Is your character a Mary Sue?
Ben Crowell
http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
R.L.
If so, zie may be in good company. There are Mary Sue elements in many
popular heroes.
Not just Nancy Drew and Perry Mason type books, but consider Tarzan,
Harriet Vane....
R.L.
Brian M. Scott
<see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
<news:1j1cc86s31vg8.g...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
Harriet Vane?!
Brian
Drak Bibliophile
news:1ayiuzz0z1fmh.2...@40tude.net...
In case, you're wonder who Harriet Vane is, she is a character in Dorothy L.
Sayers's Lord Peter stories/novels and later in the series marries Lord
Peter. Harriet Vane just happens to be a mystery writer.
Mind you, I never thought of Harriet as a "Mary Sue".
--
Paul Howard (Alias Drak Bibliophile), AIM id DrakeBookLover
*
Sometimes The Dragon Wins! [Polite Dragon Smile]
*
Will in New Haven
Remii is right at the bottom of the "possible Mary Sue" scores at
seventeen. She's pretty frankly a Mary Sue in many ways and I'm
surprised she scored so low. But my concept of Mary Sue-ism, while
close to that of the quiz designer, probably isn't quite the same.
If the term were used for real people in her culture, some of her
friends might call her one, especially the troubador who wrote "The
Blacksmith's Spoiled Daughter" about her.
--
Will in New Haven
Peter Knutsen
> If so, zie may be in good company. There are Mary Sue elements in many
> popular heroes.
I think the problem is if a character is *too* Mary Sue'ish.
I skimmed the first 15 questions or so, and they all had to do with the
character's appearance. I've got a fair amount of quite attractive
female characters in my stories, but they can't count as Mary Sues. My
males are average-looking, at least the ones that can be accused of
being Mary Sue (or Gary Stu, which AFAIK is the proper term) types.
Presumably later in the test it'll deal with subjects other than
appearance, but it bothers me that it isn't divided up into more
categories and sections, so that I can skip those that I deem
irrelevant, instead of having to read several dozen questions about
unimportant issues.
> Not just Nancy Drew and Perry Mason type books, but consider Tarzan,
> Harriet Vane....
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Brian M. Scott
<drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote in
<news:MvGdnVzeJNlQjtzW...@giganews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
> news:1ayiuzz0z1fmh.2...@40tude.net...
>> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:49:09 -0800, "R.L."
>> <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
>> <news:1j1cc86s31vg8.g...@40tude.net> in
>> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:38:09 -0800, Ben Crowell wrote:
>>>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>>>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>>>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>>> If so, zie may be in good company. There are Mary Sue
>>> elements in many popular heroes.
>>> Not just Nancy Drew and Perry Mason type books, but
>>> consider Tarzan, Harriet Vane....
>> Harriet Vane?!
> In case, you're wonder who Harriet Vane is, she is a
> character in Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter
> stories/novels and later in the series marries Lord
> Peter. Harriet Vane just happens to be a mystery writer.
> Mind you, I never thought of Harriet as a "Mary Sue".
I know very well who she is. As the punctuation fairly
clearly indicates, I'm surprised that anyone would point to
her as an example of a character with noticeable Mary Sue
elements, *especially* alongside Tarzan.
Brian
J.Pascal
> On 03/01/2010 22:49, R.L. wrote:
>
> > If so, zie may be in good company. There are Mary Sue elements in many
> > popular heroes.
>
> I think the problem is if a character is *too* Mary Sue'ish.
I think that the problem is if the Mary Sue'ish'ness of the character
keeps the author from evaluating the story objectively.
In some respects Mary Sue'ish'ness might be a bit like needing more
vampires.
Making a character score as high on that Mary Sue test as possible
would be an interesting exercise. A misunderstood, teenaged, street
child, with strange lavender eyes that reflect light like a cat, whose
name is Kitsune, and who discovers that she has wings, fur, *and* a
tail, on the full moon, and give her a mysterious and dangerous
protector, and hint that she really is invisible when she tries to
hide in alleyways, but she doesn't realize it, and make her a secret
princess and heir to a galactic empire and then have her save the
whole world.
Granted, see, that's not MY Mary Sue. I'm not going to have blind
spots of wishfullness over what happens to her. And I think it
would probably be a fun (and potentially profitable) story to boot.
-Julie
Brian M. Scott
<ju...@pascal.org> wrote in
<news:1eadb2d4-968d-4c01...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> Making a character score as high on that Mary Sue test as
> possible would be an interesting exercise. A
> misunderstood, teenaged, street child, with strange
> lavender eyes that reflect light like a cat, whose name
> is Kitsune, ...
... is a foxy cat o' nine tails! (A wise kitsune can have
as many as nine tails.)
[...]
Brian
Peter Knutsen
> On Jan 3, 4:38 pm, Ben Crowell
> <crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>
> Remii is right at the bottom of the "possible Mary Sue" scores at
> seventeen. She's pretty frankly a Mary Sue in many ways and I'm
> surprised she scored so low. But my concept of Mary Sue-ism, while
> close to that of the quiz designer, probably isn't quite the same.
The test seems extremely biased against high-competence protagonists,
which bothers me a lot, since I refuse to write about boring and
ordinary peole. Perhaps the creator of the test is a very ordinary and
boring person who only wants to read about people who are like herself?
> If the term were used for real people in her culture, some of her
> friends might call her one, especially the troubador who wrote "The
> Blacksmith's Spoiled Daughter" about her.
The test links to the article on "Mary Sue" in English Wikipedia, and
that article points out that the real-world person Bono (a pop singer)
would score as a very high grade "Mary Sue" according to most such
questionaries.
My most Gary Stu-like character gets 40 points; apart from the geeral
bias gainst high-competence (and prodigies), the test is specifically
biased against polyglots. Asbrand does know a large number of languages,
but the test maker probably thinks it is extremely unusual to be fluent
in 3 or 4 languages, as is typical of USAns and others who have lived
sheltered lives.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue". Mary
Sue is a very specific SUBgroup of wish-fulfillment characters, which
can be defined in a very few questions:
1) Is the character recognizably a self-insert of the author? (changing
some details are okay, but would the author, backed into a corner, say
"yeah, okay, it's really me"?)
2) Is the character recognizably superior to the actual author in some
significant way?
3) Does the character have a significant effect upon the plot by his/her
presence (rather than, say, just showing up as an in-joke)?
All Sues are self-insert. Not all self-inserts are Sues.
I have at least two Mary Sue characters in my fiction, but ALL of my
characters would be powerful wish-fulfillment, because, well, hey,
that's the purpose of fun adventure fiction.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Peter Knutsen
> Ben Crowell wrote:
>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>
> I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
> character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue". Mary
Prezactly!
My Asbrand character is the one that scores highest on the test (40
points), but many other characters from my �rth setting would also score
rather high, in the mid 20's or even the 30's.
[...]
> I have at least two Mary Sue characters in my fiction, but ALL of my
> characters would be powerful wish-fulfillment, because, well, hey,
> that's the purpose of fun adventure fiction.
I use my personal experience and my perspective to enrich a lot of my
characters, in different ways, but yes the purpose of adventure fiction
is to tell entertaining tales about highly competent characters.
Intelligent escapism.
Perhaps the core problem is that the concept of "Mary Sue" originated in
fan fiction. In established ("media") settings there are already a lot
of highly competent canon characters (Star Wars, et cetera), and so fan
fiction writers cope with this in various ways, some of these ways being
seen as poor or inferior, which may well be justified.
But porting the concept to original fiction? I think there's room for
several different sorts of mistakes here, especially in the form of bias
(tacit bias, which is the worst kind of bias there is, because it is
guaranteed to be unreflected bias) against highly competent (and/) or
broadly competent individuals.
My �rth setting is, in a way, made as a playground for high-competents.
Both as a setting for written stories, and as an RPG setting. There's
plenty room for the exceptional (in many different ways, from scholars
to magical prodigies to warriors), but no time for those who are
capabilitistically normal.
In fact, several of the �rth setting's major characters are historicals.
Olav Tryggveson, as described in legends, would probably score quite
highly on the test. Not as high as Bono, but still well outside of the
test maker's "tolerance zone".
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On 04/01/2010 00:37, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>> Ben Crowell wrote:
>>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>>
>> I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
>> character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue". Mary
>
> Prezactly!
>
> My Asbrand character is the one that scores highest on the test (40
> points), but many other characters from my �rth setting would also score
> rather high, in the mid 20's or even the 30's.
Well, my *actual* Marty Stu character from my Zarathan setting scores
101. The one from _Polychrome_ would be in that range too.
I'm guessing the main characters from Grand Central Arena would HAVE to
be in the high 50s, as would the three main characters from Fall of
Saints which I just submitted and hope that Toni will like. Even the
characters from Boundary might well get into the 20s-30s, and that's for
much "harder", more realistic SF.
David Friedman
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> > Mind you, I never thought of Harriet as a "Mary Sue".
>
> I know very well who she is. As the punctuation fairly
> clearly indicates, I'm surprised that anyone would point to
> her as an example of a character with noticeable Mary Sue
> elements, *especially* alongside Tarzan.
It isn't the same thing as a Mary Sue, but one can see Peter as a
romanticized version of Dorothy Sayers' husband--her husband as she
wishes he were. So not "the author as she wants to be" but more nearly
"the author's life as she wishes it were."
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_
Michelle Bottorff
> Ben Crowell wrote:
> > My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
> > http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
> > that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>
> I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
> character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue".
I found one of those silly tests that handed out bunches and bunches of
points for anything that resembled a successful romantic relationship.
*I* would probably have scored a Mary Sue on that test, and I'm an
invalid!
I, too, like powerful, competent characters.
