Making Light :: Marching Mary Sues :: comments

Marching Mary Sues

To quote from the site where I found this item:Have you ever longed to insert yourself into your favorite show?...

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #1 from Andrew Brown

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 04:58:16 -0500

Laugh at me all you will, but I don't know what a "Mary Sue" is. Can someone explain?

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Posted March 8, 2003 4:58 AM by Andrew Brown

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #2 from James D. Macdonald

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 09:42:32 -0500

A "Mary Sue" is a character who is actually the author.

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Posted March 8, 2003 9:42 AM by James D. Macdonald

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #3 from Alan Bostick

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 11:56:28 -0500

So Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is a Mary Sue? Andy Breckman's song "Railroad Bill"?

(Yes, I know what you mean; you just didn't say it. ;-))

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Posted March 8, 2003 11:56 AM by Alan Bostick

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #4 from cd

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 12:26:50 -0500

Pat Pflieger's paper Too Good To Be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue has a thorough description of the phenomenon in question (and I found it pretty fascinating reading to boot).

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Posted March 8, 2003 12:26 PM by cd

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #5 from Holly

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 12:27:59 -0500

So that's the term for it. Few months ago, my group workshopped the first book of the Oort Cloud Trilogy, which featured as its hero a mild-mannered computer debugger/code writer who happened to run into a beautiful scarlet-haired mysterious woman with violet eyes and a strange ray gun, who drove a cargo-van-shaped vehicle that was capable of landing in a shopping-center parking lot at 6 p.m. on Christmas eve without anyone noticing. The violet-eyed beauty not only needed the help of our mild-mannered hero to escape from the intergalactic thugs who were trying to kill her, but upon being rescued she decided that this debugger-extraordinaire would be an invaluable asset to her top-secret government employers. Go figure.

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Posted March 8, 2003 12:27 PM by Holly

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #6 from Holly

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 12:50:32 -0500

Huh...reading the Pflieger paper just made me realize: the reason Star Trek: Nemesis was so bad was because Picard, Data and the bad guy were all THREE Mary Sues.

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Posted March 8, 2003 12:50 PM by Holly

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #7 from Alison Scott

Sat, 08 Mar 2003 13:09:30 -0500

OK. Sue Mason sent me this. Don't blame me. Blame her. You'll need to work out your own names though. Er, possibly not work safe.

http://pokeslash.tvheaven.com/files/instantslash.html

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Posted March 8, 2003 1:09 PM by Alison Scott

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #8 from Dave Bell

Sun, 09 Mar 2003 03:28:40 -0500

Well, tht's Aunty Sue for you....

Note that the page seems rather browser-sensitive

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Posted March 9, 2003 3:28 AM by Dave Bell

Marching Mary Sues -- comment #9 from CHip

Sun, 09 Mar 2003 21:55:16 -0500

"Mary Sue"s tend not just to cast the author but to put hem into a blatantly improbable wish fulfillment -- the sort of thing that makes Stranger in a Strange Land's Jubal Harshaw look like somebody you could run into any time.

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Posted March 9, 2003 9:55 PM by CHip