All shall love me and despair...

[rj_anderson]

This is an interesting review of my HP fic(s). lizbee has already made a couple of comments on one remark she felt was misleading; but it was another part of the review that particularly baffled me.

Here's the remark in question:

I was really hoping that Maud would redeem her MS qualities or something... but no-- she's the tortured girl that everyone can't help but love.

This is the second negative LJ review to make this accusation, and I am sincerely perplexed by it. "Everyone" loves Maud? I stated quite plainly in the story that she had few friends at Durmstrang and even fewer at Hogwarts, and the only students who even attempt to befriend her are the Weasley twins. Her roommate Muriel beats her up and her other roommates spread malicious gossip about her. Draco regards her with supercilious contempt. Even in the later fics, Maud's dealings with other students are merely civil at best (as when she meets Hermione in the library in PR), and at worst downright adversarial. She doesn't acquire a single friend apart from George Weasley until she leaves Hogwarts. So who is this mysterious "everyone"?

Maybe the reviewer really means that all the adults in the fic love Maud. Well, there are only four of those in TPMA. Mad-Eye raised Maud and she's his niece, so I guess he has to like her. (I should mention, for those thinking of writing fic, that heaven forbid your OC should be related to any canon character, even a lesser canon character; that automatically makes her Special, and therefore a Mary Sue. And here I just thought it would be a good excuse for having lots of Mad-Eye Moody in the story.)

Moody's got a reasonable excuse, that leaves Snape, Dumbledore and McGonagall. I think my logic behind having Snape treat Maud with considerably more decency and respect than he does Harry & co. is explained in the fic. Obviously the reviewer doesn't agree that Snape could or would treat anyone with civility or respect, much less love or be loved by anyone, so that aspect of the trilogy doesn't work for her. Fine, I can live with that. Personally I don't think even JKR takes that extreme a view of Snape's character, for all that she enjoys playing up his negative qualities through Harry's eyes. But I guess only time and canon will tell.

So back to the supposed Maud Moody love-in. McGonagall, for her part, does nothing but politely guide Maud to a meeting with the Headmaster. Unless that counts as "love" in some strange subtextual way, we're left with only Dumbledore. Who, as we know from canon, is kind and generous and benignly meddling with all his students, so... where is this "loved by all" stuff coming from again?

I don't mind having my work reviewed critically. Some of my favorite reviewers have been quite direct in pointing out flaws, as well as being honest about things they personally don't like to see in stories (Oi! for instance, never gave a fig for Snape and didn't particularly warm to Maud either, and I still loved her reviews). I can even think of some pretty severe criticisms myself (for the record, those include wobbly characterization of Maud in the first story; a number of embarrassing continuity gaffes involving numbers, dates, and architectural layouts; a really cringe-worthy bit of dialogue in the first chapter of IWS; and too much schmoop in Snape's letters, among others).

But I do object to the reviewer misrepresenting the content of my fics and disparaging faults of which they are not in fact guilty. As lizbee pointed out, that's not a valid form of criticism.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Good grief! Where to people *get* this stuff? We still keep coming back to the "every female OC is a Mary Sue" syndrome. Maud never, *ever*, struck me as an MS. Good grief, *Harry* is more of a Gary Stu than Maud is-even in canon!

I'd really like to see what HP fics this person does enjoy. I can think of quite a few HP fics where Hermione is turned into a Mary Sue to be perfect for Super!Harry, for instance. I mean, if D&L can't pass the MS test, *what can*?

I don't think I'll ever understand.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and that last comment was me.

Emily (wahlee)
*who comments so much on LJs that she should probably give in and get her own so she doesn't have to be anonymous*

[meril.livejournal.com]

I have a code...need a code?
(sorry for spamming the journal)

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Unless that counts as "love" in some strange subtextual way...

::keeps mouth shut very tight indeed::

As for the review, the more I think about it, the less I like it. The reviewer clearly entered the affair with a bias against OCs -- if she's so determined to hate them, then she should specify that OC-based fics shouldn't be offered for review.

[ymfaery]

Obviously these people don't know how to read. /snark

I wondered for a bit if Maud would be considered a Mary Sue by other people, but I never thought she was one. She doesn't have super-duper skills, she makes mistakes, and she mostly stays to the side of the main events--she knows her limits and is willing to stay within them. People tend to like her once they get to know her, but until IWS she doesn't really let people get close enough to know her besides George and Snape. And Dumbledore too, I suppose.

What's really interesting is that these Mary Sue accusations came out *long* after you finished the initial trilogy. Are the reviewers just trying to find more things to stick the Mary Sue label on?

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

By the way, I *love* the title of this post!


Summary:

Reviewer: Ewwwww...and I didn't even read the rest of the story, but this must happen, and I'm tired of people liking stories where Snape falls in love...grrr!

Me: I'm sorry, are you being helped?



I think *someone's* on a Mary-Sue "witch hunt" (pun not intended). And the reviewer really didn't make any constructive criticism. They went into it hating the "Snape/Anyone" ship, and it seemed that was the whole point: trying to make *every* story that features Snape falling in love (and having it reciprocated) look like something ridiculous.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Me: I'm sorry, are you being helped?

LOL!

