(no subject)

[niankhsekhmet]

Comandeered from the marysues community, special thanks go to suselaps

Mary Sue Litmus Test

The most common Sue traits in the PotC fandom.



Sue-ish Character Traits
__There's a young female original character (OC).

__The OC is descriped as amazingly beautiful. (2 points)
...__With unrealistically coloured eyes.
...__With colour-changing eyes. (3 points)
...__With big ol' boobies.
...__With lovely hair.
......__Which she always keeps perfect even when she's out on a ship and it ought to be tangled and full of salt. (Especially if it's curly. I used to skin dive, and I can tell you firsthand that seawater is not kind to long curly hair. It basically turns into steel wool.) (5 points)
...__But she doesn't know how pretty she is. (6 points)
...__And Jack responds to her beauty with any emotion besides lechery or indifference.

__The OC's outfit is ludicrous.
...__She wears bright red or purple and isn't a whore. (2 points)
...__She wears makeup and isn't a whore. (2 points)
...__She wears her hair loose and uncovered and isn't a whore.
...__She wears men's clothes and isn't a pirate. (2 points)
......__Which causes people to mistake her for a man. (4 points)
...__She wears a corset as a top, with nothing over it. (4 points)

__The OC is a female pirate.
...__A female pirate captain. (2 points)
......__A female pirate captain who's basically Jack Sparrow in drag. (Well, in more drag.) (10 points)
......__And her ship has a name that's very close to Black Pearl, like Black Ruby or Golden Pearl. (4 points)

__The OC is related to a canon character.
...__She's Will and Elizabeth's daughter.
......__But none of the canon characters have aged a day in the intervening sixteen or twenty years. (5 points)
...__She's Jack's daughter. (3 points)
......__Whose mother is a prostitute but somehow knew that out of the thousands of men she'd slept with, Jack was the father. (4 points)

__The OC has Teh Great and Terrible Angst.
...__Because she's an orphan. (2 points)
......__And raised herself on the streets. (3 points)
...__Because she was abused as a child. (2 points)
...__Because she had an abusive husband/boyfriend. (2 points)
......__Whom a canon character resues her from. (3 points)
...__Because her parents just don't understand her. (4 points)
......__Her parents want her to be a proper lady, but she doesn't WANNA wear a corset. (3 points)
...__Because she's been raped. (6 points)
...__And Jack or Will helps her recover from her angst. (2 points)
......__Through Twu Wuv. (6 points)
......__Through sexual healing. (4 points)
.........__Sexual healing is used to help the OC recover from rape. (No points. Just turn in your test and leave now, please.)

__The OC expresses Teh Great and Terrible Angst in extensive, self-pitying, repetitious detail. (3 points)
...__She contemplates suicide. (2 points)
......__She attempts suicide, only to be rescued by a canon character. (6 points)
...__She cuts herself. (2 points)
...__She writes or imagines angsty poetry. (5 points)
......__Which is actually modern song lyrics. (6 points for a modern OC, 20 points for a colonial-era OC)

__The OC is superhumanly talented at things she shouldn't know anything about.
...__She's a master of swordfighting.
......__And defeats Will or Jack at it. (3 points)
...__She's at home on a ship even though she's never been off dry land in her life.
...__She uses her "feminine wiles" to seduce men for her advantage. (4 points)
......__And these wiles actually work on Will, Jack, Norrington, or Barbossa. (4 points)
...__She's a master of witty banter.
......__Which is actually about as witty as the jokes in Cracker Jack boxes, only dirtier-minded and much more tedious. (3 points)
...__She has ahead-of-her-time beliefs about the equality of the sexes.
......__Which seem to mostly involve being allowed to wear pants and not getting kissed on the hand, rather than any actual social justice. (3 points)
......__Which people actually listen to. (5 points)

__The OC is a whore.
...__And a virgin. (12 points and a whap on the back of the head with the Clue Stick)
...__But was forced into it. (4 points)

__The OC is spunky or tough.
...__She leads characters into battle. (2 points)
......__And they actually follow her. (6 points)
...__She's casually disdainful of the canon characters. (2 points)
.....__She hits a canon character for no good reason. (3 points)
........__Below the belt. (6 points)
...........__And they still put up with her. (6 points)
...__She threatens men with castration. (4 points)

