re: male Mary Sues--It's not as if all those hard-boiled detectives who get the blonde and the whiskey were completely original characters whose authors had absolutely no desire to beat up bad guys and be irresistable to women.
So that's my dream. That and some stuff about cigars and a tunnel.
Faith ,'Get It Done'
We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Connie Neil - Oct 13, 2004 5:16:12 am PDT #6172 of 10002
brillig
Betsy HP - Oct 13, 2004 5:27:02 am PDT #6173 of 10002
If I only had a brain...
Some people define a Mary Sue merely as an authorial insertion. Other people seem to require a degree of wish fulfilment to push a character over the line.
Mary Sue doesn't just mean that you admire the character and wish you could be her. Mary Sue means that she can do no wrong.
Which means I may have misused the term above. What I was objecting to was Hamilton's saying that the character's tastes were exactly hers, that anything she'd buy the character would buy as well. I think that's a failure of imagination.
erikaj - Oct 13, 2004 5:34:03 am PDT #6174 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!
Yeah...inclined to agree.
Connie Neil - Oct 13, 2004 5:36:01 am PDT #6175 of 10002
brillig
So LKH yearns for orgies. Hmm.
Polter-Cow - Oct 13, 2004 5:38:17 am PDT #6176 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Who doesn't?
Steph L. - Oct 13, 2004 5:38:49 am PDT #6177 of 10002
I look more rad than Lutheranism
So LKH yearns for orgies.
With her pets, apparently.
Polter-Cow - Oct 13, 2004 5:41:47 am PDT #6178 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Who doe--okay, that one not so much.
juliana - Oct 13, 2004 5:45:16 am PDT #6179 of 10002
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I miss them all tonight…
So LKH yearns for orgies.
With her pets, apparently.
Not. Enough. Brain. Bleach.
Whyfor must you be so evil so early???
Connie Neil - Oct 13, 2004 5:55:16 am PDT #6180 of 10002
brillig
Whyfor must you be so evil so early???
It's a gift.
Calli - Oct 13, 2004 6:04:54 am PDT #6181 of 10002
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs
Anita is flawed enough that I don't really read her as a Mary Sue. There are some symptoms -- everyone wants her, including many of the bad guys, and then there's the whole power-of-the-month club membership -- but she doesn't have quite the sense that lint never clings to her black trousers that I pick up from characters that I think of as Mary Sues.
By the way, I explained the idea of "Mary Sue" at my local bookgroup, after saying, "At least she's not some damn Mary Sue" about a book's protagonist. The phrasing came as a surprise to one of the members, whose name is, in fact, Mary Sue. She occasionally tells me that she's still waiting for the psychic communication with her cats to kick in.