Sure, I've heard that ten percent of all fan fic written is actually pretty good but I don't want to have to sift through the other ninety percent of sick, disgusting crap to find it.
You like video games right? Now pick say 20 video games totally at random. I mean really at random completely across the who meta-score scale. I'll have a go:
Nobunaga no Yabou: Tendou
The History Channel: Civil War ? A Nation Divided
College Hoops 2K8
Planet 51
Tayutama: Kiss on my Deity
Fable II
Rock Band 3
Eragon
NCAA Football 08
Black College Football: The Xperience
I assure you this list was entirely at random (spun scroll wheel on list and typed down where the cursor landed) and considering all of those games I'd only ever possibly on my own volition play is Fable II but I don't consider that to be that great a game.
You can do the same thing with movies, books, music, TV shows. 90% of all that is produced will - to any given individual - be utter crap that you couldn't pay them to watch/listen to. And it's a zero sum game, another person may like what another person finds crap, yet not vica versa.
The thing is it is not that hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I especially like how they wheeled out the white knight bullshit in defence of The Girl Who Lived, one of the most unashamedly sexist piles of dross ever committed to hard drive. It's not quite as bad as Hogwarts Exposed, which would be my answer to the thread question, but it comes close. And at least HE doesn't actually plagiarise the books. It features oversexed underage nudists (like TGWL) and also paedophilia, ephebophilia, rape, torture and bodily functions, all stretched out over 750,000 words of some of the worst writing ever.
VaudevillianVeteran said:
michiehoward said:
My Immortal -- I read it, then found this.
http://www.youtube.com/user/szaleniec1000
Well you snipped out the response proves your wrong straight from the outset. As No-one has heard of:
-Captain Kirk
-Luke Skywalker
-James Bond
-Indiana Jones
-Han Solo
-Fucking Batman
... be ever called a "Marty Sue".
Or "Larry Sue" or "Garry stu" Really, there is no agreement of the male equivalent. And you know why? BECAUSE THESE MALE LABELS ARE NEVER USED! No one even recognises the label "Marty Sue"! There is no label for over-idealised author insertions when they are male because it is ACCEPTED!
The truth is it is sexist bigots simply make up that the idea that it's all fair in these labelling just concocting a male equivalent with full knowledge it isn't used. If you start talking about how James Bond in a Matry Sue and #1 people won't know what you are talking about and #2 once they figure out you mean this male character a hyper-idealised author-insertion they'll say;
"yeah, well Batman/Bond/Indy is supposed to be a total badass! Why are you trying to make such a cool character so sucky?"
Even IF such male characters were criticised to the same extent as female characters are with the Mary Sue label, TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT! Authors should be perfectly allowed to write idealised characters, even if female, they don't HAVE to have flaws, they just have to be INTERESTING!
We need more awesome female characters in fan-fic and everywhere.
The problem now is the fear of the unfair Mary Sue label is only people who break ALL the rules (the important rules like 'don't explain jokes') break the Mary Sue "rule" and female authors are genuinely afraid of writing female characters for fear of them being assassinated with the Mary Sue label.
If so, I see what you mean. Though the story itself didn't disturb me half as much as the idea that some creep out there decided to rewrite the WHOLE DAMN HARRY POTTER SERIES to feature an underaged lesbian nymphomaniac Mary Sue as a protagonist. And actually thought it was a good idea to POST IT ONLINE!
Question: why does this Mary Sue label exist solely for female characters?
Answer: Sexist bigotry
Males can be the centre of attention and have implausible importance and talents (best quiddich player ever! World saviour still in school) idealized and lacking noteworthy flaws, the primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy. Doesn't that exactly describe Harry Potter? But for a woman character to be like that she gets labelled a Mary Sue.
"HOW FUCKING DARE they even THINK or writing a WOMAN of inflated importance Ha... HA! Surely she must have a fatal womanly flaw"[/sarc]
The male equivalent of Mary Sue is SO UNDERUSED there has been zero consensus on what the male-equivalent should be called. Fan-fic is utterly full of over-idealized male characters without any flaws as the most-pure wish fulfilment fantasies yet the reason the Mary Sue label resonates so much is pure misogynistic sexism.
Yeah it was bad idea to put it online, a place infested the woman-hating basement trolls who prattle on "get back in the kitchen" jokes for all eternity. It was a bad idea to put it online ONLY in the same sense as a woman speaking on Xbox Live is a bad idea, how it draws the attention of sexist bigots and hypocritical lecherous perverts. The problem is not with the work or the woman or mary sues, THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE INTERNET!
