I have a slightly different perspective on Mary Sues, because I started out in a fandom which was, at the time, all about creating OCs and having them interact with other people's OCs. (The stories were set in the world of the canon we were writing, but the creators had basically said "Write all the fanfic you like, but please don't use our characters, OK?" and for the most part fandom respected their wishes. So the whole OCF = Mary Sue thing didn't even apply.
What did apply was what you're talking about - characters who suck all the literary oxygen out of the room, leaving nothing for anyone else. In Elfquest fandom we called them Wottaguy characters. (In fact, I think that lordgloria may have invented the term.) And because we were working in shared universe writing groups, they could get really, really annoying, because you couldn't just back-button away, you had to deal with them somehow.
In my experience, you can make your character as awesome and fantastic as you want and still escape Mary Sue-ism as long as you let the other characters be awesome, too. Back in those days I created a lot of characters who would win a Mary Sue contest with magenta-with-gold-flecked eyes blindfolded, but I had people asking me if they could have their character be related to mine, or if they could use my characters in their stories, or if I'd write their character into my stories, and so on. It wasn't that my characters were all that and a bag of chips, it was that I'd demonstrated that I was willing and able to let other peoples' characters shine, too.
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Date: 2010-04-15 01:56 am (UTC)What did apply was what you're talking about - characters who suck all the literary oxygen out of the room, leaving nothing for anyone else. In Elfquest fandom we called them Wottaguy characters. (In fact, I think that
In my experience, you can make your character as awesome and fantastic as you want and still escape Mary Sue-ism as long as you let the other characters be awesome, too. Back in those days I created a lot of characters who would win a Mary Sue contest with magenta-with-gold-flecked eyes blindfolded, but I had people asking me if they could have their character be related to mine, or if they could use my characters in their stories, or if I'd write their character into my stories, and so on. It wasn't that my characters were all that and a bag of chips, it was that I'd demonstrated that I was willing and able to let other peoples' characters shine, too.