fuck with people. She does have the whole dying for a friend thing which is slightly Mary Sue(ish) but only a couple people on board actually like her. So I'm large with the torn.
I love the Castro, because if somebody grabs my ass, I know they're picking my pocket.
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Ugg... I ran across a Mary-Sun in the BSR today, and I'm reminded why I don't really like them most of the time. "OC is dating Mal and has all this talents and look she was injured and she's pivotal to the overarcing politics of the show..."
OCs are just such a fine line.
And really... there are some Mary Sue stories that I read and go, "well, s/he was a Mary Sue, but the story was great, I really felt for the characters, so its okay..."
But, well, so little of fanfiction is actually well written. I am such a fanfic snob, though, so don't listen to me...
Arcadia (aka Greyfable and/or Katie)
www.stillflying.net -- picking up Firefly were Joss left off. We will hold 'til he gets back.
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Here is a Mary-Sue test which allows an author to tell if the character has gone over the line for Sueness.
http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
And another for more original fiction
http://www.onlyfiction.net/marysue.html
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Ooh, I enjoyed that test. Definately highlighted some of the major wince-worthy traps!
In reference to the previous discussion I wen't through putting River's stats. She came out with a score of 48 which is very high!
I quote:
Fanfiction authors, you might just want to start over. Role-players and original fiction authors, at this point your characters are likely to provoke eye-rolling and exclaimations of "yeah, right!" from your readers. (Well, at least from me.)
I guess the Great God Joss can get away with things the rest of us mere mortals would be truely aweful at!
___________________
Hissssssssss!
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I put a couple of my OCs through the test and they scored fairly highly (38 and 42), prompting worries from Elly. I then ran a few more canon characters in the similar genres in similar story situations through it... and they all scored a lot higher. I think that part of the problem is that SF, fantasy, cyberpunk and urban fantasy fiction protagonists are automatically skewed up due to the demands of the genre. A score of 48 compares very favourably, BTW, with Mercedes Lackey's Vanyel Ashkevron (66). All is relative, though. I would reckon that China Mieville's Bellis Coldwine would have a much lower score, and I count Mieville as the best writer working in Britain today.
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I put through one of my original characters that I was a bit worried about, and got a 26. 
22-28
Some definite Sue-like tendancies here. Some polishing is most likely in order to put original fiction and RPG characters back into the balance, especially if Kirking is involved. Fanfiction characters should definitely have some work done.
All right - anyone who's read Easy Tickets and thought Jase was marty sue-ish, drop me a PM! And don't be shy - honest criticism I like!! (But don't post here, I don't want to take over the thread.)
But I tested another one and got a 4! Yay for Ray!
0-15 Points
Your character should be fine at this level.
Good test!
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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.
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