Mary Sue Slept Here

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about the concept of Mary Sue.  She is the much maligned self-gratifying character who shows up in fiction as a portrait (perhaps) of the writer, a wistfully near perfect creation who commands attention both of the reader and other characters within the story.
I am not an expert on Mary Sue, and will admit that my first story would  probably qualify, although it was a tad tongue in cheek.  I was ignorant of Mary Sue, but perhaps in that ignorance portrayed exactly how easy it is to follow her lead.
So, with that in mind I am thinking that it might be fun to follow this to a glaringly obvious call for some blatant Mary Sue fiction.  I had mentioned to mrua7 that we might even use some old pictures of ourselves to illustrate these stories.  That's up to you, and at present I don't have a date in mind for when we might begin to post these.  Perhaps we don't need a specific date, just the tag 'Mary Sue'.
Any thoughts?  I've listed some articles, and I believest_crispins ran something related to this a while back, so perhaps she will chime in on the topic and refresh our memories. 
Think about it: you can write a story where you are the embodiment of the perfect heroine... a super woman.  Napoleon's lips kissing yours, Illya's hands encircling your waist... 
What do you say?


Wikipedia  
TV Tropes 
Official Mary Sue Manual   

Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not quite sure about this at all. I don't think I ever hit the Mary Sue aspect in my writing as I've written only one female AU character, and other than a few things...being Irish, speaking Irish, and having red hair...uh oh...and a musician. (all not really important to the character herself) That's all of what's 'me' in her character. I was careful not to do that. As Cindy said,it's about putting a little bit of yourself in all your characters, and that's what I suppose I do. Granted some characters can be somewhat formulaic, such as some of the characters in NCIS, and even UNCLE, so I don't think there's too much of me in those sort of characterization.

This whole Mary Sue concept is interesting, but will have to think about it more...