__The OC has a ridiculous name.
...__A name that doesn't fit with the time period and/or location (e.g., Ashley, Fatima). (2 points)
...__A name that doesn't fit with ANY time period or location (e.g., Jewelannique, Krystalisa). (4 points)
...__Serenity/Selena/Serena, or variants. (6 points)
...__Your name. (10 points)

Canon Character Warping
__Jack Sparrow talks like a drunken Scotsman. (2 points)
...__And says "ye" a lot.
...__With so many apostrophes and weird phonetic spellings that he's incomprehensible. (4 points)

__Any canon character besides Jack shows homosexual tendencies.
...__Jack is exclusively homosexual, with no interest at all in women. (5 points)
......__He acts like a flaming, flamboyant, swishy gay boi. (3 points)
...__Will is gay. (3 points)
......__And girly. (4 points)
......__And has sex with Jack. (2 points) (Note: If Will has sex with Jack but it's just a lark and he's not really gay, there is no penalty. I have to leave some room open for the lovely PWP slash.)

__Jack is horribly characterised in other ways.
...__He's less than thirty-five, unless it's a prequel or flashback.
...__He's naive about anything. (3 points)
......__And your OC enlightens him. (2 points)
...__He defers to someone else's judgement, or admits being wrong. (2 points)
......__He admits that the OC was right and he was wrong. (2 points)
...__He's cruel or abusive. (3 points)
......__He strikes a woman. (5 points)
...__He calls Will "whelp." (This happened once in the movie, and Jack only said it because Barbossa called Will that.) (4 points)
...__Jack is frightened, startled, or impressed by anything short of a nuclear explosion. (3 points)
......__Jack is frightened of or impressed by your OC. (4 points)
...__He cries. (4 points)
...__He's actually as stupid as he pretends to be. (6 points)

__Will is actually as stupid as Jack thinks he is. (3 points)
...__And a whiny bitch to boot. (3 points)

__Will gives up smithing to become a career pirate. (3 points)
...__Based on a misinterpretation of Elizabeth's "No, he's a pirate" line.
...__He always was a pirate, and no mention is ever made of his being a blacksmith. (6 points)

__Bad guys are unusually dimwitted.
...__So the OC can outsmart them. (3 points)
......__With schemes that wouldn't fool a reasonably intelligent golden retriever. (2 points)
...__Norrington is a bumbling stuffed shirt. (2 points)
...__Barbossa is a crude, bone-chewing barbarian. (4 points)

__Elizabeth Swann is unreasonably bitchy. (2 points)
...__Which drives Will away from her. (3 points)
......__And into the arms of your OC. (4 points)
...__And the term "Elizabitch" is used. (12 points and a good smack upside the head)

__Elizabeth just magically doesn't exist. (6 points)
...__So that Will can have a different romantic relationship. (4 points)

__James Norrington is evil, rather than just a tough enforcer of the law.
...__He breaks the law, except to save a life. (3 points)
......__He physically hurts someone, except in a battle or a fair fight. (4 points)
......__He sexually abuses someone. (8 points)

The Plots That Make You Say "Oh, Please"
__The movie is rehashed nearly line for line. (10 points)
...__Only with an OC stuffed in. (3 points)
......__In the place of one or more canon characters. (6 points)

__The curse was never actually broken, thus making the entire movie meaningless. (4 points)
...__Jack is cursed and turns skeletony in the moonlight. (2 points)
......__But doesn't suffer from the "no pleasure" part of the curse. (6 points)

__Jack recruits an OC to be on his crew.
...__Even though she has no sailing experience. (5 points)
.....__But she never gets seasick. (2 points)
...__And she gets a private cabin. (3 points)

__Canon characters get transported forward in time. (8 points)
...__And they're not upset about being separated from their friends, families, and normal lives. (2 points)
...__And they make a bargain with an OC to help get them back, despite having no reason to think she'd be able to. (3 points)
...__And many jokes are made about them being befuddled by modern technology. (4 points)
......__Including toilets. (3 points)
...__And end up living in the house of a female OC. (2 points)
......__Who, despite being under 18, has no parents around. (4 points)
......__Who, despite being under 25 and/or a college student, has a large house and no housemates. (2 points)
......__Who is very controlling and dictates what they can do and where they can go, and despite them being grown men and her being a young woman, they don't mind. (6 points)
...__And they are shown the movie. (4 points)
...__And people mistake them for the actors who play them. (4 points)