Yes, I do think a lot of the problems the reviewer noted are traceable to incompatible views of Snape's character. This was the main problem with the review I got on the MarySues LJ as well -- further complicated in that case by the fact that the reviewer, in spite of feeling quite confident that D&L Snape was way OOC, had never actually read the HP books at all (!).

I should dig up my old post on the differing views of Snape sometime. I think a lot of it comes down to how much you trust Harry as a narrator, and whether you think his perception of Snape is to be taken at face value. Knowing the way JKR likes to mess with her readers' perceptions, I don't give that idea much credence myself.

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

Didn't read the books? *doingggg* Oooookay?

Yes, my husband and I have talked about this and we agree there is more to Snape than just a nasty old b*******. There's a whole "redemption" thing going on there, and we are both interested to see how it pans out.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Well, as you know I'm a natural Snape-hater myself, but I do think it's important to look at the things we see him doing in canon, rather than what we're told about, and also not to leap to conclusions about his motivation. But I personally think there's enough canonically there for me to be sure in my own head that canon!Snape is a geniunely nasty bit of work, even though he's a nasty bit of work with considerable redeeming features such as skill, courage, the ability to discover he'd gone down a wrong path and do a great deal to put matters right afterwards etc. And from what I can gather he probably was much in the right about The Incident In the Shrieking Shack, though understandable as his resentment of Sirius is, he is effectively trying to kill a surrendered prisoner who's offered to go quietly in Prisoner of Azkaban, so while his resentment is understandable I do have questions about his actions and about his rationality.

So he's an interesting, very much shades of grey character. Where I come down to on the geniunely nasty side is his treatment of Neville (and, to a lesser extent, Hermione - but she's better able to look after herself and has a decent support network). For Neville actually to have Snape as his Boggart (rather the flip side of Maud having Snape as her Patronus, come to think of it)Snape must have impacted onto his consciousness to make his life a living hell. And he knows he's doing it, too. And he also (unlike Harry and co) knows exactly why Neville is peculiarly vulnerable. So I can't stand the idea of an adult in a responsible position deliberately bullying a vulnerable child, effectively as a safety valve for his own frustrations and resentments. But I'm quite open to reading something which presents an alternative view entertainingly, and to suspend disbelief for the duration of the story, if it's well done.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

understandable as his resentment of Sirius is, he is effectively trying to kill a surrendered prisoner who's offered to go quietly in Prisoner of Azkaban

I really need to dig up Amanda Lewanski's old (but excellent) HP4GU post about the Shrieking Shack. She makes the point that if you look at what point Snape actually came in, and what he would have heard Sirius and Lupin say from that point on, he had no reason to believe that Sirius was anything but an escaped and very dangerous criminal, or that the Trio had not been somehow Confunded by him. And Sirius was not exactly acting like a sober, rational, self-controlled individual at the time either. Though even at that, I admit that all the spitting and yelling on Snape's part was a bit much. :)

You're right about Hermione and Neville, though. I have not yet come up with a theory that adequately explains Snape's persecution of Neville, or that is sufficient to cover the cruelty in "I see no difference." I have a few conjectures on both points, but I think JKR will have to supply more data before I can feel confidence in any one of those theories.

And even if I should turn out to be right in thinking that Snape's remark to Hermione was made primarily for Lucius Malfoy's benefit (via Draco, who was of course a witness to the scene), it still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the remark -- IMO there should have been another way for Snape to strengthen his DE "cover". Nor does the possibility that Snape thinks he can terrify Neville into some kind of magical breakthrough justify the harshness of his technique.

In short, I would certainly agree that in terms of becoming a decent human being, Snape has a long way to go and a lot to learn. No, he is not a nice man. But I think he is, slowly, heading in the right direction, and the potential for him to prove himself, to be redeemed, interests me.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

And even if I should turn out to be right in thinking that Snape's remark to Hermione was made primarily for Lucius Malfoy's benefit (via Draco, who was of course a witness to the scene), it still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the remark -- IMO there should have been another way for Snape to strengthen his DE "cover".

Until the end of Goblet of Fire Snape, in my view, doesn't have any interest in maintaining a Death Eater cover (and in any event, the events shown in the Pensieve suggest that he's blown any cover he once had). I think that remark is wholly in character with him being a bully, and it really is almost impossible to think of a decent justification for it. But I've had teachers exactly like that, and so far as I was aware they weren't doing it because they had present a cover story for a magical conspiracy, but because they were horrible inadequate people who found it easier to be take out their inadequacies towards kids who had no way of fighting back. So I'm probably temperamentally less adapted to start looking for excuses for people like that than I am for terminally socially inept kids whose parents' utterly wrongheaded political notions have given them serious problems in their ability to bond with their peer group, and who have never actually been taught that certain anti-socially behavioural traits are in fact both wrong and likely to maximise the sense of social exclusion that lead to them being displayed in the first place.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Until the end of Goblet of Fire Snape, in my view, doesn't have any interest in maintaining a Death Eater cover

Not a proven interest, no. But if you buy into the theory that Dumbledore strongly suspected that Voldemort would return, and believed that he and his allies should be prepared for such an event, it's conceivable that Snape might have kept up some semblance of a DE cover in case it should be needed again. Not that I expect to convince anybody with that -- I'm just submitting it as a fairly reasonable possibility.

