Thoughts on Mary Sueness

[valarltd]

I bounced this off jkb last night. I'm writing a post-societal breakdown story. My PoV character is indeed a self-insertion. I'm giving her the skills and reference books that I have in real life. My worry is that there are too many of them.

When planning to live off-grid, she took to ordering from places like Lehmans, Xantrex and solar cooking sites. So Solar oven, treadle sewing machine, composting toilet. Maybe even a couple other solar items.

She has The Reader's Digest book Back to Basics, a couple of Foxfire books, and The Family Creative Workshop, which is a 25 volume set of everything one could need to know about 1970's crafts.

The thing I worry about is the moving part. Is anyone going to believe 5 acres adjoining her mother's (the former nurse) 5 acre parcel, both on well-water with an apple orchard in between? (Basically I'm moving into the house that was right next door to my grandparents' when i was a kid) Pasturage, 3 ponds, established gooseberry bushes, elderberry bushes, asparagus bed and rhubarb bed?



I can do these things. Is it too much to ask that a fictional character could?

stoke a fire in a wood stove that's been banked all night
bank a fire
cook from scratch for a crowd
collect eggs
milk cows
curry and hitch horses
drive a horse team
ride a horse, saddle or bareback
feed the animals
spin
weave (inkle, backstrap and table looms only)
dye with natural dyes
draft patterns
sew
crochet
knit
quilt
teach my kids
make jam without store-bought pectin
weave baskets
churn butter
identify morel mushrooms and other wild edibles
light carpentry
haggle
first aid
churn butter


Would anyone buy such a character in this day and age? I can see this if it was 1930's America, but 2005? It's not like she's doing all this to show off, but rather to survive. Most of it comes from Girl Scouting and half-way living on my grandparents' farm. A lot more of it comes from living through the 1970s and the "Back to the land" and handcraft revivals.

I just wondered if this was all too Mary Sue. It's not like she's going to be good at most of this stuff the first time she tries it. Or even the twentieth. After all, while neglected skills come back, they don't always do so easily or gracefully.

Comments

[beeej.livejournal.com]

I think it depends a lot on your character's backstory. A person who grew up in a metropolitan area might not have most of these skills, or even know how to begin to learn them, unless family members or friends taught them, or they took an interest in one or two as a hobby. But where I grew up - in a small town in the midwest, farming communities are still abundant and many of these skills are more common. I live in a metropolitan city now, with a corporate job and a house in the burbs. But I can do at least a dozen of the things on that skills list. Your character may be more unique than others, but that's a good thing, right? :)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

i'm a country girl too. I may live in the burbs and work at an urban university, but I grew up collecting eggs and cutting spinach.