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ljash!!!
I've been meaning to update for several days and just keep....what? Oh, getting distracted. I've been writing a lot elsewhere, though, and this weekend it really made me wonder about something.
Warning: this whole discussion could demonstrate a total lack of self-awareness on my part, but here we go.
I've been writing this thing, and there's this one secondary character I know is the one that's "me" for what that's worth. Not completely, obviously, but he's just the character who would be me. So I've been thinking about all the characters and trying to, like, get to know them by asking them questions interview style (which sounds unbearably poseur-ish when I write it down). So it was cool because when I got to this character I saw things about other characters that I didn't know based on how he saw them. Suddenly I was like, "Hey, J is a lot like my friend J and P is a little like S...” But the main thing was, this would be my Mary Sue, if you define Mary Sue as just by author insertion. And Mary Sues are so often characterized by having super powers and everyone loves them and they have a tragic past and they are absolutely beautiful. So often when somebody is identifying with that character, they become right. They take over the story.
Okay, so I'm not 14 and being in the fandom I naturally know not to give my Mary Sue/Gary Stu eyes like sapphires, raven black hair with violet highlights, porcelain skin and sculpted muscles that making him the sexiest ten-year-old on the playground. But still, when I was asking this character questions it was more embarrassing than anything. Going in I'd assumed that being me he'd be the most reasonable character, and he does seem that way. But the poor kid just seems to have been saddled with all of my issues. And it made me think aback on another character, the first thing I gave to my agent, and I didn't even really think of her as a Mary Sue, but she was obviously the "me" character in that piece and being perfect was not her problem. Her problem was she seemed to have these really annoying faults--at least to the agent. It was kind of funny, actually. The agent was just like, "What's wrong with her? Why does she keep doing this?" and I thought what she was doing was being this very reasonable human being. That was a little humiliating. So there we go...I think I'm making her right and she seems wrong.
Do people go one way or the other? Because really when I think of the few characters I've written where I would say they were more "me" than another character they seemed to have a real problem in becoming non-entities--that was the problem with that problem too, in a way. She kept seeing everybody else's pov. This character has a totally different set of issues, and I don't know how apparent they will be, since he's not a main character. It's just struck me that perhaps I just have a personality that produces a very different Mary Sue than the one commonly seen. Originally there was this girl character that I thought was more like me, and then I realized she needed to be the complete opposite. It's kind of sad, really. Woe to the character that is my Mary Sue!
ljash!!!I've been meaning to update for several days and just keep....what? Oh, getting distracted. I've been writing a lot elsewhere, though, and this weekend it really made me wonder about something.
Warning: this whole discussion could demonstrate a total lack of self-awareness on my part, but here we go.
I've been writing this thing, and there's this one secondary character I know is the one that's "me" for what that's worth. Not completely, obviously, but he's just the character who would be me. So I've been thinking about all the characters and trying to, like, get to know them by asking them questions interview style (which sounds unbearably poseur-ish when I write it down). So it was cool because when I got to this character I saw things about other characters that I didn't know based on how he saw them. Suddenly I was like, "Hey, J is a lot like my friend J and P is a little like S...” But the main thing was, this would be my Mary Sue, if you define Mary Sue as just by author insertion. And Mary Sues are so often characterized by having super powers and everyone loves them and they have a tragic past and they are absolutely beautiful. So often when somebody is identifying with that character, they become right. They take over the story.
Okay, so I'm not 14 and being in the fandom I naturally know not to give my Mary Sue/Gary Stu eyes like sapphires, raven black hair with violet highlights, porcelain skin and sculpted muscles that making him the sexiest ten-year-old on the playground. But still, when I was asking this character questions it was more embarrassing than anything. Going in I'd assumed that being me he'd be the most reasonable character, and he does seem that way. But the poor kid just seems to have been saddled with all of my issues. And it made me think aback on another character, the first thing I gave to my agent, and I didn't even really think of her as a Mary Sue, but she was obviously the "me" character in that piece and being perfect was not her problem. Her problem was she seemed to have these really annoying faults--at least to the agent. It was kind of funny, actually. The agent was just like, "What's wrong with her? Why does she keep doing this?" and I thought what she was doing was being this very reasonable human being. That was a little humiliating. So there we go...I think I'm making her right and she seems wrong.