As for the idea of trying to justify Snape's actions, particularly toward Neville -- I don't think they are justifiable, frankly. Even if his motives are more complex than, "This kid is incompetent, incompetence irritates me, therefore I shall bully him mercilessly to vent my own frustrations because I am a petty individual", even if somewhere in the back of his mind he has a nebulous idea that he's acting for Neville's own good (and I wouldn't put money on that), it doesn't in the least excuse the misery he's caused Neville. (Which is part of the reason that in the Margot fic I have deliberately afflicted Snape with a third-born son who looks like Harry and makes potions like Neville. What goes around, comes around, and this time Snape had better learn to Deal With It.)

No, the chief reason that I feel there has to be more to Snape's behaviour than mere petty viciousness actually has very little to do with my confidence in Snape, and a great deal more to do with my confidence in Dumbledore. Not that I think Dumbledore is infallible or impeccable, but he has been presented to us so far as a wise, compassionate, generous Headmaster with a sincere interest in the welfare of all his students. As such, it's hard for me to imagine that Dumbledore would knowingly allow Snape to persecute the Gryffindor students for no good reason whatsoever.

I'm not saying I think Snape's attitude to Harry and Neville is all or even mostly an act -- in fact I think his dislike is quite real. But I honestly find it difficult to believe that Snape's only reason for giving his inner b-word (yes, I am overly socialized) free rein in the classroom is because he doesn't know how (or can't be bothered) to control himself. I find it hard to imagine that Dumbledore would keep Snape on at Hogwarts, much less put him in a position of evident trust and confidence (indeed, Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall appear to function as a kind of administrative triumvirate at times), if that were the case.

It's not the only Snape theory out there, or even necessarily the most credible one, but it's the one that works for me. At least until OotP comes out and knocks my fanon into a cocked hat. :)

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

No, the chief reason that I feel there has to be more to Snape's behaviour than mere petty viciousness actually has very little to do with my confidence in Snape, and a great deal more to do with my confidence in Dumbledore. Not that I think Dumbledore is infallible or impeccable, but he has been presented to us so far as a wise, compassionate, generous Headmaster with a sincere interest in the welfare of all his students

But also one whose staffing decisions waver from the bizarre to the peverse. If, as I believe you have to, one accepts your earlier point that he has foreseen Voldemort's return as at least likely if not inevitable, Defence against the Dark Arts is one of the most important courses on the schedule. And look who he's hired for the job! One person who spends an entire year with Voldemort actually welded to the back of his head, one poseur and con-man, one decent and acceptably qualified individual who is unacceptable to the majority of parents and a traitorous lunatic. And it isn't as if a strong suspicion that Quirrell was up to no good, and an absolute knowledge that Lockhart was useless (I also really resent the way poorer students had to shell out on all Lockhart's expensive textbooks - I had some university tutors who made you do that, and it really got on my nerves then, too) were things he couldn't have been unaware of. In fact, after the Quirrell fiasco I'd have made Veritaserum testing part of the interview process("And one last thing - do you happen to have an ultimately evil wizard concealed anywhere about your person?"). Trelawney he hired (or, at least, hasn't fired) despite knowing she's a fraud; Binns is too boring to convey anything useful (and I'm surprised the teacher's union hasn't complained); Hagrid is well-meaning but potentially lethal (I'm referring to Blast-Ended Skrewts here, you understand) as well as being totally unqualified - the one thing we know about Snape is that he is a highly competent teacher who can keep order, and, compared to the rest of Dumbledore's hiring decisions, that alone makes him worth his weight in Dragon liver. But it really doesn't mean he's not capable or likely to cause physical or psychological harm to the students - that doesn't seem to be a factor in hiring decisions at Hogwarts.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Agreed that Dumbledore's hiring practices are eccentric and his reasons for retaining certain teachers (such as Trelawney and Binns) are obscure at best. But Snape appears to be in a different category from any of the one-year DADA hires, or even most of the other long-term staff -- he's part of Dumbledore's inner circle, an administrative triumvirate of which McGonagall and the Headmaster himself are the only other members. Even Flitwick -- a perfectly competent, proven, amiable teacher and Head of House -- doesn't have the same status as Snape does, in that respect.

So we're stuck with a nasty, verbally abusive Potions professor with (apparently) very few redeeming qualities or attractive features, who has been at the school for years and whose personality and habits are well known (especially to Dumbledore), yet who holds an position of unusual trust and responsibility at the school in spite of all that. Why? Why Snape, and not some other, much more amiable and ordinarily competent professor like Sprout or Vector or Sinistra? I'm not saying I know the answer, but I keep thinking there must be an answer, somewhere down the line...

[drmm.livejournal.com]

I suspect that what the reviewer means is that all the readers should love Maud. I wouldn't say I love Maud but I liked her a lot more than I did certain canon characters (Hermione, Harry).

