Subject: I feel your pain!
Author:
Posted on: 2012-11-21 23:15:00 UTC
It is painful. Which is why I feel like trying to do something about it. I feel like because I sort of know her I might have some influence. I want to stop it because at this point, it's only art. But one of the comments suggested that she write about this character. So I want to nip it in the bud, so to speak.
So, I have a bit of problem regarding Sues. See, I'm on Deviant Art. I "watched" someone on there because she was a Trekkie like me. She was a good artist, but I kept getting journal alerts and art alerts that featured an android OC named Catherine Evergreen who gets with Data. Sue-y, but I just ignored it.
Then this came into my message inbox: http://ladydata.deviantart.com/#/d5llnd2
She makes some good points, but some of the rant is classic denial (Sure she's smart and talented and beautiful and gets with a canon character, but she's not a Sue!!!)
So, should I let it pass me by like everything else she's done about this character, or should I find a really polite way to tell her the truth?
Ask the author why the character needs one trait or the other. The character's traits should be relevant to the story, or else they don't need to be mentioned. For example, if the character is beautiful, does that drive the story--or is it just something cool you wanted to give them? Does it change the way the character thinks of herself, perhaps to make her more arrogant, or to make her question people's motives when they are obviously attracted to her looks? Does it make her stand out from others in a part of the story where that gets her targeted by someone who values looks? Or perhaps she is the sort of person who simply enjoys looking good, spends time on grooming, and feels better when she's stylishly dressed; an artistic sort of beauty; maybe she uses her sense of style to catch someone's eye or to give a friend a makeover to take the edge off a bad day. There are many things you can do with beauty, but you shouldn't just be making your character beautiful for no real reason.
Similarly: Intelligence or talent. Your character's abilities should be relevant to the story. If you're writing about a gifted child, that giftedness should be part of what drives the plot. If you're writing about a skilled swordsman, he should be skilled not because it's "cool" but because your story requires a skilled swordsman for the role. The character's unique traits and abilities should change the way she reacts to the world around her, and thus change the way the story plays out.
Even negative characteristics should be there for a reason. Don't just make your character clumsy and then not do anything with it. Does she trip at a critical moment? Does she stay away from things requiring physical grace because she's afraid of embarrassing herself? Or if you make your character mean-spirited, that trait needs to get her into trouble, have real consequences, and not just disappear when it's convenient.
It's a sort of Occam's razor for characters: The simplest character necessary to fill the role is probably the best. But "simple" does not mean "flat". A character is presumed to have a lot more traits than you describe; it's just that if you don't use a trait somehow, you don't need to give it to the character, because it's not relevant to the story.
...would be to let her be, because she's really badly in denial, I think.
However, after simmering down a bit from the initial, 'well, shoot, what's the point?' reaction, I would probably try to post constructive criticism that borders on gentle but still points out what can be fixed. Almost baby her, in a way. Give her pointers in a way that (at least as far as you can tell) doesn't necessarily attack her character so much as offer advice as to how she can be made better.
But then, that's just my inclination. -shrugs-
I always find it bloody ridiculous how badly some people can take constructive criticism to the point where they refuse to entertain the idea that their character verges on Suedom.
But what I find even more ridiculous is how eager others are to leap to their defence and say oh no, they're not Sues, they're just interesting people! And... uh... most times those others create Sues of their own, so really, I rather doubt their ethos in those sorts of arguments.
Speaking as an ex-Suethor I just wish more people were ready to admit that their character might need work or more ready to submit their own characters to scrutiny. I did it rather regularly with the cast of IAHF back when I was still writing it; Jennifer barely avoided Suedom in the form of a messy love quadrangle, for example, which one of my regular readers had the decency to point out to me.
It really depends on how ticked off you get by the Suethor. Any course of action you may take may play out favourably or not, but it's still your call. If it were me and my short temper and patience with Suethors in denial, I'd spork the heck out of it. But since I know I have no saintly patience with these sorts of people, I would advise you against doing the same.
...I have Jane Eyre on the mind, sorry.
It is painful. Which is why I feel like trying to do something about it. I feel like because I sort of know her I might have some influence. I want to stop it because at this point, it's only art. But one of the comments suggested that she write about this character. So I want to nip it in the bud, so to speak.
