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春の夕暮れに。。。

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Ok, I promised myself I won't update a journal if I just keep writing emo shit like back when I was in high school. Right.

Anyway, I was reading 会長はメイド様！(Kaichou wa Maid-sama/ lit. The President is a Maid!) and was snooping around for some spoiler chapters and came around Mangafox.com's own manga discussion board.

I felt rather amused and perturbed by the fact that people were theorizing about what could the next chapter be about...in a rather cliched format. But then I could not help but think that a "Mary Sue" and a "John Stu" romance series would inevitably use a literary stock situation. I mean, a lot of stuff are like that and for good or worse, there are people who will always love or detest such a thing.

In my opinion, I originally hated writing girl-boy fanfics because I knew the danger of Mary Sues. And in the world of fan fiction, the power of scathing and reckless internet flaming is bad. I mean, I have seen some of my friends cry for real over something like that. It would probably be the case if I were still in junior high though. But now that I'm older, I realized that after writing about my Original Characters, there is nothing more to a Mary Sue character other than "her being perfect is boring" thing. Really, Mary Sue characteristics are too general that literally, every other girl made in fiction would apply to it (same holds true for John Stu). I'm not saying that every character here on earth can be thought of a Mary Sue. But owing to our lack of understanding of how stock characters work, we tend to simply dismiss every other character as a Mary Sue.

Stock characters are named stock because they follow particular attributes and characteristics. They are a sort of "predefined" character to be used. And im my honest opinion, stock characters are not bad nor are they necessarily evil in the world of literature. Indeed, even the greatest writers of fiction use them. Except, stock characters when used show the true skill of a writer. How a writer is able to transform that stock character into an interesting one is a skill that is not available to all.

And that is the real reason why I can read manga/books with stock characters. Take for example Artemis Fowl's butler Butler many of us do not realize he is a stock character as Sidekick. There's a major difference in using a stock character to make a hero more likable versus a stock character that is virtually predictable; worse if lumped in a cliched plot. Illustrative point in my opinion is Dan Brown, I couldn't take him after two novels because while his writing style was good, he became too predictable that novelty nor creativity shined. Anyway, that's my opinion--same with pop fiction Twilight. But that's enough as sarcasm and catty neta users don't go together.

Any opinions? Cookies?


Commissions
Status: Open
Information: HERE
Worklist:

1. ~QuatreBornes - Kingsley (Working)
2. open
3. open

Thanks to:
*Grin-Without-A-Cat for my sub <3



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Read about my Original Characters here