(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

I woke up a half hour ago and all I've accomplished so far was putting Kate from Lost through a Mary Sue Litmus Test. She got a 75, and that was with me being generous and letting her get away with a LOT. Needless to say, I don't think the title of "Irredeemable Mary Sue" is a good thing.

Bah. I need scrambled eggs and a better chair for my computer desk. *toddles off to arrange for both*

Comments

[eponine119.livejournal.com]

I usually lurk, but I had to post with all the 'katred'...I did the exact same thing months ago, put Kate through the Mary Sue test! So this cracked me up.

The writers seem to just love her, it's obvious from the way they write Kate, like no matter what she's done or what she does, she can do no wrong and she jumps into the middle of every storyline and makes it all about her. Total Mary Sue.

[valerie]

Heh. Is there a character that she hasn't tried to insinuate herself with?

I can only imagine her butting in during the eventual Bernard/Rose reunion and be all "LOOK AT MY EMO!FACE! IT'S ALL ABOUT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!1!"

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I was making a list of why she's a Mary Sue for another post and suddenly realized Kate is JJ Abrams's wife's name. So ... yeah. :)

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Hell, she was the first face poor Aaron saw when he was born. Maybe that's why he's Beelzebaby.

[valerie]

That alone would be enough to scar a child for life.

[dragonsinger.livejournal.com]

I KNEW she was a Mary Sue!

[stevie-jane.livejournal.com]

Yep, she's a Sue, rather odd that some don't see it; but then I did the test on Ginny Weasley and unsurprisingly she's a Mary-Sue, and some don't believe that. Heh.

[milkshake-b.livejournal.com]

But Litmus tests don't mean anything--I mean hell, we put a friend's left sock through one once and got a higher score than Jesus. Litmus tests inevitably depend on a series of arbitrarily chosen traits which are associated with bad characters, but nonetheless can actually be extremely positive under certain circumstances, and the tests never take those circumstances into account--did you know most fantasy MS Litmus tests will give you points if you have a character who is anything other than lily-white? And there's at least one I found where you almost automatically end up testing as a Sue if you're writing anything other than bland Euro-fantasy. And all of those tests ignore the most fundamental rule of any story: the final decision of whether or not any character will turn out okay is not the traits, but the writing.

I'm not going to argue about if Kate is a good or bad character--I haven't seen the show, because the pilot bored me so much I couldn't even finish. But going, "HA, she sucks because she's a SUE, look, she failed this TEST," is a lousy way of proving your point. If she's a bad character, it's because the writers dropped the damn ball. Period.