look. fiction in general isn't good at what CPR is for. i once saw a fictional character use it on someone who had been stabbed (and stabbed nowhere near the lungs, I might add.)
Don't forget that time in Doctor Who when Martha, a med student and thus someone who should know better, gave an alien who was dying of blood loss CPR, and the big nod to xenobiology was that she did some compressions on either side of his chest because he has two hearts. :::PPP
I don't know, CPR has a much wider range of applications than a lot of people think. For example, it can be used to treat a bullet wound to the head very effectively! /red vs blue reference
You know, "OOC Characters" is a very useful tag to have and all, but sometimes you just gotta wonder: what's the point, then?
I think the most popular Mary Sue test is the Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test, which is still being updated. It's better than it was, and has a lot of questions about illogical or offensive writing, but there's still questions like (The tooltip for that question says that there's nothing wrong with this unless the character mostly exists to be your mouthpiece, but then why include it in the test?) It's stuff like that that always gave me the impression that good characters can never be smart, competent, or unique or it's bad writing. The creator of the test uses a spice metaphor to explain that the things in the test aren't inherently bad in small amounts, but if you follow the test's scoring, it'll still end up the character equivalent of boiled chicken with maybe a little salt. A lot of the writing criticism I consumed as a teenager was pretty misleading, actually. Like I got the impression that good plots spring fully formed from good characters (who are bland everymen of course), and constructing a plot and characters at the same time was the bad way to do it. And that it was more important to include things wildly different to what other people were doing than it was to include things you think are cool. I don't know if that's what people were actually saying, but it's how I took it.
and in this our time of need we look to our savior, the ultimate shroedinger's sue, one punch man, a man so ordinary he became the world's most powerful hero with a simple fitness regime. (What i mean by this is: every supposed "writing mistake" can make for an incredibly enjoyable character if you just use it to your advantage. There ARE no characterization/writing mistakes, there's only unusual approaches that might end up not working. Maybe they don't work in most contexts! But i assure you there is a way to make shit work out there somewhere.)
My personal sue test has three parts: - Is everything ever about this OC and does the world seemingly not exist except in relation to said character? (Unless we're talking a very self-absorbed person and exclusively their own POV here) - Do they make the plot obsolete by providing solutions for everything without throwing up other problems? - Is it enjoyable to read? If it throws yes/yes/no, then I'd classify it as Sue. (Other gripes wrt Mary Sue: the predominance of the accusation thrown at female characters. Oh no, never at the guys. I mean technically Sasuke Uchiha hits so many Sue buttons... But he's also very 13. And stays there.)
ANOTHER REASON I HATE IT. "Rey's a mary sue" ok but what about literally every other force using star wars movie protagonist
At this point I honestly think people just have entirely forgotten what the other Star Wars movies actually were. They remember how wowed they were by the films as a kid and maybe haven't actually watched them in years but surely their memories can't be off or nothing.
There's a couple people out there who think the prequels don't count when you're talking about what Force users can do because they were bad movies or something. But, I mean. Fuck that noise.
what If we're going by bad then most of the franchise is officially gone. And it's not like the originals and TFA are masterworks.
yeah. I like Star Wars a whole bunch, but. They're not super great movies as a general rule. Fun, full of lovable characters, lots of the dumb bullshit is honestly super endearing, but not super great.
Welp, so much for Hiro Protagonist, the greatest sword fighter in the world. Try again, Neal Stephenson, you have committed An Error. No excuses.
I like this test. I think it's good. I particularly think the second point is important: does the character's awesomeness deflate the dramatic tension or does it serve the story? Sasuke is really a very good example. His seemingly effortless achievement and popularity is entirely in service to the story. He's a foil. He's exactly everything Naruto painfully is not. He's also a concrete demonstration of the naivety of Naruto's childhood ideas about what being a great warrior and person is all about. Sasuke isn't any happier or more satisfied with himself, and he's a hell of a lot less pleasant to be around. Sasuke's natural awesomeness provides a goal for Naruto's ambition while calling into question whether it's a goal we should really be cheering for. It's an excellent source of conflict on more than one level. I mentioned Hiro Protagonist. His ranking as the greatest sword fighter in the world is most remarkable because of how much it doesn't solve his problems. Even if it did, it could still be a great story if we believed his sword fighting-related problems were still actually problems. Like Inigo Montoya. I think there's a problem with people recognizing some common elements in stories that don't work in a particular way, without really understanding why they aren't working. It feels wrong, and the wrongness has something to do with a character who is superlative: the most, the best, the greatest. But that isn't really the problem. There are many counter examples of how that isn't a bad thing in and of itself. There are entire genres of examples, like superheroes and fairytales. I think the problem is that conflict is challenging to write. And maybe that's an especially thorny issue for women and girls as both authors and characters. In U.S. culture at least, girls tend to be socialized to avoid conflict, and I don't think we're unique in that. And I think it probably has an effect on the comfort zones of female authors, how their work is received, and also probably the perception of female characters in relation to conflict.