If the character is badly written, then just say they are badly written. If it is cliche'd then say so. But DO NOT use these sexist labels that act like it is something so unacceptable for a female to be idealized.
Just stop and think about MALE characters of established fictions:
-Captain Kirk
-Luke Skywalker
-James Bond
-Indiana Jones
-Han Solo
-Fucking Batman
Are these men not idealised like all hell? James Bond is the most obvious idealised proxy for Ian Fleming yet the character is NEVER panned for that reason! The most criticism there have been for various incarnations of Bond over the years is that occasionally he is not perfect enough, that on extremely rare occasions he might hint at some sort of weakness or flaw. Its for labels like these that modern fiction has such a critical lack of compelling heroines.
Every time I see someone use the Mary Sue label I just know right away they are a sexist bigot. Male or female, it doesn't matter. Either that or a fool who has put next to no thought into what they are saying.
There's a male equivalent call Larry, Gary or Marty Stu. They aren't ever called that, because unlike Mary Sue, those characters do have major flaws. Captain Kirk is a womanizing dick and egotistical dick, Luke Skywalker is a confused and inexperienced jedi who, even after gaining control of the force, is clouded by revenge, James Bond is a womanizer and over confident as well, Indiana Jones has major issues in regards to snakes and his age, Han Solo is greedy and Batman is often caught in Moral dilemmas in which he knows he could kill these villains and make Gotham a better place, but be forced to sink to the level of those he is trying to stop.
I especially like how they wheeled out the white knight bullshit in defence of The Girl Who Lived, one of the most unashamedly sexist piles of dross ever committed to hard drive. It's not quite as bad as Hogwarts Exposed, which would be my answer to the thread question, but it comes close. And at least HE doesn't actually plagiarise the books. It features oversexed underage nudists (like TGWL) and also paedophilia, ephebophilia, rape, torture and bodily functions, all stretched out over 750,000 words of some of the worst writing ever.
Is it really plagiarism if you give credit to the original author? Plagiarism is passing off other peoples work AS YOUR OWN! Academia is ALL ABOUT re-writing what other people have written and GIVING SOURCES!
Isn't ALL Fanfic inherently copying as it is based on characters and canon the writer has no rights over! They can do it simply because they aren't selling it.
Also
"Mary Sue Labelling" and "CP literature" are SEPARATE ISSUES! I've seen the Mary Sue label be applied to the most tame and prudish of work.
But what gets my goat is of a series that features child sexualization, yet busterkeatonrules single out that female characters are too idealized...
Mary Sue IS a sexist label.
'The Girl That Lived' MAY in fact be sexist and could be the worst writing ever (dear god, it is like he is TRYING to be bad) but the criticism that the female characters are too idealized IS a sexist objection. And on the "white knight" that's a straw-man label, I'm no white knight just because I call out a bad practice, anyone can blow the whistle, and I am not one who prescribes to the "he who is innocent cast the first stone" that is how indentured corruption continues.
PS: sexual =/= sexist bigotry
Sex does not have to inherently be belittling and denigrating of women. Even though it is often abused for that purpose.
Spent a good 10 minutes adding in my 2 cents to the "Mary-Sue/Sexism" debate but decided I didn't want to get drawn into all that noise while there's stuff to be done...
OT: I have 2 candidates, of course the notorious "My Immortal" which... just makes you sad that there are human beings whose mental processes could churn out something so god awful.
Or, Agony In Pink [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/AgonyInPink], which consists of several chapters of Kimberly from Power Rangers being gruesomely tortured with a little bit of gratuitous rape.
My Immortal is certainly terrible from a literary standpoint, her grammar, spelling and all the rest may never be matched... but Agony In Pink is actually disturbing, proper "My-god-who-would-write-this?" disturbing.
There's a male equivalent call Larry, Gary or Marty Stu. They aren't ever called that, because unlike Mary Sue, those characters do have major flaws. Captain Kirk is a womanizing dick and egotistical dick, Luke Skywalker is a confused and inexperienced jedi who, even after gaining control of the force, is clouded by revenge, James Bond is a womanizer and over confident as well, Indiana Jones has major issues in regards to snakes and his age, Han Solo is greedy and Batman is often caught in Moral dilemmas in which he knows he could kill these villains and make Gotham a better place, but be forced to sink to the level of those he is trying to stop.
