Ensign Sue... the comic
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Okay, I don't know who made this... but... scarily accurate and hilarious.
https://www.deviantart.com/comicalclare/art/Ensign-Sue-Must-Die-01-165689110
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This has been around forever and is, from what I can remember, what people get pointed to when they ask what a Mary Sue/Gary Stu kind of character is. I think it really resonates with readers, because... c'mon. Let's be real here. Not only do we know people who make this kind of character but we've all been guilty about it ourselves at some point.
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I use a strategy for the ultimate Mary-Sue/Gary Stu, Jimmy Bond.
I call it "cat alley".
I have three layers of strategy:
I take a Bond villain, applying the singular character in some form they used a strategy in the movie they were in (besides the original Casino Royale, where Jimmy Bond is from, played by Woody Allen, Sir James Bond 007's nephew that was rejected from espionage for being vertically challenged in a knight spy's family). Then, I arrange the strategy to be used on a Cat, Felix Leiter, to place them in a customized Batman villain, and then I release them, as an extension of my presence.
The second strategy is the Le Chiffre, to create Orson Welles at the baccarat table, a cop steering wheel to mark an entire group of people as SMERSH, whomever associates with Le Chiffre, so everyone thinks they're Russian, but not in Russia during the Cold War. If I spot someone as a Superman villain (read: they think I'm a cultural reference, and I figure out what it is), I mirror the cultural reference at them, upgrading them to a Superman role with the villain's skillset. I then break contact, and let them be a dummy organization.
Finally, I have the BOX, an MI-5 term for a detainment unit. I create another Bond villain, by giving them the entire strategy, but modified just for them, without Le Chiffre or the BOX.
The ultimate Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu system, two joint boards, same shape, interlocking into a tunnel, for cats to crawl through. Like in the Do the Evolution video by Pearl Jam, with the babies coming out of the factory, and being marked with infrared scan bands on their foreheads, the kind from a retail outlet.
Note, I do this RL.
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@Derp
You want the DC Comics cast, eh. I can give you five of them.Batman: this guy takes down Tong and Triads (the children of teachers and professors, and overseas students involved in banking and contract guilds, manipulating failed teachers - guidance counselors - and college professors that can't teach - the lunch hall guy, Tobias Funke - not Dr. Leo, I have trained him to be Amos Fortune, and under my personal tutelage, he is now Le Chiffre, baccarat master.). He takes a villain from any work of fiction, to play pranks on the Triads and Tong, with a single Bat-Gadget, an insight from Henri Ducard on how to pick one hero (I have Ultra Magnus, he can't open the Matrix of Leadership because he doesn't have women's fingernails, that was an insight from a pre-op transgender - that one is alias rosters, J. Edgar Hoover). Joker is a teacher's son, except in The Dark Knight, when the comic book writer is Joker, the Batman Reality Tour (from the Seinfeld Kramer Reality Tour), and the teacher's son is Bruce Wayne, for many tricks.
Superman: this guy has a single business strategy, from each founder of an academic form.
Green Arrow: a Scoutmaster's son, with each counter-fascist strategy ever employed, such as decals (NASCAR and F-1, no more sabotage circuits inside racing, no more European Fascist intelligentsia, corporate sponsership demands clean racing so parents aren't worried by fatalities, stockcars used to be mechanics and racing, with the drivers stealing strategies and then assassinating each other - Otto Skorzeny actually put you on trial for stealing a mechanical strategy, after sabotaging your trick to kill you on exhibition so only he'd have it.)
Hawkman: comes up with a rare academic form based on his family's culture, always a first generation child of an immigrant. Could be Cleveland to Boston, could be Nigeria to France. The friendly professor.
Green Lantern: someone that claims they were abducted by aliens whenever they're caught chasing down someone they dislike because they commit a petty crime most people ignore, knowing that all cops believe in weird things in the woods. The standard move is to set up a downfall, then play into it, an altar boy trick.
None of these are Mary-Sues or Gary-Stus in writing, since part of the character in each, is that you never play the central strategy up, you always pick some force as opposing you. Each one, offends Ensign Sue, because Ensign Sue focuses on the actual appearance of the character in cited media, not the gag behind the character. Ensign Sue, is a rote-learner, that's someone who relies on memory, they don't know theory, which is what you're taught to produce around the 6th/7th grade, from rote, which prior education teaches you.
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@Derp
The Office? I'll take that on, too. You know this one by now, you've been talking to me.You have to write yourself, as the mocked villain, to eliminate Jim, who is the guy that is toxic to what you judge to be the culture. You write Dwight Schrute, as a pompous villain with interviews, and you have Dwight Schrute, make every violation, you want Jim to make, and you expand it, to opposites of each person, the way they actually are, in such a way that it will offend them. Jim, me, has to be you, with your off-screen love interest, flirting.
The documentary style, makes the viewer, Jim, want to be Dwight Schrute, the person who made the show, instead of Jim, who he hates, not realizing that it's him.
Dwight Schrute has just destroyed every Jim, whoever that poor soul was (Dwight Schrute).
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Stanley Kubrick, invert the meaning of the book to cause the symptoms suffered by the main character that the book seeks to invert. All you do, is change the definition of the title, to the condition that changes in the climax, which is the hook in any Stanley Kubrick adaptation.
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Chet Factor 9000
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Chet is the person fiction writers tend to assume stoners are like.
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Correct, I'm going to school for fiction.
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@Chet Well. I hope you pass "Actually Reading What Was Written 101."
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in Ensign Sue... the comic:
@Chet Well. I hope you pass "Actually Reading What Was Written 101."
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@Auspice There's actually a reason we do that, though.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in Ensign Sue... the comic:
@Auspice There's actually a reason we do that, though.
Go oooon....
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@Derp said in Ensign Sue... the comic:
@Tinuviel said in Ensign Sue... the comic:
@Auspice There's actually a reason we do that, though.
Go oooon....
Not to that extreme, obviously. But the idea is to encourage the kind of mindset that looks for reason and meaning in text, even when it is not evident. Why was X written this way? What is the author trying to make you think? Etc.
You know, the kind of thing the world needs more of when consuming media.
He/Him
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Oh, I legit thought that you meant that sort of symbolism-analysis of weirdly banal stuff, lol. You're just talking reasoning and critical thinking, though, which is way less 'secret arcane knowledge' than I was hoping it would be.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@Derp Well yeah, but symbolism-analysis of weirdly banal stuff is one way to do it. If you're trained to look deep into boring shit all the time, you'll actually use the critical thinking you're taught to. It's one thing to teach how to think critically, it's another entirely to teach when.
ETA: Also, once the book is in your hands it's not the author's book anymore. It's yours. What the author thought or hoped or dreamed doesn't matter.
He/Him