But I do think this whole wish fulfillment thingy can be over-done. If
your character is so uber conpetent that it takes my suspension of
disbelief and hangs it until it's dead, I'm not going to be enjoying
their adventures much.
And if they are too powerful, where's the dramatic tension?
I liked Tarzan, but I only stuck with Doc Savage as long as I did,
because his buddies were fun.
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Ben Crowell wrote:
>>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>> I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
>> character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue".
>
> I found one of those silly tests that handed out bunches and bunches of
> points for anything that resembled a successful romantic relationship.
> *I* would probably have scored a Mary Sue on that test, and I'm an
> invalid!
>
>
> I, too, like powerful, competent characters.
>
> But I do think this whole wish fulfillment thingy can be over-done. If
> your character is so uber conpetent that it takes my suspension of
> disbelief and hangs it until it's dead, I'm not going to be enjoying
> their adventures much.
>
> And if they are too powerful, where's the dramatic tension?
>
Really, how powerful they are is irrelevant.
How powerful their PROBLEMS are is the relevant question. If you're
Superman and your opposition is a typical mugger in an alleyway, you're
too powerful. If you're Superman and your opposition is Galactus, you
may need some serious backup (depending on which version of Superman you
are)
Peter Knutsen
> Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>> I, too, like powerful, competent characters.
>>
>> But I do think this whole wish fulfillment thingy can be over-done. If
>> your character is so uber conpetent that it takes my suspension of
>> disbelief and hangs it until it's dead, I'm not going to be enjoying
>> their adventures much.
>>
>> And if they are too powerful, where's the dramatic tension?
>
> Really, how powerful they are is irrelevant.
>
> How powerful their PROBLEMS are is the relevant question. If you're
> Superman and your opposition is a typical mugger in an alleyway, you're
> too powerful. If you're Superman and your opposition is Galactus, you
> may need some serious backup (depending on which version of Superman you
> are)
Superman and Doc Savage are very unusual cases, though.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Bill Swears
matter how powerful people become, they bring commensurate problems with
them. Superman has commitment issues. Lex Luthor builds flaws into his
most fantastic schemes that not only can be solved by Kalel, but that he
almost must notice.
Bill
--
Living on the polemic may be temporarily satisfying, but it will raise
your blood-pressure, and gives you tunnel vision.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Unusual in what way? I don't find them unusual in my own perspective
(well, depends on what version of Superman you mean...).
Ben Crowell
> The test seems extremely biased against high-competence protagonists,
> which bothers me a lot, since I refuse to write about boring and
> ordinary peole. Perhaps the creator of the test is a very ordinary and
> boring person who only wants to read about people who are like herself?
I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
For me, this brings to mind a couple of recent examples from media SF:
Avatar, and the 2009 Star Trek movie. In Avatar, a young guy
starts spending 8 or 10 hours a day with a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
He does that for a few months, and goes from being incompetent in their
environment to being a warrior-king of epic proportions. Okay, he
does practice hard, but still, it's not believable.
In written SF, the examples that spring to mind are Heinlein's Lazarus
Long and Herbert's Paul Atreides. Long is competent at everything
because he's had 2000 years to *do* everything, but it's really annoying
how he's always right, and everyone always hangs on his words. Paul
seems like a more egregious example, but I don't remember feeling that
way when I read the book 30 years ago as a teenager. I wonder if I'd
accept him less now that I'm not a teenage boy.
US pop culture, including SF, glorifies youth. It's probably inevitable
that that becomes less palatable as you get older.
Brian M. Scott
<crow...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote in
<news:00be5b82$0$13090$c3e...@news.astraweb.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> In written SF, the examples that spring to mind are
> Heinlein's Lazarus Long and Herbert's Paul Atreides. Long
> is competent at everything because he's had 2000 years to
> *do* everything, but it's really annoying how he's always
> right,
I have to point out that some wouldn't agree that it's
annoying, and some wouldn't agree that he's always right.
> and everyone always hangs on his words.
Not in _The Number of the Beast_.
> Paul seems like a more egregious example, [...]
How so?
Brian
Peter Knutsen
> Peter Knutsen wrote:
>> The test seems extremely biased against high-competence protagonists,
>> which bothers me a lot, since I refuse to write about boring and
>> ordinary peole. Perhaps the creator of the test is a very ordinary and
>> boring person who only wants to read about people who are like herself?
>
> I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
> amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
> millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
> a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
> scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
Acknowledging the *fact* that some people are born with high aptitude is
adolescent wish fulfillment? That's vile cowshit!!
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Joy Beeson
#67 is truly weird:
> Does your character frequently carry knives,
> daggers, or other little sharp pointy objects concealed
> within his/her clothing for no other reason than that
> they might be come in handy?
Blink blink -- of course he does! So do I, and so does every other
responsible adult. How you gonna clean the dirt out of your cleats if
you don't have a pen knife on your key chain?
Vorjack scored 27 -- should have been 29 -- he got two de-suification
points for being magically old.
(
Cue Wizard of Id
Rodney: This joust is going to be a laugher. My opponent is ninety
years old.
Bung: How does a jouster live to be ninety years old?
Rodney: <starts sweating>
)
--------------------------------
Now Kiranta *ought* to score high:
(Grump. So far, not one of the "authority figure" questions considers
the possibility that Kiranta *is* an authority figure.)
(Misses on the spending-money question too: Kiranta is wealthy, by
the standards of her society, but money hasn't been invented yet.)
27 again, and the only de-suifier was "admits to being wrong"
(Vorjack no doubt has admitted to being wrong -- but he hasn't been
wrong on stage, so I didn't count it.)
--------------------------------
I suppose I should do Chris Killbuck, since he's been discussed here:
9 -- mostly because his universe doesn't have evil overlords or any
of the other furniture the questions were expecting. Chris
definitely doesn't need "a little spicing up" -- being worth your
weight in gold ought to be good for a point!
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
Kay Shapero
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
> Ben Crowell wrote:
> > My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
> > http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
> > that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>
> I really don't like these quizzes because they conflate "powerful
> character, probably with wish-fulfillment aspects" with "Mary Sue". Mary
> Sue is a very specific SUBgroup of wish-fulfillment characters, which
> can be defined in a very few questions:
>
> 1) Is the character recognizably a self-insert of the author? (changing
> some details are okay, but would the author, backed into a corner, say
> "yeah, okay, it's really me"?)
> 2) Is the character recognizably superior to the actual author in some
> significant way?
> 3) Does the character have a significant effect upon the plot by his/her
> presence (rather than, say, just showing up as an in-joke)?
>
> All Sues are self-insert. Not all self-inserts are Sues.
I generally think of a Mary Sue as a sort of literary black hole,
warping the plot, other characters and anything else to hand by their
very existance and action, and that this makes them irritating. They
unbalance the story and the result is far less interesting than it might
have been. It is this lack of balance that makes for problems, not the
power or whatever per se; the same character in a different environment
and story might do just fine.
--
Kay Shapero
address munged, email kay at following domain
http://www.kayshapero.net
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
But that's just a wish-fulfillment character with no controls. Mary Sue
(as begun with the original) is the AUTHOR in the story. A good Mary Sue
acts as a regular character, just with characteristics that work with
the plot. A bad Mary Sue warps or ignores the plot due to Authorial
Fiat. But Authorial Fiat can do the same thing with ANY character. I
don't think, for instance, that Hannibal Lecter is the author's Mary
Sue, but he DOES become something of an invincible psychotic superman as
time goes on.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Peter Knutsen wrote:
>> The test seems extremely biased against high-competence protagonists,
>> which bothers me a lot, since I refuse to write about boring and
>> ordinary peole. Perhaps the creator of the test is a very ordinary and
>> boring person who only wants to read about people who are like herself?
>
> I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
> amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
> millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
> a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
> scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
>
> For me, this brings to mind a couple of recent examples from media SF:
> Avatar, and the 2009 Star Trek movie. In Avatar, a young guy
> starts spending 8 or 10 hours a day with a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
> He does that for a few months, and goes from being incompetent in their
> environment to being a warrior-king of epic proportions. Okay, he
> does practice hard, but still, it's not believable.
It's believable in space opera contexts. In gritty realistic contexts,
no. Same with Star Trek. Heroes versus Ordinary.
>
> In written SF, the examples that spring to mind are Heinlein's Lazarus
> Long and Herbert's Paul Atreides. Long is competent at everything
> because he's had 2000 years to *do* everything, but it's really annoying
> how he's always right, and everyone always hangs on his words.
Not in his original appearance, and not always in the later ones,
although by those it was Bad Heinlein, alas.
> Paul
> seems like a more egregious example, but I don't remember feeling that
> way when I read the book 30 years ago as a teenager. I wonder if I'd
> accept him less now that I'm not a teenage boy.
In the original Dune? Paul was dicked around by fate and so on for most
of the book. If his saga was wish-fulfillment, Herbert had serious
problems. The novel essentially starts out with his father and 90% of
his friends and associates being killed, him having to flee into the
desert, learn an entirely new way of life, almost get killed in some
religious ritual, and FINALLY get a chance to take his vengeance against
the guy behind it all, but boy, did he go through a wringer to get there.
>
> US pop culture, including SF, glorifies youth. It's probably inevitable
> that that becomes less palatable as you get older.
You obviously speak for yourself. It's certainly not inevitable for me.
Ben Crowell
>> Paul seems like a more egregious example, [...]
>
> How so?
Just in the sense that he's preternaturally good at everything,
and he's God, and ... stuff.
Brian M. Scott
<crow...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote in
<news:00a10e32$0$16922$c3e...@news.astraweb.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> How so?
