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Post by rainkaimaramon on Dec 9, 2016 11:40:19 GMT -5
Browsing on deviantart I often come across the "parody" of Mary Sue character, the ones who are White, Black, Asian, Eskimo, alien race mixed with hair color are rainbow, stars and a moon with massive wings, leg warmers, pirates jacket, tube top, big earrings and lots of other details that is suppose to "bad character designs", they always put what they consider a "good character design" is to one side mocking the "sue", thing is that character is always the same brown haired white girl, always the same frumpy over shirt, same glasses and if they are feeling Extreeeeme a ponytail which about than I think, "uh, your Parody of Mary Sue is much more interesting and fun."
It's because I had read and seen too many Plain Janes, characters have no personality traits and does nothing, they are just lifeless mannequins only there to do what the story demand. Plot robots who are controlled by a team of betas following the check list of TVtropes assembly line instead of one individual's vision, and some times trippy power fantasy.
I had a long write up about Role playing and a superman story where he sat in one place helping a lot of people without moving, it's a Nu52 backup story, but I deleted it because it was a jumble mess going no where. Thing was I realized while writing that story make me want to go out and do good, to be a better person and try to help the best way I can in real life. It was about than I wonder if Plain Jane is another form of power fantasy, where to tell the writers they don't have to improve themselves in anyway in real life, but only improve in the fictional one, to wallow in the crab bucket they sit in and let others think for them. To let fifteen other people correct their mistakes instead of trying to better themselves through failure, practice and learning, to just grab a hat full of jumble words called tropes and line them up in perfect, bland and manufactured order instead of actually creating a real stories that flow that might have a mistake or two.
Just had to put this out there.
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Post by Snake on Dec 9, 2016 12:30:51 GMT -5
Maybe you have a point about Plain Janes. I just think it's not always a conscious choice to write characters that way.
Like if you take the Twilight series, followed by 50 Shades of Grey, they're both written as an author's wish-fulfillment. Bella in Twilight is clearly a Mary Sue. And that girl in 50 Shades, which is basically a Twilight fanfic, is more of a Plain Jane. In the end, Twilight is more or less the same person, and in 50 Shades of Grey, the only growth she makes besides getting her cherry popped is being assertive about her boundaries. The rest of the stories are just fantasy filler. But you find the right audience, and people will eat it up.
So I wouldn't necessarily call it a "power fantasy," so much as "I can bait the man of my dreams with my sexuality fantasy."
Unless you want sexuality inclusive to the whole power trip thing.
Which would be another trip in itself right? Because here you have multi-million dollar empires centered around sexuality as power, and there's a whole group of women who fight to say women do not need to weaponize sexuality to gain ground in media and industry.
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Post by toadofsky on Dec 9, 2016 12:31:41 GMT -5
Im always nervous about these discussions because I feel like im going to upset someone, but to be honest these days I never really care much for trope discussion, it just feels like too much like boiling a story down to basic elements just to pick it apart for all of its faults and nothing else.
Granted, I don't think it's bad to have tropes nor is it bad to discuss them, often times when it comes up it just gets to where people are upset if the story didn't get a person or group 100% correct. But as you said I'd also rather have a writer attempt to broaden their story and tell the one they want to tell and maybe slip up in parts and learn from it, instead of being accused of "ist" or "isms", kind of how some got mad about the new Deus Ex. If you want tougher subjects to be in games how about giving them a chance and not tear them apart?
Part of me thinks story writers be it comics or other mediums are afraid of being accused of things they aren't by some critics drive by assessment of the content of the story, and people's constant pursuit to be angry or stamp out racism/sexism/etc., but a part of it can probably be attributed to some laziness too.
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Post by Snake on Dec 9, 2016 12:46:39 GMT -5
It's pretty sad, if we can't have an intellectual discussion about the creative process.
It's productive to breakdown story structure if there is something to learn and grow from it. Of course, there's always angry bitter people that just need something to complain about because they have a habit of being in an angry mood.
