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preliminary musings on mary sue
Feb. 9th, 2004 10:13 pmHere are some undigested musings on Mary Sue, prompted by my recent posting of k/d.
One of the reasons that the k/d epic wip did not work was that I had got my Mary Sue wrong. All the time I was writing and angsting, I thought it was a Dom!Sue but later it was pointed out to me that it was actually a Karl!Sue, and suddenly the whole thing made a lot more sense. It was a Karl!Sue, and part of the mess I'd got myself into was because I had mis-identified my Sue!
It is actually important, I have come to believe, to know your Sue. Sues have been vilified extensively and have had to lead an underground existence but perhaps it's time that we took them seriously for a bit. I think knowing your Sue helps you to reflect upon that Sue and maybe gain the necessary fictional distance for a fic to work. And as we all (?) have secret-Sues, anyway, or at least tend to identify with one character very strongly (otherwise, where would the passion in the writing come from?), we might as well own up -- at least to ourselves.
This does not mean blatant Harry-Pottering. After all, I'm not talking about bad!fic but about sophisticated Sue-manipulations. Cupiscent is a mistress of that, for example.
So: free that inner Sue! But do it in order to make the fic better.
One of the reasons that the k/d epic wip did not work was that I had got my Mary Sue wrong. All the time I was writing and angsting, I thought it was a Dom!Sue but later it was pointed out to me that it was actually a Karl!Sue, and suddenly the whole thing made a lot more sense. It was a Karl!Sue, and part of the mess I'd got myself into was because I had mis-identified my Sue!
It is actually important, I have come to believe, to know your Sue. Sues have been vilified extensively and have had to lead an underground existence but perhaps it's time that we took them seriously for a bit. I think knowing your Sue helps you to reflect upon that Sue and maybe gain the necessary fictional distance for a fic to work. And as we all (?) have secret-Sues, anyway, or at least tend to identify with one character very strongly (otherwise, where would the passion in the writing come from?), we might as well own up -- at least to ourselves.
This does not mean blatant Harry-Pottering. After all, I'm not talking about bad!fic but about sophisticated Sue-manipulations. Cupiscent is a mistress of that, for example.
So: free that inner Sue! But do it in order to make the fic better.