Mary Sue Problems

Life is hard when you're a rebellious, Converse loving, not like other girls, clumsy, average, slim but curvy, misunderstood special snowflake. I do not give out links to any fics on this blog. You can read why in the FAQ. Sharing one or two traits...

[marysueproblems]

Is this blog still active? If not, please don't delete it. I enjoyed going through the archives.

Inactively active. Sometimes we rise from the dead again. Much like fanfics.

[marysueproblems]

Have you read Irene Iddesleigh? It's famous for being one of the worst books of all time, with a Mary Sue who constantly aangsts about everything to boot. Als it just jumps into descriptions out of nowhere.

I have not, but I'm probably now legally and spiritually obligated to, so I'm off to find a copy.

[theriverdalereviewer]

list of worst lines of dialogue in riverdale:

“You’ve got some pretty big coconuts pulling that kind of stunt last night.”

“Bro I’m warning you. You don’t wanna start with me.”

“I was attacked by a bear.”

“That’s because the gargoyle king wants me and Jughead to be together. We’re gonna be a ship.”

“Ethelhead? In your dreams.”

“Because we’re endgame, Archie”

“Sardonic humor is just my way of relating to the world.”

“A vughead kiss, right now in the present might be precisely what it takes to save a future bughead from imploding.”

“I dropped out in the fourth grade to run drugs to support my nana.”

“That means you haven’t known the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football.”

“You’ve given me the kiss of life Archie Andrews. Now I’ve given it to your dad.”

“Because if you did I might have to punish you.”

“I’m coo coo bananas for you.”

“SHUT THE HELL UP IMPOSTER.”

“I’m gonna make my bones.”

“I’d recognize those abs anywhere.”

“Mr. Andrews, nice haircut. You’re looking extra DILFy today.”

“I am so over the toxic masculinity in this hallway right now.”

“I beg your misogynistic pardon?”

“The serpent queen is a warrior queen.”

“Don’t test us, mumzie. We know how to *pulls out a belt* dominate too.”

and of course

“In case you haven’t notice, I’m weird. I’m a weirdo. I don’t fit in and I don’t wanna fit in. Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? That’s weird.”

[marysueproblems]

I have this crack theory that one of the Riverdale writers wrote My Immortal. Don't @ me.

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Hi Maggie! Have you ever had problems with characters who are too much like yourself? If so, what have you done to write from perspectives that sound different from yourself? Thanks!

Dear expertlyfeigningnormalcy,

Our default setting as creators is actually “self.” This is because everyone in the world has to go through the process of understanding how much of their experience of reality is universal. Does everyone feel pain when they’re burned? Does everyone have two parents? Does everyone live in a house? Does everyone say y’all? etc. etc. 

That means that without effort, without study, without empathy, our characters will be us. Even if they look wildly different, like ninety year old retired bankers or twenty year old hippies or one thousand year old tree people, their motivations and dialog will be limited by what we understand of the world.

Some good exercises to be sure that you’re not writing you:

• ask yourself, what would I do in the situation I just placed this character in? If the answer is always the same as what the character is doing, you’re writing yourself (or at least how you see yourself).

• write down other people’s vocal tics (for instance, I know someone who says ‘whatnot’ a lot and just interviewed someone who kept saying “crumbs!”) and then do your best to analyze your own speech for tics. 

• read your dialog out loud, without dialog tags. Can you or your critique partners tell the difference between characters?

• swap your characters out in scenes. Do they behave the same way when facing the same circumstances?

It’s one of the cool things about writing that rewards age and cunning. The better you know humans, the more interesting and varied your characters can become.

urs,

Stiefvater 

[jeffgoldblumss]

✌😁

[marysueproblems]

Maids of Honor trying to figure out wedding dress judging.

[marysueproblems]

Trying on wedding dresses, and it is nothing like what I expected from fanfiction. Sleeves? Itchy. Everything? Had to be clothespinned. Bigger and smaller. Nothing is the same! Some have pockets! Some have judgemental salespeople! SALESPEOPLE TEXT YOU NOW.

[marysueproblems]

I can’t believe this blog is still running, I remember when you first started doing book reviews. How’s your cat been?

It’s more like crawling along now.

I am up to 3.5 cats now. All are doing well. Seamus (the oldest) tolerates the others, but he has been a lot less grumpy since he had several teeth removed (older cats tend to have a lot of dental issues). Bunny hops around the house and gets Maeve into trouble by tricking her into things (Maeve is not very bright, and Bunny is a criminal mastermind hindered only by the fact she is a very small cat). Maeve is a terror who loves to snuggle (until she doesn’t, and she’ll stare you dead-on as her only warning that she is about to bite the shit out of your face) and who is also the sole reason we can’t have a Christmas tree or string lights. Because she eats them. Both the cords and the actual lights.The half cat is an outdoor one who kind of showed up shortly after we moved into the house. He took some time to warm up to us, but we’ve kept him fed and healthy, and now he comes to me for snuggles every time we’re outside. His name is Castiel. He is a little aggressive. Like Maeve, he bites sometimes, but when he does it, skin rips... So not quite safe to have him around the other cats. He has a little bed on the porch that he loves, and if the temperature is extreme, we open up the garage for him to stroll on in. 

They’ve been awfully quiet today. I need to go make sure they’re not in the liquor cabinet again. 

