[Moralanqua]

Yes, im a naughty chica!


Ladies,

There IS a difference between a Mary Sue character/fic and an Original Female Character (OFC).

Having noticed the influx of crap sue fics, it was time we stopped moaning and bitching in private and got it out for a decent discussion.

Mary Sues are NOT something to be proud of. OFCs are! You cant simply say 'I like Sue-Fics' cause that makes you sound like a retard. How can you possibly like a fiction where Tolkien is raped and distorted beyond all recognition? Where grammar and spelling take a backseat to the Sues wonderful array of gowns and speshul jewellery? Where plot and characterisation are thrown out the window so SUE can shag Legolas and ride off on her ponicorn named 'Barney'? WTF?


OFC fictions are very different. This is where you have a female character interacting with Tolkienverse in a realistic, believable and well thought out manner! Is that so hard?

I dont think it is. I think that if a writer puts the effort in and created a kick ass gal who is both depthful in characterisation and leads the plot, THEN we have something to shout about!


Now, lassies - get your 2 cents in.

And remember, some people say that any OFC is a SUE and that there is no definition of a SUE - those people are wrong. We all know a SUE when we read one and there is NO EXCUSE!

[sindohte]

You go Mora!!! I am totally in agreement with you. A Mary Sue compared to an OFC is like saying you have a pair of shoes vs. saying you have a pair of Manolo Blahniks. They are both shoes, but there is the world of difference. I think that once an author takes the time to shift the focus from trying to bang the cutie Elf to actually developing an engaging story, it becomes a story featuring an OFC.

Mora, I loved some of your warning signs of Sue. It brings to mind Jeff Foxworthy and his bit about - "You might be a redneck, if...."

So in that vein, "You might be reading a Sue-fic, if...

1. Your heroine was given a special piece of jewelry at birth and it has a mysterious purpose.


I also want to raise the question - what can an author do to make sure to not turn their story into a Sue-fic?

[Viv]

I'm a retard.

I define Sues using Gil Shalos's Mary Sue Litmus Test (there are others, but they pretty much all say the same thing, and Gil's is funny).

Using that litmus test, a lot of stories I've read and liked (and written) qualify as Mary Sues. Doesn't mean that the writer is bad or even that the story is bad.

If a story sucks, I generally just say that the story sucks (and usually give pertinent details, like "Yo, you have a spelling mistake in the title... this does not bode well"), without throwing in terms like Mary Sue.

And I'll defend to my dying day that Aragorn was Tolkien's Sue. But I still like him.

[Ellbee]

[Moralanqua]

[Moralanqua]

Limus tests are shyte. They dont factor in other things that EXPLAIN why a OFC is ticking off boxes.

Aragorn and Faramir arent sues because they have a history that fits in with the fantasy genre - they are consistant and dont turn Legolas into a girl or Boromir into a whiny, drunken butt-raper.

[Viv]

[Ellbee]

[Thuriniel]

I can understand where Mora is coming from, especially since everytime someone decides your OFC is unacceptable, they call her MarySue. Thus MarySue has become a nasty term.

I'm beginning to be fond of simply saying OFC, considering the bad reputation Sue is getting lately ...

Faramir and Aragorn as MarySues ... never thought of that one !

[Moralanqua]

Way too perfect? No they aint! How do you get that?

Moira isnt a sue, Viv. She is in a situation and reacts in a real manner. If she suddenly sprouts fairy wings and Birdsong declares her his speshul wuv - THEN she is a sue.

Cant you see the difference?

[SpaceWeavil]

This is where I start to get confused. My first experience of fan fiction was when my flatmate in London started editing/writing stories for the TV show ‘Lexx’. For them, Mary Sues were always middle-aged, mid-western women with very ordinary lives who unexpectedly got sucked up into the universe and then one or other character would fall maaaaadly in love with them. When I moved onto Gerry Anderson fan fiction, a Mary Sue was any female romantic interest brought into the canon, and although it wasn’t used as a negative term, they quite often dispensed completely with canon and made the characters behave totally OOC. The worst stories I have ever read ever in any fandom ever (can I stress that some more? ) were ones where the writer had developed an entire fantasy world around her Mary Sue and related characters she had made up, to the point where there were only two chars remaining from canon and they were both unrecognisable. She abandoned the whole point/story arc of the series and wrote her own little soap opera. So that was what I took as being a Mary Sue. This character didn’t have any special powers or abilities but was terribly written with no personality at all, and the stories themselves held no interest for me or other fans of the series.

OK, so that is a long way to say that I can see what Mora means, because each fandom seems to have its own brand of Mary Sue, and in LOTR it is this person who has a unicorn etc., but in the same way, I would agree with Ellbee that I tend to consider a well-written female character just as a character, like one of my bad guys I made up for various Elrond stories or whatever, and I would tend to call one I found totally unbelievable a Mary Sue. To me, it is all down to opinion – whether you like the character or not.

The writer I mentioned above once accused me of writing a Mary Sue, whereas the others on the forum referred to the character as just another player in the scene.

Sorry about the long post.

[Viv]

[Anna]

eh, maybe i´m stupid, but why are they called mary-sue? I mean, why 'Mary Sue'? Why not 'Edna Darla', or something like that?

[Maram68]

[Robbie]