Do people go one way or the other? Because really when I think of the few characters I've written where I would say they were more "me" than another character they seemed to have a real problem in becoming non-entities--that was the problem with that problem too, in a way. She kept seeing everybody else's pov. This character has a totally different set of issues, and I don't know how apparent they will be, since he's not a main character. It's just struck me that perhaps I just have a personality that produces a very different Mary Sue than the one commonly seen. Originally there was this girl character that I thought was more like me, and then I realized she needed to be the complete opposite. It's kind of sad, really. Woe to the character that is my Mary Sue!
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I don't know if any of these things would come out in the story with this character, since this would mostly be backstory, but hopefully it will make his interactions with other characters more interesting. Heh--I've been reading the Q&A's with the NA players recently and that really brings it home how important that is. Everything adds that little shade to the character, even if the audience never knows where it comes from.
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The problems arise when those issues aren’t really part of the story you’re supposed to be telling, and they just take over and distract from everything else.
Um, I hope you don’t mind I’ve friended you. I’ve been lurking on your journal for quite a while now, and your essays and discussions are always very interesting.
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And yes, I definitely think that's a good point. It's one of those things where just because it's interesting to you doesn't make it a story.
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As to your Original Character's backstory:
Go ahead with it.
You never know what will come of it. My own Original Character turned out to have such a cool, interesting backstory that I'm in the process of taking her out of ficworld and writing her own, original story. I knew I had a story cooking somewhere, I just couldn't find it until I went back into my nearly forgotton fic and re-read a chapter in which she retells something that happened years prior to her being inserted into fanfic. And quite honestly it's more interesting than what happened to her after she arrived in weird-world.
Is she a Sue? Maybe but I don't think so. Self insertion? Maybe a bit but I'll tell you if I met her on the street she'd scare the crap out of me.
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The Mary Sue of your sister sounds like quite a character though...
(Btw, I have just ordered Autumn Term and can't wait till it arrives.)
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This to say, Mary Sue simply defined as "self-insertion" (of varying degree) without the... mind-boggling beauty and ass kicking and world-saving and righteous punishing, is not necessarily bad. In fact, if you define Mary Sue as a character with something of yourself (be it your own traits or a theme dear to you) every character is one. If you define her as a brilliant self-insertion, an interesting character no matter where she comes from, then she's perfectly okay. Unsuspectable, even! Who knows how many MS we've read in unsuspectable piece of literature and never recognised as such because the writing was subtle enough? Sublety is the key to good writing.
(I may be biased because I am aware of having Mary Sues in the sense I described above. I have people who are me. They just tend to be very ugly unpleasant people because I love all the ugly part of myself and that's what I want to say right now in my writing. The people who read aren't so wooed, so no worries. Whipping myself seems like a regular hobby of mine, too.)
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I think the bad Mary Sue can be a sort of creeping thing, where you realize that in any situation she's going to turn out to be right or to look good. I still remember how much I loved reading that article about Madeleine L'Engle and hearing how her editor told her that the main character of the Archer series was just insufferable the way she was always right and everyone else was always wrong. She changed it, but it was hysterical to think of a famous writer creating what sounded like a Mary Sue straight out of ff.net!
But I'm sure otoh literature is filled with really interesting negative Mary Sues like you describe, where someone is sort of celebrating the horrible parts of themselves.
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In relation to your characters being all parts of yourself and parts of yourself being naturally dark, this is what boggles me about JKR and Umbridge. No, really, it's not even an hyperbole, I can't wrap my head around it. (I know, I know. I can't pass an occasion to mock Rowling these days. Petty, petty! My next character's going to be totally petty. Although I write enough Draco already.)
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I know this author who writes a het fic with a character that is an obvious insertion of her, who has an affair with Draco Malfoy. I know this sounds like the ultimate 14-year-old Mary Sue thing to write EVER, but the thing is, it's not exactly like it.
