I have many thoughts, but it took me a couple of days to write this, and then I didn't want to bury it under the Golden Globes liveblog, so
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Everytime I see "Author responds to review" these days, I cringe. A big part of me just assumes that it's not going to end well.
I have to admit I howled with laughter reading "Diary of an Author"; what really set me off were the 'screenshots' on the fifth page. Whoever faked those up deserves a round of applause.
Some great advice about how to take praise and criticism. I wonder if some of these authors that freak out believe that they can handle negative reviews only to find out waaay too late that nope, they can't handle it after all.
And I have agree 100% on the "Mary Sue label becoming meaningless" thing. I've spent the last few months talking with friends about just what we define a Mary Sue as. The end result kind of surprised us. We decided on this definition:
Mary Sue: A character that usurps the main characters in their own story. Everything else was more about how the Sue usurped the story, the unearthly/unique beauty, super-special skills, wealth, awesomeness-by-author were just the tools used by the Sue to become
( ... )
Whoever faked those up deserves a round of applause.
For real, those were totally amazing. I don't even know how they did that (this is not saying much).
You know, I started writing out a long explanation of why I thought a main character could be a Sue, but... honestly, your definition does a better job of fitting the original Mary Sue, who was the youngest whatever to ever be on the crew of the Enterprise, etc.--an original, theoretically minor character who totally usurped the story.
There might still be a whiff of the "usurping" quality for the New Girl in Town trope, though? Like Bella arriving in Forks, and suddenly all the boys lose their shit over her, and she is smarter than everyone else, beautiful to the more discerning eye, tasty, etc. Like, these people had perfectly normal, realistic lives, and then ~*BELLA*~ rode in on the back of a teenage wish fulfillment fantasy? Maybe that's why it feels like Mary Sue fanfic without actually fitting the definition.
...your definition does a better job of fitting the original Mary Sue
That was our conclusion too. From what I seem to remember, for a long time it was a fanfiction-exclusive term that people only used on original fanfiction characters. Then you started seeing the "Is Your OC a Sue" 'quizzes' popping up, which lead to "traits of a Mary Sue" debates and discussions; all of which seemed to focus on physical/mental traits i.e. beauty, skills, wealth, intelligence etc. People focused on those traits to the point that they often never went beyond them, they never striped the them away to find a defining core definition.
Then people started to notice published fiction characters that had similar traits. Naturally they started talking about how Whoever Girl is like a Sue, with her prettiness, and popularity and the way she just gets all the attention etc. Others agreed, but over time the 'like' part got dropped. That lead to an increased amount of the vagueness of an already nebulous term. Thus was born the [insert subtype here] Sues
( ... )
I have to admit I howled with laughter reading "Diary of an Author"; what really set me off were the 'screenshots' on the fifth page. Whoever faked those up deserves a round of applause.
Some great advice about how to take praise and criticism. I wonder if some of these authors that freak out believe that they can handle negative reviews only to find out waaay too late that nope, they can't handle it after all.
And I have agree 100% on the "Mary Sue label becoming meaningless" thing. I've spent the last few months talking with friends about just what we define a Mary Sue as. The end result kind of surprised us. We decided on this definition:
Mary Sue: A character that usurps the main characters in their own story. Everything else was more about how the Sue usurped the story, the unearthly/unique beauty, super-special skills, wealth, awesomeness-by-author were just the tools used by the Sue to become ( ... )
Reply
For real, those were totally amazing. I don't even know how they did that (this is not saying much).
You know, I started writing out a long explanation of why I thought a main character could be a Sue, but... honestly, your definition does a better job of fitting the original Mary Sue, who was the youngest whatever to ever be on the crew of the Enterprise, etc.--an original, theoretically minor character who totally usurped the story.
There might still be a whiff of the "usurping" quality for the New Girl in Town trope, though? Like Bella arriving in Forks, and suddenly all the boys lose their shit over her, and she is smarter than everyone else, beautiful to the more discerning eye, tasty, etc. Like, these people had perfectly normal, realistic lives, and then ~*BELLA*~ rode in on the back of a teenage wish fulfillment fantasy? Maybe that's why it feels like Mary Sue fanfic without actually fitting the definition.
Reply
That was our conclusion too. From what I seem to remember, for a long time it was a fanfiction-exclusive term that people only used on original fanfiction characters. Then you started seeing the "Is Your OC a Sue" 'quizzes' popping up, which lead to "traits of a Mary Sue" debates and discussions; all of which seemed to focus on physical/mental traits i.e. beauty, skills, wealth, intelligence etc. People focused on those traits to the point that they often never went beyond them, they never striped the them away to find a defining core definition.
Then people started to notice published fiction characters that had similar traits. Naturally they started talking about how Whoever Girl is like a Sue, with her prettiness, and popularity and the way she just gets all the attention etc. Others agreed, but over time the 'like' part got dropped. That lead to an increased amount of the vagueness of an already nebulous term. Thus was born the [insert subtype here] Sues ( ... )
Reply
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