I don't think that any of that is true in _Dune_: my view is
about the same as Wasp's. (_Dune Messiah_ is sufficiently
inferior that I don't even think of it in the same breath,
but even there his problems are at least as big as he is.)
Brian
R.L.
> In article <1to7d1xi0a6p0$.1q8yjizl...@40tude.net>,
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
>>> Mind you, I never thought of Harriet as a "Mary Sue".
>>
>> I know very well who she is. As the punctuation fairly
>> clearly indicates, I'm surprised that anyone would point to
>> her as an example of a character with noticeable Mary Sue
>> elements, *especially* alongside Tarzan.
I don't read Harriet as a 'Mary Sue' either. For me the line falls between
her and Laurie King's Mary Russell, who does feel very Mary Sue to me.
> It isn't the same thing as a Mary Sue, but one can see Peter as a
> romanticized version of Dorothy Sayers' husband--her husband as she
> wishes he were. So not "the author as she wants to be" but more nearly
> "the author's life as she wishes it were."
I've seen extreme wish fulfillment circumstances called a marker for Mary
Sue; eg Harry Potter's successes in the first volume (instant respect,
natural at Quidditch, etc).
Harriet certainly has enviable circumstances, especially after her
marriage. She also has the personal qualities that Sayers herself admired,
shares Sayers' real opinions, etc.
R.L.
R.L.
Your sketch didn't sound very Mary Sue to me, except in a few places. Made
me think of an Andre Norton story somehow.
Perhaps the reason is that if she's a street child having to hide in alleys
and needs a mysterious protector etc -- then she's getting enough
challenges to balance her strengths.
Zornhau in a recent LJ post said balance is the key, and I tend to agree.
Harriet has more challanges, difficulties, than Mary Russell; Tarzan is
often overwhelmed.
R.L.
R.L.
[....]
> In Avatar, a young guy
> starts spending 8 or 10 hours a day with a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
> He does that for a few months, and goes from being incompetent in their
> environment to being a warrior-king of epic proportions. Okay, he
> does practice hard, but still, it's not believable.
One theory is that Gaia/Pandora wanted some human DNA for her gene pool, so
She set him up.
R.L.
R.L.
[....]
> Really, how powerful they are is irrelevant.
>
> How powerful their PROBLEMS are is the relevant question. If you're
> Superman and your opposition is a typical mugger in an alleyway, you're
> too powerful. If you're Superman and your opposition is Galactus, you
> may need some serious backup (depending on which version of Superman you
> are)
Being more powerful than the average human is interesting to imagine -- and
then gets balanced by problems greater than the average human has.
R.L.
Eric Ammadon
If the reader is going to accept the idea of his walking around blind
without falling into holes because he's reading the future realtime,
it seems reasonable to expect him to have reached that point after
passing through "good at everything", I'd think. Having observed him
being a good-at-nothing lame for his entire life would hardly prepare
the reader to accept his near-omniscience at the same level of WSOD.
--
arggh, is it priate day again?
Eric Ammadon
I take it then Peter that you disagree?
Some people are more inclined to be mechanists than others, they seem
to think that anything a machine cannot be constructed to do is
therefore a ludicrous impossibility. Those folks sometimes make their
way into the writing of hard sci-fi as a sort of... adolescent wish
fulfillment?
People are not the same. When I look at something covered with
ribbons and flowers that my wife declares to be absolutely beautiful,
it is sometimes not within me to understand what universe her
perceptions proceed from. I've found it best at those times to
carefully and quickly change the subject before my head has been
thumped and ground glass queued for my next morning's oatmeal. <g>
Eric Ammadon
I'm not convinced that you are yet that older. <g>
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
How do you define "older"? That's the key. My physical existence on
this planet approaches the half-century point, so by that standard I am
getting older.
Michelle Bottorff
> > I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
> > amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
> > millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
> > a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
> > scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
> [...]
>
> Acknowledging the *fact* that some people are born with high aptitude is
> adolescent wish fulfillment? That's vile cowshit!!
So, um, which of the millionaire rock stars out there managed to become
millionaire rock starts without ever having to practice?
A high aptitude won't get you to the top of anything by itself, because
there are always going to be other people out there who also have a high
aptitude AND are willing to work.
Eric Ammadon
My physical existence on this planet approached the century point
before I was a week old yet it still has not reached it.
I think the key is the question of how old "that older" is.
If you're sufficiently jaded nothing is very palatable, regardless of
age. <g>
netcat
says...
Whereas in a similar situation I would ask the other party to explain
their universe until I either get it or they run out of patience and
thump me.
I think it's perfectly possible to see beauty in styles that you do not
personally like, or to like diametrically opposed things.
rgds,
netcat
Eric Ammadon
That's my tendency too. In the case of my wife's asthetic values,
I've been thumped more than once so to speak. <g> Some things we both
understand, some we don't. She sees no beauty in a purring mechanism
pared to its essentials, to her it's just a machine; I see no beauty
in some of her fluffies, others I can grasp.
>I think it's perfectly possible to see beauty in styles that you do not
>personally like, or to like diametrically opposed things.
I agree. I can see perfect composition in a photograph even when I
dislike the subject matter, beautiful balance in a room decorated in a
style I despise, and so forth. Despite the asthetic differences
between my wife and myself, there's minimal bloodshed. Usually. <g>
There's a difference between talent, aptitude, and achievement. There
are some who are forced to admit the existence of child prodigies like
Alexander Pope or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because they cannot shout
them out of existence, but find the idea of proposing such an
individual in a work of fiction to be "adolescent wish fulfillment".
I have not a clue what such people are doing attempting to write
fiction in any of the fantasy/sci-fi genres.
Will in New Haven
> > seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
The reason you don't think that Lector is the author's Mary Sue is
that you are too nice a guy.
--
Will in New Haven
Dorothy J Heydt
><see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
><news:1j1cc86s31vg8.g...@40tude.net> in
>rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:38:09 -0800, Ben Crowell wrote:
>
>>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>
>> elements in many popular heroes.
>
>> consider Tarzan, Harriet Vane....
>
>Harriet Vane?!
Absolutely.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Dorothy J Heydt
Well, I wrote a Mary Sue once (in _Coda_, my fanfic novel tying
up loose ends in Asheron's Call 2), and she was a
wish-fulfillment character, too, but not in the way you usually
mean. She was my main character in AC2, and a specialized
Healer. (Best character I've ever had in any game.) She was the
major (though not the only) viewpoint character, and she got to
serve the great Asheron, whom she venerated (he'd been dead for
about five centuries, btw), and who gave her a special MacGuffin
for laying the undead with which the world was littered. Asheron
trusted her with the thing because, as he said when she'd just
wiped out a couple of Very Ueber Undead, "I chose you, and no
other, for this task because every time you perform it, it
grieves you. I feared to give this duty to someone who might
come to enjoy it."
Other than that she's pretty ordinary, though a skilled Healer.
She's not a cute young thing, either; she's sixty-three, as I was
when I wrote the thing.
Dorothy J Heydt
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>Well, I wrote a Mary Sue once (in _Coda_, my fanfic novel tying
>up loose ends in Asheron's Call 2), and she was a
>wish-fulfillment character, too, but not in the way you usually
>mean. She was my main character in AC2, and a specialized
>Healer. (Best character I've ever had in any game.) She was the
>major (though not the only) viewpoint character, and she got to
>serve the great Asheron, whom she venerated (he'd been dead for
>about five centuries, btw), and who gave her a special MacGuffin
>for laying the undead with which the world was littered. Asheron
>trusted her with the thing because, as he said when she'd just
>wiped out a couple of Very Ueber Undead, "I chose you, and no
>other, for this task because every time you perform it, it
>grieves you. I feared to give this duty to someone who might
>come to enjoy it."
>
>Other than that she's pretty ordinary, though a skilled Healer.
>She's not a cute young thing, either; she's sixty-three, as I was
>when I wrote the thing.
And I just ran her through the test. She scored 17.5.
J.Pascal
> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
Are you suggesting that child prodigies don't work at it?
I know a man who's two boys were at least near the "prodigy" level...
the sort of kid who spends two hours a day playing piano and is
brilliant and then says, at age 8, "Hey, Dad, I want to play cello,
too. I can do the extra practice, really I can," and then does.
My point being that this 8, 10, 12 year old (and his brother, who
seemed of the same mindset,) did actually practice music for four
hours a day or more (being homeschooled frees up some time), because
he really wanted to practice music for four hours a day. And
they're both battling for first chair in elite youth symphonies, and
got to meet Yo Yo Ma, etc., etc. And people look at them and think
"prodigy" but they would be very very wrong if they thought that work,
*obsessive* work, was not part of that picture.
-Julie
Bob Throllop
<crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
> I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
> amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
> millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
> a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
> scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
>
> For me, this brings to mind a couple of recent examples from media SF:
> Avatar, and the 2009 Star Trek movie. In Avatar, a young guy
> starts spending 8 or 10 hours a day with a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
> He does that for a few months, and goes from being incompetent in their
> environment to being a warrior-king of epic proportions. Okay, he
> does practice hard, but still, it's not believable.
>
In the case of _Avatar_, I think the underlying cause is not the
hero's unbelievable ability, but rather a failure of storytelling
craft. Given how fantastic the situation is to start with, it would
not be hard to posit that the avatar technology gives him abilities
the natives don't have. But making us care whether he can do
something the natives can't is a different matter.
The real reason you didn't "believe" what he did was that the
narrative didn't involve us in the key events. Jake decides to do (no
spoiler) to become the war leader on what appears to be a whim. We're
not only given the impression that it was too easy for him; we're
given very little indication that he's thought about it at all, how
much effort he did or didn't put into it, or whether it even matters--
if it didn't work, couldn't he think of some other way to fight the
bad guys? Once he does become war leader, his leadership basically
consists of a pep talk and human-wave tactics. Couldn't he have
contributed just as much to the fighting as an ordinary warrior?