Hermione, especially fanfic Hermione, makes me want to scream Mary Sue at the top of my lungs. Considering JKR has actually said she based Hermione on herself, I would think that this is a big hint.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Hermione, especially fanfic Hermione, makes me want to scream Mary Sue at the top of my lungs. Considering JKR has actually said she based Hermione on herself, I would think that this is a big hint

Please, no! Basing a character on aspects of yourself does not a Mary Sue make. For what it's worth, LOP!Neville has my fear of heights, LOP!Draco has some of my drinking habits and a fair dollop of my melofdramatic tendencies [also, Freudianly, spelling, as I've just noted], and LOP!Emily is a vision of what a composite of me, my mother, both grandmothers and my Great Aunt Sarah (before she decided she was the Archbishop of Canterbury, of course) would be like if she were 103 and could turn into a bat.

Basing a character on aspects of yourself that you would rather like to change, and then fixing them in the character might make the charge a bit more valid, though I'm prepared to argue that even wish-fulfillment doesn't necessarily make Mary Suedom inevitable - suppose (like myself at that age) you really wanted to open the batting for England, and were only prevented by a total lack of hand-eye co-ordination, desperately bad reflexes, a fear of being hit by 51/2 ounce projectiles hurled at your head from 100 mph and 2 X chromasomes. And suppose you went on to write three novels in which the entire English cricket team appeared and demolished the Australians with what would have been monotonous regularity. Wish fulfilment - you bet. But are you really going to describe a 6ft 2 male cricketer as a teenage girl's mary Sue?

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add to the above comment, except that I loved it. Hee.

I do have some things to say about self-insertion and wish-fulfillment and how it is quite possible to create a Mary Sue-like OFC (or at least, one who gets accused of being Mary Sueish) without harbouring either of these motives, but I think I'll make it up as a separate LJ post, since all I mean to do here is say "ha" and "I agree".

[drmm.livejournal.com]

Hum, didn't notice that someone responded to me for a long time, so this is rather late ...

Please, no! Basing a character on aspects of yourself does not a Mary Sue make.

Um, I didn't really mean that I think that Hermione nothing but a Mary Sue. I realize that people will always use their own personal experience as a basis for their writing. It's the same for me; I couldn't write a story from a popular character's POV.

However, I do think that Hermione has certain aspects of a Mary Sue. 1) She's super-intelligent. 2) A famous guy has a crush on her. 3) She can transform herself into a beauty when she so chooses. Honestly, I never really considered Hermione to be much of a Mary Sue until Goblet of Fire when the last two things happen. Those are wish-fulfillment and as such, very Mary Sue-like traits.

What has always balanced these characteristics is Hermione's flaws and her hard work. She's bossy and she does act like a know-it-all. While she's intelligent, she studies very hard to get where she is (I don't buy into the "Hermione is the most talented female at Hogwarts" theory). She's also (IMO) very insecure and these insecurities influence the above things. A Mary Sue does not have flaws so Hermione can't be a 100% Mary Sue.

Of course, given what happens in GoF during the ball, I think that it would be very easy for Hermione to become so. I hope she doesn't. I'm not a Hermione fan. She can annoy me but I don't dislike her.

Fanfic Hermione is another case altogether. Fanfic Hermione Sue (especially in Harry/Hermione or Snape/Hermione fic) is usually beautiful, more intelligent and powerful than 99.9% of the population and flawless. I hate Hermione Sue.

But are you really going to describe a 6ft 2 male cricketer as a teenage girl's mary Sue?

Why not? If they're flawless and perfect -- be they male or female, it could be a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu.

I hope this makes sense.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think this discussion shows how confused, and, therefore, ultimately useless the Mary Sue description has got.

You say about canon Hermione that she didn't strike you as a Mary Sue until Goblet of Fire, when she turns up to the ball looking good on the arm of Viktor Krum. Now, personally, I saw that as something of a cliche - but one which Rowling acknowledged to be a cliche and was playing with, slightly. It doesn't have anything to do, I suggest, with Rowling's psychology, but with how she wants to treat the readers whom she knows will identify most with Hermione.

The cliche image is the librarian with the glasses and the hair in the bun in the 40s film, whom Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart removes the glasses from, takes the hairpins out of and voila ! Raving beauty city! True, wish-fulfilment, but it's actually intended to make the brainy, underappreciated girl readers (or viewers) feel good as they put down the books or leave the cinema. It's intended to put down all the glamour pusses who everyone else has known to be raving beauties from the beginning, with the less obvious star coming through from behind and waltzing off with the prince.


Now, if a Mary Sue by definition is so stunning that she could expect Krum to invite her to the ball as a matter of course, the idea wouldn't work. It is, actually, a geniune surprise when Hermione turns up with Krum (well, it was for me) and so it works dramatically. Are you saying that for fear of Mary Suery Hermione isn't allowed any of the perks of being the nearest thing to a heroine the stories have? This is not a novel of gritty realism, after all, you know.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I think this discussion shows how confused, and, therefore, ultimately useless the Mary Sue description has got.

Quite so. There probably is some use to the Mary Sue idea (although it would be better just to label it "bad characterization" and use whatever subcategory you wish without resorting to the name), but certainly one shouldn't be seeking them out. They should jump up and hit you over the head. And steal your lip gloss.

Now if you combined Fleur and Hermione, that would be a Mary Sue.

Erica, who bumps into things when she takes off her glasses

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Unless the result had Fleur's magical competence and Hermione's (pre Goblet) teeth and hair.

[(Anonymous)]

Then she would be me. :)

[drmm.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think this discussion shows how confused, and, therefore, ultimately useless the Mary Sue description has got.

