Have you ever had critiques/feedback that you disagreed with? If so, why?

A point that a lot of people miss about Gary Stu/Mary Sue characters is that whether they are "perfect" or not depends on the context of their actions and how the world around them works.

Most Mary Sue stories suck not because there's something fundamentally wrong with the MC but with the world. Everyone is constantly praising the protagonist and mentioning how great they are at everything they do. All the boys want to be with them, all the girls squeal at the mere mention of their name. But more often than not, these characters have "flaws". They are "clumsy" or "silly" or "have dyslexia" (sorry, been reading Handbook for Mortals lately), but these aren't framed as flaws because they never negatively affect the MC's life. The best way to write a character IMO is to have one critical flaw that drives the story - say, they are so clumsy, that they end up burning the mayor's house. To atone, they need to do community work and meet a very diligent guy. So, to overcome what put them in this miserable state in the first place, they try to become diligent themselves. It's a stupid thing I thought of in seconds, but I think it illustrates the point - it's physically impossible to create a "perfect" character. You can only create a character that is treated by everyone as if they were perfect. In my opinion, that's a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.

 

I thought that's how people saw it? A Mary Sue or a Gary Stu is someone who are inherently perfect in their stories. They can have flaws but the flaws aren't really flaws because the enemies cannot take advantage of them.

For example "One Punch Man" he takes out everyone with one punch. That's his shtick. Within the context of the story, he's practically perfect and invincible.

So you are right it's not that perfection is the problem, it's how the story developes them that is the biggest problem. A very good example is in watchman, Mr. Manhattan is practically a God and he gets outwitted by pretty much a puny human in a cape. Or even superman, the times when he's forced to make a decision between his humanity and his super alter ego, that is his greatest weakness (though kryptonite comes close).

 

Sorry, I might've just said an obvious thing, yeah. Reading so many Mary Sue stories (I just finished the Onision trilogy, yes I'm a masochist) I kinda forgot most people probably already know this stuff.

 

Hey I wasn't meaning to put you down! It's always better to go deeper into things you "think" know regardless. I wouldn't have thought to bring up the distinction or the framework without you mentioning it, thats why I started with a question.

But sentiment I was going for was that I agreed with you.

 

One asks for critical reviews and can either choose to accept or reject them. When I disagree, I tell the person that I appreciate their feedback, and what they had to say. Whether or not you incorporate what they said is up to you. I actually have gotten new ideas from things I initially perceived as negative. It may have been negative for that particular piece of writing, but out of that, a germ of another idea or character or something can take root. The main thing is to be specific.

I agree with Ziggy here

 

Comments like the ones you received in that discord chat are one of my biggest pet peeves. Utterly lazy "criticisms" in review sections of webstores, youtube critic/drama channels, responses to forums and social media posts, etc. annoy me to no end. Too many people online think that simply throwing low effort insults like "this is stupid", "pure cringe", "their logic is bad", etc. without bothering to elaborate further is good enough. Not only are such thoughtless statements extremely juvenile, they're so vague and subjective that it's very difficult to discern what points they're trying to get at.

As everyone has a different opinion on what they consider “cringe” or “dumb”.

 

During a long ago critique, a beta said, "This is a fun moment, but you need to take it out."

I loved that scene and said, "But-"

Him: "No buts, it isn't relevant; take it out. "

Me: "BUT!"

Him: "You said in class that if a scene doesn't move the story forward, it needs to go."

Rats. I hate it when former students quote me to me and turn out to be right. Damn, I'm a good teacher.

 

Yeah, I received many "critiques" in my post that my OC "Rat Teeth" couldn't possibly be a real person with his chronic backstabbing and rampant cruelty. One commenter even proclaimed that he would be poisoned by the Tavern maid. I guess the person thought that D&D was representative of real world history.

The funny thing is, Rat Teeth was actually loosely inspired by the Harpe Brothers, a pair of extremely vicious bandit/serial killers active in colonial America. Like Rat Teeth, they were a bunch of fair weathered cut throats. For some backstory, the Harpes were a pair of brothers or cousins (historical records aren't particularly clear on their exact relation) that joined a loyalist "rape gang" that terrorized Patriot aligned settlements during the American Revolutionary War. After the Revolutionary War ended, they still continued to attack continental settlements. Initially, the pair joined a Cherokee tribe and raided with them. They lived among the tribe for about a decade, and then abandoned them when they were about to wiped out by a settler militia.

