What/Who is a Mary Sue to you?

[Synigma]

After reading everything and thinking about it a bit I've come to this conclusion:
- A power fantasy/wish fulfillment character that has no arc over the course of the story.

Typically caused by bad writing (not being able to setup or understand the need for a character arc) but certainly not limited to self-inserts.
Maybe we should start judging Mary Sue's on a sliding scale of how much they break the rules of their own universe (from slightly OP to Deus Ex Machina) related to how boring they are.

 

[Worgen]

There was a fanfic I read awhile back and it had the most annoying villiansue I've ever seen. In the first part of it she was fine, but in the second part... well, lets just say that nothing the main characters did mattered at all. She completely drove the plot, had everything planned out ahead of time, it all went perfectly, she never seemed to have any struggles at all, she literally came back from death (which she planned on also) and she had the most skilled agents around working for her and they could teleport anywhere they needed to be. She even anticipated the weird stuff that happened that no one saw coming.

 

[WolfThomas]

Mikael Blomkvist in the Millenium series. People might complain about Lisbeth Salander but she has flaws and get beaten down by the

Mikael is bascially the best journalist ever. He was only convicted of slander because the person he was targeting paid people to make stuff up and disappear. He has sex with literally every female he comes in contact including victims of rape with no issue. And more.

 

[Redryhno]

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.

I could understand not wanting to retread TLA ground, but they really could've done better than just have done "WE FOUND THE AVATAR!" "HOW DO YOU KNOW?" *Korra bursts through wall, using three elements better than most benders as a toddler*. Like, they could've pulled an Up and replaced the first five minutes with Aang's death quickly followed by Korra in swaddling or something and her pulling a ball of water towards her to drink, then progressively getting older and being led by the hand to learn the other elements.

And your other point would hold weight, if they hadn't also shown Roku and Kyoshi talking about learning the other elements. You'd think Kyoshi, born into her own war-torn war, would've easily picked up the others considering she was brought up in a warrior-like culture. Or even Roku being brought up in the Fire Nation which was a relatively free space for thought and philosophy during most of his tenure.

There's just so much wrong with Korra, and her bending with the exception of Air being innate. Except suddenly at the end of Season one when her bending is taken away she's competent..somehow, even though she'd shown a bit of Air bending during her training with Tenzin already. Which should sealed it off as well, but somehow it didn't. And then the suicide contemplation followed quickly by "lol, you get your bending back now" which basically was just there to appear edgy.

 

[Redd the Sock]

An old quote came up often back when I read fanfiction: every protagonist is a self insert for the author, it's just a question of how much he fools the reader. To my own taste, there's no binary to Mary Sue as most main characters suffer from the traits from time to time, but the term comes out when it's crossed the point of breaking suspension of disbelief for someone. Those points where you go: give the bad guy a chance, or no human being could have deduced that or remembered all that trivial information, or is the cast broken up between people that really like this character and total asses. Some people rush to the term to defame someone they hate, others hide from it rather than admit that cool character they like was tossed a few gimmies.

Warning signs:

Chosen one / rags to riches: Mary sue is a character that goes from shit life to good life.
Savanthood: Mary sue is really good at something over what similar effort put forth by others would achieve. She may also display quick use of untrained skills (yes, I'm looking at you Rey)
No obvious faults, or faults that hinder attaining goals: Mary Sue isn't held back by something about her. (this is why btamn often has stories where his arrogance or poor team skills come back to bite him)
One dimensional values and politics in the cast: Mary sue is always right, so good people have her values, and people that don't are evil, jerks, or otherwise not allowed to be right about anything.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Basically any character who either:
A: Is just instantly good at everything with no real training.
B: A character who is never really challenged and just seems to breeze through what are supposed to be the tribulations that define a hero.
And sometimes it's a combination of both.

-Steven Seagal is Gary Sue in basically all his movies. They usually provide some explanation for why he's super bad-ass, but it's boring because he's never challenged. Even when he's fighting the "big bad", they'll never seem to pose any threat to him.
-Rey is an example of A. Even if the explanation is "she can do everything super good because of the Force!" then that's just lazy writing to me (and that's a critique of Star Wars as a whole).
-Geralt from the Witcher is sort of a Gary Sue, but I tend to overlook it because he had to endure horrendous stuff to get to where he is, and people largely treat him like shit.
-Old school Lara Croft often felt like a Mary Sue (even though she's sort of bonkers when you think about it).
-Bayonetta (even though going way over the top with how bad-ass she is was part of the game's charm).
-Kratos is sort of, but I think it's kind of offset by the fact that he's insane and not a good person.

 

[Zhukov]

I've always thought of a Mary Sue as a character who is improbably capable, always right and correct about everything and lacking any flaws. Or has only token flaws that do not inhibit them in any way whatsoever. Usually have an idealized and/or exotic appearance.

