Funny
I think I live in a funny world sometimes.
On Wednesday night I went to see Lev Grossman talk about The Magician King.
At some point a member of the audience asked why Quentin, the main character, wasn't really all that good at anything.
Grossman's answer included a digression into the notion of the Mary Sue / Gary Stu problem and how he didn't want his character to be the bestest/youngest/most selfless person ever.
At this time, the woman next to me leaned over to her husband and whispered, "I've never heard of such a thing. He's just messing with us. He's making it up."
Her husband agreed.
But I couldn't help but whisper back, "Oh no, it's a thing. It really is. Try tvtropes.org."
Now I know that tvtropes is not necessarily the best place to send someone for Mary Sue information, but it is rather enjoyably like pushing someone down the rabbit hole.
Only now am I starting to look back at the delicious strangeness of it all. I live in a world where a Mary Sue is a thing, a thing that I know something about, a specialized language that I can more or less speak.
How wonderfully odd.
On Wednesday night I went to see Lev Grossman talk about The Magician King.
At some point a member of the audience asked why Quentin, the main character, wasn't really all that good at anything.
Grossman's answer included a digression into the notion of the Mary Sue / Gary Stu problem and how he didn't want his character to be the bestest/youngest/most selfless person ever.
At this time, the woman next to me leaned over to her husband and whispered, "I've never heard of such a thing. He's just messing with us. He's making it up."
Her husband agreed.
But I couldn't help but whisper back, "Oh no, it's a thing. It really is. Try tvtropes.org."
Now I know that tvtropes is not necessarily the best place to send someone for Mary Sue information, but it is rather enjoyably like pushing someone down the rabbit hole.
Only now am I starting to look back at the delicious strangeness of it all. I live in a world where a Mary Sue is a thing, a thing that I know something about, a specialized language that I can more or less speak.
How wonderfully odd.