Afterwards, the Harpe Brothers fled and hid out in the remote outskirts of the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi river. They flipped back and forth between acting out on their own and joining Samuel Mason's river pirate gang. The two lived by ambushing and robbing random travelers and farmers. In their attacks, the victims would often be raped, murdered, and then mutilated. Dozens died by their hands, which painted a target on their backs. One of the Harpe brothers was lynched after a murder, forcing the surviving one to permanently join the Mason river pirate gang.

A few years later, Mason was mortally wounded during a prison escape. The surviving Harpe brother either murdered him or beheaded his corpse after he died (what exactly occurred isn't known), and tried presenting his head to collect the reward money. His plan badly backfired as he was recognized and arrested on the spot. He was then executed shortly afterwards.

Essentially, Rat Teeth's lifestyle as a "wilderness bandit" was taken from them, and his back stabbing habits where somewhat based off of the Harpes as well. Loosely independent "wilderness outlaws" aren't exactly common these days. It's also extremely difficult for many readers to believe in individuals that depraved and opportunistically unscrupulous, as they usually don't exist in their lives. Likewise, I heard that the main Nazi dude in Schinidler's List was actually a saint compared to his real life counterpart. Apparently, Spielberg had to tone his brutality down, as he feared that the viewers wouldn't be able to believe that a man as cruel as him could possibly exist. I think this is partially why my character was derided as an "edgelord", though me botching the outline's description could've played a part as well.

Too often critiques are pushed by lens of the reviewer(s)' personal bubble. If the character or work is beyond the reviewer(s)' perceptions, then it'll be unfathomable to them. Thus they'll attack it for not following the confines of their world views.

On a side note, something I regret not bringing up in my parent thread, Rat Teeth's family backstory was also a bit inspired by Charles Manson's family situation. Like Rat Teeth, Manson's mother was a teenage prostitute who had relations with several men at the time of his conception. Thus Manson never knew the identity of his father during his lifetime, though researchers believe he was a man named Colonel Scott. The only difference between Rat Teeth and Charles Manson's situation, is that Rat Teeth's abandoned him on her own incentive. Manson's mother lost custody after her arrest for armed robbery, and then wasn't presented in his life afterwards.

 

I hope it's okay to highlight these lines apart, as I found them very true. I wondered if online critique on unfinished text causes a vicious circle. If critics are fed a diet of first drafts of first attempts at first novels, from people who should have read more books first, or watched more self-help videos, or asked a family member... perhaps it can make us boilerplatey and reactive. If the rule was "two original critiques of a Shakespeare passage before we're allowed anywhere near a living author", it might take even more hours per minute.

On the biggest problem, I would like to be able to contend that critique is an artform in its own right, and that in the long term it often outlasts the stories it started with - but it should always be appreciable, even if it isn't useful. Is it that critics being pressed into service as editors' cheaper precursors is making us always look for something to improve, rather than setting out to produce the most enjoyable critique for its own sake? Or is it perhaps that a kind of 'post-millennial forced-positivity' is causing certain valid types of critique to be suppressed. Are useless suggestions being left behind on the page, in the places where really the critic wanted to let rip? Jewels like "Wagner's music is better than it sounds" are rare online.

On the second biggest problem, agenda criticism I would suggest is a distributary of agenda composition - unfinished work does have strange agendas. Sometimes the MC is a mouthpiece for the writer, and they say so. Conversely, whole swathes of the published books on the shelves in stores now have little to recommend them except an agenda. Critique needs to respond to whatever it finds in the text, with no holds barred. Sometimes a combination of book and critic will end up with the critic's biases being destructive or tilting at windmills - but I think bias in a critique is inherently easier to spot than bias in the book, because it's distilled/concentrated from the original artform. If large numbers of critics are coming out of university with the same boring outlooks, that's a far worse problem for readers wanting to find a good book than it is for the books.

Whether or not we use critics, there is the hope that in 200 years' time they will still use us.

 

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to offer some insight on this.

Readers are people. Sometimes readers give feedback because:

• They are sensitive about something, and the story struck a nerve. (The story isn't for them.)
• They think they're Gordon Ramsay, and taking someone down makes them feel smart. (This was me, as a teenager.)
• Your story has lots of "little" sexist things in it, and individually, they don't seem like a big deal, but overall... the story has a sexist tone, so they're trying to explain why.

So my advice is: Try to take a step back and think about which of these it is.