Examples:

Chris Pratt's character (forgot his name) from Jurassic World struck me as being incredibly Mary Sue. He's massively skilled at everything he does, he's always right and vindicated in everything he says and there's nary a flaw in sight. Plus hot and handsome (although that kind of comes with the territory of being a movie protagonist.)

Geralt from the Witcher games. Slays monsters for a living. Greatest swordsman ever and a spellcaster. Sleeps around with dozens(?) of various hot women. Good looking, with distinctive hair, exotic cat eyes and a cliche vertical slash scar over one eye. He's supposed to be an outcast and a pariah but that's rarely actually demonstrated, most people treat him just fine.

There is of course the stricter definition that requires the character to be an idealized self-insertion. However I'd say the term has expanded beyond that by this point.

 

[DementedSheep]

Basically any character who either:
A: Is just instantly good at everything with no real training.
B: A character who is never really challenged and just seems to breeze through what are supposed to be the tribulations that define a hero.
And sometimes it's a combination of both.

-Geralt from the Witcher is sort of a Gary Sue, but I tend to overlook it because he had to endure horrendous stuff to get to where he is, and people largely treat him like shit.

This is because I played the game recently but while I'm not a massive fan of his character he's neither of those things. He's not instantly good at anything, he's been trained since childhood. He's not even particularly better than other witchers (though he is a bit a snowflake with the white hair and additional mutations and make him sound sueish at first glance), the others just don't have famous bards as best mates that keep making (exaggerated) ballads out of their lives. He usually losses "verbal sparing" with his mates and gets lost in discussions about politics or magic.
He also appears to breezes through things in the game but so do most game heros as few like cutscene incompetence. There is a reason he has so many scars, it's because he gets his ass handed to him or only just manges to win frequently in the books.

 

[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).

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

I don't know. I don't think there are any trope-terms that I find significant or helpful in a discussion. The only use I can see for them is if you were co-authoring something and needed to quickly convey something to your writing team, in a way that was free from positive or negative connotations. Kind of like using music theory terms to tell your bandmate something.

Actually, I think the music analogy sums up my feelings. As a listener, nobody brings any serious music terms into a review or discussion of a piece of music. They would actually describe the music in terms of what they felt or envisioned, they might describe qualities of the sounds and how they perceive them throughout the song, but rarely do they go into music theory, and that makes sense to me. Yet there are tons of people here spouting off these quasi-technical storytelling terms which tells little, apart from how they enjoy exercising pattern recognition.

Maybe you're all a bunch of burgeoning writers and I'm not, I dunno.

 

[Zen Bard]

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.

This is, in all honesty, the correct definition and usage of the term.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

http://io9.gizmodo.com/please-stop-spreading-this-nonsense-that-rey-from-star-1749134275

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-good-ideas-that-got-ruined-by-idiots_p2/

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).

I think this is largely because, as the meaning moved further from its original intent, it's become more subjective. It now seems to refer to "That character I can't stand because I think s/he is too overpowered."

If you think about it, no one ever uses that term as a compliment. Let's face it, by the current definition, Superman is a "Mary Sue", because he can literally do everything (except stand in a room with glowing green rocks). And yet, I've never seen anyone complain about him. Batman? Sure, 'cause he's kind of a prick. But not ol' Supes...

 

[Sean Renaud]

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.

Bending actually appears to be pretty close to "mutants" in that you get powers so right out of the gate you're simply incorrect. The fact that you learn to maximize your abilities as has been shown with plenty of mutants over the course of their development with Kitty Pride arguably being one of the better examples doesn't change the fact that you are born a bender or you are not. Any question that might have existed in the original series about each nation having it's own bending being similar to most nations IRL having their own language and culture was utterly crushed by LoK showing that you still don't have dual benders and Aang who obviously wanted more airbenders and is heavily implied to have favored his airbending son to the water and nonbender siblings would have raised them to be airbenders if he had any say in the matter. So clearly he doesn't.

Second it's never shown at all how long it takes to "master" an element. As someone else states Korra doesn't really seem to master any of the forms she just notices she's the Avatar sooner than her immediate predecessors and seems to have an unusual amount of raw power. Though as again is mentioned she is shown time and time again that the Avatarverse ultimately rewards finesse over raw power pretty much up to and including the Avatar. It's worth noting that Avatar state taps into the complete knowledge of all past lives so in that state she has however many thousands of generations separate her from the first Avatar when it comes to finesse.

