Thank you! Now I feel I can jump in with a clear conscience (sort of - preemptive apologies for what will probably be a long, rambley post!).
First: this is a really cool discussion! The Mary Sue term does get thrown around an awful lot, agreed. And sometimes I feel people may forget that wish-fulfillment may not necessarily always be so bad - and in fact, there's probably a bit of wishfulfillment in the depiction of their favourite characters, too.
Mary Sue, use #1: My introduction to the world of fanfiction was the Ranma 1/2 internet fandom as it was in the late 90s and early 00s (I started to read/lurk in 2000, but got back into archives for canon discussions, fic discussions etc as well as for fanfics). In those days, a lot of Ranma writers were guys (or claimed to be ;p): looking back, it's my impression that at least half of the BNFs were men, and they certainly tended to argue the most. Possibly relatedly, I also remember that yaoi (it was never called "slash") was rather rare and usually warned for, while yuri was relatively common and didn't seem to require a warning. Funnily enough, many oh-so-amazing OCs were also male characters. ;)
Instead of "Mary Sue", a term more in use back there for the same deal was "ANC", which had nothing to do with Nelson Mandela but stood for "Annoying New Character". I think that term had maybe a slightly lower flavour of accusing the writer of making an idealised wish-fulfilling self-insert, but instead said "Hey, this person's stealing all of the spotlight and is kind of annoying, we'd rather read more about the canon cast, kthnx?" On the downside (besides being geopolitically dubious), the term might have led people to be a bit too suspicious of new characters, even non-annoying ones.
(Incidentally, years later I was one of the betas for an epic fanfic written by two veterans of this fandom, which set out to deconstruct both the self-insert and the multicrossover genres, but at the same time prove you could make something interesting and challenging with self-inserts. I'm biased, but I think they succeeded. However, now that that story is written, I find it hard to think of what another good self-insert might be like...)
Mary Sue, use #2: I never liked the use of Sue for canon stories, especially not for works with a single creator. Even if you want to discuss overly perfect and/or overly accommodated characters that seem way too similar to the author, I think they should be called something different. I used to see the term "Author Avatar", but TV Tropes has a quite different denotation for that term, which frankly seems to make more sense. "Authorial Darlings" seems good - but I feel main and supporting characters should still be distinguished. I feel it makes a difference if the world is supposed to bend around your character in the first place, if they're the hero.
Take Book-Mary Poppins, for instance. In her canon, it would be OOC for her to lose and fail. She's the sun's god-daughter. She alone remembers the secret of being born and how to speak with the animals that all other humans forget as babies. The sun and the planets bow down to her! Not only is she never in any real danger, but there's no question that she will prevail in any situation - the question is just how. Nobody has a hope in hell of getting the better of her.
But then again, she's not supposed to be a complex, psychologically convincing person; and certainly not someone you can identify with. She's meant to be a creature of mythology - the formidable, prim & proper, invincible Nanny-Goddess, who stirs up wonders and protects the children. Who is also ridiculously vain and can be downright unpleasant to her charges at times, undermining their self-esteem and sense of truth. Readers may or may not care for that kind of character, but just calling her a Canon Sue as some might feels wildly irrelevant to me. (But maybe this is a dumb example - I've never seen the term used wrt Mary Poppins, after all.)
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 05:59 pm (UTC)First: this is a really cool discussion! The Mary Sue term does get thrown around an awful lot, agreed. And sometimes I feel people may forget that wish-fulfillment may not necessarily always be so bad - and in fact, there's probably a bit of wishfulfillment in the depiction of their favourite characters, too.
Mary Sue, use #1: My introduction to the world of fanfiction was the Ranma 1/2 internet fandom as it was in the late 90s and early 00s (I started to read/lurk in 2000, but got back into archives for canon discussions, fic discussions etc as well as for fanfics). In those days, a lot of Ranma writers were guys (or claimed to be ;p): looking back, it's my impression that at least half of the BNFs were men, and they certainly tended to argue the most. Possibly relatedly, I also remember that yaoi (it was never called "slash") was rather rare and usually warned for, while yuri was relatively common and didn't seem to require a warning. Funnily enough, many oh-so-amazing OCs were also male characters. ;)
Instead of "Mary Sue", a term more in use back there for the same deal was "ANC", which had nothing to do with Nelson Mandela but stood for "Annoying New Character". I think that term had maybe a slightly lower flavour of accusing the writer of making an idealised wish-fulfilling self-insert, but instead said "Hey, this person's stealing all of the spotlight and is kind of annoying, we'd rather read more about the canon cast, kthnx?" On the downside (besides being geopolitically dubious), the term might have led people to be a bit too suspicious of new characters, even non-annoying ones.
(Incidentally, years later I was one of the betas for an epic fanfic written by two veterans of this fandom, which set out to deconstruct both the self-insert and the multicrossover genres, but at the same time prove you could make something interesting and challenging with self-inserts. I'm biased, but I think they succeeded. However, now that that story is written, I find it hard to think of what another good self-insert might be like...)
Mary Sue, use #2: I never liked the use of Sue for canon stories, especially not for works with a single creator. Even if you want to discuss overly perfect and/or overly accommodated characters that seem way too similar to the author, I think they should be called something different. I used to see the term "Author Avatar", but TV Tropes has a quite different denotation for that term, which frankly seems to make more sense. "Authorial Darlings" seems good - but I feel main and supporting characters should still be distinguished. I feel it makes a difference if the world is supposed to bend around your character in the first place, if they're the hero.
Take Book-Mary Poppins, for instance. In her canon, it would be OOC for her to lose and fail. She's the sun's god-daughter. She alone remembers the secret of being born and how to speak with the animals that all other humans forget as babies. The sun and the planets bow down to her! Not only is she never in any real danger, but there's no question that she will prevail in any situation - the question is just how. Nobody has a hope in hell of getting the better of her.
But then again, she's not supposed to be a complex, psychologically convincing person; and certainly not someone you can identify with. She's meant to be a creature of mythology - the formidable, prim & proper, invincible Nanny-Goddess, who stirs up wonders and protects the children. Who is also ridiculously vain and can be downright unpleasant to her charges at times, undermining their self-esteem and sense of truth. Readers may or may not care for that kind of character, but just calling her a Canon Sue as some might feels wildly irrelevant to me. (But maybe this is a dumb example - I've never seen the term used wrt Mary Poppins, after all.)