Mary Sue in Saiyuki

[incandescens]

A passing note. Dougan in Saiyuki Requiem really is a Mary Sue.

I mean, he wants the main character to love him, he artificially gives himself powers so that he's as cool as all the other main characters . . .

. . . so, all would-be Mary Sues, take good note of what happens to him.

Comments

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

Heh. A Mary (Marty) Sue wanna-be. Else he would've taken the day, won his teacher's heart and saved them all from some mortal peril (Kougaiji? ^_~) whilst proving himself more capable and wonderful than the others.

[incandescens]

Well, one could wish that what happened to him _would_ happen to all Mary Sues. (Especially Sanzou-loves-me-really types . . .)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to assert some day, in public (and *after* I've hired the guard dogs and the bodyguards) that Mary Sues are no worse than yaoi- or rather, no different from yaoi. In a MS you take the guy who loves nobody and make him love you. In yaoi you take the guy who loves nobody and make him love his pet monkey. (You've read the Sanzou/Gokuu that starts with Gokuu saying, 'Do you remember our first time, Sanzou?' and Sanzou saying 'As if I could forget.' It exists. TTBOMK no-one said anything but me.) If it's permissable to make characters fall arbitrarily in love with other characters, why is it heinous to make them fall for you? Just wondering.
(My other stated opinion is that people hate MSs because at some point they themselves either wrote or fantasized a MS. The farther you get from the age when you naturally tend to do this, the sweeter the habit looks. 'Ahh, isn't that cute- she's written herself as Sanzou's main squeeze. Natsukashii.')
-mjj

[incandescens]

Hm... okay, point. I was being rather petty there. And I will admit to having written a couple of MS stories early on, and to still having a metric ton inside my head to provide entertainment in the dull moments.

Perhaps a problem which MS stories often have is that they _are_ early writing by the author, which means that readers have to cope with problems of grammar, plot, spelling, and so on. A really well-written MS could probably surmount a lot of this.

[(Anonymous)]

I double-dog dare you...
-mjj

[incandescens]

(whimpers)

Okay, _when_ I can come up with a MS who'll have sufficient character consistency to stand up to the rest of the Saiyuki characters. :) And a good reason for being there.

In the meantime... I'll just keep on playing with the regulars. (Get pin. Prod. Prod again.) I'm getting more ideas about where to take Dry River, and who's going to end up resolving it, too.

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

Ok, my love of language moves me onto a topic far outside my purview.

I've a pretty clear sense of what a Mary Sue is from the context of all this, but it leaves me quite curious: Where did that particular designation come from?