Just recall the phrase: "Kill them with kindness".
Be gentle, but be sure that she reads in to your meaning, and don't, for god's good name, let yourself get wrapped into a fight.
If she ends up falling regardless, c'est la vie. But don't let yourself go down as well.
Calms the nerves, brainwashes the mind with happy thoughts, that sort of thing? You sound like you need it.
From what I've experienced people like this can be very stubborn about this sort of thing. My advice would be to not directly tell her that her stories need work, but to pose innocent-seeming questions like "I wonder how Catherine managed to time travel like that?" (Note: I'm not very familiar with Star Trek, so I have no idea if this is a usual thing) or "Wow, how does Catherine manage to be so popular with the guys? I can't get one guy to even look at me!" People like this need to be let down gently, when you're critiquing her don't use sarcasm or make a snarky remark because then she'll just think you're being mean. After she's settled down for a bit maybe casually suggest that you can beta-read for her, because I’ve noticed that there are quite a few mistakes. Above all, don't provoke her; people hate it when you say that something that they believe is wrong, no matter how wrong it might actually be.
It's a Sue alright. A big, fat Sue.
But I wouldn't do anything about it. If LadyData wants to write, fine. She wants to rant? Fine. But when it's ranting like this, simple words won't get through to her.
Maybe talk to her in a month or so, once they've cooled off. But even then, just give her some ideas on how to improve. Don't say that they have a Mary Sue, because that will get you nowhere. She'll only get mad and then you'll get mad- it'll just be ridiculous.
Having been in several of DeviantART's rage groups in the last year - which I am no longer a part of, and am only on DeviantART to express my works - I can safely say that this kind of person, who is so in denial that it hurts to read, is better left to their own devices. Somebody else will throw the first punch, trust me.
Starting a debate about Mary Sues with a person like this will inevitably lead to a full-on flame war between opposing parties. Depending on how loyal the white knights are, this could go on for Weeks or months, and eventually will degrade into spite-directed trolling of both parties involved. I've seen people on DA deactivate their accounts over something like that, because it just gets downright FILTHY after a while.
Bottom line: not worth it. Don't waste your time - just enjoy her works and ignore the journals, and try not to get too disgruntled over the Sue, because it's one Sue that I don't recommend you try and spork.
I'd honestly be more troubled if this story was on fanfiction, but let's face it, Deviant Art writing is a smaller audience and is going to cater primarily to like-minded people. It's probably not worth being in a flame war over, especially when you've got your own account and stuff.
Plus, Deviantart is a place that I'd initially peg for flame wars getting outright nasty - it's a bit like the sims community in that a lot of people get a disproportionate influence because they're good at making things, and then they get inflated egos from people praising their writing because of their popularity or talent in another feild, when the writing turns out to be subpar. They don't take being brought back down to earth or honesty about their writing ability very well... also, Deviant Art has a "secrets" thing going, which can turn nasty, and any anonymous "secrets" organization is likely to take any sort of mildly interesting spat and blow it out of proportion. Basically, I'm agreeing with Specs, but with some extra information to clarify things about my opinions. I might be over-cautious about this, but I've seen flame-wars go on for years in mixed-media (writing and pictures) communities just because someone dared to point out that the popular person actually didn't write as well as everyone said they did and people were just currying favor so that this person would possibly make them something. (Sims machinima and CC community, I'm looking at you.)
On a much lighter note, the presence of triple exclamation marks and the overall tone of the journal makes me think that this person is not psychologically mature enough to take an objective look at her own work and admit that people are taking issue with the quality of the characterization. The kind of constructive criticism and growth that might lead her to write better isn't going to be found on Deviantart, because she's going to keep getting praised for her art and people are going to extend that to her writing, and attempt to make themselves more popular by hanging out online with her.
I think her last stamp says it all: she doesn't know what it means, she just sees a personal attack. It seems like everyone else that commented sees it as a personal attack as well.
About those rage groups I mentioned? Well, to further Seven's point about things going off the handle, I learned, trolling and flaming techniques - from them. I'm sad to admit it, but I used to be one of the worst of their kind, and would screen cap anything I deemed worthy of being slammed and just rail at it with red ink.
