Should I start culling my characters? A Mary-Sue Question for the pro-fun thingamajig

[capri0mni]

What makes a character a Mary-Sue? Is it simply a way for a writer to put herself in a fic, and make it sympathetic? Or is there something more than that?

See, 'cause I'm contemplating starting up the "Pro-Fun Multi-writer, Multi-fandom, break it down, have a party, and save the world while you're at it" thingamajig again, and most of the people who have made suggestions have suggested that I do it as a Live Journal Roleplay.

I'm not exactly sure how that would work, but I know it involves making journals for each character that you play/write.

And I'm not sure which (if any) of my characters I should bring to this thing. Over the first three Pro-Fun Multi-writer thingamajigs, I've developed quite a crew. It's mostly because what I do best in these kinds of stories is react to the action, and connect it to action in other parts of the story. In order to do that I've had to put a p.o.v. character in each "quadrant".

First, there's Eloise. She's The Hostess, and pretty good at positioning herself in a central location. If she can't see (or hear) what's going on in middle of the action, she can usually at least catch whiff of the turmoil around the edges. But even she can't be everywhere at once.

So then, there's my pro-fun troll #2: Ruthie. She's a younger troll, who thinks Eloise makes a wonderful mentor. Plot-wise, she's there for Eloise's footwork. For example, if a giant pterradactyl crashes through the roof while Eloise is busy dealing with the fire in the closet full of rubber chickens, Eloise will send Ruthie over with some bandages.

(Edit: Forgot to say this last night: one symbol of Ruthie's role in the stories is that she dresses in a child's "Deputy cowboy/girl" costume. For these parties, she wears a bright red, flat-brimmed cowboy hat that ties under the chin, and a faux leather vest with a big, plastic "silver" Deputy Star attatched.)

Third, there's Walter Duncan. He's older, and he's Eloise's mentor -- the solid family core that Eloise never had with the family that raised her. He's the chef of the parties, and spends most of each story in the kitchen. But he also provides Eloise with some perspective on the events.

I guess Eloise represents my emotional reactionary self, and Walter Duncan represents my authorial/philosophical self.

There's Eloise's dog, too -- a stray she picked up in the second Hoedown, but dogs don't keep LiveJournals... so...nevermind.

Finally, there's a character that I think I may love -- Florestan (though I'm not fond of the name -- reminds me of a brand of toothpaste): the original pilot to Eloise's home TARDIS. He didn't start out as exclusively my character, but he sort of fell to me by default, because Eloise and "her" TARDIS were my "home ground." I wasn't planning on him showing up at all, but he gradually emerged out of the plot from the third Hoedown.

From the Doctor's p.o.v., he comes from Nearly Ancient Gallifrey: a time when Rassilon was a legendary hero, but not yet a God-in-Everthing-but-Name -- nor is he entirely sure that Rassilon's plan for Gallifrey was all that and a bag of chips. Up until his reemergence 2 years ago, he'd spent the last 90 (?) Time Lord generations trapped in suspended animation (between regenerations) just outside a black hole's singularity. So whatever's happened to Gallifrey, it's a pretty safe bet that this Time Lord also survived it. Or has he?


That's what I'm unsure of. When we start this pro-fun whatever-it-s, should I include any of these characters? If so, which ones? Or should I just wipe the slate completely clean?

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

By definition, a Mary Sue is a type of author-insert, but not all author-inserts are Mary Sues.

The biggest thing is the center-of-attention factor. If the story revolves around an author-insert character, and the point of the story is always about how brave or or beautiful or mysterious or caring or self-sacrificing she is, she's probably a Mary Sue. There might be another plot outside of the character portrait, but if she's a Sue that plot will keep getting derailed and put on hold while she grandstands.

Your characters represent different aspects of yourself, and they seem engineered (evolved?) to mesh with each other. None of them has catharsis or (to put it not-so-delicately) emotional masturbation as her or his primary reason for existence. You're a good storyteller and you've created purposeful characters. I think you're fine.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

You're a good storyteller and you've created purposeful characters. I think you're fine.

Thanks. I guess the one character I'm most worried might be a Mary-Sue (or is that Marty-Stu?) is Florestan. As a Time Lord, he's the character most at risk of upstaging the Doctor, especially since he lived at a time when Gallifrey's "religion" (for want of a better word) was still forming.

On the other hand, he'd be a good foil for the Doctor, in a way that his multiple regens can't be.

On first hand, again, this pro-fun thingie is (probably) going to take place in a new format, with new writers, and they will have no context to put him in.

On the other hand, again: I like him... I think.

Oy! I think I'm beginning to get a feel for RTD's Gallifrey Continuity puzzle...

[narm00.livejournal.com]

Mm. The other Time Lords we've encountered have been of different styles to the Doctor - that is, either what they do, or how they do things, is very different from the Doctor's, and it's that clash, that dynamic, that prevents it being all about the other Time Lord. Florestan has always struck me as being more formal, more scholarly and academic, then the Doctor. There /is/ a streak of adventure in him, a desire for something more - otherwise he would never have left Gallifrey - but his approach to adventures differs from the Doctor's.

