The birth of Mary Sue.

[rivka]

Alex narrated a little piece of Mary Sue self-insertion fanfic this morning, complete with dialogue markers. It began like this:

"Hi, I'm Alex," I said. "I'm a new friend in Miss Frizzle's class."

As tends to be the case with Mary Sues, there wasn't much of a plot. When you're a student in Ms. Frizzle's class, and Ms. Frizzle is your teacher, apparently all you need to do to enjoy the story is to revel in the coolness of the situation. But there was a suggestion of a hint of a plot in this bit, which was my favorite part:

[...] "Wait!" said the children. "Didn't you go to Leo's party?"

"No," said Miss Frizzle. "I went to Alex's party, and she gave me a present."

"Wow!" said the children. "Wow!"

I think Alex has a long career ahead of her on fanfiction.net.

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Heee. Does that make you a beta-listener?

Our kids loved that series too.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We've just discovered them. Alex seems a bit young for them - especially for the TV show; the books are slower-paced and we can discuss them as we go - but she does seem to be taking in some of the information, and she sure loves them.

We had an interesting conversation reading Magic Schoolbus Inside the Human Body:

Me (reading): We climbed down the spine. The spinal cord was inside the bones...
Alex: The spinal cord is inside the bone. It's spongy inside a bone. Yes, that's right. The spinal cord is spongy.

A fine example of excellent deductive reasoning that is completely and utterly wrong.

My favorite part of the Magic Schoolbus TV show is the bit at the end of every episode, where kids from around the world are shown calling up the producer to complain about scientific inaccuracies. It's definitely a show that's by geeks, for geeks.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

The books do that same bit of "no, really, we just put this part in to make the story work, but it's really wrong"

There used to be video games as well; my boys both learned an awful lot about geology and oceanography from them.

[naomikritzer]

That is awesome.

And a pretty good riff on the Magic School bus books, from what I've seen of them...

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Magic Schoolbus fanfic...the mind boggles.

But, you know, if she had to pick a series of books/TV show, that's an EXCELLENT choice :)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

She's not the only one. (http://www.fanfiction.net/cartoon/Magic_School_Bus)

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I think it's unfair on Alex to speculate on where her fiction career will take her based on a Mary Sue at age 3. I suspect everyone starts that way :-).

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

She's definitely an overachiever.

Wow.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Hulda started out Mary Sueing herself into Doctor Who.

"Hulda Doctor run. Hulda get Martha."

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

This is perfect fanfic, and precious!