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On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
This doesn't mean I've stopped reading The Pearls; far from it. I just have to take any serious Mary Sue in very small bites.* I may put up a checklist of elements she hits soon.** (Story so far: Male protagonist does some stuff. Plot gets shoehorned in. Mary Sue is introduced. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telophase drops to reading one page at a time.)
Anyway, I've started a book I bought a couple of weeks ago but put on a shelf and forgot about: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness: Adventure. Peril. Lost Jewels. And the Fearsome Toothy Cows of Skree. by Andrew Peterson. I found it in the SF/F section of Barnes & Noble, and it seems to be marketed for the adult reader although I think it would be at home on the YA/kids' shelves.
As you can guess from the title, it's an irreverent fantasy. There's a lot of irreverent fantasy and adventure cluttering the kids' shelves at the moment, all trying to match the success of Lemony Snicket and most of which fail. Or at least I get heartily tired of the tone and humor by the middle of the second chapter and put it down. I was leery of this one, for that reason but so far it's been surprisingly good.
It took me a while to nail the tone and why I liked it - it seemed almost familiar, and I mentally sorted through a lot of authors, humorous and not, to ID it. It wasn't The Hobbit, it wasn't Pratchett, it wasn't Douglas Adams, this, that, or the other. I finally nailed it, though: Terry Jones. Specifically, Terry Jones' text in The Goblins of Labyrinth, a book originally released as a tie-in to Labyrinth back in the 80s that was Terry Jones' hilarious meanderings on and identifications of various goblins that Brian Froud had designed for the movie. It was reissued sometime in the past few years, whereupon I noticed that the references to the movie Labyrinth had magically vanished from the cover.
At any rate, I'm 64 pages in and it's holding up so far. The protagonists are three children who live with their mother and one-legged ex-pirate grandfather in a small cottage on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. The country is in the thrall of the Nameless Evil, whose name is Gnag the Nameless, and order is enforced by lizard-like men called the Fangs, who are known to take prisoners away in the Black Carriage, never to be seen again. The three kids naturally run afoul of the local gang of Fangs, and thus the story starts.
...and now I've run out of steam for typing and am going to go eat lunch. Blarg.
* I know people mean well but when I put up posts about hilariously bad books it's for comedic effect, not a sign that I am desperately seeking good books to read. SHARE THE PAIN.
** I do NOT subscribe to the "Mary Sue is always a self-insert of the author" theory on the basis that if the author was writing his- or herself in, the character would share characteristics with the author and could be bad or good.*** A Mary Sue is instead an idealized character, one more consistent, perhaps, with the sort of image an obsessed stalker builds up in his or her mind of the object of his or her ideation.****
*** Any self-insert of mine would be a pudgy librarian with short sight and a shorter temper.
**** There's bound to be a story in there of an author turning into a crazy, murderous stalker when his or her character refuses to behave like a proper Mary Sue.
telophase drops to reading one page at a time.)Anyway, I've started a book I bought a couple of weeks ago but put on a shelf and forgot about: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness: Adventure. Peril. Lost Jewels. And the Fearsome Toothy Cows of Skree. by Andrew Peterson. I found it in the SF/F section of Barnes & Noble, and it seems to be marketed for the adult reader although I think it would be at home on the YA/kids' shelves.
As you can guess from the title, it's an irreverent fantasy. There's a lot of irreverent fantasy and adventure cluttering the kids' shelves at the moment, all trying to match the success of Lemony Snicket and most of which fail. Or at least I get heartily tired of the tone and humor by the middle of the second chapter and put it down. I was leery of this one, for that reason but so far it's been surprisingly good.
It took me a while to nail the tone and why I liked it - it seemed almost familiar, and I mentally sorted through a lot of authors, humorous and not, to ID it. It wasn't The Hobbit, it wasn't Pratchett, it wasn't Douglas Adams, this, that, or the other. I finally nailed it, though: Terry Jones. Specifically, Terry Jones' text in The Goblins of Labyrinth, a book originally released as a tie-in to Labyrinth back in the 80s that was Terry Jones' hilarious meanderings on and identifications of various goblins that Brian Froud had designed for the movie. It was reissued sometime in the past few years, whereupon I noticed that the references to the movie Labyrinth had magically vanished from the cover.
At any rate, I'm 64 pages in and it's holding up so far. The protagonists are three children who live with their mother and one-legged ex-pirate grandfather in a small cottage on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. The country is in the thrall of the Nameless Evil, whose name is Gnag the Nameless, and order is enforced by lizard-like men called the Fangs, who are known to take prisoners away in the Black Carriage, never to be seen again. The three kids naturally run afoul of the local gang of Fangs, and thus the story starts.
...and now I've run out of steam for typing and am going to go eat lunch. Blarg.
* I know people mean well but when I put up posts about hilariously bad books it's for comedic effect, not a sign that I am desperately seeking good books to read. SHARE THE PAIN.
** I do NOT subscribe to the "Mary Sue is always a self-insert of the author" theory on the basis that if the author was writing his- or herself in, the character would share characteristics with the author and could be bad or good.*** A Mary Sue is instead an idealized character, one more consistent, perhaps, with the sort of image an obsessed stalker builds up in his or her mind of the object of his or her ideation.****
*** Any self-insert of mine would be a pudgy librarian with short sight and a shorter temper.
**** There's bound to be a story in there of an author turning into a crazy, murderous stalker when his or her character refuses to behave like a proper Mary Sue.
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On the subject of Mary Sues: I do not subscribe to the belief that ALL self-inserts and OCs are Mary Sues. -_-
Like you said, Mary Sues are annoying stereotypical caricatures of the perfect person. Most such are badly written (as in typically plopped into prose filled with bad grammar, zero plot, and no logical reason for the non-canon characters to be there among other failures to adhere to standard fiction rules).
I'm also of the belief that not all Mary Sues are female characters in het fanfiction. I've seen some equally atrocious slash and yaoi. I think those are called Gary Stus.
Some of the most entertaining fanfics around are parodies of Mary Sues/Gary Stus (or even funnier: serious fanfics). It takes a lot of talent to deliberately write bad fiction.
Oh yeah, there's tons of really awful original fiction out there too. The sad thing is so much of it has been published. Worse, I actually sat down and read some of it. @_@
I want to read a self insert of you as a pudgy, near sighted, bad tempered librarian. ^_^
I'd also like to read a story about an author acting like a vengeful god who goes ballistic when his/her characters fail to meet parental expectations. X-D
Just out of suicidal curiosity, when did it become so taboo to write down your daydreams and share them? Seems like too many people who would write awesome self-insert fanfics based on their personal fantasies are chickening out because they fear being lynched by fellow fans for writing Mary Sues. I can't imagine why people don't write autobiographical-fantasy original fiction. Or if they do write them, why they don't share them. :(
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