__The OC gets transported back in time. (8 points)
...__And doesn't develop intestinal illness from the very different standards of hygiene in the colonial Caribbean. (4 points)
...__And doesn't once notice that people smell rather foul. (2 points)
...__And continues to wear modern clothes but isn't thought of as a whore or a lunatic. (2 points)
...__And she knows what will happen because she saw the movie. (10 points)
......__Which leads to a re-enactment of the movie, only with the OC providing all the plot points and preventing all the nasty difficult bits like injuries and death and betrayal. (12 points)
...__And she's not at all worried about getting back to her friends, family, school/career, flush toilets, etc. (2 points)
...__And she strikes a bargain with a canon character in exchange for helping her get back to her time, despite having no evidence that this character would be able to help. (3 points)
......__This bargain involves joining Jack's crew. (4 points)
......__This bargain involves sex. (6 points)

Love and Sex
__The OC has a romance with Jack.
...__Even though the OC is a young teenager, and just conveniently forgets that Jack's in his forties and that would be a really creepy relationship. (2 points)
...__Which makes Jack show his hidden sappy sensitive side. (5 points)
...__Which leads to marriage. (6 points)
...__Which leads to offspring. (4 points)
......__Intentionally. (10 points)
...__Which causes Jack to give up the pirating life. (30 points. Automatically. I don't care what your excuse is.)

__The OC has a romance with Will. (3 points)
...__Because he's broken up with Elizabeth. (4 points)
...__Because he doesn't mind cheating on Elizabeth. (5 points)

__Two characters have to share a bed or get naked together, because of contrivance. (2 points)
...__They have to share a bed naked. (6 points)
...__And they "accidentally" touch each other intimately. (2 points)
...__And it leads to sex. (4 points)

__There's ludicrously written sex.
...__Jack is a virgin. (6 points)
...__Prior to his marriage to Elizabeth, Will is NOT a virgin. (6 points)
...__Someone sleeps with Jack (or another pirate) and doesn't catch some sort of horrible disease.
......__And he's not only disease-free, but magically becomes clean and nice-smelling. (3 points, or 6 if his partner is a modern OC--I'm not prissy, but I doubt I could stand within Jack's breath radius, let alone sleep with him)
...__Pregnancy never happens. (2 points)
...__Pregnancy happens the very first time people have sex. (4 points)
...__Horrible euphemisms for body parts are used. (e.g., "manly staff," "gates of womanhood," "pearly globes") (2 points)
......__In dialogue. (4 points)

Canonical And Historical Inaccuracies
__Geography is warped.
...__The trip between Port Royal and Tortuga is less than two days or more than four (unless it's specified that the wind is dead). (2 points)
...__A pirate ship sails to Europe. (4 points)
......__In a ridiculously short amount of time. (4 points)
...__The United States exists. (4 points)

__Sailing is described in unresearched and hideously inaccurate detail. (2 points)
...__Ship captains bark nautical orders that don't make sense. (e.g., "Haul off the mainsail and lower the starboard mast!") (2 points)
...__Pirate ships are really big, with lots of rooms and empty space. (4 points)
......__Everyone on a ship has their own cabin. (8 points)

__Rum is drunk in quantities more appropriate to beer, which has a fourth as much alcohol. (3 points)
...__Enough rum is drunk to actually be fatal. (Around one large bottle in a sitting, give or take depending on weight, tolerance, and the strength of the rum.) (6 points)

__Anachronistic language is used. (2 points)
...__Really, REALLY anachronistic language is used. (e.g., "Yo, Cap'n Jack, what's up? Checking out the hotties?") (6 points)
...__Americanisms are used. (3 points)
...__Women, or men of good social standing, curse publicly. (4 points)

__Anyone other than a sailor, physical labourer, or low-class whore has a tattoo.
...__Which is far too elaborate to be done with colonial-era tattoo technology (a sharp knife, some ink, and balls of steel). (3 points)

Each of the following phrases may be used once and only once per fic without punishment. Add one point for any additional use. Two points if the phrase is blatantly misused.
__Savvy
__Arrrr (or yarrr)
__Shiver me timbers
__Dead men tell no tales
__Yo ho ho
__Scurvy (except in the literal medical sense)
__Avast
__Ahoy
__Keelhaul
__Swab the deck
__Wench
__Grog
__Walk the plank
__Bilge rat

General Badness
__Teh spleling is lik thiss. (6 points)
...__Major characters' names are misspelled. (6 points)