I'm not saying that I thought it out this way as I was watching. What
was actually going through my mind was that I was waiting to see the
good guys' problems dealt with in a different way, and then Jake
started doing (no spoiler) and I thought, "Oh, I guess that's supposed
to be important instead. Whatever."
Michelle Bottorff
> There's a difference between talent, aptitude, and achievement. There
> are some who are forced to admit the existence of child prodigies like
> Alexander Pope or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because they cannot shout
> them out of existence, but find the idea of proposing such an
> individual in a work of fiction to be "adolescent wish fulfillment".
> I have not a clue what such people are doing attempting to write
> fiction in any of the fantasy/sci-fi genres.
:rolls eyes:
Nobody thinks Mozart is an adolescent wish fulfillment character.
Nobody said anything that could reasonably be taken to mean that they
thought someone like Mozart couldn't exist.
The complaint was about millionaire rock stars that got there without
practising chords or scales.
You aren't seriously suggesting that Mozart's apparently very rigid and
classically trained musician father never set him practising chords and
scales?
Could we get *real* for moment here?
Mozart was from a family of gifted musicians and he ate breathed and
slept music from infancy, and recieved a very find music education.
As close as I can figure, as a child he practised *constantly*. That
may well be why he was so fond of partying later in life.
He did NOT get teleported in from a world where nobody had ever heard
of music or believed in music, and in a couple of months became the
greatest musician in the world. To cite a standard fanatasy equivlent
situation.
Nor did he in any way resemble the average Mary Sue rock star. In fact,
he would probably consider the life of the averge Mary Sue rock star the
fulfillment of *his* wishes, and regret that, with all his genius, it
still nonetheless remained a fantasy.
The millionaire part, especially.
You, uh, do know that he died fairly young, and a pauper. Right?
Will in New Haven
<crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
I did this quiz for Vlad Taltos. Obviously, I could not answer from
the author's PoV but I guessed a bit and he scored thirty. This is a
pretty high score but I think Vlad is a bit of a Mary Sue,
specifically because many important and powerful people become his
friends, although it is not without cost. I don't think this detracts
from the books in which he is featured.
Eric Ammadon
I'm "suggesting" (since you suggest that word) that people with
sufficient talent do not have to practice very much at all to achieve
"high-competence", and that most prodigies don't "work" at their areas
of talent at all, they simply *play* at it because it's fun.
Eric Ammadon
>Nobody thinks Mozart is an adolescent wish fulfillment character.
...
>You, uh, do know that he died fairly young, and a pauper. Right?
Lots of folks die fairly young. Lots of folks die as paupers. A few
hundred years ago almost everyone died at an age we'd consider "fairly
young", and most people probably would have felt privileged to live at
today's poverty level.
The idea that nobody achieves anything except through work (effortful
diligence) is, at least to me, as ridiculous as the idea that nobody
on the planet could whistle up a tune without years of professional
music instruction.
Michelle Bottorff
> > But that's just a wish-fulfillment character with no controls. Mary Sue
> >(as begun with the original) is the AUTHOR in the story. A good Mary Sue
> >acts as a regular character, just with characteristics that work with
> >the plot. A bad Mary Sue warps or ignores the plot due to Authorial
> >Fiat. But Authorial Fiat can do the same thing with ANY character. I
> >don't think, for instance, that Hannibal Lecter is the author's Mary
> >Sue, but he DOES become something of an invincible psychotic superman as
> >time goes on.
>
> Well, I wrote a Mary Sue once (in _Coda_, my fanfic novel tying
> up loose ends in Asheron's Call 2), and she was a
> wish-fulfillment character, too, but not in the way you usually
> mean.
I don't want to say who my 'comes the closest I can think of to
self-insertion' character is.
But A) readers seem to find her interesting
and B) she typically scores very low on the Mary Sue tests.
Plus nobody has yet accused me of self-inserting. (Which is the main
reason I don't want to say... I want to see how long it takes for
someone to guess.) :)
Anyway, self insertion or no self insertion, none of my stories bears
the slightest resemblence to "my life as I wish it was," and none of my
heroes are "my husband as I wish he was".
J.Pascal
Okay, so you really were saying that.
How freaking odd.
-Julie
JF
>
> How freaking odd.
>
Sounds like Tina, doesn't it?
JF
Michelle Bottorff
> mbot...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
>
>
> >Nobody thinks Mozart is an adolescent wish fulfillment character.
> ...
> >You, uh, do know that he died fairly young, and a pauper. Right?
>
> Lots of folks die fairly young. Lots of folks die as paupers.
Yes, "folks" do. But *not* adolescent wish fulfillment Mary Sue
millionaire rock stars. That's sort of the point I am trying to make.
Mozart is believable because he is real. The characters we are
complaining about, *aren't* real, and don't resemble reality, (or
Mozart.)
> The idea that nobody achieves anything except through work (effortful
> diligence) is, at least to me, as ridiculous as the idea that nobody
> on the planet could whistle up a tune without years of professional
> music instruction.
Well don't blame me for how ridiculous those ideas are.
I never said anything of the sort.
James A. Donald
wrote:
> Your sketch didn't sound very Mary Sue to me, except in a few places. Made
> me think of an Andre Norton story somehow.
>
> Perhaps the reason is that if she's a street child having to hide in alleys
> and needs a mysterious protector etc -- then she's getting enough
> challenges to balance her strengths.
>
> Zornhau in a recent LJ post said balance is the key, and I tend to agree.
> Harriet has more challanges, difficulties, than Mary Russell; Tarzan is
> often overwhelmed.
There is nothing wrong with Mary Sue characters that cannot be fixed
by throwing rocks at them.
James A. Donald
> [Mozart] did NOT get teleported in from a world where
> nobody had ever heard of music or believed in music,
> and in a couple of months became the greatest musician
> in the world. To cite a standard fanatasy equivlent
> situation.
I don't recognize this as a standard fantasy equivalent
situation. It is pretty rare that an earth human gets
summoned into a world of magic and become the greatest
magician, and when it does happen, he got summoned
because a master summoner was searching through all the
worlds for someone with potential to do the amazing
things that were needed, or some similar up front
explanation.
During the colonial era there were often novels where
westerner gets teleported into a backward or decadent
culture, and winds up in charge, but those were written
in a time when not so long ago, westerners had
frequently barged into backward or decadent cultures and
wound up in charge, but in our more decadent and less
self confident era, such stories are no longer written.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Throw rocks at my Mary Sues. I dare ya. The villains usually try that.
It doesn't end well for the villains.
R.L.
> On Jan 4, 4:29�pm, Ben Crowell
> <crowel...@lightSPAMandISmatterEVIL.com> wrote:
>> In Avatar, a young guy
>> starts spending 8 or 10 hours a day with a tribe of hunter-gatherers.
>> He does that for a few months, and goes from being incompetent in their
>> environment to being a warrior-king of epic proportions. Okay, he
>> does practice hard, but still, it's not believable.
>>
>
> In the case of _Avatar_, I think the underlying cause is not the
> hero's unbelievable ability, but rather a failure of storytelling
> craft. Given how fantastic the situation is to start with, it would
> not be hard to posit that the avatar technology gives him abilities
> the natives don't have. But making us care whether he can do
> something the natives can't is a different matter.
>
> The real reason you didn't "believe" what he did was that the
> narrative didn't involve us in the key events. Jake decides to do (no
> spoiler) to become the war leader on what appears to be a whim. We're
> not only given the impression that it was too easy for him; we're
> given very little indication that he's thought about it at all [....]
Maybe Jake's decision was made at the speed of plot.
We're not given much detail or inner processing about Luke's decision to
join Knobe. We just see him looking at his uncle's burnt out [spoiler] and
then next shot he's en route.
Realistically Luke may have done several days of checking things out,
looking for survivors at the [spoiler], etc etc. But for most of the
audience, showing all that or listening to him angst like Hamlet would have
been bad storytelling. We all know what Luke is finally going to do, we've
seen the trailers.
Iirc it was Eugene Vale who did an analysis of this sort of thing in a
screewriting book. Something like, if the decision and the means are
straightforward, predictable, then you don't have to show motivation AND
decision AND means; just cut to the next unpredictable thing. (Catja did a
great analysis of this sort of thing about when a team is planning an
action: if it goes smoothly, you don't have to show the planning; if you do
show the planning, that's a signal that it WON'T go smoothly.
> how
> much effort he did or didn't put into it, or whether it even matters--
> if it didn't work, couldn't he think of some other way to fight the
> bad guys? Once he does become war leader, his leadership basically
> consists of a pep talk and human-wave tactics. Couldn't he have
> contributed just as much to the fighting as an ordinary warrior?
>
> I'm not saying that I thought it out this way as I was watching. What
> was actually going through my mind was that I was waiting to see the
> good guys' problems dealt with in a different way, and then Jake
> started doing (no spoiler) and I thought, "Oh, I guess that's supposed
> to be important instead. Whatever."
Could well be. If the pacing and cutting and so forth had led us to expect
the plot was going in a different direction, they can't do an about-face
and still ride the speed of plot.
Maybe Cameron's fault was in leading you to the wrong expectation.
R.L.
R.L.
Hm. I'd admit the existence of prodigies who did not have a musical
upbringing. And who had the luck to be discovered and become successful,
even rock stars, without ever learning scales and such. (Ethyl Merman,
maybe?)
In a story I'd call such a person a Mary Sue if zie ... took the situation
for granted. Didn't see anything odd in it. Didn't wonder why their fate
was unusual. Didn't look around to see if zie had any peers -- or if there
were others undiscovered whom zie could 'pay forward.'