Being a womanising dick was never a flaw for Kirk, it served him well getting with many beautiful women. Many things jeopardised the safety of the enterprise and their missions but not Kirk's inability to keep his DNA to himself. The poor outcomes of his decisions are more a result of extreme circumstance than poor judgement, like the planet Khan's was exiled to inexplicably being made barren when it was once bountiful.
He BLEW UP THE DEATH STAR... not by luck or technology but by a special link he has to a special unique power. And he later got Darth Vader to defect to the Rebellion.
[quot]James Bond is a womanizer and over confident[/quote]
That's not a problem for Bond, that means he has many commitment-free relationships. In fact him seducing many women quickly is part of his bloody job description as a secret agent! And how can he be "over" confident when his confidence always results in victory? His ridiculous risks are always rewarded in the end.
That's not a character flaw. That is plot. Having a well constructed moral code and STILL working out a positive solution without compromise is hardly a flaw. Though it's the closest one on the list. He is still hyper-idealised. He's freaking Batman!
Lol wut? He has a massive price on his head and still he is written in to go back and save the rebels, where he get given literally a golden fucking medal by the princess in a massive ceremony for his contribution. You say greedy, why not enterprising? He tries to make himself better off and this is somehow a character flaw?
The price wasn't on his head for a flaw in his character, he didn't lose it in a decision he made (eg gambled it away) but because of circumstance because it was written that his ship was to be boarded.
But get this I Am not saying these are bad characters
They are good characters even with their idealisation, and that female characters should be allowed to follow the same lead.
That's because none of those guys ARE Marty Stues. Each is written in a manner which makes them believable both as heroes and human beings. A Marty Stu (or Mary Sue) is the result of an amateurish author who cares only about the protagonist, treating all other characters as spotlight-stealing liabilities.
Or "Larry Sue" or "Garry stu" Really, there is no agreement of the male equivalent. And you know why? BECAUSE THESE MALE LABELS ARE NEVER USED! No one even recognises the label "Marty Sue"! There is no label for over-idealised author insertions when they are male because it is ACCEPTED!
The truth is it is sexist bigots simply make up that the idea that it's all fair in these labelling just concocting a male equivalent with full knowledge it isn't used. If you start talking about how James Bond in a Matry Sue and #1 people won't know what you are talking about and #2 once they figure out you mean this male character a hyper-idealised author-insertion they'll say;
"yeah, well Batman/Bond/Indy is supposed to be a total badass! Why are you trying to make such a cool character so sucky?"
Even IF such male characters were criticised to the same extent as female characters are with the Mary Sue label, TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT! Authors should be perfectly allowed to write idealised characters, even if female, they don't HAVE to have flaws, they just have to be INTERESTING!
Actually, a character without flaws is not a well-written character. Nobody is flawless, therefore nobody can truly sympathize with a flawless character. Without Kryptonite, nobody would give a shit about Superman.
There is nothing wrong with heroes who always win, but it has to be genuinely difficult for them.
We need more awesome female characters in fan-fic and everywhere.
The problem now is the fear of the unfair Mary Sue label is only people who break ALL the rules (the important rules like 'don't explain jokes') break the Mary Sue "rule" and female authors are genuinely afraid of writing female characters for fear of them being assassinated with the Mary Sue label.
I wouldn't worry about that. The term "Mary Sue" - and the occasional male variant - is usually applied only to the most outstandingly over-the-top examples, dredged up from the murkiest, slimiest depths of gut-wrenchingly awful fanfiction. (Commonly known as the MAJORITY of fan fiction.)
I applied the term to Rose Potter, the Girl who Lived, because she is so poorly balanced, badly written and just plain unlikeable as to stand out like a sore thumb even among the legions of Sues you find on the badfic pages of TV Tropes, as well as the various "Archive of Incredibly Bad Fan Fiction Guaranteed to make you want to Eat your Own Guts and Blow your Brains Out" - type sites available now on an Internet near you.
Seriously. Do us both a favour and take a look at the TV Tropes page for "The Girl Who Lived". You could even try and have a look at the story itself, if you think you have the stomach for it.
Ah. Sorry, you posted this while I was writing a response to your previous post.
I would just like to point out that I never ragged on the character of Rose Potter because she is female. My only problem with her is that she is a bad character appearing in a bad story, and if the author had turned Harry Potter himself into an underaged Druid / nudist / porn icon / etc, my opinion of the story and its protagonist would have remained unchanged.
Note also that my initial reference to Rose as "an underaged lesbian nymphomaniac Mary Sue" IS also an indictment of the story itself. If a story has a protagonist like that in the first place, you pretty much know it's not Pulitzer material!
