Subject: Yup, parody sue, not canon sue.
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Posted on: 2015-08-09 23:32:00 UTC
The writer of Wicked (which is a canon of its own, and goodfic) knew very well they were writing an adult-sized world based on a children's story. In that world, Dorothy becomes a Parody Sue because she's still treating an adult-sized world like a playground for children.
Dorothy in "Wicked". She doesn't enter into the story much; in the musical she's only a shadow. But I think she's a parody sue, with the movie as her story. Why?
-She enters a canon with an involved backstory, factions, politics and religion, and simplifies it so that it revolves around her journey through it.
-She gathers allies that should want to stay rather far away from her, or at least not want to have much to do with her.
-Everything she does, without much apparent effort, is heralded as heroic.
-Despite being dropped into a totally unfamiliar environment and having to go on a journey, she's never hungry, cold, physically exhausted, etc.; her journey is more like a tour, and her hair and clothes stay perfect.
-She seems instinctively drawn to pink, glittery Glinda.
To be clear here, I'm not saying that the original Oz book series had Dorothy as a Canon Sue; I'm saying that "Wicked" turned her into one by making the world more serious, adult, and deep than it was in the books or in the movie based on them.
Wonder how many other prequels retrospectively turn characters into Sues?
You could argue that the posthumous publication of The Silmarillion turned Bilbo Baggins into a Marty Stu.
Please don't pounce on me for this, too hard... but "The Hobbit" isn't really Tolkien's best work. (Which is kind of like saying, "That dish isn't the best one available at this world-famous, wonderful restaurant", though. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it.)
"The Hobbit" was written back before Tolkien's world was properly fleshed out as it is in the trilogy and later on the Silmarillion. It's very much a bedtime story; it only gets complex near the end, when the focus widens into the battle over Smaug's treasure and many more people and places join the narrative. At that point you realize--wow, this story takes place in a larger world. The first time I read it, I found the transition a little jarring; I'd been going along, reading it much like I would a fairy tale, and suddenly all of these other people with other motivations showed up and I had to keep track of them like I would while reading a novel with a much wider scope.
Also, Bilbo Baggins is not a silly name. It's a Hobbit name. So there. :)
As for Bilbo being a Stu from the perspective of the Silmarillion... Hmm... Well, in-canon, "The Hobbit" was written by Bilbo himself, and so of course it focuses on his experiences. It doesn't contain the bigger backstory because Bilbo didn't know the bigger backstory until later. Other characters are written as though they were exactly the way Bilbo perceives them.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that from the perspective of the Silmarillion, The Hobbit is a Suefic; I would say it's a genre-shift fic, from fictional-history to fairy-tale. It's about the same thing as the difference between "Wicked" and the Oz book series, a shift from drama to children's fiction. But the movie's Dorothy... well.
The Hobbit was written first, just as Wizard of Oz was written before Wicked. That's my point.
It looks like they're saying that the later work written by a different author makes a certain character a *Parody* Sue in that work. You're (as far as I can tell) saying that a different work that came later turns a character in an earlier work into a regular Stu -- but they're talking within-the-work, not saying Wicked made Original!Dorothy a Sue.
Furthermore, the main difference is that Wicked *is* fanfic, whereas Tolkien's later works are, well, *his* later works. An author's early works are not fanfic of their later ones.
The writer of Wicked (which is a canon of its own, and goodfic) knew very well they were writing an adult-sized world based on a children's story. In that world, Dorothy becomes a Parody Sue because she's still treating an adult-sized world like a playground for children.
I was just trying to expand the Original Post into a sort of wider speculation on how later prequels can make the earlier works seem Suish. That's all.
You're onto something there. As a world expands in the hands of a good writer, the early, unformed stories in it can seem simplistic by comparison, even though standing on their own they're quite good.
Compare that to what happens when a bad writer writes a series or expands on a world--they get favorites, and their favorites get more and more sparkly, and the series gets more and more repetitive. (Anita Blake, looking at you, Canon Sue that you are. And she started out so promising too...)