The plot would be odd if something weren't made of this anamoly, one way or
another. -- Or, if the idea of hard work and dues-paying weren't openly
debunked or at least challenged one way or another.
It should be an ISSUE, if mentioned at all.
R.L.
R.L.
> (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
>> [Mozart] did NOT get teleported in from a world where
>> nobody had ever heard of music or believed in music,
>> and in a couple of months became the greatest musician
>> in the world.
Well, he wouldn't have much competition. ;-)
>> To cite a standard fanatasy equivlent
>> situation.
>
> I don't recognize this as a standard fantasy equivalent
> situation. It is pretty rare that an earth human gets
> summoned into a world of magic and become the greatest
> magician, and when it does happen, he got summoned
> because a master summoner was searching through all the
> worlds for someone with potential to do the amazing
> things that were needed, or some similar up front
> explanation.
Rick Cook's The Wiz series?
R.L.
James A. Donald
> > I don't recognize this as a standard fantasy
> > equivalent situation. It is pretty rare that an
> > earth human gets summoned into a world of magic and
> > become the greatest magician, and when it does
> > happen, he got summoned because a master summoner
> > was searching through all the worlds for someone
> > with potential to do the amazing things that were
> > needed, or some similar up front explanation.
"R.L."
> Rick Cook's The Wiz series?
He was what I had in mind when I referred to a master
summoner searching through all the worlds with someone
with potential.
R.L.
> On Jan 5, 12:54嚙緘m, Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>> "J.Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote:
>>>On Jan 5, 6:53嚙窮m, Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>>>> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>>>> >In article <ut16k5db17bl09dmgjv84q1vpgst0sk...@4ax.com>, n...@spam.thankee
>>>> >says...
>>>> >> Peter Knutsen <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>> >> >On 05/01/2010 01:29, Ben Crowell wrote:
>>>> >> >> Peter Knutsen wrote:
>>>> >> >>> The test seems extremely biased against high-competence protagonists,
>>>> >> >>> which bothers me a lot, since I refuse to write about boring and
>>>> >> >>> ordinary peole. Perhaps the creator of the test is a very ordinary and
>>>> >> >>> boring person who only wants to read about people who are like herself?
>>
>>>> >> >> I think there's a difference between high competence and competence that
>>>> >> >> amounts to adolescent wish fulfillment. If your character is a
>>>> >> >> millionaire rock star, that's high competence. If your character becomes
>>>> >> >> a millionaire rock star without ever having to practice chords and
>>>> >> >> scales, that's adolescent wish fulfillment.
>>>> >> >[...]
>>
>>>> >> >Acknowledging the *fact* that some people are born with high aptitude is
>>>> >> >adolescent wish fulfillment? That's vile cowshit!!
>>
>>>> >> I take it then Peter that you disagree?
>>
>>>> >> Some people are more inclined to be mechanists than others, they seem
>>>> >> to think that anything a machine cannot be constructed to do is
>>>> >> therefore a ludicrous impossibility. 嚙確hose folks sometimes make their
>>>> >> way into the writing of hard sci-fi as a sort of... adolescent wish
>>>> >> fulfillment?
>>
>>>> >> People are not the same. 嚙磕hen I look at something covered with
>>>> >> ribbons and flowers that my wife declares to be absolutely beautiful,
>>>> >> it is sometimes not within me to understand what universe her
>>>> >> perceptions proceed from. 嚙瘢've found it best at those times to
>>>> >> carefully and quickly change the subject before my head has been
>>>> >> thumped and ground glass queued for my next morning's oatmeal. <g>
>>
>>>> >Whereas in a similar situation I would ask the other party to explain
>>>> >their universe until I either get it or they run out of patience and
>>>> >thump me.
>>
>>>> That's my tendency too. 嚙瘢n the case of my wife's asthetic values,
>>>> I've been thumped more than once so to speak. <g> 嚙磅ome things we both
>>>> understand, some we don't. 嚙磅he sees no beauty in a purring mechanism
>>>> pared to its essentials, to her it's just a machine; I see no beauty
>>>> in some of her fluffies, others I can grasp.
>>
>>>> >I think it's perfectly possible to see beauty in styles that you do not
>>>> >personally like, or to like diametrically opposed things.
>>
>>>> I agree. 嚙瘢 can see perfect composition in a photograph even when I
>>>> dislike the subject matter, beautiful balance in a room decorated in a
>>>> style I despise, and so forth. 嚙瘩espite the asthetic differences
>>>> between my wife and myself, there's minimal bloodshed. 嚙磊sually. <g>
>>
>>>> There's a difference between talent, aptitude, and achievement. 嚙確here
>>>> are some who are forced to admit the existence of child prodigies like
>>>> Alexander Pope or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because they cannot shout
>>>> them out of existence, but find the idea of proposing such an
>>>> individual in a work of fiction to be "adolescent wish fulfillment".
>>>> I have not a clue what such people are doing attempting to write
>>>> fiction in any of the fantasy/sci-fi genres.
>>
>>>Are you suggesting that child prodigies don't work at it?
>>
>> I'm "suggesting" (since you suggest that word) that people with
>> sufficient talent do not have to practice very much at all to achieve
>> "high-competence", and that most prodigies don't "work" at their areas
>> of talent at all, they simply *play* at it because it's fun.
>
> Okay, so you really were saying that.
>
> How freaking odd.
>
How hard did Bill Maulden and Trudeau of Doonesbury have to work for their
success, or the cartoonist of Cathy?
Didn't they begin in the right place at the right time: non-competitive
outlets (small military paper, college paper, letters to father) and get
wider publication without much effort?
R.L.
John W Kennedy
> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:17:25 -0600, David Friedman wrote:
>
>> In article<1to7d1xi0a6p0$.1q8yjizl...@40tude.net>,>>>> Mind you, I never thought of Harriet as a "Mary Sue".
>>>
>>> I know very well who she is. As the punctuation fairly
>>> clearly indicates, I'm surprised that anyone would point to
>>> her as an example of a character with noticeable Mary Sue
>>> elements, *especially* alongside Tarzan.
>
> I don't read Harriet as a 'Mary Sue' either. For me the line falls between
> her and Laurie King's Mary Russell, who does feel very Mary Sue to me.
I think Mary Russell very likely has her origin in a long-ago Mary Sue,
but I also think King cleaned up her act before she sent in the final draft.
>> It isn't the same thing as a Mary Sue, but one can see Peter as a
>> romanticized version of Dorothy Sayers' husband--her husband as she
>> wishes he were. So not "the author as she wants to be" but more nearly
>> "the author's life as she wishes it were."
>
> I've seen extreme wish fulfillment circumstances called a marker for Mary
> Sue; eg Harry Potter's successes in the first volume (instant respect,
> natural at Quidditch, etc).
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone" is a pastiche of
the standard English School Story. That sort of thing is a standard trope.
> Harriet certainly has enviable circumstances, especially after her
> marriage. She also has the personal qualities that Sayers herself admired,
> shares Sayers' real opinions, etc.
I see no indication that Harriet is a determined Anglo-Catholic, or that
she has any serious opinion one way or the other about consumerism. I
know that Sayers used to be furious with people who wanted her to
Christianize Lord Peter.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"
Ric Locke
No, not really, though there's some commonality. It's a matter of
semantics, word definitions in this case.
Eric is one of those annoying (to me) folks who insist that it isn't
"work" if you enjoy doing it. A person who spends four hours practicing
a piece of music because he or she enjoys it isn't "working". The same
mindset insists that anything that tastes good can't be good for you.
Regards,
Ric
J.Pascal
Enjoyable effort is still effort. Work is energy applied, or some
such. Nothing about it requires the energy or "work" to be
unpleasant or unwelcome.
-Julie
David Friedman
Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
> Lots of folks die fairly young. Lots of folks die as paupers. A few
> hundred years ago almost everyone died at an age we'd consider "fairly
> young",
I don't think that's right. Life expectancy was relatively short,
largely due to a high rate of infant and child mortality, but maximum
age was about the same then as now and a fair number of people made it
to what we wouldn't consider fairly young.
> and most people probably would have felt privileged to live at
> today's poverty level.
Yes.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_
Ric Locke
Agreed without a struggle, but the Grim Moralist (same hood and cloak,
but a rulebook instead of a scythe) doesn't see it that way. If you're
having fun you aren't working. If you aren't working you're at best
frivolous and at worst a parasite. Gitcher nose back t'th grindstone,
Pilgrim.
Regards,
Ric
R.L.
> On 1/5/10 5:35 AM, R.L. wrote:
>> I've seen extreme wish fulfillment circumstances called a marker for Mary
>> Sue; eg Harry Potter's successes in the first volume (instant respect,
>> natural at Quidditch, etc).
>
> "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone" is a pastiche of
> the standard English School Story. That sort of thing is a standard trope.
Might we say that that standard trope includes Mary Sue elements?
>> Harriet certainly has enviable circumstances, especially after her
>> marriage. She also has the personal qualities that Sayers herself admired,
>> shares Sayers' real opinions, etc.
>
> I see no indication that Harriet is a determined Anglo-Catholic, or that
> she has any serious opinion one way or the other about consumerism. I
> know that Sayers used to be furious with people who wanted her to
> Christianize Lord Peter.
Perhaps I should have said, Harriet's opinions do not contradict or
contrast with Sayers', sfaik. And some are shared, at least to some extent,
concerning feminist issues.
R.L.
Eric Ammadon
>On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:26:18 +0000, JF wrote:
>
>> J.Pascal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> How freaking odd.
>>>
>>
>> Sounds like Tina, doesn't it?