IMO: That origin story is fine. Sex workers are people and people are bad sometimes. But also, make sure you ask yourself: Are there multiple prostitute characters? Are they all presented that way? What are the other female characters like?

Some suggestions:

• Make sure you're not defining the mother as just "a prostitute." Sex workers frequently only do sex work on the side, or when they have to. You might try reframing her as a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock, who worked odd jobs, who sometimes slept with men for money, who was shitty for reasons unrelated to sex work.
• Someone mentioned upthread that sometimes people abandon their children when they get a new partner. Honestly, if you would work that in, it'd be a real gut punch, and it'd be unrelated to sex work.
• Get more betas. See what they say.

Have I had critiques I disagreed with? Yeah, absolutely. I've told this story many times, but: I once had 2-3 betas rave about how amazing a book I wrote was and said they finish it in a single night. My last beta came back and told me I needed to change the entire thing because she absolutely loathed one of the MCs. He was an anti-hero type, and he did some pretty fucked up things, and she wanted me to kill him at the end or make it clear he was an outright villain. I understood why it bothered her (it was a super fucked up story) but I didn't change it, no.

 

I don't think I'll putting much focus on prostitutes at all in my work (if it's ever published). The mother herself is just a person caught up in bad circumstances, and she isn't intended to representative of sex workers as a whole. His mother most likely isn't going to show up in person at any point in the story, as she's long out of his life. At the most, he might have some occasional flashbacks about her.

Within the universe, prostitutes are there and they exist. Some might be good peoples, others not so much, but the main character doesn't hang around prostitutes long enough to learn anything in depth about them. His typical dealing with an individual sex worker are fleeting and don't last any longer then an hour, before they permanently part their separate ways. Rat Teeth probably doesn't have the most enlightened view on prostitutes (and let's face it, his world view really doesn't exactly operate on ethics), but they're quite incidental to him. Sometimes he utilizes their services, and he might get violent if he thinks they're robing him, but that is about it.

In terms of his general views on women, I don't picture Rat Teeth having a particularly strong enmity towards them. However, he has no qualms with targeting women in his attacks. As long as they're vulnerable with little chance of fighting back, he'll go after them in a heartbeat. Though, the same can be said with men.

The work will mostly be in Rat Teeth's perspective. Any women (and men for that matter) depicted are either potential prey or trading partners to him. In other words, most women to him are either potential robbing victims or someone he could buy/sell (often stolen) goods and necessities to and from. Indeed, Rat Teeth probably completely lacks any sort of healthy relationships with women.

This is partially out of his own hyper violent personality scarring away any potential female partners and friends, but his lack of interest in a full term companionship is more of a contributing factor. As relationships take too much effort in Rat Teeth's mind, and a permanent wife/girlfriend is probably "dead weight" to him and his "wilderness bandit" lifestyle.

 

@Oldmanofthemountain, I think most of the commentary I've seen on Rat Teeth has been saying the same thing from different angles and different theory bases - and one can imagine a spectrum between (research) the realism and (execution) the relatability or interest value.

The character is defended at length, including with reference to the Harpe Brothers, but I wonder if that's a familiar enough or a relatable enough story for it to assist readers to 'get' Rat Teeth. I checked out literary treatments of the Harpe Brothers, and so far they seem to have only been:-
- either minor characters, stock characters, or unsympathetic antagonists
- recent/modern. Despite the crimes being late 1700s, the earliest appearance as characters is 1941 - very different from e.g. the Red Barn Murder (1820s?) where the murderer and criminal began to be mythologized even while the criminal investigation was still going on.

Wikipedia mentions Selah Saterstrom's 2015 novel Slab as a possibly serious treatment of them. But before looking at other writers, the question for me would be whether there is any historic record of their voices that might support a contention that they are (reader-identifiable) models for a character who has a "lack of interest in a full term companionship".

Concerning realism, nearly all of the strange and habitually violent men a relative of mine has encountered in a social services career have had extremely complex psychology around women.
Concerning relatability, when a psychopathic male serial killer is a main character, it's common to write them as having complex psychology around women - e.g. American Psycho (1991), Red Dragon (1981).

