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Author Topic: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?  (Read 3116 times)

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Offline filmstu2005

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #15 on: July 06, 2009, 04:56:54 PM »
Tobias is the inverse of Cassie. Its true. I just realized how unfortunate he was, and how fortunate Cassie was. The universe just loved to prove Tobias wrong, but the universe had no problem being Cassie's b!tch.

Hmm. i wonder, did these two even get along well? They had little interaction throughout the series, which is interesting....
« Last Edit: July 06, 2009, 04:58:27 PM by filmstu2005 »
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Offline foxglade

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #16 on: July 06, 2009, 10:18:40 PM »
I don't know, I like Tobias. Soz, I just pity him. Plus, he seems like a nice kid who was probably in the bathroom when the luck got handed out :)
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #17 on: July 06, 2009, 10:46:53 PM »
I think they got along pretty well, except that Tobias ate fresh meat instead of Human food. I think Cassie was bothered by his feelings towards life being the same as any predator.
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esplin

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #18 on: July 07, 2009, 12:19:25 AM »
Before I came on RAF I never had a problem with Tobias.  But now I've seen all the love for him it makes me not like him so much.
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #19 on: July 07, 2009, 12:42:05 AM »
Wait. You like him less because people around here like him more? Sounds like "It's popular, so it sucks".

Actually, I've found that he's more angsty than I remembered. Maybe it's just all the people calling him a wangsty emo hawk.
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Offline Shark Akhrrana

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #20 on: July 07, 2009, 01:58:22 AM »
hmm never saw that but yeah he is the other pole compared to Cassie. But i think it was very intentional and don't truly think they can be considered as a sue . well maybe Cassie a little but that is only because she is almost always right about stuff. well sort of. But that is what makes teh books great they have characters who are opposites of each other being friends. Or more than Freinds. I mean there is teh Cassie/Rachel (Plain / Fashion), Marco/Jake (Funny / Serious), Cassie/Tobias (Flawless / Flawed) ,  Jake/Tobias (Normal Everyday Family / Totally messed up family )
The characters are all like that and get along in their differences i think that is what its all about.
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Offline foxglade

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #21 on: July 07, 2009, 07:35:48 AM »
Quote from: Chad28 on July 07, 2009, 12:42:05 AM

Actually, I've found that he's more angsty than I remembered. Maybe it's just all the people calling him a wangsty emo hawk.

I agree. I never really thought of him as emo, just kinda messed up and lost (sorry if that's the definition of emo, I'm kind of out of the loop). And you would be too, if you had to kill every day to survive, and your dad was an alien who you'd watched die, and no one ever really loved you, and the one girl that did was killed... you get my point :)
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My String, My Rules. But the teacher made me throw my string away. :(
http://www.tobias-perigrine.blogspot.com
I see a little silhouette of a man SCARAMOUCH SCARAMOUCH will you do the fandango?
You can laugh or you can cry. Personally? I do both. At the same time.
Animorphs: The first 10 were light, funny, still innocent. But slowly, it got darker, more moral, passionate and mature. And then it was messy, bloody. It was chaos. It was the end.

Offline sluggerrocky123

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #22 on: July 07, 2009, 08:30:19 AM »
i never really liked either of them....tobias and cassie that is, i just never really "latched on" to their books, felt their books were boring, like it felt Cassie was always QQ THE ANIMALS OH NOES!!!!!! and Tobias was like MY LIFE SUCKS :( NOBODY LOVES ME, IMA FREAK blah blah blah.....whereas marcos where funny, some parts hilarious and also like hella serious, where he morphs into the mountain goat to kill his mum and jake has to hold him down, as gay as it sounds my heart was breaking for him, you know what i mean? and ax's are funny, like slapstick humour is funny, you can expect whats coming with him, which most people would say is boring but i donno i like it, and jakes and rachels where like pew pew action packed, i donno im sure tobias's and cassie's had cool pew pew moments, but i never saw em cause i guess my eyes where covered with the thoughts i had of cassie and tobias and just thought that way so couldnt really get the full throttleness out of their books, maybe i should go read them again.....with an open mind
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Offline AlothAssassin

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #23 on: July 07, 2009, 08:47:10 AM »
He's probably my least favorite of the six, but I can see why he's there.

Just, personally, his self-pity and excuse-making bothered me.  Sure, he's had a messed-up background, but I do think a lot of the BS he went through post-Elfangor (torture and loss of Rachel aside) was by choice.
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Offline Estelore

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #24 on: July 07, 2009, 09:30:07 AM »
Hmn, interesting thread! FINALLY people take interest in this board when I happen to be online. :D


I don't see Tobias as a Sue or even as a serious anti-Sue... I see him as "realistic" representation of what a person with his background would do in reaction to his set of circumstances.

