10 points to Ravenclaw for xstar's post insightful post. As xstar said, the purpose of the test is to help authors inspect their creations from a more objective standpoint, identifying whether they are creating something "personally interesting" to the author or "generally interesting" to a possible audience. Even that isn't a good way of putting it though. The test has a multi-faceted purpose and is largely relativistic, as xstar brought up on multiple points.
Consider the question: "Is the MC described with excessively florid detail?"
Would the author count this against their MC if it is simply their writing style and used for all characters?
Here's an example of the extreme of this, when it is a problem and harms writing and shows obvious favoritism to the MC, as can be often found in fan-fiction containing mary sue characters. Meet MC John and his best friend Jack: "Jack was cool looking with blond hair, a sharp contrast to John who's tall, dark presence filled the room and cut through the class with his piercing brown eyes with flecks of hazel and and wire rimmed glasses that caught the light. His uniform snug and unbuttoned at the top to expose the edges of his clavicle. Sauntering over to his seat the whole class stopped to stare. Jack came over saying, 'Dude what's with that catching everyone's attention as usual!?' Every girl in class caught their breath at the sound of John's voice in response, ears straining to hear soft reply of his deep voice like the rushing of a river, 'Whatever.'"
Here we see the author's favoritism to MC John, putting a spotlight on him and using other characters, namely BF Jack and the unnamed classmate mob, to draw attention to how DEEPLY FACINATING and OBVIOUSLY INTERESTING John is and how VERY AWESOME John really is and how much you should just absolutely LOVE HIM as an MC.
There was actually one Mary Sue test I'd seen which was actually very careful to go over this in the opening of their test, how even possessing a high score doesn't denote a poorly written character, even if they seem to be a Mary Sue, and that Mary Sues can still be fantastic main characters to a series. More so, even some characters that might test as a Mary Sue really aren't for one reason or another.
Though here I am missing the forest for the trees and getting all detailed about some things where the primary issue here is much more fundamental.
. . . wait that simile doesn't quite work here. Oh well. >_>
Anyway, more importantly is the fundamental issue of "How are you defining a Mary Sue?"
OP, genius and hyper capable of handling situations =/= Mary Sue
(At least not always and in every instance.)
In fact, some Mary Sue's are quite weak and pathetic, and their Sue-ism displays itself in other areas.
Simply because a character is written as being of supremely high caliber does not necessarily mean they are poorly written. (Though I won't pretend that every high caliber character is well written, nor that writing such a character well and realistically is easy.)
Edited by nalydw, 18 April 2014 - 05:27 AM.
Sign In
Create Account
Back to top
