I'm of two minds about this - mostly I agree with you but I've also encountered the the type of stories that probably inspired the complaints about "protagonist privilege" - i.e., ones in which the main character gets an infinite number of moral and practical get-out-of-jail-free-cards from the author, without the narrative ever acknowledging it - in other words, the author really seems to think the character really is brilliantly clever and brave and that's why they succeed, while at least one reader/viewer sits there thinking "wow, that entitled adrenaline junkie would have got them all killed just then if that had been anything like the real world.(1)" I suppose it's a kind of pro Mary-sue-ism (I think someone once called it the Macho Sue trope.) I think though that I prefer seeing it subverted rather than avoided, like that scene in Rome where Caesar actually points out that there are these two seemingly-ordinary soldiers who somehow are always in the right place at the right time and never get killed, and that the gods must be watching them; or your own handling of Chess's shooting skills....
I wonder if this is going to be one of those pitfalls that people try so hard to avoid they end up writing a dull story - I'm aware, as Personal Information continues to coalesce, that some characters are grabbing more screen time than others and feel vaguely guilty about it, even though I've already been pushing my own favourite characters down from the very beginning in an attempt to even the playing field a little. I do think I've managed (so far) to not lead Dr. Samadi into marysuedom, though she is unquestionably the POV character - after all, she arrived in the setting the same time as the viewer and is saddled with the task of asking all the dumb questions on our behalf about why things are the way they are.
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Date: 2010-04-20 03:04 am (UTC)I wonder if this is going to be one of those pitfalls that people try so hard to avoid they end up writing a dull story - I'm aware, as Personal Information continues to coalesce, that some characters are grabbing more screen time than others and feel vaguely guilty about it, even though I've already been pushing my own favourite characters down from the very beginning in an attempt to even the playing field a little. I do think I've managed (so far) to not lead Dr. Samadi into marysuedom, though she is unquestionably the POV character - after all, she arrived in the setting the same time as the viewer and is saddled with the task of asking all the dumb questions on our behalf about why things are the way they are.
(1) Yeah, I'm looking at you, Lady Christina.