>>
>> JF
>
>No, not really, though there's some commonality. It's a matter of
>semantics, word definitions in this case.
>
>Eric is
When you begin a sentence with that phrase, it increases your
likelihood of being off by an order of magnitude.
>one of those annoying (to me) folks who insist that it isn't
>"work" if you enjoy doing it.
English is handicapped by having too few words and too many meanings,
or maybe it's me that's handicapped; which end of the telescope is
toward the eye doesn't much matter in this case.
It's my view that everyone has his own "work" but most of us never
find it or don't have the <fill_in_blank> to spend our time doing our
own work, instead we rent ourselves out to others and _that_ is what I
call "work". It's a sad thing, but it doesn't make me sad anymore,
just as starving children in Africa give me sadness but their
starvation don't make my stomach feel empty.
> A person who spends four hours practicing
>a piece of music because he or she enjoys it isn't "working".
Here again English comes up short. The word "practicing" is just too
pale and limited. There are at least two kinds of practice.
One kind of practice is effortful diligence, repeating an act over and
over until you've learned to mimic well enough to produce the expected
result; that kind of practice is "work" because it isn't your own
practice, you've rented yourself out to gain the approval of others by
becoming a startlingly good mimic.
Another kind of activity exists that appears externally to be
"practice" but it isn't effortful diligence, it isn't mechanical
repetition in order to learn mimicry, it is rather a search, a sensing
that something is hidden but you can see a little bit of it, at times,
and an attempting to find where that bit comes from and where it goes
to hide itself. It's more a following of curiosity. I'm of the
opinion that that's what the very talented are doing when people think
they're practicing, they're digging around to find the essence and
once they've caught it by the tail the rest of it's easy for them.
>The same
>mindset insists that anything that tastes good can't be good for you.
I try to eat dessert first, I'm going to eat it no matter how full the
main course has made me, and by eating what's best for me first I can
avoid feeling overfull by shoving aside some yams or whatever. If
something tastes bad, or smells bad, it's more likely to be bad for
you than not, that's my take on it. It is not unusual here to find
that breakfast is dutch apple pie (though ice-cream is for later in
the day).
Eric Ammadon
>In article <km77k5l2e348g9q5e...@4ax.com>,
> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>
>> Lots of folks die fairly young. Lots of folks die as paupers. A few
>> hundred years ago almost everyone died at an age we'd consider "fairly
>> young",
>
>I don't think that's right. Life expectancy was relatively short,
>largely due to a high rate of infant and child mortality, but maximum
>age was about the same then as now and a fair number of people made it
>to what we wouldn't consider fairly young.
I'm reading you to say that a few hundred years ago most everybody
lived to be around 70 except the babies and they died off like
mayflies; that does not compute.
I wasn't here then, so maybe I've been misinformed, but what I've
gathered is that the average guy who made it to 35-40 was just about
done for, and anyone who made it past 60 was a fairly extreme rarity.
Eric Ammadon
You'd probably find enough "issue" mileage in such a person's
interactions with others. There's usually something a bit odd about
them.
The "a bit odd" thing reminds me of _Dorsai!_ for some reason.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:27:08 -0500, John W Kennedy wrote:
>> On 1/5/10 5:35 AM, R.L. wrote:
> [....]
>
>>> I've seen extreme wish fulfillment circumstances called a marker for Mary
>>> Sue; eg Harry Potter's successes in the first volume (instant respect,
>>> natural at Quidditch, etc).
>> "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone" is a pastiche of
>> the standard English School Story. That sort of thing is a standard trope.
>
> Might we say that that standard trope includes Mary Sue elements?
>
The Mary-Sue (admitted, IIRC) in Harry Potter is Hermione Granger.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:26:18 +0000, JF wrote:
>
>> J.Pascal wrote:
>>
>>> How freaking odd.
>>>
>> Sounds like Tina, doesn't it?
>>
>> JF
>
> No, not really, though there's some commonality. It's a matter of
> semantics, word definitions in this case.
>
> Eric is one of those annoying (to me) folks who insist that it isn't
> "work" if you enjoy doing it.
From my PoV, that's true.
> A person who spends four hours practicing
> a piece of music because he or she enjoys it isn't "working". The same
> mindset insists that anything that tastes good can't be good for you.
This is of course insane.
I have no intention of doing work if I can avoid it. At the moment, I
can't avoid it (without consequences I really don't want), but if the
opportunity presents itself I'll become a professional author, which
means I'll stop working as far as I'm concerned.
Ric Locke
> I'm of the
> opinion that that's what the very talented are doing when people think
> they're practicing, they're digging around to find the essence and
> once they've caught it by the tail the rest of it's easy for them.
Bullbleep.
Unfortunately for the Smaht People, much of the world is simply
mechanical stuff. To play a chord on a piano requires that the fingers
and feet be placed /just so/, and since Mother Gaia didn't provide
Steinway grands, no critter (including human beings) has that motion
pre-wired; the muscle-synapse system must be programmed to make it when
the`brain, or soul, finds that sound in "the essence". Since we also
lack download connectors, the only way to accomplish such programming is
practice -- think sound, attempt motion, examine result, correct errors,
repeat ad nauseum. A musical savant like Roy Clark is able to do that
very quickly, at the extreme doing it only in the mind without actually
touching the instrument after initially determining which finger does
what, but that merely shortcuts the process, and the merely very
talented must do it the hard way. That doesn't mean "the hard way" isn't
enjoyable to a person with a particular mindset.
Pretentious elitist twits, on the other hand, seek the essence in their
souls and pour it into the music or onto the canvas or... without ever
bothering to acquire the necessary mechanicals. The result is cacaphony
and ugliness.
Regards,
Ric
Brian M. Scott
<djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in <news:KvrHn...@kithrup.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> In article <1ayiuzz0z1fmh.2...@40tude.net>,
> Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>>On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:49:09 -0800, "R.L."
>><see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
>><news:1j1cc86s31vg8.g...@40tude.net> in
>>rec.arts.sf.composition:
>>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:38:09 -0800, Ben Crowell wrote:
>>>> My daughter sent me this link to an online quiz
>>>> http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
>>>> that helpd you to determine whether your POV is a "Mary Sue:"
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
>>> If so, zie may be in good company. There are Mary Sue
>>> elements in many popular heroes.
>>> Not just Nancy Drew and Perry Mason type books, but
>>> consider Tarzan, Harriet Vane....
>>Harriet Vane?!
> Absolutely.
Oh, there's a lot of Sayers in her, and quite possibly some
auctorial wish-fulfillment as well, but she's not in the
least a Mary Sue as I understand the term: 'a fictional
character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms,
lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as
wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers'.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<n...@spam.thankee> wrote in
<news:omh8k5pq6b7jnhu61...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>>In article <km77k5l2e348g9q5e...@4ax.com>,
>> Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>>> Lots of folks die fairly young. Lots of folks die as
>>> paupers. A few hundred years ago almost everyone died
>>> at an age we'd consider "fairly young",
>> I don't think that's right. Life expectancy was
>> relatively short, largely due to a high rate of infant
>> and child mortality, but maximum age was about the same
>> then as now and a fair number of people made it to what
>> we wouldn't consider fairly young.
> I'm reading you to say that a few hundred years ago most
> everybody lived to be around 70 except the babies and
> they died off like mayflies;
Why? That isn't what he said. It is, rather, a caricature
thereof.
> that does not compute.
> I wasn't here then, so maybe I've been misinformed, but
> what I've gathered is that the average guy who made it to
> 35-40 was just about done for,
Statistics for the Ache, Hadza, Hiwi, and !Kung suggest that
a hunter-gatherer of the Upper Palaeolithic might have had a
life expectancy at birth of about 33 years but could
expected to live a couple of decades more than that if he or
she reached the age of 15.
> and anyone who made it past 60 was a fairly extreme
> rarity.
Not in the Middle Ages.
Infant mortality ranged from something like one in six for
the most advantaged elites to something like one in two for
the poor. At a rough average of one in three across the
board, the mean life expectancy for those who survived
infancy was about 50% more than the mean life expectancy at
birth. That makes life expectancies at birth rather
misleading.
Brian M. Scott
<see...@no-spams.coms> wrote in
<news:1hkun8r478641.t...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> How hard did Bill Maulden and Trudeau of Doonesbury have
> to work for their success, or the cartoonist of Cathy?
> Didn't they begin in the right place at the right time:
> non-competitive outlets (small military paper, college
> paper, letters to father) and get wider publication
> without much effort?
Not in Mauldin's case. He studied cartooning at the Chicago
Academy of Fine Arts in his teens, and lack of success led
him to abandon cartooning for over ten years after the war.
Brian M. Scott
<n...@spam.thankee> wrote in
<news:0u57k5913fqud1pqb...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> "J.Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote:
[...]
>>Are you suggesting that child prodigies don't work at it?
> I'm "suggesting" (since you suggest that word) that people
> with sufficient talent do not have to practice very much
> at all to achieve "high-competence",
They don't have to practise as much to achieve a given level
of competence as people with less talent. But you should
consider this well-known statement by Vladimir Horowitz:
If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't
practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I
don't practice for three days, the world knows it
> and that most prodigies don't "work" at their areas of
> talent at all, they simply *play* at it because it's fun.
The fact that they enjoy the work does not mean that they
aren't working at it.
Brian M. Scott
<ju...@pascal.org> wrote in
<news:e9a44839-e471-445c...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> My point being that this 8, 10, 12 year old (and his
> brother, who seemed of the same mindset,) did actually
> practice music for four hours a day or more (being
> homeschooled frees up some time), because he really
> wanted to practice music for four hours a day. And
> they're both battling for first chair in elite youth
> symphonies, and got to meet Yo Yo Ma, etc., etc. And
> people look at them and think "prodigy" but they would be
> very very wrong if they thought that work, *obsessive*
> work, was not part of that picture.