Sensitivity: I wonder if the difficulty people are having might be to do with this character presenting a specifically asexual worldview in opposition to sexual worldviews. When he is a main character, he might need an anti-Jungian mode of storytelling, where Faith, Hope, and Charity are swept off Jacob's Ladder (perhaps for being in the way) and masculinity engages the reader in splendid isolation. I think that's done in Lisa: The Painful (video game, 2014), or it's sometimes said of Tolkien - certainly it seems there's a niche for it in fantasy literature. If it's something along these lines, my suggestion would be to go back to the drawing board and define Rat Teeth in terms of what does motivate him, rather than what doesn't. Could he naturally and positively identify as asexual, rather than it being a pathological outcome needing a backstory of childhood neglect to explain it. For all that he might document asexual people's lived experiences of alienation, it is difficult for readers to engage with anything different through a prism of alienation, and they might sometimes reach for disparaging interpretations (that a character is anti-sex work, or anti-women or incel) to socialize their anxiety at perceived challenges to their identities.

 

I've read a number of the replies above, but not all and hope I'm not repeating something already suggested.

What I'd suggest, to work out how to write Rat Teeth (great name, by the way) is to flip the conundrum just for a moment. Say your MC grew up in a loving house with devoted parents who gave upright and moral instruction into how best to live life, helping people and being ever kind. Doesn't ring true and sounds boring as hell.

Villains are generally more interesting than heroes. Just are. One dimensional is still one dimensional, though, whether hero or villain. The vile nature of your character was never an issue for me. There are people who are vicious, unscrupulous and poisoned. The back story you've outlined is not likely to produce a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but still could. And that's where your trick lies, in my opinion. Write your character as vile as he is but make him more than a one dimensional cut out. If you manage to write him doing his nasty thing and yet have the reader respond to him, even extend sympathy, then you'll have done a very good job.

Let's face it, many of us have wanted to slap Superman for all that unerring goodness all the time. Everyone needs different shades, even if it is mostly dark.

 

I think the problem with Rat Teeth is that he doesn't seem to be particularly relatable. He's a fine character, but framing him as the protagonist of a story can cause some backlash because his worldview can be easily interpreted as the author's stance on certain topics. The inspirations you chose are very interesting but a "realistic" character doesn't mean a "good" character.

I have a friend who is a psychologist. He's also a writer and I frequently edit and beta read his books. One of my common complaints about his writing is that his characters are too realistic - they act exactly like characters with certain psychological flaws, disorders etc, which often makes them boring. The best example would be his take on narcissists. Narcissist Personality Disorder is incurable, according to modern psychology. People like that really change their ways (which isn't their fault, mind you, it's a combination of upbringing and the way the brain is built.) For this reason, my friend's narcissistic characters are boring and one-dimensional because they don't really change with the story. It's psychologically correct but unless you are a psychologist yourself, the character will seem less real because he/she lacks depth.

A question you should ask yourself is "why do I want to tell Rat Teeth's story". Using a vile and unpleasant character as a protagonist can make a powerful story, but there needs to be a reason for it. I don't think most people will have a good time reading about a guy mutilating corpses for 300 pages unless there is a good theme that connects said mutilations. Nekromantik is an absolutely disgusting movie about a... well, necrophile, but it is interesting because the movie asks a question - how far will the protagonist go to fulfill his sexual needs? There are stories that don't have an underlying theme, but these are usually easily digestible fluff with relatable characters, by-the-numbers adventure plots, and cute animal companions. Writing a story about a character that does awful things (even if that character is an edgelord) needs to have a reason for choosing such a protagonist - otherwise, you risk making a story that can offend a lot of people for no good reason.

 

Coming back to your question:
I know its pissing in the wind, but I do dislike the occasional workshop critique you get on these boards where someone, who joined earlier that day and is still racking up their mandatory 2-to-1 posts, chips in with, "You've got something here. But do try to show not tell. Remember, keep writing, you'll make it in the end." Did I say I wanted to make it? I'm here because I can't plot my way out of a paper bag, let alone a vignette; not for generic encouragement to write the next Great American Novel.

 

"Oldmanofthemountain, I think most of the commentary I've seen on Rat Teeth has been saying the same thing from different angles and different theory bases - and one can imagine a spectrum between (research) the realism and (execution) the relatability or interest value.


The character is defended at length, including with reference to the Harpe Brothers, but I wonder if that's a familiar enough or a relatable enough story for it to assist readers to 'get' Rat Teeth. I checked out literary treatments of the Harpe Brothers, and so far they seem to have only been:-

- either minor characters, stock characters, or unsympathetic antagonists

- recent/modern. Despite the crimes being late 1700s, the earliest appearance as characters is 1941 - very different from e.g. the Red Barn Murder (1820s?) where the murderer and criminal began to be mythologized even while the criminal investigation was still going on.