I get the sense that what Florestan does, he does partly for Eloise, partly for Sweetheart, and partly also out of his own sense of curiosity, his own fascination.

/I/ rather like Florestan, too (as I'm fond of Eloise, Ruthie and Walter) - the impression I get of him is the gentleman-adventurer, fascinated and curious about the universe around him. I think he would make a good complement - and a good foil - to the Doctor. Their approaches to adventures are distinct enough that, handled well, neither should be in danger of upstaging each other.

If you need a context for him, I'd suggest thinking through the basics of Florestan, keep it simple (like RTD's reintroduction of the Doctor). You're introducing him to a new audience, in a new format, who've never encountered him before - What do you think are the essentials? What should newcomers know about him? Start from the basics, then introduce the other things as and when.

Imran

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Florestan has always struck me as being more formal, more scholarly and academic, then the Doctor.

Hmmm... I think that's part of it. Mostly, though, I think he has a very different personal style. The Doctor tends to jump right into the middle of trouble, and make a splash (as when he took over in "Tomb of the Cybermen").

Florestandrezoremptrizon (to use his full name) prefers to slip in and move beneath the surface, barely making a ripple before he acts. That approach tends to make him more comtemplative -- and diplomatic -- than the Doctor.

What do you think are the essentials? What should newcomers know about him?

Hmmm... Basically, what I wrote above: 1) That he is the original pilot to the TARDIS where the party/story takes place. 2) That he's been long-lost and newly returned. 3) That he comes from a Gallifreyan time long before the Doctor's grandfather was a pattern in the Loom. In that order.

I'd leave out the quest for the muses, or the brewhaha over the Myth Engine, all that stuff. At least, we probably don't have to explain Gallifrey or Time Lords to this new group ;-).

Oh, and I am hereby changing his name. From Florestan to Estandre. It sounds vaguely French, and vaguely Spanish, and has of whiff of "the Stranger" about it. Which fits.

[narm00.livejournal.com]

Florestandrezoremptrizon (to use his full name) prefers to slip in and move beneath the surface, barely making a ripple before he acts. That approach tends to make him more comtemplative -- and diplomatic -- than the Doctor.

Mm. I had a sense of something like that when I wrote the original reply. I could see Estandre fitting into a high-class situation with diplomacy and ease. Looking back at what he says, and how he behaves, I can see him extending that across the board - being able to fit in, or at least give the appearance of fitting in, no matter the culture; he is/was an exo-mythologist, after all. Just needs a bit of adjustment on my part, get the mental image straight. ;)

His decision to use his other name is going to be interesting for Eloise, who knows him as Florestan; the regular party-goers too, but more so for Eloise, who's travelled with him since his awakening in this era.

Hm. Florestan /is/ a name he uses, we know that from Goodnight, Sweetheart (the flashback with Danik); so too is Estandre - which raises the interesting question (well, at least for those of us returning to the party) of why he uses both.

Imran

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Hm. Florestan /is/ a name he uses, we know that from Goodnight, Sweetheart (the flashback with Danik)

Or, at least, the name he used to use, once upon a time, in his previous regenerations, on other worlds (another difference between him and the Doctor is that Estandre rarely visited Earth in his travels. If he did so at all, it was in the far distant past, from our p.o.v.).

I do have a brief little comic scene in mind to introduce the name change, and Eloise helps him choose which syllables to use. Back home, on Gallifrey, of course, he would have used all 8 of them, just as Romanadvoratrelundar did; but that's impractical when introducing yourself to many different people speaking many different languages.

BTW, do you remember, roughly, how long we'd figured Estandre had been trapped? I know we'd figured that his lifetime was the same number of generations after Rassilon as our time is in generations after King Arthur. But I don't remember how long that was before the Doctor's time.

Did we ever spell it out in the text of the story? or was it all in emails back and forth?

[narm00.livejournal.com]

(another difference between him and the Doctor is that Estandre rarely visited Earth in his travels. If he did so at all, it was in the far distant past, from our p.o.v.).

Which is interesting; in 'Hanging Questions', he says he chose to study Earth myths very early on. He studied the myths, but rarely went to the source. Hm...

We discussed how long Estandre had been trapped in newsgroup discussion after 'Hanging Questions'; I'm not sure we ever spelled it out during the Quadrille.

What we were figuring as relates to King Arthur was how many generations after Rassilon Estandre would have to have lived in order to discover what had happened during Rassilon's assumption of power and learn about the muses; the upper limit we set was a few generations less than the number of generations between Arthur's and our own - a point where it was still possible for a dedicated researcher to discover the truth.

Between Arthur's time and ours is about 63-64 human generations, so the upper limit for Estandre was 50 Gallifreyan generations. (lower being 15 Gallifreyan generations.)

