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Still can't wrap my mind around how awful Horatio Caine is, as a fictional character (This is the journal of things stuck in my head).
And then I realized why:
He's always giving advice, and it's always perfect advice-- And he never asks for advice (or needs it, but refuses to ask). He treats his colleagues like children, and they seem to love him for it. And he is completely unflappable. He's never flapped once, much less flailed, no matter how horrible the crime scene. He talks about everything as if he were terminally bored.
In other words, he's a Marty-Stu.
Obviously, there's got to be a spectrum, here. A character that is always flailing and in need of advice would be just as annoying, and completely unconvincing as a leader.
And then I got the silly notion of coming up with a formula that new (and old) writers could use to avoid M-S charaters, as a diagram with arrows and squiggles and all...
Want to help me figure it out? ;-)
And then I realized why:
He's always giving advice, and it's always perfect advice-- And he never asks for advice (or needs it, but refuses to ask). He treats his colleagues like children, and they seem to love him for it. And he is completely unflappable. He's never flapped once, much less flailed, no matter how horrible the crime scene. He talks about everything as if he were terminally bored.
In other words, he's a Marty-Stu.
Obviously, there's got to be a spectrum, here. A character that is always flailing and in need of advice would be just as annoying, and completely unconvincing as a leader.
And then I got the silly notion of coming up with a formula that new (and old) writers could use to avoid M-S charaters, as a diagram with arrows and squiggles and all...
Want to help me figure it out? ;-)
