Show Notes

• Candy and Spinach





• Mary Sue





• Calvin and Hobbes





• Kvothe 





• Luffy





• Eda Clawthorne





• Raksura





• Kelsier





• Mysterious Badass





• Bondrewd 





• Black Swan





• Oz the Great and Powerful

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Aiden Lumb. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle and Bunny.

Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant podcast. I am Chris and with me is…

Oren: Oren.

Chris: And…

Bunny: Bunny.

Chris: We are of course cohosts. We’re completely equal partners, but I happen to have a secret dramatic backstory. So… the next ten episodes are going to have to be all about me and how shocking but cool my backstory is.

Oren: We’re all equal, but some of us are more equal than others.

Chris: It’s okay, Chris. We love you. You deserve this. Go for it.

Bunny: I want to learn more!

Chris: You’re so correct about how these next episodes should go.

Oren:  Well, hang on. I think I’m actually going to disagree with Chris, just so that she can show how right she is, of course. Like, I’m not going to try to actually argue. I’m just going to put up some really pitiful objections that will be easily smacked aside.

Bunny: Don’t listen to him, Chris. He’s a jealous hater.

Oren: This might literally be a sign that I’ve been mind-controlled by the villain.

Chris: Yeah, did you know that I used to be a rebel who wouldn’t follow anyone’s rules? That’s right. They called me “the book ender” because I would sneak around finishing people’s unfinished manuscripts. But no-one ever knew who I was. But… ta-dah! Shocking. I am the book ender.

Oren: That’s so cool. That’s just the greatest thing that has ever happened.

Bunny:  Oh my god, your eyes just changed colour!

Chris: I know! They change colour depending on my mood.

Bunny: They’re new and exciting and sparkly! Yes. And your hair, too: interesting.

Chris: It’s also a sign that I am the chosen one and I have the secret power that’s needed to defeat the villain.

Oren: Yeah. But you’re very modest, obviously.

Bunny:  Of course.

Chris: Naturally. In fact, that’s why I’m the chosen one: I’m so modest. And only a modest person can defeat the villain. Don’t worry, I’ll win every verbal smearing match with him, though. So… making fun of candied characters is always very easy. So, we’re talking about how to fix over candied characters and just a review. Most people listening probably know what we’re talking about, but again… So, a candied character is one that gets lots of glorification. Lay people are most likely to call these characters “Mary-Sues”, which we don’t use because it’s a gross and sexist term. It specifically targets women, even though in really big budget popular works they are far more likely to be men.

Bunny:  Also, what if I don’t want to marry Sue?

Oren: You don’t have to marry anybody. You can be single for as long as you want.

Chris: The other thing that’s weird about Mary-Sues is it kind of conflates having a self-insert character with having glorified character and while those things can go together, they are also others that are… who will put in a self-insert character and really beat up on them.

Oren: Yeah… which is way worse! It’s so uncomfortable to read a book about a character who is obviously the author’s self-insert and then the book just craps on them. And I’m just like: “author, are you okay?” I don’t know, maybe you need to talk to someone.

Chris:  I think oftentimes it’s their younger self, where they’re like, oh, why couldn’t I be more like this when I was younger? But hey, stories are an outlet for our deep feelings—

Bunny: Psychology…

Chris: —Sometimes making them more transparently obvious than we would choose.

Oren:  In reality most of the time you will never know if a character is the author’s self-insert or not. And for the most part, that never comes up. It only matters when suddenly people are looking for a reason to dislike a character and they’re like: “ah, this is definitely the author’s self-insert.” Like, if you say so bro.

Bunny: Sometimes a self-insert character might be an incredibly boring, everyday person. I’m kind of reminded of that Calvin & Hobbes strip, where Calvin says he’s writing a book and Hobbes asks what it’s about and he says it’s about a guy who flips through channels with his TV remote and Hobbes looks to the camera and kind of walks away. And he’s like, “they say you write what you know.”

Chris: Again, there’s something wrong with self-insert characters. They’re fine. But in any case, if we’re looking at candy, which is different than a self-insert character, we’ve covered some of the typical signs. Always being right is a thing that a lot of candied characters have. Usually, they are more quirky and unique than the characters around them. You can see that that’s where the creative energy’s going. They typically solve problems easily; being exceptionally good at an unusual number of things, like having three sets of professional skills that they’re the best in the world at, for instance.

Oren: They have so many PHD’s.

Chris: Having special physical features, like bright eyes or colour changing eyes. Or, you know, red red hair instead of just red hair.

Bunny: Redder than red. True red! The colour of flame. It’s like, wait a second.

Chris: Flames aren’t true red! What!?

Bunny: It’s blue at the roots. I don’t know.

Chris:  So, is it the colour of flame, or is it true red?

Bunny: I should just say the colour of blood, in that case.

Chris: And then, oftentimes they get lots of social recognition because in many cases, the storyteller is looking for excuses to give them social recognition. So, like them being famous; being the chosen one; having people admire or, alternatively, envy them, right? Like those jealous haters, for instance; having them die or fake die so that everyone can be super sorry about it.

Bunny: This one is the most reliable way to identify them, for me. If there is a gratuitous funeral sequence where everyone weeps and talks about how cool they are, that, my friend, is a character you need to take some candy from. And I know it’s because I used to do it and… they’re absolutely self-insert manuscripts.

Chris: Right. And I do think actually that young people, like kids, tend to have more taste for candied characters. They like more candy than adults do in general. But there’s lots of personal variation, I should say. Just because a character is candied does not mean that story is for kids. I just have to be firm about that, because there’s a lot of people who say things like that that’s not good. But, kids in general do seem to like candy a lot and I think a lot of us have had the experience when we were young of making our super-candied character in our stories. And that was fun. And it was fine.

Oren: But, you do have to evolve a little bit.

Chris</stron