When I said somebody else will throw the first punch, I really meant that a rage group would get her eventually. Her kind of behavior does not pass by the eyes of the vengeful vigilantes and trolls of DA, because they feed on other people's misery and expressly seek it out.
In fact, at one point in a rage group I frequented, an event was organized to break up a chat-room wedding role play. I didn't participate, because my conscience wouldn't let me in good faith, but I went to watch the bloodbath. Oh. My. God. That's one chat room that never came back to life after it was destroyed.
Now that I think on it, I think the best way to convert the hard news to her would be through private notes, and not open messages where you'll be subject to attack.
... to what a very small group of people used to do within the sims community. (Probably why a lot of our older members left, to be honest.) The criteria was a little different, because these people wanted to enforce that it was okay for them to write badly because sims writing wasn't "real" writing and people with actual care and talent were the ones constantly under attack (as well as anybody who created custom content who had been getting attention that the trolls were jealous of,) but basically they'd take a post much more honest and well thought-out than that and take it further out of context than a news anchor on a talk show.
I'm actually starting to feel quite sorry for your net-acquaintance if and when the inevitable firefight does break out, because white knights or no, if she keeps making a fuss about a relatively harmless spork on a sues page, she will get troll attention in a big way. So will her defenders, most likely.
(See, those sporking and sue pages are good because they channel people's urge to tear apart a work, but since they have rules to prevent personal attacks and to vent people's rage over ignorance in ways that are designed not to go directly back to the author, they don't degrade as easily into all-out ad hominem attacks and trolling. At least, when they're run well they don't. Come to think of it, the PPC serves the same function in a way - attacking a work that we can't countenance, either because of the author's ignorance/blatant button-pushing or because of the use of bad spelling, grammar, and logic - without venting any spleen directly upon the author, a handful of sarcastic comments aside.)
Anyhow, that's enough amateur psychology from me - can you believe I'm technically studying archaeology and chemistry? I just felt like getting that out there because I don't want you to get sucked into something with such a potential to get ugly, since I learned that the hard way over in the sims community - places with anonymous "secrets" threads seem to perpetuate hateful trolling and gossip, and I've seen both eager, bright young things and established members of the community get sucked in on both sides of the fence and chewed up and spit back out. Your DA aquaintance has been sporked - if she's lucky, she'll mature a bit sooner or later and won't become a troll target.
So, to sum up the combined four posts above me:
Question: Do I go after Sue on DA?
Answer: HOLY AELDRA, NO.
...that she needs to take a couple anatomy classes?
Either that, or she really needs to stop photographing her coloured pencil doodles at an angle so that the perspective is skewed like woah.
...Okay, off to take bleeprin before I embarrass us all.
See? I knew you needed a good Bleeprin binge.
I don't think the "nice" approach was getting through to her. The person running the "Star Trek Mary Sues" blog was very polite and kind, explaining the general reason the characters were classified as Mary Sues, but Lady Data just uses it as a way to rant about "My characters are super pretty and smart and it's hurtful to call someone's character a Mary Sue just because you don't like the way it's written."
She defends her characters with the traits that were pointed out to be Sueish, so I don't think she really understands what people are trying to say is that her characters still need development, not that people just don't like them. If you clarify that for her first, you might get through to her more. And add details, like how she was randomly time traveling, instead of just saying "This needs work".
*Takes a big breath, then dives back into NaNo story.*
Do you feel like getting into a debate and possibly alienating this person?
Having read the post and a bit of the discussion in the replies, I agree she's in denial. I am greatly amused by the part where she says she's not writing to fulfill some fangirl fantasy and then goes on to describe her desire to see Data in a happy relationship, and the part where she says she's writing a beautiful, smart character to get away from stereotypes. Oh, and how all her past relationships have sucked because the men only wanted her for sex, which somehow makes her not Sueish ("cursed with beauty," anyone?).
So... the question really is how much energy you feel like putting into it, and whether you think it's worth it. Do you think she's open to hearing the truth, however politely you phrase it?
~Neshomeh