Subject: Re: A rite of passage?
Author:
Posted on: 2012-10-15 12:14:00 UTC
I must agree. I never wrote a 'Sue in my life, nor a fanfiction. I've started, indeed, with poetry. Of course, that does not mean my writing wasn't horrid at first...
Robert Downey Junior's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes has birthed the interest of several interested suethors. This is perhaps most eloquently stated through a glimpse of a community I found while browsing through the pit earlier today.
Click if you dare: http://www.fanfiction.net/community/BakerStreetof_OCs/77483/
I must say, it is impressive that such a large group of Sues can inhabit the same space without nullifying each other's powers. Do not fear, however, I am assured that at least one of these fics has a merely borderline Sue. The rest... well, you'll see.
Thankfully, I am incapable of fully witnessing the horror, but...
Just.
How do suethors survive? Especially in groups? Are... Are they like some kind of mutant amoeba-beast-entity with hivemind-like powers over Mary Sue virus cells?
Surely, there is no logical way that a teenage human being could do this... Right? Guys?
Believe me, I've spent years thinking about this.
When I was in eighth grade I wrote a Mary Sue. This is especially interesting considering I was in the PPC at the time and I had recently gotten Permission. My Mary Sue, however, wasn't a self-insert; it was a glorified version of a friend of mine (I eventually revised the hell out of her and turned her into Lori Starrett).
A Mary Sue appears when a writer is blind to their(or the person they're trying to write in's) flaws. At the time I did not see that [Lori] was a naive and rather mildly racist person who, despite our converging of interests in social politics, is still going to vote for Mitt Romney (I'm trying my best to be neutral here but I really don't like that guy), so I put her on a pedestal and subsequently her character became a Mary Sue.
Suethors who write self-inserts, on the other hand, often try to dissociate themselves from their creations (because if they acknowledged it was a self-insert, they'd have to look for their own flaws in that character and Mary Sue is Too Preshus To Have Flaws). However, they can't help but insert the positive aspects of their personality, and try to come up with milder flaws in an attempt to balance things out - but of course, that never works out because the canons love her flaws, too.
Character writing for the average teenager is ridiculous amounts of hard. I wasn't even technically teenaged when I got Permission, so I'm one of those freaky kids who started writing at the tender age of ten and therefore nipped most of it in the bud, but I can tell you a person at that age is 1) still struggling to understand themselves, 2) not experienced with creative writing, and 3) not experienced enough to make believable things happen to their characters. It's much easier to make a Sue when you're younger, trust me.
It's even easier to make a Sue on your first go at character creation, no matter what your age is. Generally the first character of many writers is the result of years of inexperience in character creation, so the majority of First-Fanfic OCs tend to be Suvian.
Conclusion: Suethors are always going to exist because we can't expect children, preeteens, and most teens to understand life enough to create living characters. Personally I just wish they'd keep the fics to themselves. Sue/Canon is one of the most selfish things a writer can do, because it's telling the world to PAY ATTENSHUN TOO MAI OC U GAIZ, SHES PERFECKT AND IF U DONT LIEK U WILL BE ASSIMILAYTED!11!1ONE! at the cost of everything else.
-tries to take off fangirl psychologist glasses-
Maybe in order to write decently, we all have to write a few Sues first. If there's a person here who has never written a Sue, it's probably because they started out writing on essays or poetry.
Both in-world and in terms of the Real World, this is why the PPC doesn't go after Authors. An Author has the power to truly strengthen a continuum--but most of them will start out writing Sues or bad crossovers or generally messing up their grammar and spelling. In order to get the benefit of the Author's later work, you've got to tolerate their early 'Sues. Or, in the case of the PPC, assassinate the Sue and send the Author to an OFU.
In the real world, we don't attack authors for the exact same reason: Because the same person will probably write good stuff and bad stuff. Because we're people who have written both good stuff and bad stuff.
I think it's very important to make that point in missions--that a Mission-worthy story is not an indication that a person will forever be a horrible writer. It's just an indication that they wrote at least one bad story. That's something every writer does. Yes, even the famous ones.
... I strongly approve of PPCing our own mistakes - or rather, each other's - when requested. Doing in your own characters is harder, so I'd advocate passing them on to someone else... but it's a good idea nontheless.
hS
If I can recall at least one scenario involving my Sues, could I spork it without having Permission, or do I still need Permission?