That's because none of those guys ARE Marty Stues. Each is written in a manner which makes them believable both as heroes and human beings. A Marty Stu (or Mary Sue) is the result of an amateurish author who cares only about the protagonist, treating all other characters as spotlight-stealing liabilities.
Or "Larry Sue" or "Garry stu" Really, there is no agreement of the male equivalent. And you know why? BECAUSE THESE MALE LABELS ARE NEVER USED! No one even recognises the label "Marty Sue"! There is no label for over-idealised author insertions when they are male because it is ACCEPTED!
The truth is it is sexist bigots simply make up that the idea that it's all fair in these labelling just concocting a male equivalent with full knowledge it isn't used. If you start talking about how James Bond in a Matry Sue and #1 people won't know what you are talking about and #2 once they figure out you mean this male character a hyper-idealised author-insertion they'll say;
"yeah, well Batman/Bond/Indy is supposed to be a total badass! Why are you trying to make such a cool character so sucky?"
Even IF such male characters were criticised to the same extent as female characters are with the Mary Sue label, TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT! Authors should be perfectly allowed to write idealised characters, even if female, they don't HAVE to have flaws, they just have to be INTERESTING!
Actually, a character without flaws is not a well-written character. Nobody is flawless, therefore nobody can truly sympathize with a flawless character. Without Kryptonite, nobody would give a shit about Superman.
There is nothing wrong with heroes who always win, but it has to be genuinely difficult for them.
We need more awesome female characters in fan-fic and everywhere.
The problem now is the fear of the unfair Mary Sue label is only people who break ALL the rules (the important rules like 'don't explain jokes') break the Mary Sue "rule" and female authors are genuinely afraid of writing female characters for fear of them being assassinated with the Mary Sue label.
I wouldn't worry about that. The term "Mary Sue" - and the occasional male variant - is usually applied only to the most outstandingly over-the-top examples, dredged up from the murkiest, slimiest depths of gut-wrenchingly awful fanfiction. (Commonly known as the MAJORITY of fan fiction.)
I applied the term to Rose Potter, the Girl who Lived, because she is so poorly balanced, badly written and just plain unlikeable as to stand out like a sore thumb even among the legions of Sues you find on the badfic pages of TV Tropes, as well as the various "Archive of Incredibly Bad Fan Fiction Guaranteed to make you want to Eat your Own Guts and Blow your Brains Out" - type sites available now on an Internet near you.
Seriously. Do us both a favour and take a look at the TV Tropes page for "The Girl Who Lived". You could even try and have a look at the story itself, if you think you have the stomach for it.
"A Mary Sue is the result of an amateurish author who cares only about the protagonist, treating all other characters as spotlight-stealing liabilities."
OK, you are now changing what the Mary Sue label so much to mean just amateur writing. If you mean badly written then JUST SAY THAT! Why use this clearly inflammatory label?!?
"spotlight stealing"
You mean like how all writers treat the protagonist? You mean like James Bond? The spotlight shines out of his bloody arse! What a double standard. See this is why you should not use the term because the ONLY thing that can be agreed on is that it is a derogatory term for female protagonists to denigrate them with insinuating double standards.
The way male characters are praised, by the same standards the Mary Sue is damned!
The term is inappropriate and you can't bring up the most extreme examples to justify its use.
I don't have time for crap like The Girl Who Lived, and I fear it is being held up as a straw man to justify continued use of Mary Sue when it is NEVER appropriate
Enemy? ENEMY!?!? So FINALLY after millennia of female representation being utterly sidelined now a whole vague category of female characters is somehow ANYONE'S FREAKING ENEMY! Where the hell are you coming from?!?! Listen to yourself!
Your own source repeatedly states what a worthless term it is, how much it is abused and has lost all meaning except as an insult. I consider it a sexist insult. It is clearly used JUST to undermine female characters and when the male equivalent is a token gesture exists SOLELY to deflect criticism of sexism.
I'll tell you what is the enemy. It is over and over and over AND FUCKING OVER female characters are written as plot devices. They might as well be inanimate Macguffins they have so little agency in events. And they are BORING. Held back so much and jsut how many female authors don't ever write females characters precisely to avoid the accusations of Mary Sues.
"Awww, these women are taking too much of the spotlight, typical women, get them out of the way. Who do they think they are BatMAN or something?"
I'd rather have a hundred of what would be slanderously called "Mary sues" than another "wife of..." or "X's girlfriend" that is supposed to pass for a real whole character. Women's characters are just DEFINED by how they are either in love or not in love with the male protagonist.