For starters, the character is not pretty. It's average-looking, brunette-ish thing, but nothing more than that. (unlike the author who's blond and very cute) Moreover, the character is deliberately flawed in many ways. So, by the way, is Malfoy. They both have an unhealthy fixation for one another in the "you're making me so angry and I LOVE it" way. They have lots of ups and downs in their relationship, which is really not even established (but it's clear that no one would like to stay with those two basket-cases for long ;)). I just wonder whether it's a new type of Mary Sue, Crazy Sue or something. :)
I personally think that those kinds of characters ARE real Mary Sues, much like the way JKR writes her Hermione. They're not always good looking, nor perfect. But yes, they are author insertion Mary Sues. So that's my cague answer, I think. :/
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And I also agree about Hermione--I think part of the reason I always do like to think of Hermione as a bit of a Mary Sue is to point out how an author can have an author insertion that isn't a terrible character. And also it's just always so interesting to see what someone with imagination comes up with for their insertion chracter--like a girl who is blond and very cute having an alter ego who is plain and obnoxious, you know? There's always something so fabulous about somebody realizing, "Wait, that's you? How could that be you?"
In fact, I have a friend who has this joke about finding "Who's inside you?" It started when she was talking with some people about Elmo on Sesame Street, who's played by a large black man. So it's always funny to think about little pink Elmo having "inside him" this grown man. So they started asking people about the random types that were inside people--one person, for instance, had a sister who was a surgeon but inside her she swore was a heavy metal headbanger. My boss, we feel, has inside her a 14-year-old cool girl. Things like that.
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I always considered a Mary Sue to be not only putting yourself into the story, but putting some extreme (usually idealized) version of yourself in, where the Mary Sue character starts to derail all the rest of the story. Not just that you can't get interested because of all this blather about the Mary Sue but that she/he honestly disrupts the plotline and makes the other canon characters act in an unbelievable way.
I consider it to be kind of a similar phenomenon to something I see in published fiction a lot, which is when an author falls in love with their character. Suddenly this character can do no wrong, they're incredibly cool at every turn and the author must tell us why, and everything about the character must be seen as good. This usually kills a book--and it's usually pretty easy to see just by reading the one book. There are very few exceptions.
In high school we read this short story by woody allen (I cannot remember the name of it) where there's this guy, Percy the magician, who has a magic box. If he puts you into the box, you go into the book. (Jasper Fforde has a whole series of books that also have this concept but I hadn't read those then.) You literally put yourself into the book. In class we had to write a short story where we did this. I remembered this, years later. The first fanfic I ever wrote (having no idea that fanfic existed) was to write a percy's box story. The surprising thing is that while I went in because I was heartbroken by the ending of a book and I really wanted to show up and fix everything, I found that when I was writing it I was overwhelmed and I was writing my character as tongue-tied and clumsy and not doing everything right. Because it really felt like I was there, and so I was intimidated.
That was perhaps mildly insane but it contributed to my thinking about Mary Sues. Some writing is like a dream, where the story takes prescedence and you let the characters be themselves, even if they get out of hand. Some writing is like a fantasy, where you really want something to happen so you force it into being, tweaking things so that everything comes out just like you want. Writing that is fantasy tends to be writing for yourself. Only you are likely to like it. That's how I think Mary Sues go, and those books where the author has totally fallen for the character and is simply writing a personal fantasy about it.
So this marysueish character of yours may have all your faults and may be you--but the question is whether you can still treat her (or was it him?) like a real character, or whether you start rooting for that character or wanting the whole story to be about him. If it's just you, in a story... the question is whether you can be a good enough writer (or detatched enough, or insane enough, or however you want to say it) to still write a good story and not let your protectiveness or narcissism of the character that is you get in the way.
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I think you can probably get to where you balance fantasy and dream, where you can allow yourself one special idea, like a superpower, but then no more, so that you're honestly dealing with the consequences. Otherwise, you're right, even if the character didn't start out as a Mary Sue the story just gets annoying. It's like listening to people in fandom argue and defend characters where it's too personal. Anything the character does that's not perfect is somebody else's fault or the only thing he could do, while other characters are always in the wrong.
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Oh, yes! This is an excellent point, one of the few things I brought with me from my creative writing class. First rule of good characterization: never have too much sympathy for your characters.
