What/Who is a Mary Sue to you?

[kitsunefather]

Really now, it's simple.... Mary Sue characters are a self-insert of the author, are usually invented by 13 years old girls, and are absolutely idealized, and every single thing in the universe revolves around them.

Seconded.

Technically, that's an "Author Insert" character. It's usually a Mary Sue, especially when it comes to fanfiction (or fanfiction inspired published works), but it isn't always. Much of the rest of WW's definition is sound, but also the following:

◘ Secondary Characters perform the work of the narrative, but main character is credited with the successes
◘ Never changes; instead the story or other characters change to solve any dilemmas the Mary Sue encounters
◘ Is often nebulous in longform stories; adding details to their character that are otherwise known to be "impossible" in the mythology of the story-universe

::On the Original Topic::

Honestly, I'd say Clara Oswald from Doctor Who qualifies as a Mary Sue. Not wanting to spoil the show for those who haven't seen it yet, but the entirety of season 9 exists to remind us of how awesome she is; including episodes she's not in, where secondary characters talk with the Doctor about how magnificent Clara is.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I think it has a lot to do with the writing, honestly. Characters like Batman and Superman can be considered Sues if written badly, but under the right pen, they can be engaging characters.

And don't get me started on fanfic writers... I myself might have been guilty of this at some point, but that was when I was young and inexperienced, gimme a break!

...Of course, it's gotten so that I'm a bit hesitant to post any of my writings, since I'm worried that the characters might be considered Sues... or am I just being paranoid?

 

[visiblenoise]

It means nothing to me. In its current usage, it's an overly broad label that doesn't really say anything specific about a character. Every "overpowered" character I've had the displeasure of seeing this term applied to has their own version of potentially incomplete flawlessness that might be interesting to discuss (especially if you take the liberty of divorcing the characters and their details from the ideas they represent).

Just the fact that there's such disagreement over what character can be called "Mary Sue" shows just how effective a term it is. All everyone can agree on is that they might show up in the shittiest of shitty stories (and was probably done intentionally to boot).

 

[wizzy555]

It means nothing to me. In its current usage, it's an overly broad label that doesn't really say anything specific about a character. Every "overpowered" character I've had the displeasure of seeing this term applied to has their own version of potentially incomplete flawlessness that might be interesting to discuss (especially if you take the liberty of divorcing the characters and their details from the ideas they represent).

Just the fact that there's such disagreement over what character can be called "Mary Sue" shows just how effective a term it is. All everyone can agree on is that they might show up in the shittiest of shitty stories (and was probably done intentionally to boot).

Just curious, are there any broad labels or tropes that don't have these sorts of disagreements?

 

[sXeth]

Bella from Twilight is prettymuch your big mainstream example.

A not particularly interesting average high school girl that suddenly has 2 mythical beings (one of whom has managed to go over a hundred years without falling in love til she came along) fighting for her affections while risking exposing their respective species secret existence. Then once she makes peace between them, the real bad guys show up, she ends up having the one special superpower that saves everyone, and an impossible miracle child.

To cover the male side of the coin. Charlie Sheen's character in Two and a Half Men. Seemingly impervious to the effects of ridiculous substance abuse. Perenially wealthy by a talent never actually displayed. Consistently successful with women despite his age and being a ridiculous jackass. He gets killed off by his lifestyle eventually, but only because of outside circumstances to the shows development.

 

[the_dramatica]

A "flawless" character, although people like saying it means a self insert.

I wouldn't say the recent star wars characters were mary sues, but they were definitly immortal, having more than a fair share of dues ex machinas, even going as far as to walk into the orders base, kill 2 guards, and secure the shields, sealing the death of thousands of stormtroopers. The movie then continues for some time after this, pretending there is any suspension of disbelief left.

 

[Areloch]

At the risk of calling a mob upon myself, Motoko Kusanagi.

She's more or less perfect in every way.

- She's a beautiful fanservice cyberpunk dream woman.
- She surpasses the rest of her team in their own specializations (a better hacker than the specialized hacker guy, a better fighter than the specialized fighter guy, a better sniper than the specialized sniper guy, etc.)
- She's clearly the writers' favorite character.
- If she ever disagrees with another character, that character is wrong.
- The movie is about her being singled out as the perfect example of humanity by an AI with which to merge with and become a digital goddess.

I still like her, but this character is a black hole.

I'm not sure she fully qualifies, because while she's definitely top-class in regards to the cast, she also fails and messes up quite a bit and gets bailed out by people on her team.

