Making a Mary Sue? · 1:05pm Sep 27th, 2012
I made my last blog a little more open and posted it on a MLP site I'm on and apparently it caused someone to read my stories. They said they didn't really like the story because Shadow comes off as a Mary Sue character. As in, a character that is just perfect and has no flaws. Which threw me off. As far as I've ever been concerned Shadow was never close to a Mary Sue character. Maybe his flaws aren't glaring but he's certainly not perfect. Granted, he does get luck a lot but if he was the unluckiest pony in the world he would've been dead long before the stories I've written. haha
When I presented that as a response the person still didn't agree. That impossible luck all the time was the same thing. (I began to wonder if they even read the stories.) First of all, in the first story, he fails to save the pony when he's in Las Pegasus with Dash. And if he were perfect, he wouldn't fail that. I think the one thing I did the best with Shadow was not presenting him as an unstoppable detective force in the world. For all intents and purposes, I made him human. Not literally, of course. But metaphorically he is human. He makes mistakes. He gets scared. He gets hurt. He gets mad. He loses his temper. He's had his magic fail him. Hell, that little italicized thing I do is the negativity we all face in situations like that. To prove that there is a voice in him telling him all the bad things that could go wrong. To me he's far from perfect, but that is what makes him perfect. He's not exactly an underdog in everything but even as I write him I find myself rooting for his plans (Which I make up) to work. I want to see him succeed.
I think the only thing I did, that I would take from him given the option was the ability to teleport that I gave him. But it wasn't like he just learned how to do it. Twilight wrote down how to do it on a scroll and he tried it from there. And he still hasn't quite mastered it. I keep all of his teleportations as short distances. Save the one to get to Rainbow's home. I don't regret the wall walking spell though. It's a spell Shadow can make good use of. The one spell I gave him that was completely unique was the invisibility spell. And even when using that he has to remain motionless for it to work. I wanted that to be a last ditch effort hide from everything moment when he uses it.
But all of this got me wondering, do you guys, my readers, feel Shadow is a Mary Sue type of character?
I can see how that argument could be made. I don't really agree with it, but there's probably some truth in it.
I think the problem isn't so much that you've failed to give Shadow flaws as that his flaws have never really reared up and caused a major problem. Yes, he's made mistakes, pissed off Rainbow, and failed to save a pony or two, but the resulting conflict was generally resolved within a few paragraphs (and with Rainbow, it stopped being a major problem in the next chapter). I can't remember a conflict besides the main plot that caused long-term suspense, but I'll need to go back and re-read to see how true that actually is.
I think this was mostly what I was thinking of when I called your writing "simpler" after your last blog post. I haven't really seen this as being symptomatic of a Mary-Sue, I've just seen it as keeping the story "lighter" than most because while there's an overarching plot that drives the story forward, the characters don't seem to come into serious conflict too often.
I'm sure this is probably wrong in many ways - I'll go back and re-read and try to figure out a better way to describe this.
No, you're right. Most of those problems do go away rather quickly. I have a tendency to give everyone a suck it up and drive on kind of attitude. I had intended to make the conflict with Rainbow more pronounced and keep the anger simmering under the surface for a while but they kind of got thrown into the thick of a fight rather quick, and they're both the kind that can forget petty things for a greater moment and then after the thing with Skip it was illogical that she'd still be super angry about it. Subtly it played a part in my reasoning for breaking the partnership. I mostly needed that fight to break them up, and that was really the only reason for it. I had never intended for Shadow to have a relationship with anyone, let alone Rainbow Dash. But they sort of fell into each other and it kind of fit.
I also don't think in the grand scheme of things that my stories would hold a conflict like that very well. The scenery is constantly changing so it's hard to have bitter feelings linger in the face of constant challenge. It's hard to make ponies angry at each other when they're all working toward a greater good, in a situation that could find them all dead if they don't. You're very much right about the interpersonal challenges being cream puffs in terms of difficulty to deal with, but my hope is that the overarching story and the secondary story attached to each would be enough to convey that they don't really have time to be mad at one another if they expect to prevail.