Comments | cupiscent: A character named Sue

cupiscent

A character named Sue

Oct 12, 2011 11:12

Seanan McGuire has made an excellent post about the misuse of the term Mary Sue. It really is an excellent post, thoughtful and insightful and calling out some issues that people really need to pay more attention to because they're those issues that just slide by insidiously, sucking all the while. Heaps of things about unconscious use of ( Read more... )

dissection kit

Comments 23

maggiebloome October 12 2011, 07:43:35 UTC

Actually my favourite definition of Mary Sue comes from the guy who writes Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I don't think he was talking about Mary Sues specifically when he said this, but he basically said "you can't give Frodo the Millennium Falcon if you don't give Sauron the Death Star." That is, the main character's strengths and weaknesses should tie into the challenges and opportunities they face, and their competence level should be approximately the same as their enemies - the trials your plot presents them should be genuinely challenging. I think what I recognise as a Mary Sue is a character whose author thought, well, how can I fix all these bad things in the story - and gave the character the ability to fix stuff by, basically, upgrading her to a higher level than the rest of the story. It might be what you'd want to happen if you WERE in the story, but it's just not very interesting to read.

cupiscent October 12 2011, 21:14:00 UTC

That is an excellent definition. Yes. It's when the character is a level too high for the monsters being generated, and why is the game-master running it this way? (Even as a computer game, that's only interesting if you're finding really great stuff when you effortlessly carve your way through obstacles.)

dharma_slut October 12 2011, 21:02:33 UTC

you can't give Frodo the Millennium Falcon if you don't give Sauron the Death Star."

Ah,yeah. And you can't give "Froda, the woman who bore the ring to Mount Doom" a Millennium Falcon because... she doesn't exist.Women don't exist in LOTR, in any meaningful way ( ... )

cupiscent October 12 2011, 21:37:02 UTC

I've been thinking around in circles about this comment - so thank you for bringing me these really interesting thoughts ( ... )

dharma_slut October 12 2011, 21:54:19 UTC

Okay, I just gotta ask:

How would you use "Mary Sue" "correctly?" What weight and connotation would you assume the listener was aware of?

this is a serious and lexicological question, honest.

cupiscent October 12 2011, 23:25:44 UTC

I don't really have a potted definition that I can slap down here. It is very fuzzy. I like maggiebloome's litmus-test definition above. I don't like the inference in Seanan McGuire's post that Mary-Sue only exists in fanfic (or the kneejerk fandom definition that all non-canon [female] characters in fanfic are Mary Sues). I might say something like: Mary-Sue is a highly unbalanced central character who does not serve the story; the story serves her. To a certain extent, yes, I agree with Ms Mcguire's definition: Mary-Sue breaks the story. I just don't agree with the unspoken annotation that she can only break the story if it isn't hers.

I was thinking about this further on my walk to work, and I guess part of my thing here - which I didn't phrase brilliantly in the first place, I admit - is "why are we letting the detractors define the terms?" There seems to be a "well, if you're going to define Mary Sue like that [as a personally-defined "too something" female protagonist], then we think Mary Sue is awesome!" vibe, and I don't understand why ( ... )

Thread 21