You could do things like MSTing, or commentary like they used to do in Deleterius and still do in other sporking comms on LJ. Those don't require Permission. Writing it as a PPC mission requires Permission because it uses PPC ideas. But killing a Sue without being tied to the PPC doesn't necessarily use PPC ideas, and would not need Permission.
So feasibly, if I wrote a Sherlock AU in which Sherlock and John were consulting Sue Slayers without connections to the PPC (unlike in my fic for the Badfic Game where they were in the DMS), I would not need Permission to do it.
Permission is needed to use the concept of the PPC itself, because the PPC is a semi-quarantined continuum. But if you wanted to spork it in some way other than using the PPC to kill a Sue or rearrange a bad crossover, etc., you could totally do that. You could even use it as a Permission piece. I'm not sure if this has been done before, but you could certainly write your agents as freelancers, dealing with the fic before they even know what the PPC is--followed by recruitment, naturally, if you decide to ask for Permission. The concept of either 'Sue-killing or fixing the damage a fic does to a continuum is not proprietary to the PPC, and you wouldn't be doing any plagiarism if you did those things. Just don't use anything that the PPC invented, and you're fine.
That's actually really good to know, because I'm not at all ready to ask for Permission, and there are some fics I really want to get after.
A lot of them ones I wrote.
... asking someone else to do it can be cathartic, too. Since we're generally nice people here, we probably won't even disown you, flame you, and block every IP address for 50 miles around you. :P
hS
That's also nice to know, that is.
I must agree. I never wrote a 'Sue in my life, nor a fanfiction. I've started, indeed, with poetry. Of course, that does not mean my writing wasn't horrid at first...
That could be part of it, too. I mean, heck, I could probably compile a list of over nine hundred Mary Sues that I've written from my early childhood, and most of the names I would be incapable of remembering because there were so many.
And so many categories, too, now that I think about it.
I'll split my response into parts for each paragraph.
Part the first!
I recall writing from an age closer to seven. Most of my stories were spawned from a mixture of watching my sister write, watching anime like DBZ and s-CRY-ed (still by far my favorite), and generally experiencing my hyperactive imagination for the first time. Ergo, I have probably written hundreds of Mary Sues in my life, the most prevelant being a group of four: a self-insert of myself (early rendition - The Creator from the Specs and Co. series is my new, comedy-only self insert), a Replacement!Kira Yamato from Gundam SEED, a red-haired super spy named James, and a Cuber Mummy Creature who I named Neb. I was not good at names.
Part the second!
I can attest to this; as I already mentioned, I was so enchanted by my newfound talent four writing and imaginative prowess that logic kind of flew the coop for a few years, up until I turned... Twelve, I think. So for a good while, I would get really mad when people would criticize me (admittedly, I sometimes still do) for my characters.
Part the third!
See also: "Aires Weirmoore", my very first self-insert, who was a mix if Goku from DBZ, Kazuma from s-CRY-ed, and Kakashi from Naruto. I am sorry.
Part the fourth!
Ties in to part the first, actually.
Part the finale!
However, we can confuse in knowing that there are nerdy freaks of nature like myself and you who strive to make everything fantastically awesome and logically sound every single time they write.
/Response.
Dammit, I meant CONFIDE.
I hate my phone's auto-correct.
Here, come and sit by the fire. We shall shoosh and papp each other on the heads, read goodfic, and rejoice over the knowledge we share. Then, after being revived through the power of chocolate and bleeprin, we can examine those... things.
I just...
Get a load of this one:
Watson and Mary have broken off their engagement, much to Holmes' delight. Now he can find Watson a woman that he approves of, but could he find the perfect match in his own cousin, Abigail Newton? Watson/OC
-insert sobbing gif here-
Whoops! Hey, any chance mini-Boarders could be recruited, you think?
(and am I the only one who thinks it would be ridiculously adorable to see minis in Agent uniforms?)
Stop me before I art again.
/papps/ It will all be okay.
I will console myself with the fact that Lux Piper is thinking of continuing the 1895 Baker Street Fanfiction Academy.
/emotional rocking
The continuation of a much beloved OFU, the fact that it's nearly Halloween, WiFi, good fanfiction, and the image of Eledhwen in a chicken suit.
The hell did that come from? It sounds vaguely familiar, but...
I provided one. Birds are on my mind anyway, as I just spent thirty minutes in a who-can-make-the-most-bird-puns contest. It was in-crane.