True. People do scream "Mary Sue" far too often (including myself upon occasion). It's also true that Hermione becoming a beauty and dating Victor Krum is wish-fulfillment and a cliche. It's far more satisfying than seeing Parvati or Lavender date him, that's for sure (if I were Ron and Harry, I'd rather go to the ball single).

However, I think it takes away from the realism of the character. Dating Krum, while unrealistic, doesn't bother me as much as her sudden transformation at the ball. I think that it would be far more narratively satisfying for Hermione to not turn into a raving beauty overnight and still go to the ball with Viktor Krum. I think that this would help those who do identify with Hermione realize that you don't have to be beautiful to get a date.

True, Harry Potter is not very realistic. I just think that there are certain realities that it should keep as realistic.

[(Anonymous)]

I also like the subject line. Perhaps you should just rewrite D&L with Maud as Jadis. Oh, wait -- that's the Margot fic. Never mind. :)

As far as the review goes... certainly, the story can't be for everybody. But people who write reviews that go beyond "Squeee!" or "Gross me out!" ought to take the time to read deeply and completely, avoiding preconceptions and assumptions.

And even if it is the reader who's supposed to love Maud (I'm not sure it is, being that having every character fall in love with her is a typical Mary Sue ploy), is there supposed to be something wrong with creating characters who are appealing to the reader? Or whom somebody in the story likes?

Oh well.
E.H.S.

[(Anonymous)]

Idiot me. Galadriel, not Jadis. Better for Maud, actually -- right hair color.
E.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Since unless I've got the wrong end of the stick I understand Margot is going to end up with Draco (or at least, ruthlessly use him and toss him aside in her bid for power) I thought the Jadis idea worked better. At least hoping there was a mattress to land on.

[(Anonymous)]

Do ferrets need mattresses?
E.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yes, Margot definitely leans more toward the Jadis side of things. Just a good deal more socially adept, and considerably better at controlling her temper. Actually, I'm sure that if I ever finish this fic, there will be someone (or several someones) complaining long and loud about how Margot is Snape's daughter and beautiful and clever and enormously powerful and has heaps of followers (including Draco) and comes pretty close to taking over the world, which proves irrefutably that she, too, is a Mary Sue.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Actually, the version of the Mary Sue generator I read doesn't have that question as "do all the other characters fall in love with her" but "is the attitude of the other characters to her a touchstone as to their moral worth?" I don't think it particularly applies to Maud one way or the other, but it is at least a much more interesting critical question than the original one.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

You're right, that seems like a much better question, or at least a more potentially useful one when it comes to identifying bad characterization. And yet... how many books can you think of where the hero or heroine is widely disliked by people who are not, in some way, the "bad guys"?

Of course, "bad" in this case doesn't have to mean "given to committing villainous acts" -- it might just mean that they are ignorant, or bigoted, or jealous, or self-absorbed. But the characters who dislike Our Hero aren't presented to us sympathetically in the way that the hero and his friends are. We aren't invited to consider their judgment as sound, or to identify with them in the same way. And I really can't think of an exception to this rule at the moment.

Of course, you might write a book in which the heroine is evil and we are meant to anticipate her downfall. In that case, the heroine's enemies would be the "good guys". But even at that, you're still left with a situation in which the attitude of the other characters to the heroine is a touchstone of their moral worth. It's just that in this case, their moral worth is proven by their *opposition* of the heroine rather than by their support of her.

So, perhaps even that question isn't as useful in identifying Mary Sues (in the sense of unrealistically idealized or intrusive, reality-warping OC's) as it might seem...

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Well, actually there are two keys incidents in the HPverse where the Trio are led to make that mistake - the Quirrell/Snape stuff in PS, where Snape's hostility to Harry makes him effectively the only suspect, and the Moody ferret-juggling incident, which makes the Trio (well, Harry and Ron, anyway) utterly convinced of Moody's bona fides and general all round Jolly Good Egg-ness. And the plot of Pride and Prejudice depends on Darcy being snobbish about Elizabeth, and Elizabeth disliking Darcy.

But I did mean "bad" as in "morally suspect" rather than "likeable". Once again, I go back to Honor Harrington for examples. Honor in the first book is widely disliked by her crew because they think she's responsible for them having been handed the hiding of a lifetime in some wargames. In fact, it's because the wrong-headed materiel theories of a pigheaded admiral has gutted her armament. The pigheaded admiral hates and resents her because she thinks Honor should have done better with materiel given, and so sends her off to a dead-end posting. She's dumped in an impossible situation at the dead-end posting by a cowardly and inept superior officer who resents her for having broken his nose and several ribs when he tried to rape her at military school. In the course of the first book she has to win back the crew's respect (and those whose respect she doesn't win are unquestionably presented as bad - they only don't respect her because she reveals their laziness, cowardliness or ineptitude), demonstrate her superior moral integrity (making an enemy of the industrialist Klaus Hauptmann, whose ships she intercepts smuggling furs on the protected species list, and whose respect she wins in a subsequent book by her self-sacrificing defence of his ship), win a battle against tremendous odds despite the duff armament, protects a planet from invasion and ends up with promotion, the personal thanks of the queen, and a chance to tell the pigheaded admiral face to face how she got the armaments wrong. Oh, and she agonises with guilt for days over the deaths caused in her defence of the system against impossible odds, comfortedd only by her empathic alien tree cat, to whom she is psychologically bonded.