Wikipedia mentions Selah Saterstrom's 2015 novel Slab as a possibly serious treatment of them. But before looking at other writers, the question for me would be whether there is any historic record of their voices that might support a contention that they are (reader-identifiable) models for a character who has a "lack of interest in a full term companionship"."

"I think the problem with Rat Teeth is that he doesn't seem to be particularly relatable. He's a fine character, but framing him as the protagonist of a story can cause some backlash because his worldview can be easily interpreted as the author's stance on certain topics. The inspirations you chose are very interesting but a "realistic" character doesn't mean a "good" character."

I apologize for botching the format of this reply, my old laptop has been acting up on me.


Anyways, I feel a problem with drawing inspiration from the historical pirates and "wilderness outlaws" (including, but certainly not limited to the aforementioned Harpe brothers), is that a lot of them are poorly documented. For example, the only thing really known about François l'Olonnais’ (a Caribbean Buccaneer notorious for his extreme brutality) backstory is that he was an indentured servant sent to the Caribbean islands, and turned to pirarcy once his servitude was completed. Anything else about his childhood and pre piratical life has been lost to history.


Likewise, anything regarding “Albert Johnson’s” life (an unidentified trapper turned fugitive shot dead by the Canadian Mounties during the 1930s) prior to the fateful manhunt in the remote Yukon-Alaska border mountains, is untraceable. Scholars suspect that he might’ve been of Scandinavian descent from his reported accent and results from isotype and DNA testing on his corpse. Additionally, dental work on his teeth were rather sophisticated for the time period, suggesting at least some degree of wealth in his background.


As such, there really isn’t much material to work with such men. Much of what is recorded on them could easily be (and often is) embellished folklore. With outlaws such as the Harpe brothers and Blackbeard, there is so much sensationalism around them, that it’s rather difficult to discern fact and fiction. Furthermore, in my impression from reading about Tasmanian/Australian Bushrangers, Caribbean Pirates, Old West Bandits, etc, historical records don’t really seem to care about discussing their characteristics and motivations in depth. Rather, they’re more about detailing what crime(s) they committed.


In other words, it feels difficult to make a compelling character out of a figure, whose entire description in historical records mostly consists of “he robbed a shop keeper here, ambushed and killed a passing traveler there, probably took part in plundering a nearby village, and finally was caught and hanged for his crimes.”

 

I hope you're not talking about me

I generally like giving a bit of encouragement to others because my critiques are so long and full of nitpicks that I feel like I need to remind the reader that I'm trying to help them improve, not piss on their hard work.

 

I'm not talking about you. Anyone who worries is far to conscientious to worry.

Nothing wrong with chipping in with a bit of generic good cheer, with or without any pertinant points. Not every response has to be cutting.

Edit: If your critiques are long then that is the opposite to the target of my moan.

 

I can't speak for Mogador, but I just checked one of your critiques, and it doesn't seem at all to fit what he mentioned. The one I saw was extremely lengthy and detailed, rather than just a few brief sentences, and I didn't see any empty emotional support lines like "In the end you'll make it". Those kinds of lines aren't helpful, and they're disingenuous, because there's no way a critiquer can know if a writer is going to make it or not. It's like telling a child "Everything is going to be alright" during a crisis, just to provide some emotional support. A child needs that kind of support, and it's OK to say something like that to them, but it doesn't help a writer who wants to know what's working and what isn't in their piece.

I have seen some lines like that in here (not from you), and I don't think they qualify as actual critique.

 

And I hope noone misunderstands me. I;m not knocking saying nice things to make writers feel good about their work. Of course that's helpful, but it should be grounded in some actual positive point of their work and not simply "You're gonna knock 'em dead kid!" But honestly even some purely emotional support lines are OK as long as it's a decently long and detailed critique and gives some real helpful feedback. As long as a critiquer does that anything else is forgiven. It's mostly the super brief, 2-line blurbs like "Hey great work, this is excellent, keep it up you're killing it!" that don't belong here.

 

And, that said, I have to admit I've done it myself a few times, when I'm so blown away by a story that I have only admiration and no critique for it. Maybe the critters giving those kinds of critique feel that way about the story they just read? I don't know, but when I do it it isn't to rack up 2 critiques so I can post my story. When the person is brand new that seems to be what they're doing.