Though if my own experience with mathematics at that age is
anything to go by, it probably doesn't often feel like work
to the kids.
Brian
Ric Locke
You've been misinformed by failing to understand, and by taking your
comfortable industrial-society life as the norm.
From time to time we find that simplifications are useful, so long as we
don't lose sight of the fact that they are simplifications. "Life
expectancy" is such a simplification, especially if you fail to include
the qualifier "average". If a mother has two children, one of which is
stillborn and the other lives to be 70, the average age of death of her
offspring is 35.
If you look even shallowly into the matter, rather than taking the
assumptions at face value, you will discover that, in precursor
societies, the older the individual was the closer his or her life
expectancy came to the norm for us. A person who had already lived to,
say, age 20 years in saga-period Iceland or Han China had a life
expectancy not that much different from our own 20-year-olds -- less
because of hazards and poor nutrition, but not nearly half.
The real break, the point at which the statistics become very different,
is at early ages, especially under two years. That's where extrapolation
from present conditions becomes such an error. You simply have no idea,
no concept, of how very very many babies didn't make it before modern
medicine took hold. Once in a while you will find, in cemeteries, old
graves of "Baby XX, age two days" or some such, and reason from the
paucity of such examples that infant survival in those days was about
like it is for us. Not so. The societies regarded the people who "went
on" about such things as really or borderline insane, with the "right
way to do it" being to bury the dead infant without ceremony and get on
with life. My grandmother had a long speech about that, which was
triggered by visiting her husband's grave and seeing such an infant
burial next to it.
The application to writing is this: If you intend to depict a society
without some version of modern medical care, and fail to include a very
high percentage of infants and babies who die before they're a year old,
you aren't being realistic. This may be your didactic purpose -- a
realistic depiction might be too depressing or horrifying to support the
story you're trying to tell -- but you ought to be aware of it.
Regards,
Ric
Bill Swears
> Oh, there's a lot of Sayers in her, and quite possibly some
> auctorial wish-fulfillment as well, but she's not in the
> least a Mary Sue as I understand the term: 'a fictional
> character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms,
> lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as
> wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers'.
>
> Brian
thought that the Mary Sue character was sort of in the Retief mold.
Highly competent, but undervalued, and busy doing whatever it took to
save the day, while going virtually unobserved and unappreciated by her
leaders?
Bill
--
Living on the polemic may be temporarily satisfying, but it will raise
your blood-pressure, and gives you tunnel vision.
J.Pascal
I accept that. By all accounts the time spent is enjoyable and
rewarding to the kids in question (young men by now) and if it wasn't
enjoyable it likely would have never happened at all. Likely their
talent makes the process less of a struggle and less frustrating, but
the hours do get put in. And those hours are long hours of intense
concentration.
-Julie
Dorothy J Heydt
Michelle Bottorff <mbot...@lshelby.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>> > But that's just a wish-fulfillment character with no controls. Mary Sue
>> >(as begun with the original) is the AUTHOR in the story. A good Mary Sue
>> >acts as a regular character, just with characteristics that work with
>> >the plot. A bad Mary Sue warps or ignores the plot due to Authorial
>> >Fiat. But Authorial Fiat can do the same thing with ANY character. I
>> >don't think, for instance, that Hannibal Lecter is the author's Mary
>> >Sue, but he DOES become something of an invincible psychotic superman as
>> >time goes on.
>>
>> Well, I wrote a Mary Sue once (in _Coda_, my fanfic novel tying
>> up loose ends in Asheron's Call 2), and she was a
>> wish-fulfillment character, too, but not in the way you usually
>> mean.
>
>I don't want to say who my 'comes the closest I can think of to
>self-insertion' character is.
>
>But A) readers seem to find her interesting
>and B) she typically scores very low on the Mary Sue tests.
>
>Plus nobody has yet accused me of self-inserting. (Which is the main
>reason I don't want to say... I want to see how long it takes for
>someone to guess.) :)
>
>Anyway, self insertion or no self insertion, none of my stories bears
>the slightest resemblence to "my life as I wish it was," and none of my
>heroes are "my husband as I wish he was".
Well, I can say (I think) that Tapuaua was my character as I wish
she was, since the character I have now (in a different game) is
not nearly so competent in the healer/mage specialty.
But she wasn't at the time, and since in appearance she resembled
a small, bipedal, carnivorous, semi-aquatic dinosaur, only
covered with green fur, I don't *think* she's what I wanted to
look like.
But you never know.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Dorothy J Heydt
R.L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>
>We're not given much detail or inner processing about Luke's decision to
>join Knobe. We just see him looking at his uncle's burnt out [spoiler] and
Kenobi. For a while there, I didn't know who you were talking
about.
>then next shot he's en route.
On the contrary! Seeing [spoiler], he turns to Kenobi and says,
~"There's nothing left for me here. I want to go with you, and
learn the ways of the Force, and become a Jedi like my father."~
(Tumultuous applause from the audience)
And *then* he's en route.
You may not *see* his inner processes, but anyone this side of
autism can figure out what they were.
Dorothy J Heydt
Ric Locke <warl...@hyperusa.com> wrote:
>
>Eric is one of those annoying (to me) folks who insist that it isn't
>"work" if you enjoy doing it.
Well, there's always Twain's dictum (in _Tom Sawyer_) that Work
consists of what a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of
what a body is not obliged to do.
A person who spends four hours practicing
>a piece of music because he or she enjoys it isn't "working".
Consider Herbert Blomstedt, conductor of the San Francisco
Symphony from 1965 to 1995. He is a Seventh-Day Adventist and
refuses to "work" on Saturdays. He counts rehearsals as "work."
He will perform on Saturdays, however, because performing at
concerts isn't "work."
It's all in how you slice it.
The same
>mindset insists that anything that tastes good can't be good for you.
Oh, like M. F. K. Fischer's grandmother.
Dorothy J Heydt
R.L. <n...@none.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:27:08 -0500, John W Kennedy wrote:
>> On 1/5/10 5:35 AM, R.L. wrote:
>[....]
>
>>> I've seen extreme wish fulfillment circumstances called a marker for Mary
>>> Sue; eg Harry Potter's successes in the first volume (instant respect,
>>> natural at Quidditch, etc).
>>
>> "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone" is a pastiche of
>> the standard English School Story. That sort of thing is a standard trope.
>
>Might we say that that standard trope includes Mary Sue elements?
Oh heavens yes. Or Gary Stu elements, maybe more often, since
boys have been going to Standard English Boarding Schools for a
lot longer than girls have.
I'm not going to look up the reference at the moment, because
it's five a.m. here and I've been woken up by the cold and the
ache in my wrist --- waiting for the latest painkiller to take
effect so I can get a bit more sleep. But in C. S. Lewis's
autobiography _Surprised by Joy_ he talks about the horrid
boarding school he went to, and how within its walls the only
goal was to be an Important Person in the student body's horrid
social structure. Anyway, he describes school stories as
wish-fulfillment fantasies, and distinguished them from the
real fantasy he was reading (Old Norse, Wagner's Ring, William
Morris, etc.)
I can look up a pithy quotation later on, maybe, when the sun is
up.
>
>> I see no indication that Harriet is a determined Anglo-Catholic,
No, but she has absorbed traditional Christian values very
thoroughly. I mean, confront her with the gist of any of the
Commandments (with the possible exception of the First) and her
reaction would be "Well, of course."
Eric Ammadon
It's a "word thang". The term 'work' implies that effort or energy is
being expended. When talent is at play, the energy is going in the
other direction, the individual is not _using_ energy, he's receiving
it.
Eric Ammadon
>On Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:13:55 -0700, Eric Ammadon wrote:
>
>> I'm of the
>> opinion that that's what the very talented are doing when people think
>> they're practicing, they're digging around to find the essence and
>> once they've caught it by the tail the rest of it's easy for them.
>
>Bullbleep.
If y'all can't play nice, you'll go back in the killfile with them
other peckerwoods.
>Unfortunately for the Smaht People, much of the world is simply
>mechanical stuff. To play a chord on a piano requires that the fingers
>and feet be placed /just so/, and since Mother Gaia didn't provide
>Steinway grands, no critter (including human beings) has that motion
>pre-wired; the muscle-synapse system must be programmed to make it when
>the`brain, or soul, finds that sound in "the essence". Since we also
>lack download connectors, the only way to accomplish such programming is
>practice -- think sound, attempt motion, examine result, correct errors,
>repeat ad nauseum.
Anybody who thinks that music must consist of chords and notes from
the seven-note repeating scale traditionally used here in the western
world has restricted himself too much to understand what I'm talking
about.
> A musical savant like Roy Clark is able to do that
>very quickly, at the extreme doing it only in the mind without actually
>touching the instrument after initially determining which finger does
>what,
And what would you call that, besides "digging around to find the
essence"?
> but that merely shortcuts the process, and the merely very
>talented must do it the hard way. That doesn't mean "the hard way" isn't
>enjoyable to a person with a particular mindset.
>
>Pretentious elitist twits, on the other hand, seek the essence in their
>souls and pour it into the music or onto the canvas or... without ever
>bothering to acquire the necessary mechanicals. The result is cacaphony
>and ugliness.
Seems to me that's what happens when some dumb peckerwood decides he
knows what's going on, "cacaphony and ugliness".
Dorothy J Heydt
No. But she has one feature that is absolutely characteristic of
the Mary Sue: the main character (the animus figure, to borrow
from Jung), who has never cared much for anybody else, *loves her
to distraction* and is eternally devoted to her. The really
typical Mary Sue is loved to distraction by everybody else, too.