On Murky Pond...

[(Anonymous)]

I've really been enjoying this whole thread, especially since I've been writing a self-avowed Mary Sue myself, and have been thinking about these questions lately.

I think the Moral Worth litmus question is much more apt than the "does everybody like her" question, as a description of the mental process one goes through in evaluating an OC. On the other hand, one of the foundational purposes (in my view, though of course it has its limits) for introducing an OC at all is to test the moral worth of the canon characters -- a ficcer often says: I want to find out what Canon Character X would do when faced with so and so, and none of the other canon characters is well placed to face him with it, so Enter My New Character, Stage Right. And of course the New Character cannot, except under very contrived circumstances, deal exclusively with Canon Character X, so presto! one ends up testing the moral worth -- or at least exploring the personalities -- of all (or most) of the characters in canon.

In good characterization, the OC's moral worth would reciprocally be tested by the canon characters. But that tends to be limited by the fact that the focus of interest gravitates (for the reader, but in my experience also for the writer) toward the canon characters. So people writing OCs are put in a double bind: either they embrace the so-called hubris of making their OC an equally important character in a moral sense, so that their thoughts, feelings and moral developments occasionally take center stage (or even primarily take center stage!), or they embrace the opposite so-called hubris of using their OC as a lens with which to scrutinize the canon characters, without allowing the reader to see too much of the canon characters' effect on the OC him/herself. And this is the dilemma of the *well*-written OC.

A.J. Hall's aside that wish-fulfillment may or may not be a litmus for Badly Written OC Fic is also very apt, I think. In my experience of reading and writing fic, the fact of introducing an OC at all, well-characterized or not, is the act of temerity that makes people howl. Whether or not the OC in question is an embodiment of *anything* within the writer is merely, from my experience, the window-dressing Bulveristic subterfuge employed by people who don't want to admit to their purely reactionary response to the fic as a whole.

(Ahhhh. Having delivered myself of a couple of ten-pound sentences, I feel better now.)

That said, I find it interesting that the worst invective is levelled at OCs that are *not* avowed self-insertions. I haven't had a flame yet about *my* Avowed Self Insertion OC fic. (I also only have four or five readers, whereas D&L is quite famous in its fandom and out of it, so hey, take this observation with a grain of salt.) I'm not quite sure what to make of that, except maybe to say that an OC which is presented without any authorial disclaimers, excuses, or apologies, and which also exerts a lot of power as a character (whether for good or ill), is like one of those red tablecloths that matadors shake in front of the charging bull.

To which I can only say: Toro! Toro!!

Lisa
http://linman.blogspot.com

Re: On Murky Pond...

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

In my experience of reading and writing fic, the fact of introducing an OC at all, well-characterized or not, is the act of temerity that makes people howl. Whether or not the OC in question is an embodiment of *anything* within the writer is merely, from my experience, the window-dressing Bulveristic subterfuge employed by people who don't want to admit to their purely reactionary response to the fic as a whole.

Lisa, have I told you lately that you rock? You rock. I think this is exactly right.

Re: On Murky Pond...

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I totally agree also. This is one of the issues - if you introduce an OC, enough people are going to hate the fic purely for that reason for them to go looking for "respectable" insults to throw at it. And that's just what Mary Sue is. She's a respectable insult. It's like calling someone a Commie in 1950's Hollywood, or an imperialist running dog in 1970s China.

[(Anonymous)]

And yet... how many books can you think of where the hero or heroine is widely disliked by people who are not, in some way, the "bad guys"?

Well, there's the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust, which I recomment as top-flight fluff.

Vlad -- the first-person narrator -- is emminently likeable, in a swash-buckling, wise-cracking, under-doggish sort of way. He's also an assassin and minor underworld boss. (Illegal but fairly common in his society.)

Most of his friends, naturally, support him. Some of the genuinely, morally good people in the book -- including his grandfather, and later his wife -- disapprove of what he does, and eventually oppose him. But of the people who oppose him are up to no good themselves, and come of badly because they aren't as funny as Vlad-- and of course because he's the narrator and spins it that way.

But, as you note, a book where the protangonist isn't good and the antigonists aren't bad are an exception. In f/sf, anyway. I think perhaps "literary" fiction is another story.

--Erin
http://www.sitehouse.net/vivid

[zakhad.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of confusing back and forth about what makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue. I've been afraid that I would be accused of the same - my fanfic is sprinkled with OC's, one of them a redeemed Mary-Stu. But I've only ever been asked once if a character was me, and that was a character who is so not me.... I think everyone looks at OC's with that jaded MS finger pointing these days, especially with marysues around.

I've read your blog/journal and chatted with you enough that I can say Maud is not RJ. Even if I didn't know you, I'd doubt Maud's MSness. She's more of an everygeek than an MS -- if you want to say she's an MS then you'll have to abandon the definition of "MS is everything perfect and good and pretty, the author's perfection delusion personified" and redefine MS as "pretty much like every poor soul who's been picked on and lonely." To me the hallmark of MSness is unreality, a radical departure from anything resembling a real person, and Maud's not that. Maud doesn't single-handedly save the world; she just wants to and gets a reality check. She's part of the team in the end, and her suffering has none of the superficiality of the typical MS setup. Maud makes her choices and endures the consequences; Mary Sue is the saintly sort upon whom untold cliched woes are visited, and usually through none of her doing.

