Marty Sue?

[ithildin]

So George Lucas based Luke on himself, and Gene Roddenberry based Wesley on himself, and those are just two are off the top of my head, and now, I discover that one of the creators of How I Met Your Mother based Ted on himself and the other creator, Marshall. Yet I never see the screams of 'MARY SUE!' that I'm sure would exist if these guys were women.

Just an observation.


Ted was originally modeled on you, and Marshall on Craig. How far have those characters evolved from that? Do you ever sit around and say, "I wouldn't do that" or "We wouldn't do that to each other"?

Ted certainly isn't me anymore. I haven't been engaged, or had a lot of the other experiences he's had. It's more the characters have become themselves .We definitely do try to ask ourselves, "Would this happen to us? Would this happen to someone we know?" for all the characters. We try to keep them personal and real, but there's more overlap now. I relate to Marshall as much as I do to Ted.


Full text here, but it is spoilerish for the last ep of the season.

Comments

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love original characters! And surely ones based on the writer would be fairly well-drawn, complex, and realistic, so no bad there.

I actually have a rather difficult time writing gender cues and identity into characters, never having gotten the hang of either myself. Since, in the absence of gender cues, characters are assumed male, that means I mostly write male characters.

However, this kerfuffle over OFC's mostly just sounds like people being idiots.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I think it was Anne McCaffrey who said every character she writes has an aspect of herself in them. It was at a con many years ago, but I think it was her :)

I have a few OMCs, but they are never front and center since I don't really 'get' men, or so I believe, and because men already dominate my fandoms. I just think that there should be more gals :)