__The grammar is sub-par.
...__Exclamation marks are overused.
......__Multiple exclamation marks are used at the end of a sentence. (1 point for each extra exclamation mark in the worst-offending sentence)
...__Caps lock is used. (3 points)
...__There's netspeak. (5 points)
...__In a third person story, the narrator speaks about "I", as in "Jack put on his belt-thingy, I don't know what it's called." (5 points)

__There are obnoxious in-text author's notes. (8 points)

__The language is more purple and flowery than my grandma's Sunday dress. (3 points)

__Jack's eyes are described as "kohl-lined."
...__"Khol-lined." (3 points)
...__"Coal-lined." (4 points)
...__"Chocolate." (2 points)

__Jokes from the movie are re-used.
...__A woman slaps Jack. (3 points)
......__And he comments on whether he deserved it. (3 points)
...__Jack teases Will about being a eunuch. (2 points)
......__Jack thinks Will actually is a eunuch. (8 points, plus a big sign explaining the concept of a "joke.")
...__"I'm disinclined to aquiesce to your request."
...__"They're actually more like guidelines." (2 points)
...__Jack asks "But why is the rum gone?" (2 points)
......__After the OC destroys it to keep him in line. (3 points)
...__Jack insists repeatedly on being called "captain."
...__Jack calls things "interesting" excessively, or when they aren't really.

__The fic is told in the second person. (5 points)
...__And there's romance involving "you." (3 points)
......__Leading to sex. (8 points)
...__And "you" do really, really stupid or strange things it is not reasonable to assume that your readers would. (8 points)
...__And "you" are raped. (No points. Just put the test down and get the fuck out of my sight.)

__The fic is told in script form. (5 points)
...__And it is "wacky." (5 points)

__The fic is one long paragraph. (6 points)

__The fic has several chapters of less than 500 words. (4 points)

__You admit to writing late at night and/or on a "sugar high", and not editing. (4 points)
...__And you see this as an excuse rather than a problem. (6 points)

Sue And You
__You take insults to your OC as personal attacks. (3 points)

__You admit your OC is you. (6 points)

__You loudly declare that your OC is NOT A MARY SUE!!!11 (10 points)

__Your OC got a huge score on this test, but you know it doesn't apply to her because she's a special exception. (There's no purpose in putting points on this one, you're not listening anyway. But you're wrong, you know.)

Scoring
0-20: Fine upstanding pirate fic. Congratulations and send me the link coz I'd love to read it.
21-40: Get thee to a beta. It's salvageable, but needs work.
Over 40: Junk it. It was never meant to see the light of day.

Comments

I just have to say....

[maai.livejournal.com]

Are you serious? Um... it doesn't leave a lot of room for, being anything close to a human-being. Personally, I don't find the idea that a woman could have had 'ahead-of-her-time beliefs about the equality of the sexes' at all a stretch. Someone had to, or we wouldn't be where we are today.

I think this 'test' is really stupid. I would be curious to read anything that 'passed' just to see how far removed from anything resembling actual human experience it would be.

If this is considered a good thing, it's no wonder I can't stand 90% if fan fic.

Re: I just have to say....

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

Oh I know! I hate MOST fanfic because this is what we have seen. Over on the group, marysues, I reported an INCREDIBLY bad piece of fanfic posted on barbossa_fic, where the marysue character featured herself not only charming Captain Barbossa, but had him tucking her into bed!! Good God! How bloody unrealistic is that?!

Every other fan of barbossa was grinding their teeth with the slow motion trainwreck that was little more than masturbation through prose. (If it can be called that!) *shiver*

About this test...

[cavefelem.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, about three quarters of it is reasonable, witty and godsdamn well-deserved, but the rest is mind-bogglingly odd, not to mention extremely limiting creativity-wise. Who says you can't write fanfic in script form? Or that if you write in second person, you're a dimwit kid who should grow up and go home? Has this test's author ever read any actual literature (which certainly doesn't come in just one, "correct" form)?

Besides, if one writes a bitchy Elizabeth whose dress and hair are always perfect, who wears make-up and has exceptional knowledge about sailing (despite being a prissy upper-class maiden), it's just being true to the movie! :D

Re: About this test...

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

*laughing* You definitely have a point about Elizabeth! She was not my favorite character by any stretch, and I spent most of the movie wanting to slap her! ;)