Night-Hunter wrote:Personally i see mary sues as characters who can't defend themselves and need a man to protect them. Well Flare and Nightfall are not like that. They can handle themselves and if you would let explain what i had planned for the fic...
Hey, Night Hunter,
I've heard you vehemently deny that your characters are o.c.'s before, so I know what your opinion is on this. And to be honest, I haven't read enough of your work to make a very supportable opinion on whether or not your characters are Mary Sues, but I figured I should say something.
A Mary Sue is characterized by a lot of different features, but generally anything that will make a reader say "yeah, right," has become a Mary Sue to that specific reader. With that point in mind, the ability of your characters to defend themselves is a positive trait. If, then, they have an abundance of other positive features, their ability to defend themselves can actually add to a reader's annoyance with the character.
Obviously, not every character who can fight is a Mary Sue. And obviously (as you have pointed out yourself) there are lots of characters out there who can't fight and are still Mary Sues.
What I'm getting at is that, in the end, the fact that your characters can fight doesn't automatically give them a free pass out of Mary Sue-dom.
With all due respect to your own perceptions, it's worth any author's effort to give their characters a second look over.
Do your characters fall in love with canon characters and get that love returned to them (as Sky pointed out- this is not necessarily a condemning trait)?
Do they often express wiser things than the characters around them/often make decisions which, in the end, prove to be the best possible decisions (also fine in and of itself)?
Can they wreck most opponents they come across (fine in and of itself)?
Do they have abilities (or curses) which are, for the most part, unique to them (How dare you! ...No, I'm just kidding, this is also fine in and of itself. I'm seeing a pattern)?
Do the specific talents of canon characters seem to fall prey at times to the necessities of the plot (Can Po somehow not pick his extremely durable self off the ground after going a few rounds with a crocodile? Oh wait- here comes Tisna- warrior panda! Crocodile doesn't stand a chance.)?
Are a collection of these happening at the same time? That's where the problem lies for Mary Sues. There is not any definable rule for how many of these combined traits a character can have before becoming annoying to the reader, which is part of what makes the Mary Sue debate so heated- it really is in the eye of the beholder. And that's the reason most authors don't recognize if they have Mary Sues- obviously if the character annoyed the author while he or she was writing the story, they wouldn't have written it that way.
And I know I've put a lot of words in this comment, but there's something else to think about- do you care about whether or not your character is a Mary Sue? A lot of authors use the defense for their characters that fan fiction is supposed to be free to the imagination of the author. There is actually very little to say against this line of reasoning-
if the author truly means to write for the gratification of their own imagination, and only that. An author should be happy with what they write, and if, indeed, modifying their characters to match the perceived desires of the reading public would only make them unhappy, then it why should they want to change their characters and be unhappy?
But, as I said, that only works if you're truly writing the work for yourself, and you don't care what anyone else thinks. If, however, your intention is to write a story others can enjoy (even if only so they can give you feedback- I will readily admit that I put a lot of stock into what people think of what I write), then it is wise to write characters that won't turn your audience away. I think the term "Mary Sue" has become rather stigmatized- to the point where the goal of writing a good character is to avoid writing "that dreaded Mary Sue- some conceptual banner raised by nosy people who take writing far too seriously."
But the concept of avoiding Mary Sues, when it comes down it, is really just about writing characters your readers can become enjoyably engaged with. So if someone comes to you and says your character is a Mary Sue, don't be frustrated by the label- look to what the label is trying to tell you.