It's obvious that the reviewer has not actually read the trilogy, and if ze has, not paid a lot of attention. Ze has obviously been taking flack for it, too - the review is now a protected entry.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comments, Lori. You're right, Maud isn't me, nor is she the woman I've always longed to be -- it may be arrogance, but I've nearly always been content with just being myself, though I did go through a brief period in my childhood when I longed for green eyes and masses of flaming red hair like Jean Grey in the X-Men. (Which is why I have consciously never written a red-haired, green-eyed heroine, and probably never will.)

I like the bit about "untold cliched woes". Hee.

[(Anonymous)]

I loved the D&L, and I will happily recommend it to all and sundry in some future fandom that has grown too large and unwieldy! Quality, you know, doesn't diminish over time. ;)

When I entered this fandom I, in my sponge-like way, took on the idea of the Mary Sue and the attendant desire to loathe her in her many forms. What I dislike most of all, is an undeveloped character, waltzing along with 'love-interest' stamped across his or her forehead, without any explanation or justification.

I loved Maud, and I don't have anything against her, as a character, as a heroine, as a relative of a canon character, or anything. However, as the trilogy progressed I began to get a little annoyed with her, as she seemed to drift into a more vague 'love-interest' role. By the end of If We Survive, it seemed to me that she'd lost a little of whatever it was that made her interesting in the first place. In the beginning, she was, dare I say it, spunky, independent, very real and unMarySueish. Later on, she didn't seem to let this character shine through as much, she just waited around wistfully to be reunited with Snape. Sure, she helped with the potions, uncovered Death Eater plots, consoled friends, etc, but she seemed to be so increasingly defined by her relationship with Snape. I sat there wondering. We know that Snape is lonely and angsty, and therefore he loves Maud. Why does she love him? (I know this seems like a mindlessly stupid question - I read the trilogy a while ago, so I'm sorry if my arguments sound inane). We know why she loved him, it was built up in TPMA and Personal Risks. But what does she get out of it, really? Why doesn't she ever think, If only I had a boyfriend who wasn't an absent undercover evil agent? When Snape is depressed, she goes and comforts him. Whenever she is depressed, she just has to deal with it and accept it's too hard for him to see her. She constantly gives him support and reassurance and boosts his self-esteem....what does he do for her? Tell her that he loves her dramatically? All very good, but rather distant. She stands steadfastly by and is a good and perfect and faithful girlfriend for chapters on end. It's...just a little bit annoying. I wanted TPMA Maud back, preSnape, and vibrant.

I'm not trying to Mercilessly Critique here, I'm just thinking of the ways in which Maud could be Mary Suelike, though she is unpopular and doesn't save the day or anything of the sort, and that would be the way that stands out most to me(and a little whinging along the way).

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

That's a fascinating perspective, and I'm glad you shared it! It certainly has given me something to think about. And I'm still musing as I write this, so if I say anything that makes no sense, please bear with me.

The thing that interested me most about your perception of Maud's character development is that in some ways it's the opposite of my own. I was just lamenting to Erica yesterday that when I re-read TPMA now all I can think of is how totally "off" Maud's character seems to me, and how obvious it is that I didn't really know what she was like at the time, and how I'd really like to rewrite the whole thing (though I won't) to fix all the problems I see with her characterization. Now you come along and say that you think her characterization was actually the best in TPMA. It would be terribly disconcerting, if it weren't so funny. :)

All of which is not to say that you're wrong. It's true that Maud is at her most independent in TPMA; she's certainly her most focused, in the sense of having a clear objective and ambition, in that story; and she has an air of self-confidence (especially in the first chapter) that is definitely not present to the same degree in the later stories. In TPMA she has "action heroine" written all over her, and even her failures are mostly due to idealism.

And yet, as I was writing the second story of the trilogy, it was as though Maud were quietly but persistently telling me, "I'm not really like that, you know. You just think I have to be that way because I want to be an Auror. But maybe I don't want that, after all." Once I stopped trying to force her to conform to my expectations and started letting her be herself (metaphorically speaking, of course, but I don't know how else to explain that part of the creative process), she turned out to be a good deal quieter and more self-effacing than I'd anticipated.

I had thought, you see, that Snape wouldn't be interested in someone unless she was as driven in her own way as he was in his; that in order to work together they had to be doing the same thing, or something very like it; and that he wouldn't respect her intelligence unless it was mingled with a fair bit of Slytherin cunning. But eventually it started to dawn on me that perhaps Maud wasn't Snape's younger, slightly more honorable equivalent, but in fact his opposite -- and that it might be better that way.

Snape isn't just the "darkness" in the trilogy, he's a sucking black hole and he knows it. Sure, he saved Maud's life, but what has he done for her lately? Not to mention his marked tendencies toward high-handedness and ruthless manipulation -- if Maud were a tough-minded modern heroine, she'd have told him where to get off long ago. But in fact Maud isn't really looking out for her own interests when she begins the relationship: she's committing herself to supporting Snape as a kind of moral cause. She knows that she has strengths that he lacks -- among them a better emotional support system and a correspondingly greater capacity to love unselfishly -- and that he needs those things in her, even if only to know that they exist and are waiting somewhere for him, if he's going to make it through the next couple of years.