[mccoyquialisms]

“Fan fiction often demonstrates a high level of knowledge of and insight into its source texts (or canons, in fan fiction vocabulary) and, as an allusive literary form, rewards equally high levels of knowledge in its readers. This knowledge has an erotic inflection (as, famously, in early English translations of the Bible, where to know is to intimately penetrate); fans have not only understanding but intimacy with their canon, and fan fiction increases this intimacy. Theorists of fan fiction often speak of fan fiction as filling the gaps in a source text, a phrase with its own sexual undertones that also describes fan fiction’s self-assumed role as interlinear glossing of a source text. Silences and absences in the source text act as barriers to intimacy, and fan fiction writers fill these silences with their imaginative activity, enabling their own deeper understanding of the world and characters of the source text. In its current context in popular media fandom, fan fiction is, among other things, a heuristic tool: a mental technology that facilitates understanding of a text by means of an affective hermeneutics—a set of ways of gaining knowledge through feeling.”

—

Wilson, Anna. 2016. “The Role of Affect in Fan Fiction.” In “The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work,” edited by Ika Willis, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21.http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2016.0684. (via wildehacked)

[F]an fiction is, among other things, a heuristic tool: a mental technology that facilitates understanding of a text by means of an affective hermeneutics—a set of ways of gaining knowledge through feeling.

*Ding!* Lightbulb. It is exactly this for me. (Other things too, sure, but just… overwhelmingly this.)

[marysueproblems]

I have an MSP question regarding the Voltron fandom. There are a group of shippers who are creating an AU with two of the leads renamed. You might have seen it mentioned on twitter. It's called Leakira. I like the original ship they are riffing off of, but I have seen some concept art for Leakira and it looks... Well, it kind of looks like the Leakira people are co-opting Keith and Lance and turning them into Gary Stus. Are canon avatars the result when self inserts are chased from archives?

Oh absolutely!

It is incredibly rare for a canon character to be written exactly as they appear in the show in fanfic. Even before self inserts fell out of fashion there was a trend for massively warping canon characters into the form that the ficcer desires.

I am more than happy to admit that I (Bacon) do this in my own work. We all do it to an extent. But without the classic self-insert Sue we see it far more blatantly now.

And so let us end this ask with a minute’s silence in memory of the Self-Insert Sue. Who has been slain by crappy canon characterisation and Character/Reader fic. 

Rest in Peace Self-Insert Sue.

We’ll miss you, you tacky bitch.

[marysueproblems]

Anyone seen the Last Witch Hunter?

Honestly, Vinn Diesel making a movie featuring his D&D Self-Insert is goals. 

[marysueproblems]

Last night I managed to win at Cards Against Humanity. Not because everyone else thought my cards were funnier. But because my cards were just like... Darkly, undeniably true about the current state of the world. So really we all lost at Cards Against Humanity last night. 

[fozmeadows]

dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS

These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs - screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted - are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.

UM.

Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS. 

Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure” ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?  What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?

STOP 

GO TO WRITING JAIL

GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

[the-thorster]

tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow

[count-di-luna]

if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them? 

*facepalm*

[captainlordauditor]

“ Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English “

lovers of english

oh my goddddddd

[captainlordauditor]

i can’t get over this fucking post

“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”

1. what the fuck is joie de vivre

2. melted jewels?

3. beryl green

eden green:

WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT

[thatgirlonstage]

@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism

[captainlordauditor]

seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings

[geekandmisandry]

Oyster white teeth?

[catsfeminismandatla]

holy purple prose batman

[emeraldmercury]

Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?

[geekandmisandry]

Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.

[dizzy-redhead]

Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.

Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft

[typhoidmeri]

[123-its-just-me]

You guys here is the description of the book on Amazon.

If this is the description I cannot think how bad the inside is.

[rookerstash-after-dark]

I never ever want to hear anyone make fun of fanfic writers again

NEVER EVER

[write-like-an-american]

Lord god almighty. I’ve been feeling really down about my writing lately, but this is a confidence boost. 8I

[thelittleblackfox]

“single but in a long term relationship”

[i-gwarth]

3.6/5 is entirely too high a Goodreads score for this book

[amaryllis-meridian]

… that second one is describing a dog.

[elennare]

As well as the sexism, racism, purple prose, and general nonsense… “The moons delicate light”? At least learn to use apostrophes correctly before setting yourself up as a writing expert, good lord.

[ammg-old]

“You will find that this book will transform the way you think about descriptive writing.”

Well it sure did that…

[elodieunderglass]

Gosh

[eggpuffs]

this movie gives solid advice

[countcracula]

my brain, interrupting my daydream: this is poorly researched and the narrative is not compelling

[marysueproblems]

Would you consider doing book reviews again?

Maybe, it depends.

[marysueproblems]

I hope this isn't a weird thing to say, but this blog actually inspired me to write a sort of 'Sues collide' story/comic/I'll-figure-out-what-medium-it-is-when-I-have-a-hecking-finished-outline in which a Special Dystopian Orphan Sue and a Standard Fantasy Chosen One Stu are both forced to develop into actual characters when the former blunders into the latter's story. Classic 'self insert hijacks the plot' nonsense.

Holy crap! That sounds fabulous! If you do go through with it we’d love to read it!

[marysueproblems]

Would be considered as a Mary Sue if one of my characters is Japanese, has a pale porcelain skin and dark-ish violet-blue eyes, however due to it she get picked on during childhood?

Weird eye colour does not a Sue make. Bad writing is what makes a character a Sue. 

But even if you write her brilliantly she’ll get called a Sue. Even if she had normal coloured eyes someone would call her a Sue. Just focus on having fun and doing your best and everyone else can sod off.

x