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.
On Murky Pond...
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