Lets go through the laundry list of bullshit with the mary Sue label, what women have to be to avoid this:
-Likability/Real World Popularity = a man can be an asshole, but a woman can't be a *****. Just smile and be a nice hostess
-Flaws = the female character has to be weak, vulnerable and unimpressive, can't have potent women!
-Plausibility = so while a male like James Bond can hijack a speedboat and kill the evil supervillain with a harpoon, a woman's story is to file a class action lawsuit.
And lets explore the double standard with supposed defining attributes of Mary Sues:
-Mary Sue as Poorly Written Character
So here this fallacy used on female characters so much, but has Duke Nukem ever been called a Marty Sue? Has that Vampire from Twilight ever been called a Marty Sue? Nope. While the Mary Sue label is used against Bella Swan - even though she is horribly written - but as a general insult that denigrates all female protagonists. Why not say badly written? Why do female characters need a special label for them that links them with the very worst of fan-fiction?
-Mary Sue as Clichéd character
Ah yes, so male characters like Neo, Superman, Batman and James Bond can riff on can benefit from cliches or tropes (what's the difference) and avoid the Marty Sue label it is suddenly unacceptable for a female protagonsits to be "The Chosen One" or have a "troubled past" or "orphaned by evil".
-Mary Sue as Author Avatar
Author insertion is as old as the written word! People write about what they know, what is important, yet this label DENIES this connection between female characters and the author?!? BULLLSSHITT!!! It this was enforced to MALE protagonists then we would not have James Bond, we would not have Sherlock Holmes, we would lack so many characters as they'd be chastised for DARING to include themselves in the characters they create. The implication is that it is the author being self-induging and that the author should somehow be more detached. No. This is just to weaken female characters by denying the author the ability to use the protagonist as an exploration of their ideas, ideals, beliefs and prejudices.
-Mary Sue as Idealized Character
Now it's just blatant.
"unrealistically capable and virtuous character, one who simply lacks flaws"
That's Batman. What is his flaw? That he refuses to kill and is absolutely steadfast in his commitment to justice and being a force for good? He doesn't have flaws, he doesn't have a "kryptonite", he's covered head to foot in bulletproof armour and can block any blow in perfectly choreographed moves. The only challenges he has are external, from the situation like "opposite sides of city, can only save one".
Mary Sue as Power Fantasy
Yeah, because accepted and popular male protagonists so rarely indulge in power fantasies and when they do it's always makes for such poor cinema, like Neo fighting agents in a raid on a building. The Matrix was such a flop! And all the other examples from so many media where male characters flex their power, but suddenly when it is a woman the audience can't relate and complain that it is just the author being self-indulgent.
Mary Sue as Infallible Character
How many patients has Dr House killed as a result of his reckless treatments? None. He is Infallible. Almost every male protagonist is infallible. All this double standard demands is that female characters be less impressive and less admirable than male protagonists. I'm not asking for more male characters to be made more useless, I'm just asking that women not be forced to a lower standard!
Mary Sue as Center of Attention
HARRY POTTER! Oh the Boy who lived! World famous! Neo, the chosen one to save us!
It's like this list is going through all the common elements of the most popular male protagonists and forbidding them from women. And you can see how this ties into prejudice against women for being "too vain". throughout this tirade it is justified by phrases like "but in real life" FUCK REAL LIFE! It's fiction, you can diverge from reality! You can have shit like the entire world be a computer simulation... that changes everything.
I've had it.
As a writer I find this Mary Sue label to be a weapon of coerced self-censorship. Beyond it's intent, the result is it intimidates writers to not create compelling and interesting female protagonists as they have to dodge around this minefield of double standards. Just make the protagonist male, you'll get a free pass. Because this Mary Sue label basically excludes women from the Campbell type Monomyth.
Including, I think you'll find, in TGWL. As to the rest of your thesis, I'm not without experience when it comes to fanfic criticism and there's nothing there I'd not heard, considered and ultimately rejected already. Here's [http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/44360.html] a pretty good rebuttal to all the standard arguments of the Mary Sue sexism debate.
Treblaine said:
Has that Vampire from Twilight ever been called a Marty Sue? Nope.
Except perhaps here [http://brooketaylorbooks.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-edward-gary-stu.html], which was only the first of 35,200 Google hits for "Edward Cullen Gary Stu" without quotes. Also the first hit for "Edward Cullen Marty Stu", because Google apparently recognises these obscure and unheard of expressions as synonyms.