For the length of time Estandre had been imprisoned, what we apparently settled on was that the lower limit was 1.1-1.2 million years; upper was 1.75-1.85 million. :0

Imran

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

in 'Hanging Questions', he says he chose to study Earth myths very early on. He studied the myths, but rarely went to the source. Hm...

Ah, yes. Now I remember....and since I'm the one who wrote 'Hanging Questions,' I can explain exactly what he meant by that. ;-)

He studied Earth myths very early on: in pre-Prehellenic Greece (and other cultures), when humans were just beginning to realize the presence of muses, deamons, and genii, and develop a relationship with them, since that part of Gallifrey's own past was inaccessible to him. Once he had learned all that he thought he could from those times and places, he was off on his own quest for Gallifrey's muses, and never had a chance to return to Earth -- until Danik brought back the Sampo.

I do remember that we'd decided the proper unit of measure for discussing the timespan was generations rather than years or decades or centuries, because that would show how far distant an event would be from living memory....

Hmmm... this strikes me as an interesting subject (perhaps) for an essay -- seperate from the discussion of any particular fiction.

I'll have to go back and reread the 'Hanging Questions' thread.

[pedanther]

Florestandrezoremptrizon (to use his full name) prefers to slip in and move beneath the surface, barely making a ripple before he acts. That approach tends to make him more comtemplative -- and diplomatic -- than the Doctor.

This is why I'm not worried about him doing the Mary-Sue Limelight Hog -- he has the wrong kind of personality for it. (But the right kind of personality for all kinds of good things, of course.)

I'd have said so sooner, but I couldn't think of a good way of putting it -- the best I could come up with was that I thought he was "safe", which sounds vaguely insulting.

[pedanther]

What makes a character a Mary-Sue? Is it simply a way for a writer to put herself in a fic, and make it sympathetic? Or is there something more than that?

I can't think of anything to say about this that indefatigable42 hasn't covered already. (Except that I don't think all Mary-Sues are necessarily author-inserts, any more than all author-inserts are necessarily Mary-Sues; but that's drifting off the topic.)

most of the people who have made suggestions have suggested that I do it as a Live Journal Roleplay.

Bearing in mind, of course, that asking for opinions on one's Live Journal is likely to bias the results in favour of Live Journal things...

I should point out, by the way, that although I will of course show up for whatever party you end up throwing, Live Journal Roleplay is very much my least favourite of any of the suggestions made so far.

There's Eloise's dog, too -- a stray she picked up in the second Hoedown, but dogs don't keep LiveJournals...

Bet you half a dollar?
harpes... reginaldbarclay... zabbazabba...

I agree that Hi-fi doesn't seem the type, though.

When we start this pro-fun whatever-it-s, should I include any of these characters? If so, which ones? Or should I just wipe the slate completely clean?

I'd rather you didn't wipe the slate clean; the ongoing story of Eloise et al. is part of the appeal for me.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Bearing in mind, of course, that asking for opinions on one's Live Journal is likely to bias the results in favour of Live Journal things...

This is very true.

Live Journal Roleplay is very much my least favourite of any of the suggestions made so far.

Duly noted. And I think I agree, the more I think about it (that might be too much thinking... but it's after 2 am, here). LJ RPG's are great for character development, and long, ongoing arcs that follow a character through their life. But they don't lend themselves to actually telling stories with a beginning, middle and end. And how would it be edited into a cohesive whole if it ever were finished?

Though I may still sweep pro_fun out, and invite the participants to post there, if they want, to discuss plot lines and characters as they come up... IIRC, that's a bit how Florestan evolved: as speculations and: "What ifs" in private email discussions off of the main thread, around a month or so before he actually appeared in the story. And if writers do choose to hold these discussions in pro_fun, then the bits of discussion that make it into the story can be saved as memories, archived, and linked to. ...yyyyesssss...

I'd rather you didn't wipe the slate clean; the ongoing story of Eloise et al. is part of the appeal for me.

Okay. That's what I was wondering, really: whether I'm the only one who cares about them, or not. I'm glad it's "not." :-)

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

Actually, what some people do is have one LJ, and then have a different icon for each character. Saves logging in and having multiple accounts. If you go to GreatestJournal, you can have 1,000 icons for free (only downside is the advertising, but then that's free for you).

Eh, who cares? The whole-pro-fun thing is all about Self-Insertion characters anyway. SI's are different - Mary Sues are the perfectionist, can-never-be-defeated have-tragic-angsty-pasts characters that ruin the fun for everyone else. I had fun with Sailor G, but then she was never meant to be a SERIOUS character.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Eh, who cares? The whole-pro-fun thing is all about Self-Insertion characters anyway.

Nod. I'm just having my pre-party Hostess anxiety, that's all. And as hostess, I see it as my job to ensure that everyone else has room and stuff to do for their characters, and keep my own monitor-space hogging to a minimum.