I also see him as a definite Woobie, but that's not where I'm planning to go with this. *chuckle*

Anyway... suppose you're the kid who gets swirlied in school and has his one pair of nice new shoes boloed over the power lines next to his aunt's apartment... nobody cares about you, as far as you know. Life, as a rule, sucks eggs.
Then aliens arrive, suddenly you're all world-saving, you have a purpose, and you're IMPORTANT to somebody...
...and then almost as soon as it starts, you're trapped in the body of a CHICKEN-HAWK, for pity's sake, and are pretty much out of the fight for good, as far as you know.
Then, just as soon as you let yourself get used to being said chicken-hawk, some puppet-master dood lets you get your old body back... but with a catch to it.
And now, just to make things more complicated, you fell in love with the Most Perfect Person Ever (not really... and thank God for it, or this thread would be about Rachel instead), so every time you morph human, there's this whole stigma and massive decision-making-moment, yada yada.

I dunno' 'bout you, but given those circumstances, yeah, I might be a little bit emo and angsty.
Add to it the torture and the admittedly VERY Sue-ish realization that my Da was a dead alien prince... well, I think it'd be way more Sue-ish if Tobias WASN'T effed-up severely.
I mean, if K.A. wrote him with ANYTHING like a happy ending, the intense unrealism of that would be...
well, it'd be just a bit appalling, I think.
Sad to say it, but I prefer miserable-Tobias to any other Tobias. Even dead-Tobias would just add to his Sue status, unfortunately.

*shrug* Well, there's my twenty cents. Make of it what you will. :)


Future reference: Ax is my current favourite. The only characters who were NEVER my favourites were Cassie (oy vey) and Marco (he thinks too much like me, so I don't trust him).
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #25 on: July 07, 2009, 09:48:39 AM »
You know, it just occured to me that if Cassie died, it would be a case of Too Good for this Sinful Earth.

And I wish Tobias had found happiness with Rachel, just as I wish Rachel had survived. They were my friends, and I want my friends to be happy.
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Offline AlothAssassin

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #26 on: July 07, 2009, 10:26:17 AM »
I guess one's opinion of Tobias hinges on whether you actually believe being trapped as a red-tail was intentional, or unavoidable.

Personally, whether conscious decision or not, I see it as the former.
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esplin

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #27 on: July 07, 2009, 10:28:36 AM »
Quote from: AlothAssassin on July 07, 2009, 08:47:10 AM
He's probably my least favorite of the six, but I can see why he's there.

Just, personally, his self-pity and excuse-making bothered me.  Sure, he's had a messed-up background, but I do think a lot of the BS he went through post-Elfangor (torture and loss of Rachel aside) was by choice.

I agree with this guy.
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Offline AlothAssassin

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #28 on: July 07, 2009, 10:47:41 AM »
I mean, would Rachel or Jake have turned out the same way if they'd grown up with Tobias' ****ty homelife?  I don't believe they would.
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Offline Estelore

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Re: Is Tobias a Mary Sue character?
« Reply #29 on: July 07, 2009, 03:33:21 PM »
I do agree that the vast majority of his post-construction-site problems (actually, the construction site itself, too) were his own doing.
...I don't really see him trapping himself as a hawk. Now that he has a chance to BE SOMETHING, he's not about to give that up so easily, and in the Yeerk Pool Complex itself, it's suicide.
He's a survivor, as a rule.

Seems to me that many of his problems originate from his desire to prove himself... not really to Jake, though there is a minor hero-worship thing there... but to himself, primarily, and also to Elfangor, who (inexplicably, to Tobias' opinion) saw something worthy in him.
And honestly, whichever of the characters had died, there would've been Mary-Sue criticism for it, and it would still have been more realistic than ALL of them surviving the war.

In my opinion, Ax or Marco would have been more believable deaths than Rachel, but both were too valuable as characters to sacrifice them, even at that point in the story.
Rachel is wreckless, but she is wreckless CONSISTENTLY.
Marco and Ax both have notable inconsistencies, and the right circumstances could have given them the chance to be stupid-and-then-dead in a short order.

*chuckle* Sorry, I'm looking at this from a reads-too-much-so-everything-is-cliche point of view, not a these-characters-are-my-friends point of view.
I bawled my eyes out when Rachel died.
Then I re-read it and bawled again, three days in a row.
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The universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. There is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. The only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

-GNU Terry Pratchet, The Thief of Time
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