Ah. Sorry, you posted this while I was writing a response to your previous post.
I would just like to point out that I never ragged on the character of Rose Potter because she is female. My only problem with her is that she is a bad character appearing in a bad story, and if the author had turned Harry Potter himself into an underaged Druid / nudist / porn icon / etc, my opinion of the story and its protagonist would have remained unchanged.
Note also that my initial reference to Rose as "an underaged lesbian nymphomaniac Mary Sue" IS also an indictment of the story itself. If a story has a protagonist like that in the first place, you pretty much know it's not Pulitzer material!
Don't. It is a slur that denigrates all female protagonists. You may insist by your personal definition it isn't but you KNOW how broad the definition is.
Why not just say describe the protagonist is:
"an underaged nymphomaniac"
Which says everything about how awful the premise for the character is. Why do you have to add on the meaningless Mary Sue slur?
And why add in the lesbian bit? It's very tabloid. There is nothing awful about being a lesbian, before you are 18. People are straight before their are 18, the nymphomaniac part is the awful bit.
Including, I think you'll find, in TGWL. As to the rest of your thesis, I'm not without experience when it comes to fanfic criticism and there's nothing there I'd not heard, considered and ultimately rejected already. Here's [http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/44360.html] a pretty good rebuttal to all the standard arguments of the Mary Sue sexism debate.
Zeldaqueen is changing the Mary Sue definition to what it suits her and when it suits her. Also amazingly she says that Mary Sue is not a universal label but that who is a Mary-sue to one person won't be a Mary Sue to another! That just makes this an UTTERLY pointless label!
The reality is the Mary Sue label is essentially used for ANY female character who pretty much follows the campbell type monomyth. The monomyth reserved for MALE protagonists. It's nothing but a slur of no real critical value. Don't use it.
I'm not impressed by here circular logic and fallacies to defend these unfair limitations of avoiding the dreaded "Mary Sue" label:
"Instead of, "write to the best of your ability", the message is: Don't you dare write characters who are too perfect! Don't you dare write characters who are too flawed! Don't you dare make your characters too forthright or too timid, too connected to canon characters or not connected enough!"
Her response? She once wrote a fanfic that followed the Mary Sue formula and declares it was "hardly writing to the best of MY ability" and saying you can still get fandom from committing the Sin of Mary Sue but that it is somehow undeserved because fans won't tolerate the Mary Sue label being laid on it.
Treblaine said:
Has that Vampire from Twilight ever been called a Marty Sue? Nope.
Except perhaps here [http://brooketaylorbooks.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-edward-gary-stu.html], which was only the first of 35,200 Google hits for "Edward Cullen Gary Stu" without quotes.
And the number of hits for "Bella Swan Mary Sue": 276,000 results
So only about 8x as prevalent... if we are following your standard that number of Google results is a measure of anything.
I DID say that Mary Sue was far more used than Gary Stu/etc and even your particular example is just and over-flow from a Mary Sue "litmus test". This is hardly the most damning critique and already authors ARE avoiding writing female characters to avoid the Mary Sue label and have no fear of the obscure "Gary Stu" label nor their derivatives. Also you get 12 million hits just for searching for "Edward Cullen" so I think we may be getting some cross over.
Including, I think you'll find, in TGWL. As to the rest of your thesis, I'm not without experience when it comes to fanfic criticism and there's nothing there I'd not heard, considered and ultimately rejected already. Here's [http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/44360.html] a pretty good rebuttal to all the standard arguments of the Mary Sue sexism debate.
Zeldaqueen is changing the Mary Sue definition to what it suits her and when it suits her. Also amazingly she says that Mary Sue is not a universal label but that who is a Mary-sue to one person won't be a Mary Sue to another! That just makes this an UTTERLY pointless label!
That's bullshit. You might as well say that "bad" is a pointless label because what one person considers bad another might not.
The reality is the Mary Sue label is essentially used for ANY female character who pretty much follows the campbell type monomyth. The monomyth reserved for MALE protagonists.
I've seen far more Sues who don't follow the monomyth than do, and plenty of female protagonists who aren't Sues by anyone's definition, so I don't know where that came from. It's the only remotely original part of your argument, too - you did see the date stamp on that journal entry, right?
It's nothing but a slur of no real critical value. Don't use it.
Except perhaps here [http://brooketaylorbooks.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-edward-gary-stu.html], which was only the first of 35,200 Google hits for "Edward Cullen Gary Stu" without quotes.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