She's pretty much the definition of the 'jack of all trades'. She's really good at pretty much everything, but she's never the BEST.
She's a really good hacker, but she gets handily outlcassed by the Laughing Man's skills.
She's a good strategist, but she and Section 9 get played HARD in both both seasons and nearly sees them all whiped out.
She's a good combatant, but without support there's several spots where she very nearly died if not for being nearly excessively paranoid or had teammates on hand.

So on and so forth. In fact, she becomes an antagonist of sorts in Solid State Society because she pretty much pissed off to do her own thing and a few of the people in Sec9 dislike her for her shenanigans.

So while it usually pans out in the end, I'd say she fails the mark because she actually does get outclassed or messes up a decent bit in the series. It works out eventually as the plot for the main character usually does, but she actually does have quite a number of close calls or being overshadowed.

She definitely displays several individual markers of Sue-ism though

 

[Spider RedNight]

Half the time, I agree with what I said in the other thread where a Mary Sue is based on who likes him/her so they use the term to describe any powerful person they don't like. It's also used to describe what everyone else said and I'm feeling particularly lazy at the moment so I'll just same some Sues I've encountered that haven't been from fanfictions and anyone is more than welcome to say "lol no ur wrong" because they disagree.

And, for what it's worth, I still don't see how "socially inept" isn't a Mary Sue quality because it doesn't work. To me, that's the equivalent of "Oh well they're really clumsy!" or something like that. Then again, I've had a few friends tell me my "Mary Sue Meter" is broken because I'll watch something with them and I go "Mary Sue" and they disagree and say something shallow like "Nuh-uh because no one likes them". ...Anti-Sue.

- Maleficent (Maleficent) - They change up her character, make her with a heart of gold, the plot centers around her, all the characters that don't like her are either evil, stupid or inept, she gets her way in the end and everything is rewritten to make her look better and more sympathetic.

- Labrys (Persona 4 Arena) - She shows up LITERALLY out of nowhere in the TV world, claims to be on the student council though none of the other characters has seen her before, all their story lines get shoved aside for her character development, she's the final boss no matter which route you take, her character is ridiculously OP, and all the canon characters immediately like her and want to help her plight. Not to mention she's really whiny, bossy and did I mention she's actually not human but a robot? And I get it, things have to change for PVP stuff but do they really need to create a whole new entity to be an antagonist? There are loads of characters OUTSIDE this one so why create a new one with an annoying accent?

 

[Thyunda]

Korra on the other hand is able to learn 3 elements by the old age of 6 (despite canon) and become the "true avatar" in end of season 2 (killing all previous avatars in the progress), the world changes for her sake.

I would argue with you here to say that Korra's rapid learning of the elements was more typical of the Avatar's ability than Aang. Korra's upbringing was a bit more modern, and her emotions were left entirely unchecked and so she was never confined to a single way of thinking. Accidentally triggering her elemental abilities is perfectly normal in those circumstances - Aang struggled so much with it because he was raised an airbender, and the monks didn't test for Avatar-ness until a particular age. Because the airbenders are taught in such a religious, austere manner, there was no way Aang was ever going to experiment with the elements that went against his nature.
I would also like to say that most of Korra's storyline seemed to be that the world needed the Avatar, and so no matter how hard she fucked up, the world would fight to maintain its own status quo.

And then there's the whole narrative point - The Last Airbender was brilliant. It gave us a tour of its world, introduced us to its separate cultures, and taught us how each of the bending styles worked.
Legend of Korra would have been a bit dull if it went through the same motions except with airships and cars. It needed to skip past the training part and get on with the real plot.

The problem with this, and really, the problem with the entire LOK is that bending is not mutants, you don't "get powers", you learn them, Aang might has an advantage learning it but mastering it is still something that takes most of the bender's life time. Even then, first, Aang only mastered air bending by the age of 12 and this was his "strongest" element with the rest only learning haphazardly without really mastering and only winning through depending heavily on the avatar state. The fact is that mastering 3 of the elemenets by the age of 16-18 is ridiculous and excusing it in "not being spiritual enough" is classic mary sue writing.

Except it is like mutants. You do just 'get' powers. Benders are born with it. Avatars are born with all four. Not only that, but Korra didn't master the elements at all. She couldn't firebend like the White Lotus in TLA. She couldn't airbend like that...airbender villain. She couldn't even lightning-bend like Mako, and he wasn't even close to being a master. Oh, her metalbending was also distinctly sub-par. You seem weirdly angry that the Avatar, born to master all four elements and bring balance to the world, was pretty good at all four elements.

 

[CeeBod]

I think the biggest problem with the phrase is that of overuse - it's become shorthand for "I don't like this character". And whilst the original author insert for fan-fiction is rather narrowly defined, any attempts to widen it's use just lead it being a blanket term argued between for example Batman fans and Batman haters!