Third her mastering three of the elements by age 16 despite being trained presumably by the greatest masters under ideal circumtances is considered absurd? Lets ignore that as we see when she fights literally any master in their art that she's clearly not a "master" and skip straight to the point. Aang masters three of the four while at a younger age, I believe he was twelve when it ended. He started later in life, Korra was discovered at 6 and presumably trained for the next twelve years contrasted to Aang's two or three years. Two of Aang's three teachers have little formal training with Katara being self taught and after a few short lessons with a "master" being deemed one herself and Toph was taught by illiterate mutes! Don't get me wrong, I get that she went to the source but she learned from beings who couldn't even tell her what to do and instead had to show her. So she's basically reverse Master Splinter. So in regards to learning Aang>Korra it just seems different because she was capable of the basics seemingly instinctively. And we have no idea if this is normal.

Fourth and this part is important raw power is not the only or even most important mark of a Mary Sue. Korra is often a brat and the universe clearly doesn't bend itself around to make her correct when she goofs.

Now as someone stated it's often impossible to separate a Mary Sue from a generic protaganist. This goes double for any anime or really any setting with people who have special powers. Heroes are always going super Saiyan/Bijuu/Bankai/True Form to the extent that no long term fan of the genre is surprised anymore when characters find they can tap into something to power up and being the main character means you almost always go before your fellow heroes and when you don't its because yours is so goddamned OP that they had to save it for something all your friends couldn't handle together but you can alone if you do this.

For me the first test of a Mary Sue is do they detract from the story as a whole via sheer awesome. Because Mary Sues are by definition negative. Most main characters are improbably good at a great deal of things (often just to cut down on clutter. The same reason most fictional cops work murder, hacking, theft, kidnapping are former SEALS and experts on art. Because breaking that into an entire police force would have a lot of characters nobody would care about. Same thing for doctors and scientists.

The second deals with if they are capable of being wrong. A typical Mary Sue is almost incapable of being wrong about anything. To the point that they can come to an illogical answer or at least one that was impossible to conclude based on the evidence they had when making the call. This is generally most obvious when someone is told to "stay behind" because the scenario is too dangerous or they are too important and they save the day. Again you can do this and not be a Mary Sue but stuff like "Dear Superman, don't come. They haz Kryptonite Monster" Then he comes, punches the Kryptonite Monster into the sun is BS.

 

[Estarc]

I'd define a Mary Sue as a character with no flaws who resolves all conflict so effortlessly that it is clear the conflict is only there to show how amazing they are.

That said I feel the term is often used, unfairly, to apply to characters that don't come anywhere close to this extreme.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Basically any character who either:
A: Is just instantly good at everything with no real training.
B: A character who is never really challenged and just seems to breeze through what are supposed to be the tribulations that define a hero.
And sometimes it's a combination of both.

-Geralt from the Witcher is sort of a Gary Sue, but I tend to overlook it because he had to endure horrendous stuff to get to where he is, and people largely treat him like shit.

This is because I played the game recently but while I'm not a massive fan of his character he's neither of those things. He's not instantly good at anything, he's been trained since childhood. He's not even particularly better than other witchers (though he is a bit a snowflake with the white hair and additional mutations and make him sound sueish at first glance), the others just don't have famous bards as best mates that keep making (exaggerated) ballads out of their lives. He usually losses "verbal sparing" with his mates and gets lost in discussions about politics or magic.
He also appears to breezes through things in the game but so do most game heros as few like cutscene incompetence. There is a reason he has so many scars, it's because he gets his ass handed to him or only just manges to win frequently in the books.

Ok, to clarify, he feels like something of a Mary Sue compared to regular human beings in the world. Now granted, considering that the vast majority of people in the world of Witcher are illiterate superstitious peasants, that's not really that much praise.

But still, he's a character who barely ages, is immune to disease, is a master swordsman, drinks concoctions to heal himself that kill normal people, is faster and stronger than just about any human, has minor magical abilities, and sleeps with lots of hot Sorceresses. And this in a world where most people can't read and die before age 40. Don't get me wrong, I love the games (I count Witcher 3 as one of my favorite games of all time) but on occasion he did feel a little like fan-fiction.

 

[Winnosh]

The Sentry from Marvel Comics.
"Created" By Stan Lee( created as in just a little forgotten sketch that nothing was ever done with )
Powerful great character you never heard about but is just the greatest
Stronger than everyone and everyone wants to be like him and around him
Was the first person the ever sleep with Rogue
The Thing looked up to him
ect.

 

[DementedSheep]

Basically any character who either:
A: Is just instantly good at everything with no real training.
B: A character who is never really challenged and just seems to breeze through what are supposed to be the tribulations that define a hero.
And sometimes it's a combination of both.

-Geralt from the Witcher is sort of a Gary Sue, but I tend to overlook it because he had to endure horrendous stuff to get to where he is, and people largely treat him like shit.