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But reading some of the comments above, I must say that by just having the author-inserted character flawed and human does not necessarily constitute a good portrayal... IMO it's more important that the MS receives reasonable, realistic treatments from both the author and all the characters s/he interacts with. Say if I write a mediocre-looking girl with not the most lovable personality traits, yet somehow every boy around her sees beyond her humble appearance and falls in love with her.. this is most likely when I throw the thing out of the window hadn't I written it myself. To me a flawed MS who everyone (at least the protagonists) thinks well of despite all his/her unlikeable traits is much worse than a perfect MS who receives the same favorable treatment, I dunno probably because I think in the earlier case the author is "cheating" me into reading their personal fantasy!
So what I would consider the best MS is one who the author desplays no favoritism towards.. in that sense neither Harry nor Hermione quite 'qualifies', as both of them have moments in the story that makes me go, "Yeah right, like that is gonna happen if they weren't the author's beloved surrogates!"
Going on a tangent- I remember reading one of my favorite mangaka (manga author)'s interview, where he said that a minor character who no main characters paid much attention to (rightfully so since she was such an dork), was actually just like him in his school days. And I find it so cool that instead of showering his fictional surrogate with goodies he never had in real life, he chose to relive his experience as a dork exactly as it was on the pages :P
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In fact, I've noticed that the word "flaw" in itself is kind of interesting in fandom, because we all say we want flawed characters and that we like the characters because they are flawed, but that doesn't always mean we want to see the flaws with all their...flaws.:-) Like a good example I always feel is the very obvious one with Hermione: she's not pretty, she has bushy hair and buckteeth. But then she's the belle of the ball, so really she is. Or another interesting thing in
Heh. Actually, one of my pet peeves in fanfic is where characters are constantly telling Harry his glasses are smudged because it's just part of his general messiness not to notice. It always makes me wonder if these people wear glasses at all. Because yeah, you can get to the end of the day without noticing your glasses are getting more and more dirty, but a smudge or a fingerprint is literally right in front of your eyes. It's not a fashion thing, it's just annoying.
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Oh definitely. In fact, I can't think of a single character who everyone seems to like despite of/for their flaws.
I mean, you get people who say 'I like Draco because he's bratty' or 'I love Harry because of his CAPSLOCK, not despite it!' but then you can say:
'So do you like it when say, Draco's racist or Harry's angry? Or when Draco's cowardly or Harry's bullying?'
And they kind of edge round it: 'Well, I don't think he is, actually!'
Like...I love them for their flaws, but not those particular ones.
Some other, nicer ones!
It's similiar to what you and, I think (?) Mistful were discussing re: Narnia - Lucy's one 'big' mistake or flaw is being too humble to speak out regarding Aslan.
But that's not really a flaw. It's a disguised virtue - modesty.
It's certainly not comparable with say, Edmund's betrayal.
Like Harry's flaw is perhaps his temper, but he's defending the people he loves mainly, so it's another virtue disguised as a flaw.
Not as repulsive to people as say, Draco's whining.
Or Dumbledore. The God figure, who never makes a mistake until OotP (or so the text seems to be implying. Certainly, Dumbledore is never questioned by either characters nor the omnipotent narrator until then.)
And that mistake is another one quoted by domestic abusers (they seem to be linked to this fandom in my head at present! Perhaps I can overuse the metaphor and turn it into a new Godwin's Law?) -
"I only hurt you because I love you so much!"
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Anyway, I wouldn't say I identified myself with them when I wrote them - it was more that I was trying to described how I wanted to be at that time. I've always hated my own name, so I gave her a 'beautiful' name - I hated my dark hair, so I made her hair blond, I didn't have a pretty dress, so I called the fic 'The Pink Dress', the boy I liked at that time ignored me, so I made Gary Stu fall in love with her. She was everything I wasn't, and she had everything I didn't. In a way, I was trying to transmit my fantasy on her and her prince.
Why did I make her die in the end? It's not because I hate happy endings; in fact, you may have noticed I like them quite a lot. I made her die because, thanks God, although I've always tried to escape the reality, I've always been aware of the fact that reality and fantasy are two different things. I made her die because I knew, subconsciously, that she wasn't real and never will be, and that no matter what I do, I'll never be quite as she was.
So no, my Mary Sue wasn't based on me - she was totally the opposite. But yes, I compared her to me and it was my own personality and wishes that made me create her. Does this make any sense? *stares*
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