The Ancient Greeks used the concept of Hamartia as tragic flaw or tragic error, which would ultimately be the downfall of any hero - like Achilles' heel. I'd quite like to see Mary Sue be applied to those fictions that fail to give any flaw or errors to the protaganist. Even Superman has his kryptonite - everyone should have some shortcoming, or as was mentioned in this thread, you lose the narrative tension.

The worst example I can remember would be the main character in every single Dan Brown book - Robert Langdon the hero of the DaVinci Code is a Harvard University Professor, author of several best sellers, world expert on whatever the plot needs, expert diver, swimmer and athlete, has an eiditic memory, looks like "Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed", is named one of the most eligible batchelors on the planet and is instantly attractive to all women. His only flaw is claustrophobia which impacts him a sum total of zero times throughout all Brown's books. He's not a character, he's the Author's Deus Ex Machina for progressing the plot. Dan Brown even said in interview he created the character as "the man he wishes he could be".

 

[MiskWisk]

In my eyes the Mary-Sue is a character whose level of competence vastly out-strips what is reasonably acceptable given their background to the point that my suspension of disbelief can no longer support them performing whatever the feat they are attempting is. The problem with this is that it is ultimately subjective. To bring up the other thread, an argument can be made that a scavenger should not have mechanical and flight training while a counter argument can be made that said scavenger had a lot of free time and could learn by watching other, more experienced individuals (monkey see, monkey do).

Of course, there are other things but that is my main identifier. To be honest my definition can probably be stretched to personality traits and the reactions of other characters around them.

I will second this guy...

snip

Honestly, I'd say Clara Oswald from Doctor Who qualifies as a Mary Sue. Not wanting to spoil the show for those who haven't seen it yet, but the entirety of season 9 exists to remind us of how awesome she is; including episodes she's not in, where secondary characters talk with the Doctor about how magnificent Clara is.

... and agree about Clara. I think where it is most obvious is the most recent season's opener where she is bossing around and out-thinking UNIT for some utterly inane reason and is then allowed to get several members of her guard killed because they weren't allowed to defend themselves in case they injure a popular villain. I swear that the Master/Missy knew her (Clara's) Sue-ness would mean she wouldn't get shot at that point.

 

[The Madman]

Mary Sue is a stupid term used most frequently by people looking for a lazy means of trying to add credibility to their dislike of a fictional character for one reason or another. The world of discussion and debate would be a lot better if the term didn't exist, though it's not like online discussion tends to be all the thrilling very often anyway.

Mary Sue or a Whedon are negatives

Whedon? As in Joss Whedon? Admittedly Age of Ultron wasn't brilliant but is he somehow supposed to be a Michael Bay-esq villain now? Am I supposed to dislike him for some reason?

I'm sorry, I always fall behind on these internet hate fads.

 

[the December King]

I've always used it to describe a character that seems to be perfect in any and every relevant way to the story.

Spoiler: Spoilers ahead concerning The KingKiller Chronicles and the Something Red series

Qvothe is a great example, and Name of The Wind, though beautifully written, makes it hard to care for his 'plights' (secretly I was hoping, as alot of folks might have been, that the retelling of these tales of his past were going to be exposed as rosy-tinted memories or even lies by others he had traveled with in the next couple of books, and although A Wise Man's Fear is not quite as consistently in Qvothe's service, he's still pretty unstoppable/awesome) Greatest bard, great looking, master martial artist, charmed the faerie queen, etc.

Another great example is Maeve from the Something Red series of books by Douglas Nicholas- though I haven't read the second or third books, and the story may have changed her somewhat as it plays out, the first book has the main character practically worshiping this woman who is without flaw. Again, excellent story-telling and wonderful writing, but... I just couldn't invest in the narratives dilemnas, as their solving them seemed assured with the character in question involved. Maeve is secretly a Queen, a better warrior than everyone, A great irish sorceror, Capable of living rough or cavorting with royalty, and seemingly needs no one to help her with anything, though everyone needs her help... yeah, characters like this are very tiresome.

 

[Fappy]

At the risk of calling a mob upon myself, Motoko Kusanagi.

She's more or less perfect in every way.

- She's a beautiful fanservice cyberpunk dream woman.
- She surpasses the rest of her team in their own specializations (a better hacker than the specialized hacker guy, a better fighter than the specialized fighter guy, a better sniper than the specialized sniper guy, etc.)
- She's clearly the writers' favorite character.
- If she ever disagrees with another character, that character is wrong.
- The movie is about her being singled out as the perfect example of humanity by an AI with which to merge with and become a digital goddess.

I still like her, but this character is a black hole.

I'm not sure she fully qualifies, because while she's definitely top-class in regards to the cast, she also fails and messes up quite a bit and gets bailed out by people on her team.