This is because I played the game recently but while I'm not a massive fan of his character he's neither of those things. He's not instantly good at anything, he's been trained since childhood. He's not even particularly better than other witchers (though he is a bit a snowflake with the white hair and additional mutations and make him sound sueish at first glance), the others just don't have famous bards as best mates that keep making (exaggerated) ballads out of their lives. He usually losses "verbal sparing" with his mates and gets lost in discussions about politics or magic.
He also appears to breezes through things in the game but so do most game heros as few like cutscene incompetence. There is a reason he has so many scars, it's because he gets his ass handed to him or only just manges to win frequently in the books.

Ok, to clarify, he feels like something of a Mary Sue compared to regular human beings in the world. Now granted, considering that the vast majority of people in the world of Witcher are illiterate superstitious peasants, that's not really that much praise.

But still, he's a character who barely ages, is immune to disease, is a master swordsman, drinks concoctions to heal himself that kill normal people, is faster and stronger than just about any human, has minor magical abilities, and sleeps with lots of hot Sorceresses. And this in a world where most people can't read and die before age 40. Don't get me wrong, I love the games (I count Witcher 3 as one of my favorite games of all time) but on occasion he did feel a little like fan-fiction.

Ah ok. I just usually think of a sue as being better than most of the main cast, not just the world in general. I think witchers as a group are a bit on the silly side with the mutations that only visually modify their eyes while making them physical superior, have slowed ageing, immunity to disease and conveniently being sterile and thus able to fuck around with absolutely no consequence.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

The definitive Mary Sue is a fictional character who is surrounded by friendly secondary characters. This is done so that the author can engineer a set of plot contrivances that will demonstrate to the audience how the Mary Sue is superior to their companions in whatever talents or skills they happen to specialize in.

Case closed.

::EDIT:: For instance, I am clearly the Mary Sue of this thread. Clearly.

 

[s0denone]

Ok, to clarify, he feels like something of a Mary Sue compared to regular human beings in the world. Now granted, considering that the vast majority of people in the world of Witcher are illiterate superstitious peasants, that's not really that much praise.

But still, he's a character who barely ages, is immune to disease, is a master swordsman, drinks concoctions to heal himself that kill normal people, is faster and stronger than just about any human, has minor magical abilities, and sleeps with lots of hot Sorceresses. And this in a world where most people can't read and die before age 40. Don't get me wrong, I love the games (I count Witcher 3 as one of my favorite games of all time) but on occasion he did feel a little like fan-fiction.

A ridiculous point of view.

Geralt was trained since he was a wee lad to be a Witcher. Went through an inordinate amount of trails to reach the point where he could indeed claim that title. He is very rarely the smartest person in the room. Doesn't usually know what to do or how. Lacks etiquette and patience. He is a brash man-of-action who is good at relying at what he is good at: Killing things.

Nothing was given to him, just like he takes nothing for granted. That is what makes him the total opposite of a "Gary Sue".

 

[SNCommand]

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 say that is not a fair interpretation

Korra does indeed learn how to bend several elements very early, she is presented as a sort of prodigy at it, but she is not a Mary Sue and the world is not changed for her sake by the fact that her strength in bending doesn't help her against the challenges brought against her

Instead she is faced with political crises, spiritual conflicts, internal conflicts, and villains who regularly defeat Korra by exploiting her character flaws

The first villain exploits her brashness easily and has her at his mercy when Korra believes she can just challenge him to a duel and crush him, not only that, but he also outmaneuver her thanks to her inability to solve the political crisis that has been wrought by the establishment she is supposed to protect, and Korra psychologically fears the villain because he has the ability to destroy who she is as a person, something which he succeeds at doing near the end, something only undone by an admittedly weak attempt at making it less of a downer ending

Also the loss of the previous avatars in season 2 is presented as a monumental loss, and it haunts the character for the rest of the series, Korra herself had no wish to see it happen, and is in her role as the Avatar crippled by it

In comparison Rey in The Force Awakens is never faced with any real challenge, defeating the villain both through the force and through physical combat, the plot seems to bend itself to her will in such a way that she is never defeated

 

[SNCommand]

I love how people instantly call Geralt a mary sue without considering his flaws. He isn't universally loved, he is despised in his world. Ciri is the actual mary sue here due to how everyone wants her because she a child of the elder blood with kick ass abilities.

Wouldn't Ciri be just as despised by the common people though because of her witcher like appearance?

Now I never got that into the Witcher games so I could possibly be wrong, but I still can't help but feel that Geralt is a Mary Sue in spite of people mistrusting him because he is a Witcher. Primary reason being the mistrust is usually presented as ignorant yokels being the ignorant common people that they are, and that it has no negative consequences for Geralt. The only people who seem to dislike Geralt for being a witcher is dumb ugly farmers, people Geralt could, and sometimes easily kill because of the pathetic peasants they are