fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1679 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1679 ⌋

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.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

17.

__________________________________________________

18.

__________________________________________________

19.

__________________________________________________

20.

__________________________________________________

21.

__________________________________________________

22.

__________________________________________________

23.

__________________________________________________

24.

__________________________________________________

25.

__________________________________________________

26.

__________________________________________________

27. [titc]

__________________________________________________

28.

__________________________________________________

29.

__________________________________________________

30.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 136 secrets from Secret Submission Post #240.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 0 - omgiknowthem ], [ 0 - take it to comments ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi, I'm the OP ^^

It depends; that character you described is an instant "SUEEE!" in our minds but truth is that in your story all that can be normal. I mean: getting a blue 2m girl on Twilight will be so weird, but it isn't in Pandora (AVATAR), right?

Problem isn't that your character sounds super cool, problem is that your character may be TOO cool for the canon you're using. If that's your own canon, you can make it as you want and give reasons. Even if being blue isn't normal in your canon, it may be a weird thing that explains some plot hole or whatever. It's difficult to do that in Hogwarts because you're not making the canon, the canon is already made.

Harry, in example, has many points that I dislike (too much luck, in my opinion) but he's the main character, the choosen kid an all, it's not like you're reading the books and then suddenly X character appears and saves the world, right? It has reasons (well or not made, that's another question...), MS usually don't.

See, the problem is that if I use any character who already exists as an example of a "Canon Sue," people will immediately start to argue back and forth about whether that specific character is a Canon Sue or not, and discussion of the principles involved is lost. And if I use an example of an imaginary character in an imaginary canon then you can come back and say "But the canon could be such that the character isn't actually a Sue after all!" That's true, but it's missing the point: unless every canon contains reasons why the character's exoticism and awesomeness is actually completely reasonable, then it is possible for a character to be the main character of a canon that was always constructed with them in mind, and still be a Sue.

I mean, sure, even a character like "Misterie" from my previous example doesn't have to be a Sue. I tried very hard to make my point by specifying that she's not just good at a lot of things, she's specifically better than anyone else in the school at those things - better at volleyball than anyone on the volleyball team, better at chess than the whole chess club - and she's won the hearts of everyone in the school, not just made a few friends in the first few days. But if someone said, "Okay, write this character in such a way that she's not a Sue," I could tackle that challenge. First thing I'd do is find some reason why she's so bloody awesome at everything - so maybe she has some access to the Akashic Records, and when she wants to study a subject she can look directly into the minds of the greatest masters of those disciplines that ever lived and know what they knew. Second thing I'd do is establish that she's not the only one with that power, and that even if she's the greatest at everything in her new school, someday she may get a knock on her door from someone who isn't her friend, who has the chops to go toe-to-toe with her!

There's a rule among writers that, if you don't specify a respect in which your fictional world differs from the real world, the reader is entitled to assume that the fictional world is like the real world in that respect and is entitled to feel cheated if you suddenly decide different. The implication of this is that every fictional canon, even the most original, is based on a meta-canon called the real world. We can accept fictional worlds that operate under changed rules such as "magic actually works," "some people have psychic powers," "angels and demons walk the Earth and sometimes fall in love with mortals," etc. But unless given a really good explanation, we expect the fictional world to adhere to our real world's deeper principles: You don't get something for nothing. You can never please everybody. No one is right all the time. No matter how good you are, there's someone out there who can give you a challenge. Whining and pitying yourself isn't attractive. These are the rules that Mary Sues and Gary Stus break.

Main problem I see is that we want to apply fandom terms to other media. And that works as well as applying cinema terms to literature or video games; sometimes it may work, but most times it doesn't.

I understand a different thing about Canon Sues, they being a canon character transformed into a Sue. Not a canon character that has the same points as Sues in fandom.

The character you describe may be annoying and unrealistic. I agree: in real world things aren't like that and neither are people. But we must think that canon are usually unrealistic (and not only Harry Potter or LOTR, romantic stories are too, in example, and they're supposed to be based in the real world...) and, most important, we may think that being unrealistic =/= Sue.

It's true Sues are usually unrealistic and it comes with a story that is unrealistic too. But I don't think the main point of Sues is that their personalities aren't credible, main point for me is that they STEAL a story that ISN'T ABOUT THEM.

I don't say that can't happen to you while writing original fiction (a secondary character getting more and more importance), but you can always correct it with other things. Readers may think you don't know how to write or that your reasons are stupid, but you have the option of making it part of your canon.

You can't do that with Sues because you can't change the canon without people knowing it wasn't like that in first place. You don't know if Anne Rice intended to include Armand in the first place, so you can think whatever you want but not assure anything; on the other hand, you know Rowling has not included a super powerful veela mixed with vampire that has to be the next choosen one, so you can say someone's stealing the atention of a story that isn't his/her.

Yes, both cases are annoying and bad-written, but you can't say some character doesn't belong to my canon if that's MY canon. I hope I made sense.

TL;DR: it's different to screw up your canon (which people don't know what you were thinking while making it and even if it ends up being an awful story it may have some reason) than screwing a canon that everyone knows perfectly and where your character has nothing to do in it.

Excuse my English Uu

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. You think that it's part of the definition of a Sue is that they steal a story that isn't about them, and I don't see any point in making that a requirement, since characters can be in stories that are all about them and still display all the annoying traits of any other Mary Sue.

Part of the reason I feel so strongly about this is that I think it could mislead young writers. If they hear "Oh, Mary Sues can only be characters written into fandoms that weren't about them before!" they'll think "Oh good! I'll just write original fiction and that way my characters can't be Mary Sues!!" They won't realize that the characters they're creating are going to be just as annoying and grating as any Mary Sue, because they're doing everything that makes Mary Sues awful.

Sure, I agree to disagree with you hehe.

In the case you expose I would say their character isn't well made at all. "Your character is awful", somehow. But Mary Sue was named after a fanfiction and was named because it was in that fanfic, not because her personality but because she was better than THE CANON CHARACTERS.

Before that fanfic no one would say some characters (even if now they're seen as Mary Sue) were Mary Sue. They were annoying, and unrealistic and a freaking awful super powerful gals, but not Mary Sue.

That's my point: the term was created on a fanfic because that character was on a fandom work. Would you tell me that before that there wasn't "Mary Sue" characters in books/movies/etc.? Of course they were! Bad made characters, but not Mary Sue since that was made after fandom.

That's my opinion, at least! I'm not saying that's better, just that Mary Sue is a fandom term and should stay there.

[ SECRET POST #1679 ]

no subject

AYRT

Re: AYRT

Re: AYRT

Re: AYRT