She's pretty much the definition of the 'jack of all trades'. She's really good at pretty much everything, but she's never the BEST.
She's a really good hacker, but she gets handily outlcassed by the Laughing Man's skills.
She's a good strategist, but she and Section 9 get played HARD in both both seasons and nearly sees them all whiped out.
She's a good combatant, but without support there's several spots where she very nearly died if not for being nearly excessively paranoid or had teammates on hand.

So on and so forth. In fact, she becomes an antagonist of sorts in Solid State Society because she pretty much pissed off to do her own thing and a few of the people in Sec9 dislike her for her shenanigans.

So while it usually pans out in the end, I'd say she fails the mark because she actually does get outclassed or messes up a decent bit in the series. It works out eventually as the plot for the main character usually does, but she actually does have quite a number of close calls or being overshadowed.

She definitely displays several individual markers of Sue-ism though

Considering GitS' philosophical undertones (or overtones in some cases), Motoko serves as the thesis for the story's message. Her characterization kind of suffers for that, but as you guys have pointed out there is still a lot of room for her to be a unique and multi-dimensional character. I think that's why I liked the new OVAs more than most people seemed to. She was a lot less "perfect" in her youth.

 

[hermes]

It usually means a wish fulfillment, self-insert or an audience-insert character taken to the limit. In general, they are common in fan fiction because they are easier to identify in pre-established lore. The most common characteristic is that they are perfect and the plot revolts around them saving the day (quite often by displaying skills that break the lore), interacting with the main characters (quite often in relationships that break the lore) and elevating/degrading characters according to the author's taste.

 

[Scarim Coral]

To me, a Mary/ Gary Stu is a character that always win/ have it his ir her way. Any conflicts thrown toward the stu is little to not and it is usually resolve easily and without effect.

(Yes I copy and paste this from the last thread but I think it still stand as a gary stu) I think War World Z is a good example of the mary sue of the main character-

Spoiler

The character was important enough to send a helicopters just to recuse him and his family while ignoring the civilians.

He was able to figure out the possible cure eventhought he had a scientist with him to trying to find it aswell althought he was killed a few minutes after his introduction. Therefore he got the scientist job rolled onto him.

He and one minor character were the sole survivors of a plane crash just cos he put the seatbelt on!

He blindly took one of the virus/ diseases/ illness as one of the possible cures and he was blind to the zombie eyes with no side effects what so ever!

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I remember having this conversation with a friend, who complained that Naruto is a boring Mary Sue/Gary Stu character. And I had to disagree.

A Mary Sue/Gary Stu is a character who just excels. The Jedi Character from Star Wars The Force Awakens is a great example of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. A Mary Sue/Gary Stu character has so much power that they don't even need to learn how to use it. It will just make things better. When they are beaten down, the power will just grow to over come. This makes the character boring because you know the Power is always going to win.

The Power (in this Case the Force) the Mary Sue/Gary Stu Character in the Force Awakens just manifests. No practice, no nothing. And it overpowers the Big Bad who has trained in the Force for years. No other reason than the Mary Sue/Gary Stu is just uber. And in short order, the New Jedi unleashes a ton of powers all at once because the Force says "Yup, this one right here. Special.".

In the cinematic universe (The only one that seems to matter now since Disney wiped all the Novels as non canon), this is huge. I can't remember one character that was anything other than 'Strong with the Force' before training. No Force Powers, just strong with the Force. The New Jedi pulls off high level stuff that even Luke, the Savior of the Force, needed training with Obi and Yoda to pull off. That Makes the new Jedi a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.

Naruto, however, is born with a demon of untold power within him. And he trains. He trains his ass off. He gets beat quite often. He's the Hero, and he just gets his butt handed to him sometimes. And his power? Has a mind of it's own and wants to control him. So he can't tap into it that often. I might think the Character is annoying, but there is no Mary Sueing going on there.

 

[Erttheking]

It's supposed to be a character that's overpowered, faces no flaws in theory, but the problem with Mary Sues is the usage of the title depends on whether or not you like them. There are plenty overpowered characters that rarely lose who are very much loved by everyone that aren't referred to as Mary Sues. Basically the problem with the Mary Sue trope is that essentially it means "I don't like this character." And that's fine, sometimes a character's personality just rubs you the wrong way, they don't charm you, but then I noticed someone on the last thread mention that one method was "A more objective way of measuring Mary Sues," and then it hit me.

People online have a nasty tendency to present their opinion as the "right" one. The factually correct one. They can't just say "This is my opinion," they have to present their opinion as the way things are. This usually means using terminology to make their opinion seem more impressive, when in reality it just comes down to them not liking the character.