I just think a lot time, people are writing off-the-cuff. Like, you have one person that will write a story with a lot of thought put into it. Like The Oatmeal. A lot of his longer strips looks like he put lots of hours of thought into writing and drawing. It's crafted to portray a certain comedic message. It's very calculated. On the other end, you just have people that write whatever they want, without an editor. Without a proofreader. Without any clear sense of having a moral message, or whether they think it's going to offend anyone. Maybe the equivalent of that is some guy that draws a bunch of dicks on college ruled line paper, that gets hung in an art gallery and sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Post by JoeQ on Dec 9, 2016 13:13:11 GMT -5
Uh, not completely sure I get what you mean in the OP rainkaimaramon, but what you're describing is just another type of Mary Sue, ie. a character whose "imperfections" only serve to make them more perfect. IMHO it's more about bad writing and authors selfinserting than about overdesigned characters. |
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Post by magic89 on Dec 11, 2016 18:53:40 GMT -5
Maybe my chars are plain, but thats how i prefer been potraited, they not such badasses or been chosen ones, they just ordinary people and some had some unfisnihed buisness in past what been explanied in thier short backstory.
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Post by llj on Dec 14, 2016 13:08:25 GMT -5
A Mary Sue isn't so much a look as it is a personality. A white girl with brown hair and a ponytail isn't a Mary Sue, it's simply a character design. A Mary Sue is simply anyone who is personality-wise idealized and nearly perfect from a personality standpoint and has few flaws, always right, etc,. A lot of it is wish fulfillment and the author simply draws themselves. And since there happen to be many women in the creative field who have brown hair and glasses, that is what you get frequently.
I do not know if there is a parody of a "Mary Sue character design", but drawing a multiracial character with lots of tacky clothes is more a response to the generic character design of most female protagonists than a parody. A parody would be to keep the same generic character design but inject the character with caffeine or peppy steroids so that it is obviously exaggerated.
Conversely, a Plain Jane can be used to describe a character design, but not always a personality. A character can be described as "looking" like a Plain Jane but is actually a psychopath, demagogue, militant feminist, etc, etc, which would be a contrast to her looks.
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Post by GamerL on Dec 14, 2016 21:37:43 GMT -5
Wait a minute, I thought Mary Sue (or Gary Sue) referred to characters in fan fiction who were obviously just author inserts?
Like writing Harry Potter fiction about this new girl who joins Hogwarts who is obviously the author imagining what it would be like to go to Hogwarts and hang out with Harry and friends.
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Post by llj on Dec 15, 2016 14:49:42 GMT -5
A Mary Sue is essentially a perfect character with no real personality flaws, or even if she does to the reader, she still turns out to be always right in her story's universe 100% of the time. It is not a new term, so I am going by my memory of its old definition. In recent years, fan fiction groups may have adopted the term for themselves, and sometimes it is mistaken as ego-stroking (as in author inserts) which produces the same kind of character as those "old" Mary Sues--perfect, idealized ego stroking.
Examples of non-author insert characters accused of being Mary Sues in pop culture are Pollyanna and Wonder Woman.
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Post by DrakeDwarf on Dec 17, 2016 9:27:10 GMT -5
Browsing on deviantart I often come across the "parody" of Mary Sue character, the ones who are White, Black, Asian, Eskimo, alien race mixed with hair color are rainbow, stars and a moon with massive wings, leg warmers, pirates jacket, tube top, big earrings and lots of other details that is suppose to "bad character designs", they always put what they consider a "good character design" is to one side mocking the "sue", thing is that character is always the same brown haired white girl, always the same frumpy over shirt, same glasses and if they are feeling Extreeeeme a ponytail which about than I think, "uh, your Parody of Mary Sue is much more interesting and fun." It's because I had read and seen too many Plain Janes, characters have no personality traits and does nothing, they are just lifeless mannequins only there to do what the story demand. Plot robots who are controlled by a team of betas following the check list of TVtropes assembly line instead of one individual's vision, and some times trippy power fantasy. On deviantart rainbows get laughed at because you look at more pictures than text and these mary sue are usually OC for some media that has plain characters. Maybe you have a point about Plain Janes. I just think it's not always a conscious choice to write characters that way. Like if you take the Twilight series, followed by 50 Shades of Grey, they're both written as an author's wish-fulfillment. Bella in Twilight is clearly a Mary Sue. And that girl in 50 Shades, which is basically a Twilight fanfic, is more of a Plain Jane. In the end, Twilight is more or less the same person, and in 50 Shades of Grey, the only growth she makes besides getting her cherry popped is being assertive about her boundaries. The rest of the stories are just fantasy filler. But you find the right audience, and people will eat it up. There is also "I am plain and pure in a sea of rainbows" mentality for some plain janes sues. tl;dr - Mary Sue = Sticks out in a crowd but without a good reason + with no reasonable reaction from the crowd + author expect audiences to love someone for this |
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