fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3263 ]

[ SECRET POST #3263 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3263 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 019 secrets from Secret Submission Post #466.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Inspired by the thread yesterday about that novel "the Name of the Wind" and it's absurdly Mary Sue protagonist.

Who's a Canon Sue character you know and how would you fix them to be an enjoyable character?

I've thought that the Doctor was the Sue-ist of Canon Sues, but tend to avoid mentioning it.

Kind of unavoidable considering he's the Main Character.

Batman - Bruce Wayne.

I have no idea how I'd fix that one though. Seems like multiple authors have tried to limited success.

Batman's Sueness varies wildly depending on who's writing him. Some versions on the character aren't really that Sue-ish at all.

Fair enough. I sure haven't read all of the material.

And also to be fair, I sort of glossed over the earlier comics. When he's acting like a total dick he does stop being so Sueish. I have high hopes that Batfleck will bring out that particular Bat-iteration, honestly.

Bruce Wayne can do practically anything but when you factor in his difficult personality I think it takes his sueness away.

Therein lies the problem. He only has a difficult personality depending on the writer.

I mean, there's no way George Clooney Batman is anything but the Stuiest Stu to ever Stu.

George Clooney Batman also has nipples, so I don't know why he is even considered in any argument you would ever make about Batman. That is like using Godzilla (1998) as a great argument over why Godzilla is a terrible series.

Well, I could also go into the latest games if you would prefer to talk about a Stu Batman sans nipples.

I think it counts though, because the thing about pop culture is that it's free for interpretation, and clearly someone's interpretation of Batman was that he needed nipples and to have a bunch of ladies get hot for him.

Bat nips! duh nuh nuh nuhnuhnh

The biggest canon Stu I know is Vanyel from Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage series. He is oh so pretty, vastly overpowered, has a ~tragic~ story, gets silky white hair because of tapping into a magical mystery powersource (which is a very special thing to do) and he has massive random whump moments.

I honestly don't know how to fix that.

Edward and Bella from Twilight: Give them actual personalities beyond being unhealthily obsessed with each other and disdainful of everyone else, and in Edward's case, have the narrative stop treating all his creepy and morally questionable actions as romantic and heroic.

I think the movie actually improved their characters quite a bit, TBH. Stewart and Pattinson played them as really awkward and kind of... derpy for lack of a better word. I have no idea if that was intentional or not, but in any case, the end result is that the movie versions of them are more endearing to me than the book versions (which is not saying much, but hey, you take what you can get).

Well, given that Pattinson admitted in several interviews that he hated the character, I'm pretty sure it was a little intentional lol.

Derpy is a great descriptor for their characterization ahahah

Speaking of Kvoth(is that how you say it?) from that book, and what I heard about him.

The one thing that jumped out at me for some weird reason was the succubus thing. For once I'd love to see a succubus who likes a virgin guy because he's inexperienced and adorably inept and she could 'show him the ropes'.

*ahem* Anyway, I thought the biggest problem was just a case of special snowflake syndrome, where the character has to be the unique/special/best there ever was at anything and everything in order to be cool or just because the character was his egomobile.

He could have been made tolerable with a lot of toning down on the snowflake-meter and a huge attitude adjustment (seeing others around you as being beneath you is a good villain trait or antihero protagonist trait if done well, but not a good idea in a character we're supposed to root for.)

I think that it's not just the snowflake-ness that needs to be toned down, the books need more plot and more serious shit happening. If he was more proactive and spent less time moping around about money, there might also be more reasons to like him... but no, he's super special and everybody else in the world spends their time making up dramatic rumours about him.

Richard Rahl is a canon sue, but I don't think he's fixable. Unless you stick to the first four books.

I think the TV show did a good job of making him likeable.

That's true. So I guess the only way to fix him is to mostly ignore canon (and be better for it)?

Well, yeah. Goodkind is a shit writer who consistently lets his biases and agendas get in the way of storytelling and characterization. He's like those SJWs who write terrible issue-fic, except on the opposite end of the political spectrum.

A lot of it comes down to what the character can accomplish with no difficulty and no consequences. Solving that can be as easy as reducing their powers so they can accomplish less, or it can be as involved as finding logical negative consequences for their actions.

There's a series . . . I forget the name, but I think it was by the son of the Dune guy. The main character has no Mary Sue personality traits, and he's basically likable, but he keeps being handed more and more powers that he can use to effortlessly solve every problem in front of him. By the end of the series, he's fighting Lovecraftian abominations no other being could stand against, and he can make them explode at will. There's no way to solve that other than weakening his powers, because his powers are the sole source of the problem!

That's not it exactly, but Leto II is kind of suish in terms of power level. Except by being that powerful he's blessed with suck. He has to endure horror and becoming a monster and having no one in his life for centuries after everyone he has ever known is dead. And he's doing it for the greater good: taking on what no one else would have had the strength to take on.

So in my mind it balances out. I'm okay with really powerful characters when it balances out with a really sucky life or downsides that are equal to the power level.

That description reminds me of Janelle Angelline in the Black Jewels series. Massively powerful, but with massive downsides to her powers, trouble learning how to handle them, and an abusive culture that wants to destroy her.

Either massively super-powered characters need to be minor in-and-out characters, or they need massive obstacles in their way.

Either massively super-powered characters need to be minor in-and-out characters, or they need massive obstacles in their way.

I think it's not just that they need massive obstacles, they also need OTHER obstacles. As in, challenges that cannot just be barrelled through on sheer strength. Like people not liking them, or being able to smash mountains but that doesn't help with acquiring food, stuff like that.
I once wrote a superhero AU where one of the characters was an OP shapeshifter. This was mitigated by some limits on his power (if he's wounded, he basically can't shift at all, if he falls asleep in shift he finds it very difficult to return to himself), a massive self-hatred complex brought about by his childhood and serious lack of social skills, and the fact that the plot is not actually about him using his superior powers to smash through everything in his path. It's about the local team of superheroes rescuing him and trying to convince him to stop being a supervillain.

Goals do not have to 100% align with abilities.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3263 ]

Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue

Re: Fixing A Sue