In the interests of making Maud a dynamic and exciting character (if she ever was one) I have to agree that PR and IWS are less effective than TPMA. But I couldn't help but feel that by letting her settle down a bit and step away from the spotlight, I was also letting her be more human. Yet at the same time she becomes less ordinary, because she starts to represent a principle as much as a type of person; but I won't go into that, because if it's not clear or at least reasonably implicit in the story itself then it's just fatuous to try and explain it after the fact. Plus I have rambled quite enough already. :)

it's me, same as before

[(Anonymous)]

Well, that is indeed interesting! It reassured me to know that you intended it to be that way, and it wasn't just an unobserved shift.

It's interesting, because, it seems like, to you(with a handy little segue back on topic), Maud was more MarySueish when she was being the action heroine, whereas I was bothered by the self-effacing Maud. I felt that as she became more 'normal', she became an easier vessel for reader self-insertion. (Because we readers, of course, love Snape, despite him being useless and sour and not holding up his half of the relationship) ;D . Of course, just my opinion.

Believe it or not, I do know what you mean about the characters telling you things. It's a great feeling, when you know that you've given your characters enough life that they start wanting to do things on their own, and don't care what you have to say about it. ;D

Since I'm here, I'll take the moment to ask if you'd mind if I did a more comprehensive review - I thought I'd ask first, because maybe you don't want such a thing at this point in your life, a long ramble about an oldish story you're happy to let be. :)

And, to scuttle radically out of relevance, I am reminded for no reason of the Snape/Lily argument that was going on a few posts back. Somethings, I think, you can just predict from canon. Before I was halfway through PS/SS I announced to myself that Ron and Hermione would get together in some way eventually - by the Law of Sidekicks. ;) Snape, in canon, has a role - 'annoying and irrational teacher who foils and irritates students whilst being essential on the side of good'. He's the embodiment of the unfair and unlikeable teacher. Such a character does not have previous romantic relationships with the hero's mother. They just...don't. This is the slightly sketchy logic I use to reassure myself...and, now, others! :)

Right, I'll stop filling up your LJ space, and even put a name on my post this time.

~Chresimos

Re: it's me, same as before

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the further thoughts, Chresimos! I'm really enjoying this conversation.

...it seems like, to you... Maud was more MarySueish when she was being the action heroine, whereas I was bothered by the self-effacing Maud. I felt that as she became more 'normal', she became an easier vessel for reader self-insertion.

Well, I think this brings us back to the lack of general agreement on what constitutes a Mary Sue, and thus the critical uselessness of the term. My personal understanding of an MS (and I think you'll find this aspect fairly widely agreed upon) is not that she's too much like Everywoman and that readers can too readily imagine themselves in her place, as you suggested: rather, it's that she's not normal or ordinary enough. In fact, she's so "special" that the reader can't identify or sympathize with her, and only ends up resenting all the attention this flat and ridiculous character seems to get.

As I understand it, there are two main types of Mary Sues. Author Sue (as I'll call her) is a self-insertion in the classic sense: she looks, acts, talks, and thinks just like her author. Perfect Sue, the other type, is a fantastically glamourized creation who represents everything the author isn't, but wishes she could be.

Nevertheless, whether it's Author Sue or Perfect Sue we're looking at, in a true Mary Sue story we can be sure of one thing: everything is about her. Not just that she narrates the story or that we're limited to her POV, but that she's always at the centre of attention. None of the canonical characters in the story are allowed to be indifferent to her or remain in ignorance of her existence; everybody wants a piece of her, and everybody has an opinion about her. The Trio turn to her for advice on their love lives. Snape's exceptional viciousness to her is only a mask for his burning passion. All unbeknownst to her, she is the fullfillment of an ancient prophecy, and without her help Harry cannot hope to defeat Voldemort, etc., etc.

The reader can't identify with Mary Sue because she's so unlike themselves, or anyone they know. Her virtues are angelic, her faults negligible (or even endearing), her tragedies epic in scope. But even more unforgivably, she's flat. Mary Sue never becomes a fully developed character because the author is so busy telling us (and having everybody else tell us) how remarkable she is that we're never given a chance, much less a reason, to reach a similar conclusion for ourselves.

So getting back to Maud, yes, I do think she was more like the classic or garden variety Mary Sue back when she wanted to be an Auror, could hold her own against people like Muriel Groggins, and struggled heroically against the limitations of her blindness. I don't think she was a Mary Sue even then, but I can more easily see how people inclined to seeing Mary Sues everywhere might fix on Maud as a target.

Since I'm here, I'll take the moment to ask if you'd mind if I did a more comprehensive review -

I don't mind at all. Yes, it's an old story and yes, it would be somewhat different if I were writing it now. But I don't think that should make it immune to critique -- after all, people are still reading it, and it's new to them. Besides, I really am interested in what people have to say about my writing, for good or ill, and I do find something helpful or thought-provoking in nearly every review. So sure, go ahead! I look forward to your comments.