Subject: "It's a great theorical tool. All kinds of real things fail.
Author:
Posted on: 2011-12-17 06:17:00 UTC
...including you and me."
(Credit, of course, to Neal Stephenson, bastardized though the quote is.)
I got a 92. *cough* I... don't even know how. I blame highschool!VM.
No, not your agents, you, the boarder reading this. You may be a horrible, horrible Sue/Stu. Or not, but it would still be funny to see what a test thinks you are.
More directly, find a Mary Sue litmus test on the internet, use it to evaluate yourself, and post the results and a link to the test here.
In my case, the test I used was at http://www.ponylandpress.com/ms-test.html, and I scored a 56, or Über-Stu. It's a good thing that boarders are not agents!
Granted, I was loafing around and giving myself all the points possible. And then I remembered a conversation between my, ahem, love interest and I where he was like "flaws? I see no flaws".
I AM A MARY SUE SHE IS ME.
I'm a Non-Sue...
I scored 50 when I ignored the fact that the "character" was me. When I skipped those questions, I only got a 7.
I do not have sparkly blood, thank you very much! :P
37 to be precise.
Does anyone think the PPC count as organised crime?
It all makes sense now! We're taking part in gang warfare!
I scored myself a 48! I'm just a plain old ordinary Mary Sue!
I am bland. I scored a 7 not counting the comparison to me things. 38 with the things that compare me to me.
Okay, I'm really that bland. (Not counting the comparison to me things.)
Counting author resemblance puts my score at 105, on the same test.
I had to restrain myself from lying about my hair/eye color... and my anime obsession... and getting good grades... at least I'm not sparkly.
Maybe I should embrace my Sue-ness and go as a Sue for Halloween next year.
And here I thought I was boring.
I, the great Marl Duothimir, conqueror of universes and devourer of breakfast cereals, have a score of... -3.
I think I did something wrong.
I didn't check any of the ones about sharing things in common with the author, though, or the high school stuff (I'm well out of high school).
I did kind of help a friend out of a nasty place in his life and then date him in high school, though, so yeah. That and I figured divorced parents count for an angsty childhood. >.>
I agree with Calista: characters just don't have the same amount of detail to their lives as real people do.
~Neshomeh
I attribute this to the fact that I have a number of nasty flaws and have screwed up massively in the past. Go me?
Scored a 32, borderline. Should it really count that I have the same taste in books as me?
Apparently, I scored a 48 on that test. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go hide from the Agents. *puts on sunglasses, activates neuralyzer* You never saw me. *leaves*
I scored a 73, for Pete's sake.
I mean, I got a 79. However, I did think that I had a similar eye color and such to myself. (Excuses, excuses...whoever wrote me needs to edit me a little bit.)
It's simply a matter of "borrowing" one of Solid Snake's boxes, traveling to the Calvin and Hobbes continuum, and then changing the box into something we canuse to hide. *pulls out Remote Activator, opens portal* Shall we?
(In all seriousness, I think it was the whole "is your character similar to you in X regard" thing that's responsible for our high scores. Nevertheless, I think that I need to get my life a beta-reader...)
I feel both shame and wonder how high a score the average celebrity would get.
Probably because I thought "Well, I do have my own name. Well, I do share my own interests with myself. Well, I do have the same taste in books, films and music as myself."
That explains the 30 I got.
The ridiculous amount of clubs I do at school probably didn't help either.
I got a 36. Odd. Now to test all my other characters!
I get a 22. But that's only if I don't pick the answers that reflect the fact that the character I'm testing is myself--you know, same name, same taste in books, same career, that kind of thing. I gained some points for childhood trauma and being really good at school, looking younger than I am and being good at understanding animals. I wonder if I gained points for owning cats, or if it had to be an unusual pet?
If I added all the stuff that involved the character's similarity to me, it'd probably score Uber-Sue.
It does make me think though. A true self-insert--a real person, written into a story, rather than an idealized version of the author--would still score as a Sue, even though if they hadn't been based on the writer, they would be a pretty realistic character.
And then there's my own "borderline Sue" status, even though I'm a pretty average everyday kind of person. I think, maybe, it just comes from the way a real person is quite detailed and complex--more so than a fictional character. When you write a fictional character, you don't add every single detail about them, just the ones that are relevant. So, if I were a fictional character, the fact that I look younger than I am or won the school spelling bee mightn't even be mentioned, because it wouldn't be relevant. But, since I'm not, I know all those little details, and some of them are Suvian traits.
Maybe part of writing a Sue is just giving the character too many traits, period. You give her a beautiful face even though her beauty isn't driving the story; you give her powers she never really uses; you make people love her even though it wouldn't matter to the plot whether they did. The character gets cluttered with traits that she doesn't need to have and that don't need to be mentioned.
Everything you write about a character should drive the story. For the Sue, that's the other way around--the story is just there to show off the Sue.
Maybe part of writing a Sue is just giving the character too many traits, period. You give her a beautiful face even though her beauty isn't driving the story; you give her powers she never really uses; you make people love her even though it wouldn't matter to the plot whether they did. The character gets cluttered with traits that she doesn't need to have and that don't need to be mentioned.
Everything you write about a character should drive the story. For the Sue, that's the other way around--the story is just there to show off the Sue.
That's pretty much the definition of a Sue/Stu, as far as I'm concerned. I might save this thingie-- it also has the benefit of touching on Mark Twain's rules of writing.
... and got 4. I must be a really bland person then XD
There's always the difference between designing your characters and putting them into a story. While in your story you'll only disclose the information needed for the plot, in design, your character can have much more details than needed.
I always assumed that the mere existence of these traits counted, and now if they were described in-story. Many things inherently influence a character's personality and thus the way he or she acts, even if they're considered Suevian traits.
...including you and me."
(Credit, of course, to Neal Stephenson, bastardized though the quote is.)
I got a 92. *cough* I... don't even know how. I blame highschool!VM.
Somebody de-glitter this Boarder!
I scored a 34 on the test. I should work to de-Sueify myself...