I know this looks like I’m purposely putting the Peach into an extreme or daintified position — but you tall skinny people know how how hard it is to fit your limbs into small spaces. It’s like trying to work a handful of bent plastic straws into a box.
The more I worked with the Peach, the more complex he got. I don’t think I’ve ever done a genuine MarySue character in my life. An early character, named Georg (after I watched The Sound Of Music), was an all-powerful sorcerer — on some planets he was a god — but rather than making him supreme and perfect, this simply led to a case of incredible boredom. Not in the author — in the character. Since he could do anything he wanted with a flip of his hand, there was no challenge left in his life. He even took to cooking without magic, just to be involved in things that might burn or curdle. He was a very depressed character, although I never explained why in the stories. I was a depressed kid, so it’s clear why; there’s no use reading an author’s bios, because it’s all there in her or his characters.
Georg’s favorite dish was killer-whale cheese. Which he made with no magic. No need to describe THAT, is there?
Ja, watching someone like Pete at 6′5″ and 175 or so get into planes and other things that I easily slip into at my reasonably short 5′4″ is always rather amusing. Even as “stout” as I am, I can still fit better in a plane cockpit than he can. HEh.
Some of my first literary characters were horrible Mary-Sues, emotional, moody, firey, chock full of PMS. Ugh. I keep that sh*t around so I can laugh at how pathetic my stuff was back then. It keeps me from sliding back into that type of stuff. Somewhat. XD
But it’s VALID if it’s a teen — and from her viewpoint. The best MarySue ever is “True Grit.” What an obnoxious little snot; don’t we all wish a director who understood western humor had made THAT movie?
I was never tempted to do a Mary Sue until I was a teenager in earnest, by which time I’d written a load of stuff already. I think it must really be a consequence of adolescent self-consciousness.
I just had a thought — just about EVERY male character is, by definition, a MarySue! Huckleberry Finn – all about the boy’s feelings and thoughts. Bloom — the only thing outside himself is his wife’s happy self-time. EVERY comic book hero. Most of Greek myth and almost all religions. How come BOYS get to be self-centered, overbearing, me me me dorks and girls DON’t? Tell me ONE male character doesn’t fit the bill!
OMG, so true! Yeah, how come guys get all the fun? We call MarySue guys Gary-Stus. XD
Perhaps because in culture guys think they are supposed/genetically geared that way, and culture dictates that we of the potential childbearing aren’t? I know that in history, every woman that was MarySue-ish was labelled either a witch, a harridan, a bitch, a tramp, a whore…
Wow. That’s enough to make even the mildest feminist reach for the battleaxe and start wading through the bodies. *evilgrin*