I like randomly searching things on Wikipedia and learning…stuff. Today’s lesson was the Mary Sue. For an aspiring writer, I think learning about this wonderful, terrible character is extremely important. Hell, how many Mary Sues have I written into stories since I first started? I never wrote fanfiction, thank God, but I did once write a borderline rip-off of The Legend of Zelda games, “borrowing” Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf but changing their names and adding a bunch of other characters with weird names like Drake and Trellis. I really enjoyed myself while writing that, but would I ever have considered it for publication? Hell no. Even then (I was, what?, nine years old?) I knew that there’s some writing you write to amuse yourself and practice and there’s other writing you write for others to read. Sometimes I look at those old stories and think about salvaging parts of them, like clever little glittery things that I want to steal from myself and incorporate into other stories, but I just know I can’t take the whole story.
Do I want to bash Eragon at this point? Did that thought come out of nowhere? Yes and yes. Shall I? While considering that idea, I did some web-surfing on Google and realized that my job has basically been taken care of, as there are many readers out there who agree with me on various points of the novel.
I have many qualms with Eragon, but probably the biggest one is that the author (shall I leave him nameless?) seems to have written the book to amuse himself, and that’s fine. He didn’t have to publish it, though. When I write just for myself, I tend to set lower standards than when I write with an audience/publication in mind. Because when I write for myself, I tend to just put crap down so the movie in my head can play in all its majesty with just a few crap notes.
Also, I wanted to point out that many people have compared Eragon to Star Wars. Meanwhile, Eragon admirers have pointed out that Star Wars was based on the age-old myth story blah blah of the young unknown hero who goes out, has several trials under the tutelage of an old guardian, meets his false father, etc., etc. If you look at Jesus Christ’s life story, it’s basically that (strange or unusual birth, a prophecy, etc….) Joseph Campbell wrote a book about it: The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Recently, I read somewhere that George Lucas admitted to having been profoundly influenced by that book. So, Star Wars used the age-old myth outline to make something new and fun. The difference is that Eragon does not seem to go back to the original myth outline – it seems even more derivative, borrowing directly from Star Wars (as critics have said). That is: Old myth > Star Wars > Eragon. Also, I’d like to point out for those who say that if Eragon is derivative, then so is Stars Wars, that that statement is just wrong. When Star Wars came out, it was startling and fresh. When Eragon came out, it was…derivative. (Um…part of the reason I wrote this was because I wanted to defend Star Wars…)
Back to the Mary Sue idea. Arya? Eragon? I think so, though I’d rather not call Eragon that (not even a Mary Stu) since there are a multitude of fantasy characters just like Eragon (which is really irritating). If I labeled him a Mary Stu, I’d have to label them all Mary Stus, and that’s just boring. But Arya – a Mary Sue? I think so. At least, very unconvincing. When we meet her in the book, she seemed to say, “Fanboys, feel free to fantasize.”
A few months after reading Eragon, I found myself reading a story at a workshop that involved a half-elf. Many in workshop derided the half-elf idea, and one girl even accused the writer of fantasizing about half-elves. What the hell?? Okay – yes, the half-elf was a bad/terrible idea (that is, in the way she was described, i.e. having a perfect figure, good fighting skills… – I’m sure there are many ways to make half-elves convincing and compelling). HOWEVER, there should be a line drawn between equating the narrator with the author. I once wrote a story told from the first-person perspective of a racist, snooty little bitch but that doesn’t mean I agree with her (she was a composite of a few people, all guys, that I hated). Generally speaking, a story about a girl doesn’t have to mean the author is female.
Going back to Eragon’s author – are we not to equate Arya with some fantasy of his, since the author shouldn’t be accused of being in love with his own characters? Not quite. I definitely think that Eragon is the story of a writer practicing his craft and writing using what he loves. Hmm….to put it differently, I started writing stories with only characters that I would traditionally love (the perfect hero…at least, my perfect hero is brooding and dark… and the mysterious Mary Sue) but after going on for a while, I started creating characters that I still loved but were vastly different from the original prototypes (e.g. a garbageman, whom I really ended up sympathizing with). I don’t think Eragon’s author got to the point where he could love even the not-so-perfect characters (I’m not reading any books after Eragon, but I pray that Murtagh doesn’t die! He was a fun antihero, and it would have been fun if Eragon the character had been a parody of the traditional hero rather than a typical traditional hero.)
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I shy away from condemning Eragon’s author because I understand what it’s like for a writer (and how exciting it must have been to get published!). However, I don’t understand why the book was professionally published and why it was so popular. When I read it, all I could see was how it could have been so much greater – but wasn’t. (And I couldn’t help but note all the “references” to its predecessors.) I hope the end of the trilogy doesn’t disappoint.
Mary Sue Litmus Test – wow. I tried it and it’s scary. I feel like I have to take another look at characters I’ve written about (a testament to how prone I am to liking Mary Sue charas? I see I am also full of contradictions). Sad how much of the test I took referenced Japan – maybe because of all the anime fanfiction around (and how it seeps into original fiction).
Moving on, a note on the Da Vinci Code: it took me about 3 days to read it, found it very exciting. I finished, and then I said, “What the hell just happened?” Umm…I didn’t really give a crap about what the Holy Grail turned out to be. Because of that, I was also horribly disappointed that this piece of information was divulged halfway through the book (I kept saying, “No! It has to be something better than that!”). Funny how some people were so moved (one reader said that she couldn’t believe how the Church had lied to her). This was a work of fiction…right? I wish there had been a bibliography at the back of it, not just the advisory on the first page (which was annoying as hell since it didn’t specifically say what was absolutely true and what was speculation/fiction).
Coincidentally, the Da Vinci Code narrator is compared to Harrison Ford, who played Indiana Jones in a movie about the Holy Grail (The Last Crusade), in which the Grail was just a cup, and that movie was awesomely fun. No earth-shattering conspiracy needed.
