Mary-Sues and Fridays Alone

[revena]

After joking about some of my characters being a bit Mary-Sueish to anariel_di_gaia, earlier today, I went and located a very comprehensive Mary-Sue Litmus Test and ran a few of my characters through it, just for kicks. The results were moderately amusing, so I'll share them with you.

The characters I tested were Valmai, Ametrine, and Emlyn, as I think the three of them have had the most face-time in the Valmai Hammerhand stories, so far. I might do Wynn, Kaadin, and Sondra some other time, and so on. Anyway, the results were as follows:

Valmai - 20 points - "The Non-Sue. Your character is a well-developed, balanced person, and is almost certainly not a Mary Sue. Congratulations!"

Ametrine - 32 points - "Borderline-Sue. Your character is cutting it close, and you may want to work on the details a bit, but you're well on your way to having a lovely original character. Good work."

Emlyn - 87 points - "Irredeemable-Sue. You're going to have to start over, my friend. I know you want to keep writing, but no. Just no."

Hehe... Of course, the authors of the test do note that "the test isn't always correct. Morpheus from the Sandman Comics scored nearly 70 points, and yet we don't believe he's a Mary-Sue. He's well developed, suffers the consequences of several major personality flaws, and has very few powers or talents besides those necessary to perform the duties of his station. Of course, research, an interesting story, and good writing always help too", so I shall, of course, choose to believe that Emlyn is the exception to the rule... ;-) Still, I'm a bit horrified with just how high he scored. Poor Emlyn, being terribly attractive, a half-breed with a traumatic childhood, and having worked as both an assassin and a spy...

At least he doesn't have wings, yo.

In other news, I find that Jameson being out of town leaves me rather at loose ends. I've got a whole evening ahead of me, and no really clear idea what to do with it. Do any of you have a preference?

[Poll #551009]

Comments

[moon-fox.livejournal.com]

Some interesting stuff on that Mary Sue test... I don't necessarily think it's bad if you have a character who's really good at something you wish you were good at, or a character you'd like to be friends with, or even sometimes a character who shares your personal beliefs... but then again, maybe it doesn't matter so much with just a few things ^^; (I've found it impossible not to put just a little of myself into all my characters... being the author.) ... but yeah ^^;

[revena.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd say there are always extenuating circumstances and modifiers that will mess up the results of a test like that. And, y'know, I don't have a problem with someone writing a fictional character who is exactly like them, because that's what they know, unless the character suddenly develops Sue-ish powers that are way beyond the writer's capabilities.

But to some extent, it makes sense to write characters who have at least a couple things in common with you, or you'd spend all of your time doing research in order to create a whole bunch of not-at-all-yous.

And in the case of my story - it's sword'n'sorcery, fantasy stuff. So it doesn't really make sense that Valmai, Ametrine, and Emlyn each got points added to their totals for being good at fighting, magic, and magic, respectively. Because those things are pretty standard in that world. Now, if one of them was good at more than one specialist ability, I'd worry...

And of course, poor Emlyn got hit more than once for essentially the same things. His background as a half-breed - low social status in his birth community - gives rise to all sorts of Sue-ish modifiers. I'd argue, though, that all of them make perfect sense, because they do come from the same place, rather than being a bunch of random add-ons, a la: his father was abusive, and his best friend died in a horrible tragedy, and his adoptive mother was killed by the mafia, and his girlfriend had substance abuse problems, and so on and on and on, just to ramp up the angst.

And then, too, all of my characters racked up points for having accents, speaking multiple languages, and being well-travelled. Which, again, are related things that sort've feed into one another.

So, bottom line: Fun test, probably a good indicator many times, not actually a definitive answer. Like many things in life. ;-) /rambling!

[gimini-chick-in.livejournal.com]

I meant to check Valmai 41, of course, but my fingers were retarded. Then again, you've done two stories this week, and I don't begrudge you a nice knitting break if that would make you happy. :-) It's a little late now, anyway. I crashed last night. Stress and lack of sleep caught up with me.

[revena.livejournal.com]

I did knit for about an hour (while watching The Trojan Women, which was hella depressing), and then I worked on the short story about Valmai's background. It's coming really well... The first part of it is a lot lighter than what I usually write, and it makes me giggle a little bit even as I'm writing it.