But to what extent does a writer go against idealization to the point where it becomes almost inverted idealization, i.e., this character is the worst, stupidest, most flawed character ever to appear in print? Like, how far can we go with this fucked-up character and still get you to care about what happens to her? Or, how far can we idealize her and still get you to identify? Is identification necessary to begin with? And so on.
Honestly, when I'm writing, these are not even questions I pause to consider. I do not believe the are valid, from the POV of the author.
I suspect that you're rejecting Mary Sue as a valid criticism on some level because you don't want to be thinking about it the next time you sit down to create a character; you don't want it, unbidden, anywhere on your radar, and you certainly don't want any possibility of some potential fanboy/fangirl snark to influence you one way or the other.
See above.
he funny thing is, none of your characters have ever struck me as being remotely Mary Sue-ish, so why dignify it at all? It's not something that has anything to do with what you do.
I don't know. Echo aside, I can see this fallacious "criticism" being leveled at a lot of my earlier characters, especially in Silk and Tales of Pain and Wonder. And it is true, they were all parts of me, and here and there, there's wish fulfillment (when did that get to be a bad thing?). These things irk me. Just knowing that there are people in the world who buy into this crap irks me.
What would Harlan say? Probably 'What the fuck is a Mary Sue and why are you even thinking about it?' Interspersed with 'kiddo' and various uses of 'fuck.'
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Date: 2009-06-18 04:47 am (UTC)But to what extent does a writer go against idealization to the point where it becomes almost inverted idealization, i.e., this character is the worst, stupidest, most flawed character ever to appear in print? Like, how far can we go with this fucked-up character and still get you to care about what happens to her? Or, how far can we idealize her and still get you to identify? Is identification necessary to begin with? And so on.
Honestly, when I'm writing, these are not even questions I pause to consider. I do not believe the are valid, from the POV of the author.
I suspect that you're rejecting Mary Sue as a valid criticism on some level because you don't want to be thinking about it the next time you sit down to create a character; you don't want it, unbidden, anywhere on your radar, and you certainly don't want any possibility of some potential fanboy/fangirl snark to influence you one way or the other.
See above.
he funny thing is, none of your characters have ever struck me as being remotely Mary Sue-ish, so why dignify it at all? It's not something that has anything to do with what you do.
I don't know. Echo aside, I can see this fallacious "criticism" being leveled at a lot of my earlier characters, especially in Silk and Tales of Pain and Wonder. And it is true, they were all parts of me, and here and there, there's wish fulfillment (when did that get to be a bad thing?). These things irk me. Just knowing that there are people in the world who buy into this crap irks me.
What would Harlan say? Probably 'What the fuck is a Mary Sue and why are you even thinking about it?' Interspersed with 'kiddo' and various uses of 'fuck.'
Yeah, and "toots." He likes to call me toots.