Mary Sue: Bad Arguement
I had a dream last night, though some fanfic writers might consider it a nightmare. It deals with the fact that I dealt with someone that at times gets dubbed, a fan brat, but as one of my friends pointed out, that isn’t an appropriate term.
On one hand, you can call the cannon buffs who go overboard, fan brats, but it becomes an oxymoron of sorts, when referring to someone who says that the quality of their fanfiction doesn’t matter. A true fan, cares about quality, and the fact that it is someone else’s work they are playing in.
But anyways, I have a habit of going back, and checking on younger writers from time to time, especially when I have reviews for their stories left over. I typically don’t review twice, unless I feel that I am helping the author, I feel they have in fact improved. This is rare though, that I am able to do this.
So, I happen to be reading one of her openings, either for the first chapter, or a new one, and I read something like this. “Yemi Hikari pointed out that my character is a Mary Sue. Thanks to S-B and A, I know that she isn’t.” I use S-B and A, because that was what I remembered of their names, when I woke up.
So, I flip over to read the reviews from these people. S-B said “Mary Sue is just an insult”, and the other person said, “I don’t think that she is a Mary Sue.” I had a good laugh, and was already figuring out in my mind, how I would have responded, had not the writer already proven that she didn’t like to only listen to what she wanted to hear.
While S-B was right about the term Mary Sue being used as an insult., the people who do so, abuse the use of the term. Mary Sue is actually a literally device used to describe a weakness in an author in characterization and/or plot element believability. When a person takes the time, to point out how a character is a Mary Sue, that isn’t an insult.
As for what A said, they unfortunately based their proof that the character wasn’t a Mary Sue on opinion, while I based my calling of the character based on literary examination. The second is going to always be more reliable, in classifying or declassifying a character as a Mary Sue.
Yes… this person would have been someone, who would have chosen to read both of those comments, as proof that her character wasn’t a Mary Sue. She was the type, who, even though I pointed out plenty of arguments that would have contradicted what she told me, that she would still make arguments after the fact, that my ideas didn’t work.