Harriet doesn't go quite that far, though if you count Philip
Boyes, that's two.
Another example of the animus figure: Mr. Spock.
I don't read Harry Potter fanfic, but I bet there's a lot of
stories out there with Snape as animus.
Suzanne Blom
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:KvtBs...@kithrup.com...
> In article <bp9bidno3yih$.c1x6efhx...@40tude.net>,
> Ric Locke <warl...@hyperusa.com> wrote:
>>
>>Eric is one of those annoying (to me) folks who insist that it isn't
>>"work" if you enjoy doing it.
>
> Well, there's always Twain's dictum (in _Tom Sawyer_) that Work
> consists of what a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of
> what a body is not obliged to do.
>
> A person who spends four hours practicing
>>a piece of music because he or she enjoys it isn't "working".
>
> Consider Herbert Blomstedt, conductor of the San Francisco
> Symphony from 1965 to 1995. He is a Seventh-Day Adventist and
> refuses to "work" on Saturdays. He counts rehearsals as "work."
> He will perform on Saturdays, however, because performing at
> concerts isn't "work."
>
> It's all in how you slice it.
>
> The same
>>mindset insists that anything that tastes good can't be good for you.
>
> Oh, like M. F. K. Fischer's grandmother.
>
poison because he like the taste.
Suzanne Blom
"Eric Ammadon" <n...@spam.thankee> wrote in message
news:d6g8k5lrc8qog038m...@4ax.com...
>
> It's my view that everyone has his own "work" but most of us never
> find it or don't have the <fill_in_blank> to spend our time doing our
> own work, instead we rent ourselves out to others and _that_ is what I
> call "work".
The word you're looking for is "vocation."
Eric Ammadon
I assume you to mean as a replacement for "work" rather than for
<fill_in_blank>?
I could agree to that if the word 'vocation' didn't have such heavy
connotations of wage-slavery; you don't get "vocational training" to
do your own work, you just do it. So because of that, I'm thinking
that 'destiny' would be a closer fit than "vocation" but it still
isn't quite on the spot.
As a replacement for <fill_in_blank> I could see the words 'freedom',
'dedication', 'determination', 'stupidity', or 'money'. <g>
J.Pascal
But how does that support the notion that hyper-talented persons do
not need to develop their mad skilz?
Developing mad skilz, no matter the aptitude or talent involved,
requires actually *developing* them. You have been saying this is
not true, and argument about the meaning of the word "work" is beside
the point. No one is effortlessly brilliant at some thing they have
never done. They may enjoy the effort, but there is effort. The
idea that talent makes one *receive* energy ignores the physical and
mental fatigue that will accompany the euphoria.
And none of that, not even changing an argument about "work" into an
argument about spending or receiving energy, changes the fact that
even a vastly talented person has to actually DO a skill in order to
do it well.
We might as well argue over the inability for any human to do good in
the world if they are tainted by the least attachment to other human
beings. It only counts as virtue if there can be no possibility of
intrinsic reward you know.
-Julie
J.Pascal
> "Suzanne Blom" <sueb...@execpc.com> wrote:
>
> >"Eric Ammadon" <n...@spam.thankee> wrote in message
> >news:d6g8k5lrc8qog038m...@4ax.com...
>
> >> It's my view that everyone has his own "work" but most of us never
> >> find it or don't have the <fill_in_blank> to spend our time doing our
> >> own work, instead we rent ourselves out to others and _that_ is what I
> >> call "work".
>
> >The word you're looking for is "vocation."
>
> I assume you to mean as a replacement for "work" rather than for
> <fill_in_blank>?
>
> I could agree to that if the word 'vocation' didn't have such heavy
> connotations of wage-slavery;
But that's what you're talking about! Egad. We don't do what we
prefer or would do given a choice, we hire ourselves out to others and
we do what we do for money. We get a job. We have a vocation.
We earn a wage.
> you don't get "vocational training" to
> do your own work, you just do it. So because of that, I'm thinking
> that 'destiny' would be a closer fit than "vocation" but it still
> isn't quite on the spot.
>
> As a replacement for <fill_in_blank> I could see the words 'freedom',
> 'dedication', 'determination', 'stupidity', or 'money'. <g>
Resources.
-Julie
Brian M. Scott
<ju...@pascal.org> wrote in
<news:85d18e79-ce53-41d9...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Jan 5, 11:53�am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010 09:07:40 -0800 (PST), "J.Pascal"
>> <ju...@pascal.org> wrote in
>> <news:e9a44839-e471-445c...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>> [...]
>>> My point being that this 8, 10, 12 year old (and his
>>> brother, who seemed of the same mindset,) did actually
>>> practice music for four hours a day or more (being
>>> homeschooled frees up some time), because he really
>>> wanted to practice music for four hours a day. � �And
>>> they're both battling for first chair in elite youth
>>> symphonies, and got to meet Yo Yo Ma, etc., etc. � �And
>>> people look at them and think "prodigy" but they would be
>>> very very wrong if they thought that work, *obsessive*
>>> work, was not part of that picture.
>> Though if my own experience with mathematics at that age is
>> anything to go by, it probably doesn't often feel like work
>> to the kids.
> I accept that. By all accounts the time spent is
> enjoyable and rewarding to the kids in question (young
> men by now) and if it wasn't enjoyable it likely would
> have never happened at all. Likely their talent makes
> the process less of a struggle and less frustrating, but
> the hours do get put in. And those hours are long hours
> of intense concentration.
Oh, absolutely. It's hard work; it just happens to be hard
work that's mostly fun.
Brian
Eric Ammadon
Let's skip right to the heart of it:
>No one is effortlessly brilliant at some thing they have
>never done.
Is that the case for an autistic savant? I think it is probably not
the case at all, or at least it's very close to not being the case.
Have I, like Billy Pilgrim, come unstuck from space and newsgroup? I
thought this was a group about writing Fantasy and SciFi, am I lost?
Yes, I think that I must be lost, it appears that this is a group for
writers of boring twaddle about things everyone can do if they just
practice until their fingers bleed, and anything else is considered
"adolescent wish fulfillment".
Am I the only lunatic here who can imagine up a mutant savant? What
has happened, has the world beaten everyone down into the mundane
while I was off hallucinating and reading books written back in the
days when at least a few people still had imaginations?
Eric Ammadon
>On Jan 6, 11:33�am, Eric Ammadon <n...@spam.thankee> wrote:
>> "Suzanne Blom" <sueb...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>
>> >"Eric Ammadon" <n...@spam.thankee> wrote in message
>> >news:d6g8k5lrc8qog038m...@4ax.com...
>>
>> >> It's my view that everyone has his own "work" but most of us never
>> >> find it or don't have the <fill_in_blank> to spend our time doing our
>> >> own work, instead we rent ourselves out to others and _that_ is what I
>> >> call "work".
>>
>> >The word you're looking for is "vocation."
>>
>> I assume you to mean as a replacement for "work" rather than for
>> <fill_in_blank>?
>>
>> I could agree to that if the word 'vocation' didn't have such heavy
>> connotations of wage-slavery;
>
>But that's what you're talking about!
It may be what others are talking about, but it's definitely not what
I'm talking about.
> Egad. We don't do what we
>prefer or would do given a choice,
I apologize, but that is exactly what I have been doing for the past
decade.
> we hire ourselves out to others and
>we do what we do for money. We get a job. We have a vocation.
>We earn a wage.
I understand how necessary that seems. Perhaps for some it may
actually be necessary. During the previous millenium it seemed
necessary to me. I had kids to feed, I needed a sure thing, I worked
a job at a corporation; so it goes. One day I stopped doing that and
begain doing what I wished; so it goes.
>> you don't get "vocational training" to
>> do your own work, you just do it. �So because of that, I'm thinking
>> that 'destiny' would be a closer fit than "vocation" but it still
>> isn't quite on the spot.
>>
>> As a replacement for <fill_in_blank> I could see the words 'freedom',
>> 'dedication', 'determination', 'stupidity', or 'money'. <g>
>
>Resources.
Call it "magic" if you like. It works for me, mileage may vary.
Have you never hear of a fellow who decided that instead of working a
clock-job, what he wanted to do was to build cabinets, or paint
pictures, or whatever, and who just started doing that and <gasp!>
failed to die in the vile manner those who wish to remain in power
portray as the inevitable result of walking away from the shackles?
Goodness.
Magic, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Don't try this at home
kids, etc.
Will in New Haven
People do that sort of thing all the time. There is much less _real_
pressure not to do it than you seem to think in your dramatic
presentation of the material.
Lots of people feel coerced when no one cares what they do.
Of course, I have a carpenter friend whose ex-wife is upset because he
is no longer a cardiologist. But that's a different kettle of fish.
--
Will in New Haven
Eric Ammadon
Thanks Will, it reassures me to find that it isn't all hallucinatory.
>There is much less _real_
>pressure not to do it than you seem to think in your dramatic
>presentation of the material.
"dramatic"? Hey, I'm in writing withdrawl here, cut me a little
literary license willya? <g>
>Lots of people feel coerced when no one cares what they do.
Yes, there is a lot of propaganda out there specifically and
intentionally designed to help people get themselves into a spot where
their choices are limited. If you do your own work your own way, you
might not drive a new car and have all the new toys; if you've bought
into the new cars and McMansions and the rest, you've sold some choice
in doing that.
>Of course, I have a carpenter friend whose ex-wife is upset because he
>is no longer a cardiologist. But that's a different kettle of fish.
Yep, ex-wives are often not sufficiently ex.
Will in New Haven
Or you've _made_ the choice to do that. It is very easy to imagine
that people who do other than we would choose as puppets.
--
Will in New Haven
>