I AM A Mary Sue!
Oct. 25th, 2007 01:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaSo I was having fun with the Mary Sue Litmus Test-- the scoring inventory for literary characters that determines how cliche and uber-sappy a character is. You know, the characters people write about when they're 13, or throw into fanfiction just to get with their favorite character vicariously for them since they can't. They all have purple hair and rainbow eyes and are named Raven Victoria Neko-Chan Snape and have a dutiful half-cat half-rabbit daemon and can sing so that everyone falls in love with them. You know.
I gave the test to the two main characters of my story. Megumi scored a 29 and Andy scored a 34-- both Borderline Mary Sues. This is not bad at all considering I did start this story when I was 14, the peak ripe age for Mary Sue creation. Also, I am just inevitably a Romantic; my character gets his selfless romantic suicide death, thank you! Also a story without angst just isn't very interesting, now, is it? ("Oh, my life is wonderful!" Well, that's a deep and enriching read! O.o).
. . . also, I ran into some troubles with a few of the questions. They were pinpointed at Neko-Chan of Victorian England who somehow shows up and speaks fluent English with random interspersed badly translated Japanese, but questions like "Does your character have a Japanese name even though they do not live in Japan?" or "Does your character speak Japanese even though they do not live in Japan?" I had to count, because they're American citizens of Japanese descent, who have never been to Japan. I feel like my characters shouldn't be penalized so much for that, because I totally have a kosher historical justification! Lol . . .
(I've heard it expounded many times before that Ginny Weasley is an Uber-Sue).
So, then I took it again, as me-- my experiences, if I were to be written down. I scored a 52 (and this was skipping all the impossible questions like, "Do [I] have the same religious beliefs as [myself] throughout the course of the story?"-- skipping them!). That's just a flat-out status Mary Sue.
Ha ha, I'm a Mary Sue!
I gave the test to the two main characters of my story. Megumi scored a 29 and Andy scored a 34-- both Borderline Mary Sues. This is not bad at all considering I did start this story when I was 14, the peak ripe age for Mary Sue creation. Also, I am just inevitably a Romantic; my character gets his selfless romantic suicide death, thank you! Also a story without angst just isn't very interesting, now, is it? ("Oh, my life is wonderful!" Well, that's a deep and enriching read! O.o).
. . . also, I ran into some troubles with a few of the questions. They were pinpointed at Neko-Chan of Victorian England who somehow shows up and speaks fluent English with random interspersed badly translated Japanese, but questions like "Does your character have a Japanese name even though they do not live in Japan?" or "Does your character speak Japanese even though they do not live in Japan?" I had to count, because they're American citizens of Japanese descent, who have never been to Japan. I feel like my characters shouldn't be penalized so much for that, because I totally have a kosher historical justification! Lol . . .
(I've heard it expounded many times before that Ginny Weasley is an Uber-Sue).
So, then I took it again, as me-- my experiences, if I were to be written down. I scored a 52 (and this was skipping all the impossible questions like, "Do [I] have the same religious beliefs as [myself] throughout the course of the story?"-- skipping them!). That's just a flat-out status Mary Sue.
Ha ha, I'm a Mary Sue!
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Date: 2007-10-25 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-10-25 10:15 pm (UTC)